Heavy mist gathers on the clothes like a light rain, softening the horizon and drawing the landscape into a more intimate space. The Saddleback trail seems made for such days, whether the name comes from its shape or simply from someone’s imagination. The White Pine Ridge, with wetlands on either side, opens to a new view every few hundred metres. At either end of the saddle, it is worth stopping, made that much more primitive by the sepia-tinged colours of fall filtering through the mist, the rugged hills clumped close together.
A cottage appears now and then in the distance, but otherwise the landscape feels much as it has for a long time. As I orient my mental map to the terrain, I begin to see why the trails pass through low places and around wetlands, where the beavers’ work begins to explain the landscape.
We can call almost anywhere nature, and our minds are quite capable of making the distinction. The body seems less interested in our definitions. There is something different about being immersed in a landscape like this, away from the mechanized rhythms of the urban world. Even the phone, useful enough for photographs, seems a violation of the time.
“The view is worth the climb” is a tired cliché. But on this trail, there is a little wink in the phrase, that if expalined, has something to do with how the senses drift through the view.