sunset on lake superior5th entry – august 2014

Cottage  029Connie and Dave insisted that we go up to the cottage, because Seane wanted to toast marshmallows. Connie wanted me to see that the winter ice had removed all the stones from the shore in front of the cottage and that the whole Red Rock area now had sandy beaches. (A geological upheaval, a consequence of last winter’s Polar Vortex.)

The above image is my shooting at the setting sun from Connie’s cottage. The dark strip on the horizon is an island.

Seane did get her s’mores, but the bugs were over whelming and we ended up visiting with the neighbors and then headed indoors at Connie’s. The neighbor’s property is clear of trees and it looks huge; Connie kept reminding me that the two lots were the same size, and that her lot was still tree covered. Where the next door neighbor’s cottage looks like summer homes I’ve seen on the Outer Banks, Connie’s is rustic and very Northern Ontario-ish. It’s the kind of cabin I remember from when I lived up here in the early 60’s. A time when cottages were referred to as camps and a time when camps were places with out-houses and no running water.

The natural beauty of this part of Canada is wrapped up in its rugged terrain, its jutting rock-faces and its primitive vegetation. Give me the man-made landscapes of the Italian peninsula. The examples of man transforming the environment to make habitable. The land here in Northern Ontario may achieve that imprint, but it will take another thousand years. And even that may be optimistic; I keep forgetting about the winters, those may forever stop the human race from changing this landscape.