The rain that night and early morning fell so hard and so persistently that it would've shrouded whatever scant visibility was left in the darkness. I was in a tent with a critical design flaw: a rainfly that's just too short to stop spattering rain from rebounding and hitting the non-waterproof fabric it's supposed to protect.
But I'm jumping to the middle of the story, as is a mediocre writerly tic of mine. It's worth pointing out that it's been a minute since I wrote last and a lot has happened since then.
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| The view on the way downhill |
For one, as of July 27, I have a permanent hiking partner (a.k.a. wife). For another, we've completed and submitted a five-pound slab of paperwork and documentation required for a bureaucratic process so boringly named that your eyes might glaze over before you finish reading it, yet so nerve-wracking that we've been muddling through what's ranged from a walking panic attack to a sort of serene limbo.
And then the whole pandemic thing has been... well, I have a metric shit-ton of things to say about that, mainly about how dealing with it, even from a fairly cushy spot (still employed, etc), has worn me down in many ways and made the cynicism already tainting my mind even more toxic. But writing this post has proven to be hard enough without trying to swallow that herd of elephants.
So let's get on with it.
Lake Superior Provincial Park crossed my mind after some aimless Google Maps searching placed it there in the first place, although when I couldn't say. In fact, a lot of the finer details of this trip have faded after a time of emotional turmoil that predated even all this mask-brawl horseshit.
Get on with it.
After doing a little research, I thought I would head up there to hike the trails and planned an ambitious trip that didn't go quite as I imagined.
For one thing, I got a late start on the drive (another bad habit). So I actually got to Canada at Sault Ste. Marie around the time I had hoped to be pretty much there. Several hours to the north. That ruled out starting my trek that day, so instead I camped at Pancake Bay Provincial Park.
Great place with a beautiful beach on the often-frigid Lake Superior. Avoid my rookie mistake: fill up with gas BEFORE you cross the border, and don't be shocked when you see the price to camp at an Ontario provincial park.
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| Never take a hike for granite. |
After getting my backcountry permit — the most I've ever paid for the privilege of staying at a hike-in spot with zero amenities aside from a wooden box in which to shit — I finally hiked into Baldhead Point. The entire shoreline is serrated with mountains and cliffs, and this one's been worn down over time to resemble some Cretaceous Era life sunning itself.
The campsite was nice enough, and despite being right on top of the trail, it was more or less private. Once you're there, you have a nice stretch of cobble beach more or less to yourself.
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| I just caught this in time after spending a short eternity hanging my food pack from a tree. |
But I didn't pay close enough attention to my tent site, another basic mistake that would have me up at 4:30 a.m. hastily finding a new one. It started to pour after midnight. I was surrounded by tree roots that formed a bowl that flooded and soaked all my gear under the tent vestibule. This came to my attention when I started to feel a peculiar chill and patted the floor next to my sleeping pad. The unsettled-jello sensation proved my hopes of sleeping through the storm were basically fucked.
The rain tapered off in the morning just enough to trick me into optimism. I set the rainfly up on the beach to dry and made my breakfast as I weighed my options: carry on? Give in? Cough up another $45 to camp somewhere else in the park?
Then the rain started again.
"Fuck it," I said. "My tent and pack's already soaked. I'm getting a room."
So I threw on my dollar store rain poncho, packed up everything and headed back to the car. Which, of course, was a harder hike than the way in, being entirely uphill.
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| The park is filled with waterfalls. |
After getting to Wawa, I made the obligatory visit to the roadside attraction, a giant goose literally built as a desperation play to lure people off the just-completed Trans-Canada highway and into town. I later saw a guy engaged in what was once a national pastime for teens to twenty-somethings once the highway was completed: drop everything and hitchhike across the whole country.
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| "Wouldn't you like to come to |
The rocks in the area still have a little bit of mineral wealth to give, although the iron ore once shipped down to Algoma Steel played out long ago. Wawa has charm despite the toll a dwindling rural economy has taken on the place, and some are trying to work the land in another way. One approach I saw was to take some bare land, plant it over with low bush blueberries and make some fantastic (and not cheap) blueberry products.
I also made a stop in Michipicoten and took a swim at a park in the reservation. The road there is a nonlinear trip through a history that's at once unique in the particulars, yet shamefully common in its overall arc for an Indigenous community: forced relocation after gold was found, loss of reserve lands as the result of another mineral rush (this one iron) and isolation before a government "fix" placed its people on unlivable land.
It might seem ironic that another wave of natural resource exploitation, this time hydroelectricity, finally got the Michipicoten First Nation a deal for a road to the present location.
Missed my chance to stop at Black Thunder Enterprises on the way there, and once again I got a late start home from Michipicoten. To the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. Still made it in time to catch some Canadian "craft brew" at the duty-free shop!
Where do we go from here? I have a few answers, guesstimates and wild premonitions for myself, but the forces eating away the bonds of our civil society seem to have become more powerful as of late. It could just be the dysthymia talking. Yes. Your emotions make you a monster, said someone once. Now the beast has a name, and now we make it beautiful, to paraphrase another.
In some aspects the hope has been driven out of me. In others I find it regenerating, thanks in part to my teammates and beloved. But some days I feel like my poor potted plant. The big leaves are dying and any chance of survival depends on the little ones that sprout at a furious rate but also struggle to hang on.
All I can do is try. And keep watering it. The plant, that is. That helps.
