A Strange Name For Anyone

The last chapter was the easiest to write. The lake is one I am very familiar with – Wildgoose Lake, in Northwestern Ontario; not far from the arctic watershed, the place where the rivers change direction from flowing south to flowing north. It is a lake full of mystery and beauty, especially in the early morning when the fog moves over the surface like a living spirit.

(1)

In the early morning, when the mist first appeared, before others were out on the lake, the woman climbed into a kayak and began paddling to a place where the reeds stood out. She paddled slowly to one of the bays where the lake was shallow and mud-bottomed, where the water flowed from across the highway, below the highway, below the earth, a deep mystery that continuously filled the lake.

She knew if she paddled far enough, she would come to the spot where the creek fills the lake, where the water is too shallow for boats, even canoes, but not a kayak, where the water is barely a few inches deep. She understood the lake as much as anyone can understand a living, breathing creature that changes before your eyes.

She was small, five feet and three inches in height, and her beautiful white hair had a shaggy cut, tucked back tight in a band. She could have been an Obachan, a grandmother, long accustomed to working in a rice field, but she was French-Canadian, staying at a small cottage on the lake and living alone.

The woman paddled slowly. She passed two loons with their chick; an eagle circling high above in the sky, hunting; all the time, paddling slowly through the mist, like a spirit finding its way through a cloud.

The woman was feeling her age. Her hands were arthritic, and a searing pain ran through her hands and fingers when bending the joints – yet she continued to paddle, not letting the pain stop her. Every morning when the sun was starting to rise, when life on the lake was beginning to move, she would kayak.

Her husband had died a number of years earlier. Aside from the summers when she came to the lake, she lived in Thunder Bay, near a beautiful park overlooking Lake Superior – a lake that was almost an inland sea. People came from all over the city to sit in their cars and watch the harbour below, with the ships arriving and leaving, and the Sleeping Giant, Nanabijou, in the distance, ready to rise at any moment.

As the woman drew near to the end of the bay, she stopped, rested her paddle, and lit a cigarette. She smoked slowly and thought, “John, you would have loved to be here. Yes, you would have loved to go kayaking in the morning, you in your own kayak and me beside you in mine, just the two of us paddling together. You would have loved to see the mist rising, you would have loved the mystery, the feeling of discovery, and finding your way.”

In her mind, he was like a beautiful animal, a hidden animal like a lynx in the forest or an otter hidden deep in the water. A creature you only see now and then, a smart animal, a strong animal.

The man she was thinking about was not her dead husband, but a man she had known briefly before his tragic death, a man she always remembered. Later, she had married a good and decent man, had a child and led a long and peaceful life, eventually seeing her daughter move away, marry, and start her own family, and then watching her husband die slowly and painfully of cancer. But now she was alone and remembered an earlier time, before she was married, when her life lay before her. “Yes, John, you would have loved to be here. I think of you now, often. Nothing went well after you died. Everything got worse, much worse. But you probably knew that it would. I think you always knew more than you let on.” And then she continued to paddle along the lake, with the mist rising and the sun beginning to push the mist far away.

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