Saturnsday
Saturday morning dawned cool, beautifully cool. After what seems like an aeon of hot, sticky weather Environment Canada promised us a high of 22 breezy degrees. A hike further afield was in the offing, and off indeed we went. Only a week since our last trip up to Gatineau Park, our wonderful wildlife preserve only a half-hour drive from Ottawa into Quebec, and aren't we lucky? Only a week and already there have been changes. Beside the parkway in the green expanses, thyme is in bloom, spreading its colour everywhere, purple-on-green. For that matter, last week there were no Cornflowers in blue bloom, nor masses of golden Trailing Lotus, nor yet - so early! - Queen Anne's Lace, lofting its multipetaled heads.
Backtracking, before we were able to escape the city we'd had to do the food shopping, as the day before everything commercial was unavailable. While checking out in the self-help, dirt-cheap supermarket we shop at, I overheard the cashier chirp to the man ahead of me in the line-up how nice it was that he had finally retired. She's looking in from the other end, younger and still working, and he, obviously, doesn't find his situation nice at all, for his rejoinder was something to the effect of "why do we have to get old?". I couldn't resist: confided in him that there is an alternative, but most people don't find it appealing. A weak half-smile issued from his pallid, pouched countenance, sitting above his grey and paunchy frame. He would, he assured the cashier, begin to spend a whole lot more time at the Legion. Playing darts! she responded brightly. Practising my drinking, he corrected. Wotalife.
Our little dogs deduced in their clever way where we were headed and as we drove closer to our destination their excitement became palpable. Button, the miniature-sized female, likes to sit beside me in the car seat, while Riley, the toy male, takes his place on my lap. They nap while we're in highway-driving mode, then become instantly alert when we turn off into the park. Button edges onto my lap, shoving her bony backside into my chest, and I keep pushing her off, to little avail. Riley turns his attention to the window and hoists himself as high as he can on my chest to see as much as possible of the passing scene. By the time we pull into a parking spot they're both frantic to eject themselves from the car and into the greenspace.
Leashed and eager, they sniff and snuffle everywhere, and urinate freely, happily, for the first five minutes. We finally head uphill to begin our circuit and the sweet trill of a thrush drifts through the trees. Shafts of light slant through the thickness of leaves and the trail welcomes us. The Geraniums that hosted so many bright pink flowers are exhausted, and only the marsh Marigolds and pink daisy-heads of the Fleabane, along with clovers in pink, yellow, white and mauve colour the underbrush. We don't that often see other hikers along this portion of the trail, for even though it's a popular enough destination thanks to its proximity to both Ottawa and Gatineau (the city) most people hike only at the opposite end.
We come to the overlook and Irving takes a photograph of me and the dogs. Two men have hiked from the opposite end of the trail to this point, and they are puzzling over a small map, attempting to orient themselves. Irv tells them that they're looking northeast, pointing in that direction, and tells them that the river snakes down below, just beyond sight. River they ask, what river? Ah, they're tourists, and he tells them it's the mighty Ottawa River. They turn to argue between themselves and we continue on.
By the time we're halfway through the hike we begin to see more people. I have a habit which Irving does not share, of greeting people as we come abreast of them. Some respond, most do their best to ignore my greeting. It isn't difficult to identify those who ignore me, as they're offended that I greet them in English, not French. Irving is angry, it hurts him that I'm ignored. I'm not angry, only puzzled, that people can behave so uncivilly. Irv contends that people like that are basically suffering from feelings of inferiority, and he may be right. He spoils his insight by declaring them to be inferior in any event, while I consider them merely embittered.
We pass two young men walking alongside their gender counterparts and one of the men effusively greets Riley with a resounding "Hallo, dawg!". Riley responds through my voicebox: "Hallo, person!", and the young man grins delightedly. By this time the trail has taken us along the creeks that feed the watertable downstream and we begin seeing tall stately Rue among the grasses and rushes, the lush voluminous ferns, and admire their thick white flowerheads, embroidering the landscape.
Making our way up one of the long hills that leads downhill to The Waterfalls, a truly miserable trickle over a rocky outcropping, maliciously designed by nature to pose as the real thing, and which the National Capital Commission loves to hawk as a sightseeing destination, we face two well dressed genteel-appearing men carefully making their way downhill, and, considering their age (younger than us but unfit) and garb, I offer the information that it's a long climb down and consequently a difficult one back up. They're headed down to the falls, one of them tells me. Not worth the effort, I respond, and we stop for a few minutes to describe the ill-publicized wonder. They turn about and head back up, beside us, and soon we reach the balance of their group, the women as attractively dressed as the men and obviously on a sightseeing outing. A slender, bearded, white man stops to read aloud the sign that says: "Valley of the Kings" and I snort in derision and toss back the opinion that the lily has been gilded beyond belief. With them too we have a brief chat of the history of the place and its former owner: a nation's leader, sad mama's boy, lunatic.
It becomes clear soon that these six people are together, forming a family group. Two are residents of the area, the other four are relatives visiting from Toronto; Trinidadian-Canadians. They follow us up the long hill, and instead of veering off to the right to return to Mooreside, decide to walk alongside us to the lake. This is where, on the trail, we begin to get quite uncomfortable. The 22-degree weather that has made us up until now so glad we've come up here has also re-awakened those bloody blackflies and they're everywhere about us, driving us crazy. They're not biting, Irving helpfully advises as he successfully ignores them (or they ignore him) and the rest of us are flailing about, trying to disperse them. As we walk along the trail, rising on another hill, the troupe begins to flag, the women's shoes, unlike our hiking boots, clearly unsuitable for the terrain, but they slog slowly on. Button becomes a little concerned with all these legs surrounding her and at one point panics, uncertain where we are in the crowd. I point out to the woman with whom I'm speaking at the moment, the flying jewel of a Damselfly, alighting upon a Thimbleberry bush, its irridescent blue body shining in the sun. Politely, the woman smiles, asks what a Thimbleberry bush is, and I also point out the Solomon's Seal we're passing, and she repeats its name.
Is the little museum close to the yellow cottages open now at the lake? she asks me. Museum? what museum? I respond, confused for the moment. There's no museum, no yellow cottages at Lake Mulvihill, far as I can recall. Then I realize, they think they're heading toward King's Lake, and I stop and explain, as does Irving, which direction they should be headed toward. The wiry man wants to stick around anyway and keep talking with Irving. His wife asks where we live, and we tell them, and bloody darn if they don't live a few streets away from us, small world. We part with smiles and friendly waves.
Later that evening we view a film we'd picked up at the video store, set in the 50s in small-town America. It's a fairly good film and we enjoy its quiet introspection and empathize with the quiet desperation of its characters. But the music, omigawd, the music! It's the music of our childhood, of our teen years, of our early years together, and I can feel, I can honestly feel the physical sensation of what it was like, Irving clasping me close to his body when we were 14, 15 years old, dancing together to these very same songs.
posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 04, 2005
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