Anchor hanging over rocky bottom near jumping rock:
a good place for Smallmouth, I’d assured myself

I intently reeling
Partner calmly reading
four outings, not a nibble

Upland, the squirrel’s constant chatter

Fishing turns to philosophy:
questioning ways of man
puzzling at ways of nature

Then a strike, tentative, perhaps Lake Trout!

… I’ll never know

I pull anchor and drift, let go the images of me landing fish; the whole enterprise takes on new purpose. I perceive fish as wise, like pine rooting in the rocks, as indifferent to my pursuits as the chattering squirrel.

Another September I shall paddle back, eager to cast and reel.

A trail in the bush could take us anywhere
but not to the somewhere
we have in mind

today shall be for discovery;
of what we are not seeking

call it disappointment
or an extra eight kilometres
a hike to a lake we never knew existed
on the fork taken

Another day we shall take the fork not taken, the unlikely looking trail that turns south. We shall ascend Joy’s Peak and look to the west, knowing something of that land where the trail bends and rises mysteriously.

It was a good day to venture outside our expectations.

Sideways I flow
Beneath a high calling
A calm to know
Of forest and shore
Of towering trees
At order and disorder
I drift and wonder
In the mysterious depth
Of shallow water

What I love best in a kayak is exploring the shallows, getting lost in the space between reflection and lake bottom, to awareness on another scale. One autumn day I was taken to a show of forest colour tumbling into still water.

Relaxed and drifting … an invitation to another dimension.