SOLITUDE IS WHERE YOU FIND IT.

SOLITUDE IS WHERE YOU FIND IT.

PEACE AT BASS ROCK

        TOOK A MOTOR TRIP UP TO BRACEBRIDGE THIS WEEKEND TO VISIT SOME OF OUR FAVORITE SECOND HAND SHOPS. SUZANNE AND I DECIDED TO TAKE A SPIN DOWN TO BASS ROCK ON THE MUSKOKA RIVER, A SHORT DISTANCE FROM WHERE MY PARENTS LIVED AT THE BASS ROCK APARTMENTS. IT IS WHERE WE WENT SWIMMING AS KIDS AND WHERE WE FOUND HIPPIES AND DRAFT DODGERS BACK IN THE LATE 60'S AND EARLY 70'S. TODAY WE JUST FOUND A LITTLE LEFT OVER SOLITUDE SO WE TOOK ADVANTAGE OF IT. HERE IS A LITTLE STORY ABOUT BASS ROCK.

Shortly after I arrived in Bracebridge, back in the mid 1960's, I was looking for those inspirational places to hole-up when times got tough. Even as a kid I was enthralled by long walks in the Muskoka woods, and lengthy vigils by lake or riverside, to calm the restless beast within. I was a kid on the prowl. I was an adventurer. When I had a day free of my fetters, the school in particular, I was off and roaming not long after daybreak. I didn’t waste time and I didn’t consider it wasteful in any way, to find myself in a comfortable portal, looking out over my new hometown, or the nature that cradled it in pine forests and rock-exposed hillsides. I was as much, living in one of the Group of Seven art panels that I used to drool over in the school textbooks.

I found Bass Rock, on the Muskoka River, a wonderful place to hide-out from mother’s Saturday list of chores, and the perfect retreat when I was in trouble for actions and subsequent reactions, brewing within the neighborhood. I was a bad little bugger and believe me, I was often in need of a cooling-off area. They were self imposed "time-outs," you might say, to borrow from today’s parenting jargon. I returned home many times in the low-light, to avoid my pursuers young and old. My favorite hide-out was just below the Bass Rock rapids, where the wonderfully smooth rock shore, comforted the travel-weary "Tom Sawyer" types. There were trees to hide behind and shadows to disappear into, should some of my contemporaries give up my sanctuary to adversaries. What began as a kid’s relationship with a really good retreat, from the alleged misdemeanors of the day, became a place where I came to dream and compose. It was quite common to find me there at almost any time of the day or night, staring out over that sparkling Muskoka water, reflecting mindfully on the magic of the starscape, at night, or brilliant sun on hot summer afternoons. It was a wild place in the early spring, as the force of the current pounded water through its narrows. A romantic place to bring a young lady, to impose some poetry and grandiose expectations. In the moonlight it was magnificent, and its universality made its way into my landscape writing for decades.

I can remember coming to its shores when I was bursting in love and arriving in its comforting embrace after being dumped and feeling lost in life. I’ve sat on these rocks in quiet contemplation, in moods of desperation, anxiety churning my stomach, and then arrived here on so many other occasions, joyful and contented, having made copious notes about this healing place in the heartland. I’ve sat on the trunk of that fallen tree, and talked with the love of my life about marriage and family. I’ve sought this place out when at a loss for inspiration, and have been fulfilled generously by experience celebrated here. It is the one identifiable place that has inspired more stories than even this portal at Gravenhurst’s Birch Hollow. I’ve written hundreds of outdoor essays, over the past 35 years spent exploring Muskoka, that I can trace back to some lonely but thought-provoking hiatus upon its smooth and mossy contoured rocks. I’m so glad I found this place as a child.....and as it shielded and nurtured me then, it has inspired and comforted me ever since.

It is with some irony that my mother and father, who decided to move their young family to Muskoka in 1966, decided to make their last abode.... a residence on the bay of Bass Rock. As we were closing up their apartment recently, after the death of my father Ed, his wife having died a year and a half earlier, I stood for a few moments on the bank of the Muskoka River, watching as the currented, silver water, gurgled-up against the ice-clad shore,..... enthralled, as a child in heart again, to witness the pinery enclosure being brushed everso lightly by the January wind, as if by an artist’s brush.......a caress just enough to release the snow from the burdened boughs, in a crystalline spray down over the water. My parents loved this place....... because of the river’s gentle and soothing flow, the picturesque qualities of these giant pines and Muskoka rock. Even in death’s shadow, this sanctuary was the heaven on earth I had always thought, and it softened the heartache of loss, as it had always done as a companion. It was still the healing place.