Yesterday we took what may be this year’s last hike through the woods. It was the revival of a hiking weekend tradition established with friends some years ago but abandoned the last few years due to aching backs, newly replaced joints, and general malaise. This year, we were all in fine form for a group of septuagenarians, and we’re determined to reestablish the annual tradition.
We walked on a trail leading to the Agawa River, a short distance from our place on the lake in Lake Superior Provincial Park. The trail follows an esker, a raised “roadway” left behind by a melting glacier. It passes through an open hardwood forest filled with yellow birch and maple, a forest with a very different feel from the denser conifer and poplar woods more common in the part.
The Agawa River Valley is one of the farthest-north pockets of hardwood as the topography changes and the boreal forest begins.
Yesterday’s walk through the maples was unusually green for October. It’s been an unusually warm fall. October 6, and still no frost, but the maples farther south turned red some time ago and are generally past their prime.
Maybe because the leaves were not spectacular, we spent a lot of time admiring the fungi.
Our destination was a quiet pool at a bend in the river, a perfect place for lunch. We encountered a couple of groups who were coming from or going to the Agawa Falls, another ten kilometres farther. That’s an overnight hike, and one of the few in the park we’ve never taken.
Today, the waves are crashing along our shoreline. Normally, we love to watch and listen, but this year we do it with some alarm. The lake is the highest we’ve seen it—perhaps an all-time high. Our little beach is entirely gone, and the bank our cottage is perched on is already badly undercut from the last time the lake was high. That was before we bought it, and a lot of foliage has grown up since. Still, one heavy storm from the north, and we could lose ground, trees, conceivably even the house.
But the surfers are having a blast!
