Tuesday morning special: Elora cedar forest

In Elora on Sunday, Danny and I strolled along a trail I had never explored before. From the village, it follows the Elora Gorge west to the point where the main road crosses a bridge. From there it continues west to Elora Gorge Conservation Area, a park with camping facilities, but we did not continue that way. We stopped on the bridge, but not for long because my vertigo started to set in. I don't know how high the bridge rises above the gorge floor. I only know that if by some fluke I had accidentally done a handstand and launched myself off the railing, I would have had quite a few seconds in which to contemplate my error. The last photo in this series was taken from that outlook. The rest were taken in the deliciously spooky cedar forest along the way, which conjured up scenes from Harry Potter in both our minds. This is one place I won't go walking on a dark night, for fear of misstepping, not giant spiders.





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Enchanted song

Photo: Elora, Sunday afternoon.

A tribute to my writing appeared yesterday in another blog, Will Brady's Ruminations. Will is an artist, essayist and human rights advocate. Visit his web site at Rondak.org. We have corresponded since nearly the beginning of my first online nature column five years ago. It boosted my confidence that there must be creative, intelligent, sexy men out there, and I'm glad we're still inspiring one another. Thanks Will. My longest cyber-friendship and still "my favourite redneck."

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On warm summer evenings the hermit thrush sings. His haunting music (WAV file) echoes across the lake, a voice that can harmonize with itself. Those dreamy, mystical warbles, six or seven syllables at a time uttered between lazy pauses. I hear it through long, dark galleries of the forest, an enchanted singer calling me to pass through the shadows. You will rarely see him, only hear him from a distance when the air is still and the earth is burgeoning with growth.

If you walk too far through the forest you will come to a high granite cliff. Great hemlocks rise high above the lower canopy, and the moist bottom land is filled with them, too, deep under shadow. Atop the cliff you will find the earth carpeted with moss like a Buddhist garden. Then it starts sloping easily downward. More moss grows there with lichen and ferns. Suddenly to reach the brink of space spinning among bare trunks of trees below. The hermit thrush continues. Your ears will be full of its mystery. You will want to know the answer to all the questions of beauty. Your mind will ring with eternal resonances. You will not stop, but take the final step.

Into stillness.

The forest sighs and sleeps. When a dreamer falls alone, no one hears his last question. The birds will not tell where his foot strikes soft ground quilted with fallen needles. The air is resinous. It will enfold and make love to his bones when they finally rest. The hemlocks grow invisibly, raising living monuments, their bark coarse with illegible tales.

Wandering there in my mind's eye memory I wonder how many pilgrims have tasted the air, the subtle sweetness of notes distilled into sacred water. Come winter, the granite face will string a curtain of icicles, broad sheets of pearly white encrusting Precambrian bedrock. This low mount might have risen 600 million years ago or more, thrust up by unseen forces. In those days animals had barely begun to conquer the land. Later they arose in a flurry of creative evolution, creatures with different numbers of digits, but the best designed were the tetrapods. They gave rise to dinosaurs, which never really died out, but evolved feathers and wings.

We still have these terrible, tiny lizards stirring dank air under conifers. Their squeaks and shrieks turned to lucid lyricism. That was how the hermit thrush came to stake his territory and summon a mate. They breed in the shadows. Each summer he returns and weaves his inscrutable tale. He will travel further in a lifetime than I will ever dream. All his tales will flash through my mind in those seconds of free fall.