4 ~ Wednesday, October 30, 1991 - North Shore News

Elk Island: Walden Pond preserved

ELK ISLAND, Manitoba
— It was a modera-style
credit-card pilgrimage.

That is, | flew by jet to Win-
nipeg, dragging along a whole
mess of camping equipment,
rented a car, and drove up toward
the edge of Lake Winnipeg.

In the end, some experiences,
like travelling across the Prairies,
can’t actually be described.

But writers are the last people
to come to realize the futility of
words. So J’ll try anyway:

As I drove, the sky was a sulky
grey shadow that cried of winter
amassing to the north. Orange
and red and yellow leaves flew
like frightened bats across the ceil-
ing of bruised and scudding
clouds.

L was aiming for a place called
Elk Island. The first time I had
trekked out to the island was
when I was 15. Ahem. That was
35 years ago, conmonly what we
would call a generation and then
some.

A decade later, after a dozen
visits to the place — mosily soli-
tary — I managed to get a novel
published that contained long
devotional passe ges attempting to
describe the place.

I was trying to put Nature into
words, you see. Who has ever
succeeded? Certainly not me. But
l tried. That seemed important at
the time.

t had not been out there since
my mid-20s, so you can imagine
how low my expectations were.
Given that the island was very
near to a built-up summer cot-
tage-town called Victoria Beach,
there could be little hope ihat it
was anything other than totally

developed, i.e. ruined.

At best, I expected Elk Island
would have been grabbed by now
by a provincial parks department,
and there would be lodges for the
parks staff all over the place and
flags mounted in concrete pits,
while visitors were consigned to
designated camp sites next to the
parking lot, nature’s equivalent to
motels. (Which is what happened
at Long Beach on Vancouver
Island.)

But no, amazingly enough. The
island had been declared a
heritage site some years back, and
had been left intact in its pristine
natural state.

This was my personal Walden
Pond. To me, it symbolized the
beauty and integrity of Nature.

I remember going there time
and again and being intoxicated
by the unfurling of the stars
across unpolluted heavens, the
fecundity of the swamps, the
church-like quality of the forest,
the surreal sculpturings of sand-
stone, the Dali-esque driftwood...

And, eureka, it had somehow
been saved! Certainly no thanks
to me, having left my native pro-
vince decades ago and playing no
further part in its story.

Now (in not quite a full circle,
but certainly an interesting loop)
here I was pulling my hiking boots
and socks off, preparing to wads
across a quarter-mile of rather
chilly October Lake Winnipeg
waters, beneath a wind-lashed sky
the color of solider and paste and
soreness.

The way I used to cross was
along the ridge of an underwater
sandbar. | was afraid the sandbar
would have disappeared, making
it too deep for me to wade. But

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no, quite the reverse. The crossing
was cold but simple.

It was rendered far more pleas-
ant — at least psychologically —
than it might have been by the
fact that no sooner had I started
across than the sun broke through
the cloud cover, sending a shaft of
light down over the island,
spreading rather like a searchlight
beam over the peninsula folding
down to the lake, and out across
the water around me so that the
small wavelets glittered.

The sunlight remained, with
most of the sky clearing, as f
rubbed my pink, tingling toes,
clumsily pulled the socks and
boots back on, and stumbled nor-
thwvard along the beach, looking

at

44 This was my personal
Walden Pond. To me, it
symbolized the beauty and
integrity of Nature. 99

for a spot out of the wind to pitch
camp.

There was driftwood galore and
small dead trees that had been
choked to death by the sand. On
the leeward side of a dune, I set
up the one-man tent, and quickly
made a fire, for the benefit of my
stomach as much as my toes.

I had just finished eating when
an enormous black cloud swirled
overhead, sending sheets of rain
across the sand dunes and swamp.

Moments after it passed, a
perfect double-ringed rainbow ap-
peared across the eastern sky.

Sort of like a welcoming sign,
you know? Almost like a pat on
the head. A little cosmic hug. As
though the istand had found some
way to personify itself enough to

NE TE

smile upside down and say: Where
you deen all these years, kid? A
bit the worse for wear, eh?

Fortunately, Il am a modern
scientific-minded citizen, the pro-
duct of the education system of
one of the most highly industri-
alized countries in the world.

Random coincidental phenome-
na like rainbows at critical junc-
tures and bursts of sunlight at ex-
actly the right moment have no
effect whatsoever on my cognitive
processes.

Being all rationality and objec-
tiveness, I did what any sane man
would do under those cir-
cumstances: I bowed and
whispered a prayer of ‘anks.

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