MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Fall 2020

69 Severe weather brings valuable perspectives to backcountry trips BIOPHILIAC One August afternoon a decade ago, I was just starting a canoe trip with my then 16-year-old daughter, Myles, who, to that point, could best be described as an equivocal participant. We were setting up our tent at the Kiosk Campground in the north end of Algonquin Provincial Park when a dark line of clouds approached from the west. With the tent standing taut against the rising storm, we threw a couple of heavy packs into it just as rain arrived with the sound of splattering birdshit. Biiiig drops , I remember thinking, and then, just like that, it was howling, trees swaying like hula dancers, aqueous blasts as from a hose. In the movie-set maelstrom of churning air, swishing branches, flying greenery and three-dimensional water, lightning exploded so close it could have been in an upstairs bedroom, the thunderclap reverberating before the flash even ended. A huge gust yanked the tent up with such force it pulled out every peg, the entire thing stretched up off the ground—packs and all—as if the wind were blowing from beneath it. Myles’ eyes became saucers. With the tent resembling a hot-air balloon set to launch, we grabbed wildly at the straining fabric and forced it to the ground. Soaked, water spouting from our noses, breathing was like opening your mouth in the shower. Lightning pulses illuminated our faces as we yelled over a roar so loud we couldn’t hear each other. Nearby trees snapped gracelessly upright then jackknifed over in ferocious winds that sought to lift and flatten us as well; it took every bit of our collective strength to hold the tent down, a distraction that kept Myles from registering the surreal, chicken-bone sounds of trees uprooting in a gloom that was sundown dark at 2 p.m. That was a good thing, given the scope of danger we were courting—the chance of being crushed, impaled or electrocuted. And we hadn’t even put the canoe in the water yet. —Dad! Is this the worst storm you’ve been in? yelled Myles. —No, I told her. But bad enough. It was August, 1975, in Quetico Provincial Park in northwestern Ontario. We’d been paddling 20 days when we entered a large lake constellated with islands. There, trip leaders announced that our group of eight would sprinkle around the archipelago to tough out the night on solo missions. We’d each be allowed three matches, a metal cup, a knife, a handful of food, sleeping bag, and shelter in the form of either tent, tarp or aluminum canoe. I drew a boat and took up residence on a high, rocky point backed by thick forest. At 18 years old this was my third month-long canoe trip, and, fancying myself experienced in campcraft, I figured I’d chosen well: breezy, bugless, plenty of dry wood and a great overview. Early evening, I reclined smugly beside a tidy one-match fire burning on a space I’d meticulously cleared of the bone-dry moss covering the point. I was dialed. Smooth wilderness guy. Mr. So-lo. I leaned back and closed my eyes. It had been a steaming hot day, and thunderheads along the western horizon had seemed innocently distant until a strangely stirring breeze and diving temperature got my attention: I’d looked up into the belly of an inky billow that glowed bile-green around the edges—what the sky might have looked like if the beginning of The Wizard of Oz had been in colour. Mesmerized, I foolishly watched the preternatural formation until it all but broke upon me: One second the wall-o’-black was rising from the horizon like a drawbridge, the next it was overhead. As it would in Algonquin, the air went from calm to chaos in DOWNBURST BLUES words :: Leslie Anthony