The morning smelled the way that spring should: damp, sweet, fecund. In the mist, the patter of a pigeon's wings echoed from across the parking lot. Dew lay heavily on the picnic table, and every twig overhead held a silvery drop. I set out, heading east. The sun had risen, but was lost behind the fog. The morning had an intimate quality, with every sound seeming both muted and closer at the same time. It reminded me of hiking on Vancouver Island, on days when the mist curled around the mountains and the ravens would follow and talk to me.
As I crossed the Rideau River, I stopped to take a photograph.
I carried on, heading up Industrial Avenue to Innes, and then along Innes to Green's Creek where I stopped to wipe my glasses. The fog had coated them with fine droplets. With my sight a little more clear, I looked around. The sun hung like a shrouded lamp over the horizon, and a white-tail deer browsed placidly in an old field.
I carried on to Anderson Road, and followed it to Renaud Road. Outside the urban area, the air felt cooler and the mist more permeating. My fingers and toes began to grow cold inside my gloves and running shoes. It was almost eight o'clock when I reached the Prescott - Russell Bicycle Trail, and still the sun hadn't burned through. Where the trail passed through trees, patches of crusty snow still covered the ground. At the edge of the trail, last year's goldenrod and Queen Anne's Lace bore a delicate glaze of frost.
I had hoped that the trail would offer me glimpes of the fields and marsh adjacent to the north side of Mer Bleue. But the fog limited my view to no more than a hundred meters. Occasionally, I heard birds in the mist, and one flooded corn field held a few dozen geese and a pair of wood ducks. In the dim light, I couldn't make out the colours of the wood ducks, but knew them from their silhouettes. Just before reaching Milton Road, I found a red-tail hawk sitting in a tall, old elm beside the trail. But before I could dig my camera out of my pack, he flew off into the mist, with a parting "keeerrr!" of complaint at my intrusion.
I cycled south on Milton Road toward my destination: the large lake that forms each spring in the corn fields along Bearbrook. I'd passed through the area two days earlier, and noted the geese gathering in the fields. I also hoped to see sandhill cranes in the peaty fields to the west, along the edge of Mer Bleue. However, despite the late hour -- now almost 10 o'clock -- the mist still clung tenaciously to earth, and even grew more dense down near the river. I could hear thousands of geese in the grey purgatory, but caught only glimpes of the flocks from the road. The far ends of the fields remained hidden.
By this time, I hadn't felt my toes for several hours. Thinking that some hot food might help, I left Milton Road and cycled along Russell Road to Carlsbad Springs, detouring once to follow a sideroad back to the river. Killdeer cried in alarm as I passed the muddy fields. The sun began to feel warmer, and in places I could see the far tree lines.
I ate lunch at the D&S Southern Comfort BBQ in Carlsbad Springs: a succulent Rueben Sandwich, with decent fries, a pickle and coleslaw. Sitting in a booth in a nearly empty restaurant, I slipped off my running shoes and wriggled my toes deliciously until the feeling returned to them. I looked out the window as I sipped my coffee, and could see the fog lifting and breaking into hazy tendrils below a glorious blue sky. Contemplating the nascent ache in my thighs and... umm... other regions (those in contact with the bicycle seat), I considered whether I should return to Bearbrook and the geese, or continue homeward along Russell Road. The blue sky and promise of birds won me over.
When I arrived back at Milton Road, the fog had entirely lifted. In the flooded fields along Bearbrook, thousands of geese honked incessently, accompanied by quieter pintail. Strings of geese in the dozens and hundreds stitched the southwestern sky, probably drifting in from the fields east of Bourget. Far across the water, crows and ravens criss-crossed against a distant woodlot, and a turkey vulture soared, indentifiable only by the characteristic, shallow dihedral of its wings as it circled lazily.
At this point, the day had provided almost all for which I'd hoped... almost. I slowly worked my way north along Milton Road, and then west along Smith Road, looking toward the edge of Mer Bleue in the hope of spotting a sandhill crane or a northern harrier. A herd of fifteen white-tail deer fed in the fields closest to the trees, and geese lifted their heads from the dried stalks of last year's corn. But today the cranes and harriers escaped me, although I heard from a greying, fellow watcher that he'd heard the rattle of cranes overhead in the mist in the morning -- presumably heading off somewhere into the fens.
Perhaps his report convinced me that I still had time in the day to visit the Mer Bleue boardwalk. I cycled back along the Prescott - Russel Trail to Anderson Road, then up to Ridge Road, and out along the ridge to NCC P22, where I walked my bicycle along the boardwalk. However, apart from a few families enjoying the sunshine, the fen lay quiet. No cranes. Just a raven greeting me from a tamarack, and the trill of waxwings passing overhead.
I suffered on the ride from the boardwalk to home. The pain of coming off the saddle had grown more acute than the pain of climbing back on -- never a good sign. I cursed the softness of Ridge Road, and every pothole along Walkley. My knees complained, and several times I dismounted just to stretch the backs of my legs. I made it home, though, and following a long, hot bath, could look back with satisfaction on a good day.
My route for the day. 82 km by my GPS.
And my list for the day:
- Canada geese, ~10,000 Mallard
- Common pintail, ~500
- Wood duck
- Ring-billed gulls
- Killdeer
- Wild turkey
- Red-tail hawk
- Mourning dove
- Rock dove (pigeon)
- Downy woodpecker
- American crow
- Northern raven
- Black-capped chickadee
- Robin
- Cedar waxwing
- Red-winged blackbird
- Common grackle
- Northern cardinal
- American tree sparrow
- Song sparrow
- Gray squirrel
- Red squirrel
- Striped skunk (road kill)
- Mink (road kill)
- White-tail deer
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