Muskoka's Bluetrue Dream

We started our great travel adventure on sacred territory: with family in our beloved Muskoka.

We first traveled to Muskoka seventeen years ago, when a tornado whipped through our campsite in Algonquin and the town of Huntsville -- taking power lines, roof tops and treetops with it, wherever it went; chastened by that experience, we stayed away for ten years.  Then we were called back to the woods, and decided to "stake a claim" on a little 1/10th ownership in a family owned cottage and small family resort on Lake of Bays: we have not looked back since.

For even ten years later, Muskoka is the place where white pine, willow, balsam fir, red maple and tamarack grow with abandon -- feeding the dreams of would-be Group of Seven artists and regular cottagers alike.  It is the place where you can spend whole days paddling its beautiful lakes, and feel the wind in your face.   And it is the place where, running with my sis round Lake of Bays in July, we were able to feel as through we two were alone in the woods -- with just green trees, blue sky and the occasional bird to keep us company.

Muskoka is the kind of place that must have inspired the e.e. cummings poem which inspires the title of this blog: "I thank you God for most this amazing/day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees/and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything/which is natural which is infinite which is yes/ (i who have died am alive again today,/and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth/day of life and of love and wings; and of the gay/great happening illimitably earth)/how should tasting touching hearing seeing/breathing any-lifted for the no/of all nothing-human merely being/doubt unimaginable You?/(now the ears of my ears awake and/now the eyes of my eyes are opened).

This is for the leaping, greenly, spirits of trees, all over this big, beautiful world; and for us, that we might find them, and protect them, and appreciate them for the sacred gifts they are.