DRAUMRS - Dreamweavers Among Us

11 - Cathedral of Trees

Green Lake is a couple kilometers up a barely passable logging road off the main highway. It's on reservation land, but is open to public and used to be a good fishing lake for small mouth bass, or so it is said. Maybe it still is, but no-one fishes there. It's landlocked except for some marshy streams and not part of the extensive canoe routes in the area. Most people wouldn't plan to head out on the lake; any that did would probably just change their mind on arrival. The lake itself is nearly inaccessible other than by foot, except for one overgrown set of tire ruts in long grass leading to a mucky and uninviting launch point on the lake's only flat piece of shoreline.

The trio: grandfather, son and grandson, had headed for the lake immediately after a few brief words with Cousin Alan, or 'All-In,' as he is nicknamed, mostly for his curious betting habits at Green Clan poker nights. All-in regularly lost his stake quickly to his relatives, who could read him like a book. At other poker venues, outsiders weren't so lucky. His always-on poker face had showed little emotion today when the head of the Clan arrived in a cloud of dust.

Was he expecting them? Will would never know. Several nods and some passing of hard-to-get Danish pipe tobacco, apparently his only request of any big-city visitors, and they were hooked up to his ancient boat trailer and off down the dirt road.

The process of getting onto the lake was all bad news. All-in's loaned aluminum boat and trailer were too heavy to push through the boggy land by human muscle. Jack's attempts at backing the rickety trailer down the track had proved almost fruitless. More than once he had jackknifed the trailer into the thick grass. Both Water and Will had to dive for cover as the truck careened forward and back with all four wheels throwing off grass and mud. Once the trailer was finally at the water's edge, it became apparent that the boat wasn't going anywhere quickly.

The shoreline consisted of three inches of water over three feet of sinking peat bog that threatened to strip-off footwear. Slippery logs thrown in lengthwise years before provided a rough launching ramp, but also proved treacherous to stand on. Will was soon covered in mud, while Jack cursed some unfamiliar ancestor, who was supposedly charged with building a proper ramp and dock, but never quite got around to it.

Eventually, they were afloat and, after many heaves with oars against anything solid they could find, they were released from the mud. The good news was that there was no litter, no abandoned wrecks and no cabins. Once past the stink and ooze of the entry point, the little lake opened to a beautiful vista of granite boulders and scrub pines, with stands of birch and maple evident up the surrounding hills. Jack dropped in the 10-horse motor and they putted up the lake at a leisurely pace.

Will took in the view and was once again thrilled by the stark beauty of wilderness. He had been on hundreds of Canadian lakes and rivers and seen thousands more from the air, but was always unnerved by the individual beauty of each one, once you were on it.

"They are just like women," he would tell his college buddies. "Each is fascinating in her own appeal and each more beautiful that the last." The buddies would roll their eyes and make references to "the beer talking again", but Will never had trouble taking any woman home from the party. He only had to tell them how their skin was like shining water and their eyes like reflected starlight—the rest was as easy as paddling in the still mists of dawn.

Following Water's directions, they now approached a slender point that broke up the lake's western shore. Sharply cut, windblown rock was smooth on top and craggy at the water's edge, with just a few bent and thin pines clinging to shallow-dirt filled cracks. The bleached white rock was bisected by dark lines that spoke of the ancient cooling of deep granite, which was later scraped and formed again by miles-thick glacier ice. A rock plateau held several sheared off slabs that had once been part of the whole and now sparkled on edge with quartz and mica. There were also random foreign and mismatched truck-size boulders, left behind courtesy of the ice sheets.