Why I walk

Crows have long been considered magical. Often when I walk a quiet path I feel like I am in Sherwood Forest and the crows perched high in the treetops signal Robin and his followers that a stranger nears. At other times I see the crows as messengers calling to us about the creation and magic that is alive within our world and available to us. My grandfather once told me that even finding a dead crow was a sign of good luck. I try to pay attention day by day to the messages delivered by the harbingers of the natural world.

The freezing rain has built a crystal palace out of trees and limbs and bushes as I follow the north bank of the Murray Canal. The light is grizzled, the rain persists; patches of crusted snow outlines the path as day descends into night. The damp and chill air reaches beyond my long johns to penetrate my bones but the crows have no care. They bark from treetops and from the opposite bank while measuring my footsteps.

Night has arrived and a duality is lodged in my chest. The ground is hard and uninviting; the air bites at my breath; it is solemn and lonely in this now-abandoned place of summer. Yet instincts have brought me here promising comfort and I have learned to trust those instincts even when they defy logic. And so I find myself detouring on a return trip to the County from Trenton, a detour that has taken me to the bottom of Twelve O’clock Point Road.

Twelve O’clock Point juts out into the Bay of Quinte and has historically been a place of repose, of entertainment, a place of Sunday outings where picnickers arrived by rail and steamboat. The frame lodge that once stood on these grounds played host for the official opening of the Murray Canal in the fall of 1886. Even Sir John A. showed up. Now all is quiet.

I walk at a brisk pace to invigorate myself but it turns out to be futile on the ice. Besides, it feels unnatural to rush on a well-worn path of history where no one ever travels fast. Along the borders of the Murray Canal are former tow paths where horses and oxen, once hitched to stout bowlines, steadily eased laden ships through the five miles of waterway linking the Bay of Quinte to Brighton Bay and the open waters of Lake Ontario.

There is no one in sight. The fresh deer tracks, rabbit scat and paw prints are the only signs of life around. An abandoned canal in winter is as silent as midnight on the tundra; the stretch of hibernating ditch runs straight into darkness.

The far end of the path takes me to a series of concrete abutments bordered by solid steel railings. Below them are rows of mooring pylons. Now surrounded by open water I listen as the rain caresses the thin glaze of ice that closes onto the canal entrance.

I scan the perimeter of the bay where house lights twinkle like remnants of Christmas past; just off shore, Indian Island drifts in silhouette. Out over the wide water I spot a small circular opening in the ice and within it, the movement of two dark objects attracts my attention. Whatever they are they are now aware of me being there. One of the figures slowly raises its head high above the ice then slides its lean body onto the surface. If I was near the sea I would expect them to be harbour seals. They seem to carry on a dialogue between each other when one vanishes into the dark water. Then out from under the ice nearby to me it is an otter that appears. The pair is playful, skirting under the ice, blowing bubbles then popping out in the air hole; climbing onto the ice to again bob out of sight, only to reappear practically at my feet. Never do they seem intimidated by my presence and in fact they beckon my spirit. So I talk to them and they respond by staging further antics. I have discovered that otters can be spotted around the County, their playfulness a signature of their personality. They are seen in winter frolicking in any open water and sliding down embankments and ice banks.

While the crows remind us that magic is alive within our world, here on the bleakest of a windswept night a pair of otters has conspired to bring comfort to a stranger. The mythology of otters and the lessons they offer is that creativity, curiosity, imagination and joy are the handmaidens to nurturing the inner child. Here in the shadows at the mouth of the Murray Canal the otters awaited to console a soul in mourning on his passage through long dark nights.