night magic

Just after sunset, from the Gibsons' dock yesterday evening.


Jeff and I decided to go for a paddle and hike yesterday, and took our "good" canoe out for its first adventure of the year. By "good", I mean a custom-made canoe that my dad-in-law gave Jeff and me as a wedding present, built by Danny Gibson (eldest son of Dan Gibson of Solitudes fame). We came to the cottage for our honeymoon, and found an unpainted canoe waiting for us in the boathouse, with a note from JBR saying that Danny would paint it any colour we chose.

I love this canoe. It's tippier than regular tripping canoes, but it's also much more responsive in the water. We tend to leave it at the cottage and take the battered-up aluminum canoe, though, when we know were going to be paddling through places that might scratch it up.



Jeff patiently lets me take a picture of him before
he sets off on a portage.


Anyway, our day trip yesterday involved two portages and three lake paddles. Hey, even I did some paddling yesterday! Only a very little bit because I wasn't sure how my arms would be, but it seemed to go okay. Might do some more later this week.

The blackflies are out, but most of them haven't started biting yet. Hopefully they will remain in ignorance until after we've gone home, though both Jeff and I did get bitten once each. They swarmed around our heads on the trails, and must have been mightily annoyed (as annoyed as insects can get, anyway) at having two big potential meals so close yet not being able to do anything about it.



Sam Lake.


The skies remained blissfully clear last night, resulting in spectacular nighttime viewing. After dinner, Jeff sets up his telescope on the Gibsons' dock, and I set up a comfortable spot using two life vests and a couple of blankets.

Then we sit and wait for night to fall, watching the light in the sky gradually fade, listening to the loons calling to each other, the lovelorn chorus of the peepers (tree frogs) swelling and lapsing. And finally, peering through the telescope, Jeff exclaims that he sees the comet. I come over to take a look.

And there it is, a smudge of light with a definite tail. VERY cool.

Jeff is ecstatic; the sky is -completely- clear. And away from the city lights, the night sky is incredible...looking up at all those stars, I feel like I'm falling. I can't tear my eyes away from the sky.

Jeff points out Jupiter and Mars, Venus and Saturn. I will never get tired of seeing the rings of Saturn through a telescope. I get to see the Sombrero Galaxy, and the Leo triad (sorry, Andy, can't remember the name exactly, and Jeff's still asleep)...a trio of galaxies. GALAXIES.

It's easy to get a bit jaded sometimes, what with all the special effects in sf movies these days and space talk in the news. But when it comes right down to it, seeing all this stuff with my own eyes is still pretty darned amazing.



One of the portages involved a tricky (especially for
someone carrying a canoe!) balancing act on a log across a swamp.


I get cold and sleepy after a couple of hours, curl up on some life jackets on the deck under two blankets while Jeff continues to observe through his telescope. After what seems like only a few minutes, I hear Jeff calling my name.

Half-awake and somewhat crabby, I grunt a reply.

"Northern Lights!" he says, and I sit up immediately, wide awake.

And there it is, the Aurora Borealis: a curtain of ghostly light, with pale fingers flickering across the sky like a living thing.

For me, it's the closest thing to magic.

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