Yeah! I was confronted with a scene I never saw before. Please, let me explain.
I like going for long distance bike-hikes, and my favorites begin when I'm not sleepy,
so I leave before midnight, expecting to stay out all night, all the next day, and get back late at night,
in time to have a hot bath and sleep. I'm pedalling over a 100 miles and walking over twenty,
the walking being along Lake Erie shorelines, usually barefoot.
But the weather was so nice last Saturday, overcast and cool, some ice melting, I decided to go for one.
This winter began like a global warming winter, windy, rainy, but then the snowstorms hit.
When I made it to Reeb's Bay, north of Port Colborne, I was suprised to see a wall of ice and snow across the back of the bay.
This began at Morgan's Point and went across the horizon towards the city.
And the bay itself was just one smooth sheet of ice, with some fluffy snow trails. I never saw it like that before.
There were people walking, skidoos, and lots of ice fishing, holes and huts.
I was sitting on a fallen tree, my usual rest spot, and decided, why not.
So I left my bike where I could see it and started walking around, visiting and seeing lots of big yellow perch.
That was great, being so far out on the lake, looking back at the shore.
I caught some hot chocolate, held some fish, and caught a light.
That'll prolly never happen again, but I made a nice afternoon out of what I was seeing, and hearing.
My usual encounter? Sitting on the beach all alone, seeing the deep striations, all the white fossils,
the bleached remains of failed migrations, the acid colours of lichens and moss and marine fuels,
looking endlessly up the lake, looking just like the glacials just left, a ten thousand year view.
Jimi sang about "the echoes of glaciers from long ago", which I know, to be a part of Haida oral history.
Knowing my Mohawk friends, and their ownership of the lands I traverse, makes it all so much more beautiful.