The Day it Rained … Forever

Recently I had the pleasure of joining my friends Linda and Al at their cottage up in Killarney Provincial Park. Yep, they are two of the few lucky peeps that are allowed to own a cottage inside the park. I believe they stopped the building of private cottages inside Parks over ten years ago.

They bought it from a trusty old nun who was giving the place up; age et al, and via word of mouth they heard and competed with several other interested parties to buy the cottage and got it. Must’ve been their history at the park. I think Al is one of the ‘veteran’ Friends of Killarney members and has been canoeing and camping there for 3+ decades.

He is also very adept at getting me to buy the annual raffle tickets for the ‘Friends’. I think he learned his selling tactics from ‘Harold the Jewellery Buyer’. But it’s a good cause and a canoe as first prize to boot.

En route up to the cottage the sun was shining, the dogs were in Doggie Condo Heaven and all was well with the world. I arrived to find Linda feeding the critters – all named of course. There’s ‘Scruffy J.’, son of Half-Tail, Baby Red, ( red/ flying squirrels or chipmunks – I can’t keep up) who was discovered hanging out in a nearby tree when she/he was an itty bitty thing and Slinky the fox and her 2 ‘kits’ (kids in Fox-Lan) .

Needless to say, they are both a bit eccentric when it comes to the animals up at the ‘camp’. Dr. & Dr. Doolittle at large. They also have two hummingbird feeders that are busy all day long and a tree that has the history (read: gigantic holes) that looks like a mutant woodpecker resides/ed there, and a host of Mother Earth’s other creatures on the property. In years past, my trips up there have even led to seeing monarch butterflies emerge from their cocoons, or is it pupas? Pupii?. (Where’s Richard Attenborough when you need him!?)  Very cool indeed.

Being mostly a city slicker, but one who loves the countryside, cottages and getaways, I revel in trips up north. I always hope the weather will cooperate. It’s a long drive to Killarney (4.5 hours on a good day) and the stay is never too long – usually a long weekend.

On the Saturday the plan was to see some of the interior and the itinerary included a 3 km canoe trip and a hefty 4 hours hike.

We wake to a grey soggy sky and I curse the heavens. In a summer that has seen about 7 rainy days, I have had plans to be outdoors on all those days. What’s with that?

We venture out anyway, ever hopeful that the skies will clear. Onward and upward! As Al said, being outdoors in weather like that is not ‘character building’, it’s ‘character revealing’. In my case I feared the worst. My character can get a little ‘revealing’ when I get grumpy or  disappointed. I’m the baby of the family so that’s my excuse and I’m stickin’ to it.

Lucky me didn’t have to do too much work. They paddled while I sat and admired the lake for the 3 km canoe trip to the start of the climb. It was raining but I was out of the city and that was a good enough reason to be happy. I had packed my trusty ‘dollar store raincoat’ (read coloured piece of saran wrap) so was adventure-ready! We had spoken to the Killarney Canoe guy just before hoisting the Kevlar sausage into the calm waters re: the weather, and he replied, ‘Well, it’s been gorgeous weather for the last 3 weeks, so bad luck folks!’ or something equally knife-in-the-heart-ish.

We reached our hike starting point and about half way up, the heavens opened. So much for living in hope of a clear view from the ‘tallest peak in Killarney’. I kept calling it Silver Streak, but I believe the correct name is Silver Peak. I shall forever rename and remember it as ‘Slippery When Wet’.

When we reached the top I thought Al was a little waterlogged. He kept pointing out the sites that we could (not) see, but could have if it were sunny and clear; Manitoulin Island, Tobermory etc. Clearly (no pun intended) he’d been up there a few times and knew the view like the back of his wet & pruny  hand. As it turned out though, he wasn’t ‘waterlogged’, he was ‘backlogged’; he’d put the BIG pair of binoculars in his backpack to remind himself to bring the SMALL ones and had inadvertently brought both. It was all downhill from here (pun intended…).

So much for lunch on the mountaintop. We had to slide down the slick rockface of the Canadian-Shield to find some shelter amongst the trees to eat. We all pulled out our lunches – sandies (which were soggy) and individually wrapped Laughing Cows and Babybels. Despite the downpour the food was a welcome pitstop. Some young people were on their way up. We discouraged them (wholeheartedly) from continuing their climb – to no avail. Young people; sheesh.

We had a few laughs along the way and by the time we reached the bottom, soaked, none of us could feel our hands. A bit scary at first, but when I realized those two were in the same peril, I didn’t feel that it was my lack of outdoor experience or fitness. As it goes, when you’re hiking in the rain for over 5 hours, shit happens! Professor Al explained that while it wasn’t freezing, it wasn’t warm either (18 degrees and raining) so the human body – that most amazing of machines – makes sure that the core body (organs) is warm enough to carry on and sends all the blood there. The poor extremeties are left for dead; almost.

After that (not sure exactly how Linda and Al managed to canoe us back to the car!) we jumped into the van and blasted the heat up to 30 degrees C. Ahhhhhh. Heaven. Although it took some time for the warmth to kick in before we could wallow in its comfort.

Prior to our leaving and that heavenly blast of warmth from the van heater, I had been sitting in the van while the 2 hardier cottage folks hoisted the canoe atop the roof and secured it down. While I was waiting, freezing and wet, I busied myself to keep warm.  Hugging myself and rubbing my arms up and down just released water so I reached into my lunchbag for some sustanance and found an uneaten Babybel. Hooray for little surprises! Finding it was one thing. Opening it and trying to eat it was another. If someone had captured me on film, they would’ve thought I had lost my mind. I was laughing to myself, trying to peel the wax coating off with fingers (at that stage, stumps) that didn’t work. Little did I realize that Al and Linda had seen my attempt. We laughed about it for ages afterwards. Apparently I looked like one of the witches from MacBeth; hunched over, clawed hands, a creepy smile and all. Instead of stirring a poison conconction chanting ‘double double toil and trouble’ I was only suffering the toil and trouble.  I couldn’t actually get the wax seal off with my stumped clawed fingers and in my impatience, just managed to get half the wax off when I pushed the cheese ball towards my mouth to eat it, squeezing the cheese out with my clawed and numb hands. A pretty picture no doubt!

Back at the camp, we all tore our clothes off (well, not in that mad orgy kind of way of course) and changed, hot showered and climbed into our warmest clothes. In the hottest summer on record in Ontario, Al had lit the fireplace. We all napped and had hot pea soup for dinner in our sweaters, long pants and socks, by the fireplace. No, this wasn’t November. It was the MIDDLE OF AUGUST.

It was an early night. I prayed to the weather gods before bed for ONE good weather day on the weekend of adventure. They complied.

The rest of the weekend was a joyous romp through the sunny trails of Killarney, basking in the sun on the beautiful and peaceful (when Scruffy J and Baby Red weren’t fighting over the peanuts) cottage deck, eating and drinking and enjoying the great company of my hosts and the Canadian north.

I’ve decided not to make too many weather-dependant plans in the future. With my current run of luck, instead of skiing in February I’ll be sitting in the lodge in full ski gear, sweating,  sipping iced tea and waiting for the snow making machines to start.

Note** Since I wrote this entry, Linda informed me she has named one of the critters up north in my honour. It was because this particular squirrel looked just like me eating my Babybel. I think it’s middle name is going to be ‘hunch’.