When I say ‘the island’ I mean Manitoulin, which, throughout a tempestuous thirty years of constant motion, remains home. It has been a long time since I have lived on the island. I actively resist it, but I think I will eventually end up back there. All of my family is there, or a short drive away through the La Cloche mountains.
Mountains and water. The two islands have this much in common, anyway. I woke up this morning and took Jude out for our morning walk along a stretch of rocky beach at low tide. In true Vancouver Island style, it was overcast and promising rain. The mainland mountains were invisible across the strait, lurking somberly and immense behind the dense cloud and fog, while the black bulk of the nearer island mountains hemmed us in. As we came back to the bus to make coffee, somebody called my name from the back of a van. Two treeplanters who had just finished a fall plant up in Tahsis. We chatted for a while before going our own way, off into this island that is geographically large, but oh, so small.
My island, my mecca, my home, is small. It is the largest fresh water island in the world, but it is small. The biggest town on the island is roughly 1,000 people. The only set of stop lights is in Little Current to regulate the traffic over the one lane swing bridge. A chain coffee franchise of certain Canadian notoriety was recently built, after massive opposition and heel dragging. Change does not come easily here. Despite Manitoulin’s relatively small size (2766km squared, compared to Vancouver Island’s 32,134) it is much easier to get lost there. There are unpeopled sprawls of land and hikes and trails that aren’t permanently contaminated with other people. It is possible to camp on the shores of Lake Huron for weeks without seeing another human being, possible to hike around Misery Bay and drive out to the lighthouse at Meldrum and swim in complete solitude.
I have driven out to remote rec sites on Vancouver Island in the off season of November and never once have I been alone anywhere. People largely keep to themselves, but even at the ass end of some shitty logging mainline on a frigid day in November, there will be another camper or trailer. Every few weeks I run into somebody I know, always treeplanters, which can’t be a surprise, because everybody comes here after the season, or finishes their season here. Wallowing around in the winter doldrums, wearing dirty sweatpants and feeling completely, totally and utterly aimless, is not the time I want to be running into people I know. I want totally solitude, free of self conscious self observation.
Flying home from Alberta last year, the plane started descending through the cloud cover over Superior. Looking down on the wolf’s head shape of the lake and feeling, deep in my gut, a pull- I stared down at the Agawa Canyon and Marathon, tried to find Manitouwadge. Over the vast expanse of Lake Huron (it truly can only be appreciated from the air), I waited, expectantly, for the shape of home to reveal itself to me. By the time we flew over the island we were low enough for me to see the bays and islands. Cockburn Island, first, then eastward. Meldrum, I can feel the warmth of the honeycomb rocks under the sun, and the deep, deep blue where the lake drops off abruptly into mysterious and frigid waters. Barrie Island, I mentally place myself at the municipal beach. Has it been a bad year for watersnakes? After every thunderstorm, we would drive out to our pastures there to check the cattle. Stamping down the long grass in front of the gate to scare out snakes, shaking a bucket of barley chaff and calling out the names of ‘the girls’, all the cattle named for friends and family. Over Gore Bay we are low enough for me to see the pavilion and the docks. I index Mikey away at work, maybe installing new docks at the marina or working on the boardwalk, Nana safely ensconced within the new house on 540, Esther perched on the west bluff, watching the sailboats on the north channel. The causeway through Ice Lake. I’d love to be driving down Emery Road on a summer afternoon with my mom and my nana, stopping at all the houses we have lived in, telling, ritually, the stories. I have belonged here and continue to belong here, these stories say. They are our anchor in place and time. Somewhere within the green expanse on the south shore my dad is out in the bush, alone, his happy place. The home of my heart, Carter Bay, sweeps in a sandy, wild crescent at the edge of that green expanse, and I know in my bones every twist and turn of the creek that runs through the dunes to the great lake, and I know that there it is possible to be well and truly alone.