MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Winter 2020

15 GUESTITORIAL Ice-bound Flowerpot Island. (Disclaimer:Walking on Great Lakes ice is hazardous and we do not recommend it.) SCOTT PARENT It was day for night, only the sun cast no warmth upon the earth. I felt frozen. Like, super cold. The frozen seascape seethed against the ice- glazed shoreline at my feet. I was curled deep in my sleeping bag on a carpet of ice beneath the flowerpot.The night sky was without a cloud. The luminous sphere rising over Bear’s Rump Island across the desert-like ice-scape was the “supermoon” of February 18, 2019. [A full moon at its closest orbital point to Earth and thus much brighter than normal.—Ed.] Seizing a perfect alignment of ice, wind and weather conditions, I had set out for Flowerpot Island earlier that day from Tobermory, with paddling and safety gear and camera in tow, with the plan to camp out under the flowerpots and photograph the sunrise over Bears Rump Island the following morning. Lake ice, strangely mesmerizing, can exhibit a false sense of permanence. Frozen “open water” crossings have a heightened challenge compared with smaller inland lakes. The big water arena is alive with numerous deadly hazards. Proper gear and training is essential. Just like glacier trekking or touring in avalanche terrain. My trek to Flowerpot was for the most part void of hazards until I reached the island and had to pass over a pressure pool. Had I been solely on foot I would have likely not been able to safely reach the island—but having my SUP enabled me to use a “board bridge” technique to cross the mint-green aqueous trap to shore. There was just enough daylight to snowshoe over to the Flowerpot Station on the north side of the island and take in the sunset. Having been there numerous times over many years, I found the island oddly otherworldly. There was a pervading sense of isolation. Like I was the man on the moon. I had confirmed myself out of reach of the world, completely alone in the dead of winter. In contrast to the mobs of tourists that flock to the island in summer and the constant buzz of tour boats, the wild natural spirit of the region was evermore palpable in the hibernal silence. Snowshoeing through the deep snow provided some internal warmth that would soon be extinguished after sundown. I jogged back to the sea stacks hoping to catch the early moments of the rising supermoon. It appeared over Bears Rump: the perigean full moon rising where the sun would rise, but a luminosity void of heat. The sea stacks, formed by centuries of waves and ice shellacking their foundations, were completely lit by the ascending floodlight. Bundled into my bivy beneath them, I beheld the spectacle. The flat gurgle sounds of summer waters were replaced with sharp eruptions of pressure from the fields of ice covering the Fathom Five, grinding into the island at my feet. Sketchy as it sounds, it was actually reassuring to me that the floes were still there, and not drifting offshore. As the supermoon completed its crossing of the night sky, the clouds began to settle in. There was no sunrise to see the following morning. My photography and paddling have been two crafts that help motivate each other to keep developing constantly. I didn’t come home with the sunrise shot I was looking for. There will be other sunrises. However, that night I was endowed a lasting memory of a rare event on one of Georgian Bay’s most beloved islands. –Scott Parent SUPERMOON MISSION