MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Fall 2020

70 seconds. A vertical blast slammed the ground, sprinkling fire into the moss and igniting the entire point. Did that really just happen? Panicking, I grabbed my cup and ran for water. But barefoot, I’d kicked a rock at the lake’s edge, cracking my big toe and surrendering both cup and eyeglasses to the water. It was small mercy that a downpour erupted to douse the flames, though my sad slapstick continued. Scrambling under the overturned canoe to escape the deluge, I was aggrieved to discover a platoon of deer mice seeking similar reprieve. As darkness took hold, waterfalling rain flowed under the canoe, which shuddered with tin-can sounds. That should have been warning enough, but it took the incessant light show to finally set off an alarm: dead trees… aluminum… lightning… jeezuz ! Rolling out from under it, I’d limped toward the woods just as a massive bolt threw the canoe in the air. I’d watched it, spinning and glowing red like a firebrand, fall back on wet moss, hissing as steam rose around its edges. Did that really happen, too? In the forest I’d hunkered on a mound of earth as trees splintered and crashed all around. Soaked, shivering, and shocked, I’d been ready to believe anything. And then, suddenly, the earth was moving—lifting me slowly, lowering me again. Rhythmic, as if a subterranean beast were scratching to break through. Terrified, I’d wrapped my arms around the tree beside me and felt it move, too. It took a few seconds to understand: wind blows tree, tree sways, roots lift, I’m sitting on roots. Duh. And that’s where the leaders found me in the morning when they came looking. Joe Wilderness. Mr. So-Low. Toe like an apple, blackened canoe, tear-stained face, sleeping in the dirt. In Algonquin, it seemed Myles and I huddled in the storm for hours but it was probably under 30 minutes before the tap turned off and the wind subsided. What we had experienced was no run-of-the-mill thunderstorm, but a bona fide downburst. Downbursts are columns of cool, sinking air that spread out with straight-ahead winds that can reach 250 km/h and cause tornado-like damage. Where tornadoes leave a trail of wreckage consistent with rotating winds, however, downburst blasts point in one direction. The discrete blowdowns you often glimpse in the near north— imagining a small tornado has deftly brushed a few acres of trees to the ground—are usually the result of a small downburst, or microburst. Large ones, or macrobursts—associated with the squall lines known as derechos (Spanish for “straight ahead”)—are sustained for much longer periods over much larger areas. With a warming climate, such events have become both more frequent and severe in east-central North America. While I also experienced a microburst in Quetico, on July 4, 1999, a vast area of that park—some 20 million trees—was leveled by an historic macroburst that marauded 20 hours through 2,000 kilometres of forest from Manitoba to Maine, killing two and injuring 70—almost all campers, hikers, or canoeists. A large tornado cut a 25-kilometre swath through Algonquin in 1972—but downbursts do far more damage. On July 17, 2006, a strong, fast-moving derecho wreaked massive destruction across Algonquin’s northern tier; at Kiosk, a canoeist was killed and his partner severely injured. I wasn’t about to share this information with worrywart Myles, but in overcoming the momentary adversity of a microburst together, the trip had truly started—and already made us a team. The air went from calm to chaos in seconds. A vertical blast slammed the ground, sprinkling fire into the moss and igniting the entire point…