Of course, darkness and quiet are relative. Compared to my home in central Ottawa, the night seemed still. But the Big Dipper pointed over my right shoulder to the North Star. Spring peepers and gray treefrogs called from the wetlands. A barred owl called from deep in the forest, and a moment later, a great horned owl hooted even deeper in the woods. As I approached the rock barrens just west of town, I began to hear the calls of nighthawks and whip-poor-wills. The moon had fallen, but starlight traced the pale path of the highway.
I recorded the call of a whip-poor-will in the darkness.
My pack weighed heavy after the long night. Sixty-five pounds of equipment: enough to support me for six days and five nights. Except for short stints along canoe portages, I hadn't carried a heavy pack in years. It took fifteen minutes of walking before my legs and pace steadied. My shoulders ached. I took a fifteen minute break every forty-five minutes. Three hours of hiking left me feeling my fifty-two years.
I chose such an early start in order to reach the Kaladar Jack Pine Barren Conservation Reserve at dawn. The later bus would not have brought me to town until late afternoon, leaving me with an evening hike and a night-time search for a camping site. Instead, I found myself in the early morning light at the site of an old hunt camp -- only the outhouse still standing -- about 100 meters off the highway, well hidden from the road. Songbirds called brightly from the trees, and geese honked in a nearby wetland. A track led back into the forest toward the heart of the rock barrens. I pitched my tent and set up a cooking area under a protective tarp. I made a hot breakfast and coffee.
After a nap, I began my explorations of the rock barrens. I looked first for a good place to fetch water. I found it about a five minute walk along the ATV trail into the back country. Just below a beaver dam, where a creek ran swiftly through a narrow gully, the ATV trail crossed a small bridge. Beside the bridge, a large boulder sat beside clear, flowing water. I pulled out my water filter and tablets, filling my three water bottles -- a process that I repeated twice daily for the next six days. A rock outcrop overlooked the stream. I circled around to the top, almost stepping on a green snake in the thick moss along my approach. It slithered into a jumble of stones before I could grab my camera. I left it alone. I sat on the rock in the sunlight, enjoying the thin warmth, scanning the rocky slope for skinks. Later, I followed the ATV trail deeper into the woods, leaving off only when my map and GPS suggested that trail had crossed on to private property.
I returned to camp about 5 PM, ate a quick supper, and decided to explore the long escarpment immediately south of and parallel to Highway 7. I'd speculated about the ridge many times during the two years that I'd commuted weekly between Ottawa and Peterborough. It appeared much as I'd imagined it: a long, rippling feature, backed by a rocky plateau of oak woodland, scattered outcrops, beaver ponds and small alder swamps. Wildflowers bloomed everywhere: choke cherry, pin cherry, pale corydalis, wild columbine, trilliums in abundance. I flipped rocks in search of skinks, looked for birds, and listened to the frogs begin to call. As the sun began to sink, I turned back to camp, scrambling along the very edge of the ridge, with the highway below me. A rustle in the brush caught my attention. A grizzled old porcupine emerged briefly on to the ridge, turned his gaze scornfully upon me, and then sidled bank into the bushes.
I arrived back at camp just in time to tidy up, brush my teeth, and hang my food from a tree before retiring to my tent in the dusk. As night fell, the night birds and amphibians began their songs. I fell asleep quickly in complete exhaustion, with the calls of nighthawks and whip-poor-wills all about me.
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