a hike
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Today I was invited out to a barbeque by one of my new coworkers (the newest one). I decided to rent a car, because he (our salesman) lives in Belfountain, which is a fair ways out of the city.
I decided to find out what else I could do with the car. I discarded my first idea - of going shopping for an air conditioner - because I don't have the cash, I don't think the plastic window frame would support a unit anyway, and I couldn't even figure out how to remove the window from the frame without prising out an swinging arm by breaking a rivet.
That left getting out of town and doing something outdoorsy. So I bought myself a map, looked at it for a while, and decided that a nice hike on the Bruce Trail was in order. So I got together my things:
a) my battered black $25 MEC backpack
b) the green 'military surplus' hat that was about the only awkward/ugly bit of clothing in my possession to survive the Kupusa years
c) my camera bag, including two rolls of IR film and my brand new 25(A) lens and my new $1.15 'reflector'
d) some of my old (now illegal) 97% DEET spray
e) my two 1L water bottles, bought in Melbourne for the hike 'round Uluru (that fit perfectly into my black backpack)
f) my el-cheapo cooler, bought for use on Third Beack if memory serves
g) stuff for 'roast beef sandwiches' (which, by the way I make them, I mean 'onion sandwiches with roast beef')
h) a road map
i) one of grandpa's old compasses, for the hell of it
j) my 8-year-old MEC purplish gortex jacket-of-a-thousand-campaigns
I went out to a place called Terra Cotta where there's a conservation area. The parking lot is in the NE corner of the roughly square CA. The Bruce Trail enters in the SW corner and leaves by the NW corner.
I ate my picnic lunch and decided I wouldn't get rained on, so I set out without the cooler, gortex jacket, or the reflector, which I used as a heat shield in the car because the temperature was roughly 30C.
I plunged into the woods, and found my path. Halfway to the Bruce Trail, I discovered that I had also discovered the entire deerfly Nation. So I had to stop to whip out the old 'deep woods' repellant. Suitably slathered down with DEET, I carried on. The woods were cool (mid-20s) but my pace was brisk (it was what looked like a 4km hike to the small town where John the salesman + family live.
Three hours later, I emerged at the first road to cross my trail. It was the same road on which the entrance to the CA was located (the signage on the Bruce Trail has improved immensely). In fact, I'd come out after meandering around in the woods only about 300m from the entrance. After over 2.5 hours. So I trudged back down the road, realizing that I was never going to hike the full Bruce Trail. If I'd taken that long to toodle around a patch of the map that was about the size of bredcrumb, how was I going to make it the full handspan-and-a-half that is the full length?
There hadn't even been a *thing* to look at all the way. I saw only one woodpecker, no sweeping views, etc.
So I went to another CA up the way. Actually, I almost got lost. The roads up there are awesome if you're looking for driving (or, I was thinking as I approached the village, riding your motorbike - when I got to the village, I found it full of motorbikes; it reminded me of Bragg Creek, except these were real bikers, not weekend warriors), but they're confusing as hell if you're looking for something in particular. Along the way, I realized that there is some serious cash tucked away in the Caledon hills.
There was an article in the paper recently about a guy who is building a reproduction of a 18th century French palace that was supposed to be 'architurally perfect'. I didn't see the palace, but I saw the 110,000 square foot stables that he's building on 100 ha of land. Jesus, it was immense!
I nearly hit an East Indian family that was milling about at the side of the road in a part that was particularly blind in that British Isles kind of way. While swerving and slowing, I noticed that one of them was trying to flag me down.
I stopped, and he asked if I could take him to the CA (the one where I was going), so he could get the minivan and take the kids back. It turned out that they'd wandered out of their CA on the Bruce Trail as well, and now the kids were pooped. I took him back to the place, where the booth doofus tried to make me pay.
My hitch-hiker offered to paid, but then it turned out that since I'd already paid $5 to park in the Terra Cotta CA's lot while trudging around feeding the blackflies and accidentally taking the defunct parts of the Bruce Trail that they were trying to rehabilitate, I could go in for free.
So my hitch-hiker got his money back, and we found his van. I got out and drifted about taking photos of the waterfall. My first IR timed exposure shots of a waterfall. Just the thing for my tripod. I pull it out of backpack "a)" and of course: no mounting bracket gizmo. Damnit, I'd just spent three hours lugging the useless tripod thing through that other park! So I braced myself on the edge of the swinging bridge and did my best.
Then there was the BBQ. A front came through and the temperature plummetted, so we wound up eating outside. The host's parents joined us for what was otherwise a work thing. He has an interesting family. Good food + good company; what more do you need? Shamefully, I'd been so careful to prepare for my hike that I'd completely forgotten to do as much as pick up a bottle of wine.
Eventually, it was time to leave (8:20 or so). I left. And headed north for the cottage. It took two hours. I got in and collapsed, with a headache from the day's exertion, the two small glasses of red wine, and the cramped driving (I had a Sunfire).
I spent the next 8 hours tossing and turning on the cripplingly soft couches at the cottage, while the heat blasted away (there's central heat, now, and it seems to be warm all the time). Exhausted and head thumping, I couldn't figure out the thermostat. So I parked myself on the couch by the open door and found a fan to blow some cool air in.
At 6:30 or so, I was milling about in the kitchen with my head still hurting (my cafergot didn't make the shaving kit, which sometimes happens). So I grabbed a wooden spoon, and used it to crush the muscle in my neck for a few minutes. Ten minutes later I was asleep.