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Lac Panache: 45.5N -73.583333W
Julie Lapalme
Montréal, Québec
October 9, 2010
Roughing it in the Bush, first published in 1852, recounts Susanna Moodie’s settler adventure in the Canadian wilderness. In 1834, the Moodie family moved to a bush farm near Douro Towneship north of Peterborough. In “Burning the Fallow”, she describes the discovery of Lake Katchewanooka in such terms as to suggest she has made a new friendship.
Moodie had made during the winter a large clearing of twenty acres around the house. The progress of the workmen had been watched by me with the keenest interest. Every tree that reached the ground opened a wider gap in the dark wood, giving us a broader ray of light and a clearer glimpse of the blue sky. But when the dark cedar-swamp fronting the house fell beneath the strokes of the axe, and we got a first view of the lake, my joy was complete: a new and beautiful object was now constantly before me, which gave me the greatest pleasure. By night and day, in sunshine or in storm, water is always the most sublime feature in a landscape, and no view can be truly grand in which it is wanting. From a child, it always had the most powerful effect upon my mind, from the great ocean rolling in majesty, to the tinkling forest rill, hidden by the flowers and rushes by the bank. Half the solitude of my forest home vanished when the lake unveiled its bright face to the blue heavens, and I saw sun, and moon, and starts, and waving trees reflected there. I would sit for hours at the window as the shades of evening deepened round me, watching the massy foliage of the forests pictures in the waters, till fancy transported me back to England, and the songs of birds and the lowing of cattle were sounding in my ears. It was long, very long before I could discipline my mind to learn and practice all the menial employment which are necessary in a good settler’s wife. (281-282)
I could relate to her description, as my own Lac Panache is like a dear friend that I visit regularly throughout all four seasons. The lake has seen me grown up on her shores. I’ve fished for rockbass off the dock with my cousins, lazily slumbered on an air mattress carried by her gently rippling surface, explored her inlets by canoe and pedal boat, plunged into her cool depths after a sauna, and swam as far as I could from shore before returning to the safety of the cottage. But most of all, I’ve simply sat and watched the sun quiver on her vast expanses, I listened to loons call out to her.
When I dream of Panache, it is often from a bird’s eye view. I cover the distance between one end of the lake and another with a rise and a swoop to skim the surface without going under; there I see shadows, large moving forms. When I do dream I am swimming in her depths, I am not alone. She is squirming with creatures of all kinds. A complex, mysterious friend, but a faithful one.
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