Ice to Water

The end of winter is marked by the melting of the ice.

This is one of the two most miraculous events of the year. The other miracle, naturally, is when the water changes to ice in late fall.

The first week of May, I watched a narrow band of water at the shoreline get a little wider each afternoon. Was there enough water to float the canoe yet?

Not wanting to wait any longer to get out on the water, we loaded the canoe onto the car and drove the four kilometres to the nearest creek. Moving water opens earlier, even very slowly moving water. We knew we could paddle for hours up the creek and back again.

The sun shone warmly upon the land as we carried the canoe down to the shore. The heat of the sun soon convinced me to take off my fleecy sweater. The breeze felt great.

After the long, icy winter, it sure felt good to be in the canoe again — and in the sun. Creeks are especially nice for paddling in early May. The bugs are not out yet and the scenery is great. As the deciduous trees have not yet put out their leaves, we could see deep into the forest in many places.

We quietly paddled downstream with the morning breeze at our back. Rounding a little point of land, a shallow bay widened out to the west. Turtles were all around. Catching the sun, we saw ten painted turtles basking on logs. Their little necks stretched up as we paddled by, having a look at us as we looked at them.

We stopped at many places along the six kilometres of open water. I found an abandoned turtle shell with the bones still inside. On the eastern shore, we found several places where patches of snow hid in the shade and several more where masses of ice clung to the rocks near little streams.

The sound of miniature waterfalls caught our attention and we stopped under a grove of large cedars to walk in the shade along a creek.

It was a lovely stretch of open water before we came to the end. The lake it fed was still ice covered, so we climbed to the top of a hill and had lunch overlooking the lake.

Paddling south again in the heat of the mid-day sun, we knew it would only be a matter of days before we would be out on the lakes again.

Viki Mather has been commenting for Northern Life on the natural world and life in Greater Sudbury since the spring of 1984.