Flowerpot Island, Georgian Bay Islands National Park
July 15, 1988: Lynn Noel
Swimming in Georgian Bay is like flying. You can hang suspended over the drowned towers of the Niagara escarpment, like some stranger from the future exploring a giants' Atlantis. You can dive from the turreted rocks into bottomless space; then the water hits with the shock of glass as you break the surface, splintered bubbles flying white as ice, silver as a broken mirror. It's cold in the green depths and you surface gasping, your breath as ragged and tight in your chest as the thin air of a mountaintop. Then the water takes you, and you can scull and stroke and sculpt your way through this strange element that lets you fly as air will not, yet you cannot breathe it as air will let you. I wish I were a fish. Or a bird. But for a while, in the Bay, I can be both.
July 16, 1988: Teresa Garen
Planted on a rock and looking into the sparkling Georgian Bay, I can feel the touch of Nature. The cities, the highways, the noises all have a way of distracting me from that original force drawing me into conservation work: the experience of Nature itself. Today it calls to me. This piece of land surrounded by water (our journey's theme) has escaped distractions. Unnatural sounds are few: an occasional boat or airplane. A pair of preening ducks sit silhouetted against the sky, giving no attention to me. The sun falls, barely in sight; the clouds grow shades of pink and orange. The waves lap against the shore. No analogies are needed for the color of the sky, the smell of the air, the feel of the water. Each sensation is quite distinctly its own -- nothing else. Shadows grow longer, camp is far away. I am filled again with the energy of Nature, the energy drawing me back to work...
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