A Writer’s Contentment in a Haunted Woodlands
On the cusp of Christmas, in 1977, I remember feeling pretty contented as a young man returning to his hometown with a university degree and some ambitious plans. My mother Merle used to remind me I possessed an unusually large volume of "vim and vinegar." I guess she approved of my willingness to try just about anything in life. My first intention was to open up a small antique shop on the main street of Bracebridge, which was done before the Christmas season that same year. The second was to embark on a career in writing. By 1978 I had my first published column in the local press, on the subject of Antiques and Collectibles. I was very soon after, to be part of the founding executive of the Bracebridge Historical Society. Yes, I was reasonably contented you might say. Add to this a future editorship with the local press and a curatorial position with the new museum the Historical Society was about to launch. I was pretty excited about being home. And by the way, at that time, most university grads from our ballywick, didn’t think it much of an accomplishment to finish with a degree and then move back home. I could never understand their reasoning but then I’ve always be particularly fond of home and all its nurturing qualities.
On one bitterly cold evening in mid-December, I decided to take a little late afternoon ski on a newly created trail running from what is known as Kerr Park, adjacent to the Muskoka River. My girlfriend wasn’t coming home from Toronto until later that evening so I thought there was plenty of time for a several mile ski junket to enjoy the Muskoka winterscape. It was beautiful in every way. I stopped frequently to admire the painted winter valley and hillsides.
Growing up in Muskoka I had long been fascinated by forests, lowlands, cliffsides, meadows, and all mysterious natural places. If my mother couldn’t locate me on the first few bellows from our apartment up on Alice Street, she knew I’d be over in Bamford’s Woods next-door, either up in a tree or playing cops and robbers with the local lads. It didn’t matter what season it was....I’d be on a hillside, lowside or any side that had trees, rocks, and a plethora of wildlife in all forms. On hot summer days Bamford’s Woods was always at its most enchanting and it was a perfect place for a daydreaming kid to hang-out with a pop in the cool shade, soothingly amidst that magical trickle of mosaic sunlight coming down through the hardwoods and scraggly evergreens.
I have never looked at such magnificent natural scenes here in Muskoka, and not found them sprinkled liberally with what some would call....the paranormal....not the paranormal that would make you feel anxious or frightened. I have always had a rather curious pre-occupation with what surrounds me on nature walks for example;.....what is it about the environs on that occasion which has made it all seem so welcoming and comforting to a weary, long-travelled soul. I’m the same today and there is still a keen attraction for me, to wander about the vast woodlands in quest of mystery and discovery.....and I’m seldom disappointed. If you were ask me if I’d seen any ghosts on my travels.....I’d have to respond, "Of course." The ghosts I witness are not fantastic or frightening enough for the pulp non-fiction racks at the local drug-store. They are subtle ghostly experiences from the interplay of life and nature on our everyday world......the sensation on a countryside stroll that someone is walking at our side, or that a child’s hand has just then brushed yours.....or that a particular scent of wildflowers and wash of wind against your face has reminded you of a deceased family member, a lover, an old and dear friend who might have walked this same path many times in the past. They are as real as if a textbook-defined ghost met you on a dark corner of winding lane or crept out of an old homestead with creaking door and rattling latch. Just because there is no defining image or reality to photograph doesn’t mean an absence of spirit-kind. By being perceptive, and open to all types of sensory stimulation, you will find plenty of company on your countryside strolls.
On this particular skiing adventure, I travelled eastward along the trail for what seemed to be a distance of several miles but I was enjoying myself so much that I didn’t really pay much attention to how long it was going to take backtracking to the ski chalet. I came through a canopy of snow-laden evergreens on what appeared to be a country lane and into a vastly different topography.....a lowland full of dead trees and a sharp, snowless rock wall marking the most striking contrast in landscape, just to my left..... and straight ahead I could see a thickening of trees on the lane and a substantial hillside, with an even narrower path which a few skiers had passed that same day. Most had stayed below and turned to the left to avoid the climb. At about the three quarters elevation on the icy trail I got my first glimpse of the old farmhouse I had been told existed, although I’d never seen it before.....always quitting the outing just short of this barely visible, grown-over path winding up to the front porch. I must admit it was a striking image on a declining winter afternoon, adorned by the wreath of snow on evergreen and the silver crystals of windblown ice making it appear quite legendary.
I stood just below the house for several moments in awe of this isolated old farmstead, thinking about what it must have looked like when it housed a family so many Christmases earlier......and there was a pathetic, sad aura attached that I have never forgotten more than thirty years later. Maybe it was looking for some memorial it had never received; recognition by someone passing by that there were proud spirits here.....strong, lasting memories, lives spent, emotions expended, new lives commenced and futures determined. If none of the others, who had skied by this place, had felt the presence of the spirit-kind on that old homestead hillside, I most definitely did. In fact I remained at the homestead, on that near-Christmas Eve, until darkness enveloped the landscape, frozen white in history. I could feel the kinship of this ramshackle, half-fallen farmhouse that was emanating from within.......and it was as if this windowless old structure was crying that night.
I had watched the contrasts in the winterscape as it effected the patina of this homestead. From the sparkling sunlight and dazzling diamond prisms of frost-laden air, the homestead evolved gradually....poetically in sentiment, from the reality of its modern dilapidation to, in the late afternoon low-light, looking elegantly mournful......and then in the early evening winter-glow of moon reflecting off the snow, the ghosts of the past floated across this hillside as if butterflies across its spring meadow. On many occasions I thought I saw lights-on in the upper rooms of the house but on closer inspection it was the play of the remaining shards of glass sparkling in the moonlight. I thought there were voices coming from behind me a couple of times, and I assumed that skiers were heading home down the trail. But none ever passed where I was standing. When the wind picked up and sent great sweeping veils of blowing snow across the lowland, and bursting clumps from the towering evergreens, this spot on earth was overflowing with enchantments. I could hear sleigh-bells at one point and singing.....even the sound of pots hitting pots from a busy kitchen, which I later thought was most likely an animal rummaging inside the dwelling. This was the perfect place for the mind to play its tricks. It was perfect for the raising of hob-goblins and wee beasties, and might have been a scene penned by Washington Irving or Charles Dickens. Yet it was an honest experience that made one truly appreciate the dimensions of time and space, light and shadow, and the intricate details of man within nature, normal and the paranormal.
It was a Muskoka scene that has remained with me most of my life and it has been documented in quite a few stories and feature articles published over the past thirty years in a variety of publications. Not because it was the most haunted place I’ve ever witnessed.....but because it was the most haunting place I’ve ever studied.....and not actually having experienced anything that was by itself, proof that something paranormal was indeed going on. This was however, the adventure that made me realize just how incredible the interplay of man and nature, and how we have come to ignore so much of what is important and life-enhancing about the world around us. As Washington Irving portrayed the historic Hudson River Valley as being substantially haunted by a myriad of entities large and small, including phantom sailing ships and their ghostly crews, it was easy, in this snowy, moonlit environs to believe in the interplay of nature on the vast dimensions of the supernatural......such that, yes, this homestead was indeed haunted but not in the way every passerby would agree. No ghost was going to stand there in the centre of the path demanding a toll, or that ominous, ill-tempered entities were going to put fear into hearts by sudden emergence from dark places on this hillside. This was a perception deal. If you were sensitive to the paranormal range of activities, then there wasn’t reason to question the house’s internal unrest. If you were disinterested in anything but the physical enterprise of skiing then it’s unlikely the sight of the old home caused much more than a question about its present ownership or whether it still had an outhouse.
What I discovered on that evening which was much more profound, I believe, than if I had actually come in contact with the ghosts of its Christmas past, was this incredible sensation of the supernatural....... as it related to me in this particular location, at this precise moment, to experience in solitude, history, reality, memory and its sensory stimulation amidst a most powerfully moving and lonely landscape of life and after-life’s "light and shadow." Much like what Canadian landscape artist, Tom Thomson felt while painting the Northern Lights as they manifested in the autumn over the Algonquin Lakes.....and that admirers of his finished studies would eagerly confess made them feel cold and so very lonely. It was very similar to this homestead scene then, being consumed by winter’s haunting calm.....when for this watcher in the woods, even the sight of a ghostly waif in a pale white shroud wouldn’t have surprised or frightened me. I felt in company of many such paranormal entities on the evergreen-wreathed hillside that night, and never once did I feel unsettled or discontent. They needed to confide in me and I needed to know they existed to my perception.
I skied down the winding farm lane to the connecting trail back to Kerr Park, and felt great awe seeing that barrens of dead trees and cliffside bathed in milky moonlight. It was a Group of Seven art panel I was skiing through....and all that was missing on this night was the howling wolves and blizzard that never came. When I looked back at the old house on the hill, I had come down too far to see it clearly once more, though I do remember offering it a Christmas blessing before I finally trundled off down the icy course. The vision of that house is as clear today in recollection, as it was when I first saw it, in the crisp and clear December light in which it had been so mysteriously illuminated, from the dark and ominous background of overgrown pine and cedar.
Washington Irving once wrote, in his sketches from the 1820's, that while botanists and scientists can reduce existence of one and all, flora and fauna, to a most minute reckoning of life’s components, there is still room for the expectation and imagination of those seeking out enchantments, whether they be the fairy-kind or other.....and noting that it would indeed by a very dull world if it wasn’t for the realm of possibility.....and that one day, while travelling the same woodlands as I, you might find the remains of a fairy ring near the mushrooms, evidence that there just may be things left in this grand old world that still can’t be explained......and that’s all right with us dreamers and intrepid explorers who live for discovery.
I have always believed Muskoka woodlands to be haunted. I will always believe Muskoka to be a very spiritual place on earth. As a writer, in the spirit of Washington Irving, and sharing the vision of artists like Tom Thomson, I will carry on enjoying the permeation of lore and legend and enthusiastically receive discovery when afforded me. While I don’t believe Muskoka is any more enchanted than other places on earth......it is none the less, my enchanted home district and I’m enjoying every moment in its kindly embrace.
On the cusp of Christmas, in 1977, I remember feeling pretty contented as a young man returning to his hometown with a university degree and some ambitious plans. My mother Merle used to remind me I possessed an unusually large volume of "vim and vinegar." I guess she approved of my willingness to try just about anything in life. My first intention was to open up a small antique shop on the main street of Bracebridge, which was done before the Christmas season that same year. The second was to embark on a career in writing. By 1978 I had my first published column in the local press, on the subject of Antiques and Collectibles. I was very soon after, to be part of the founding executive of the Bracebridge Historical Society. Yes, I was reasonably contented you might say. Add to this a future editorship with the local press and a curatorial position with the new museum the Historical Society was about to launch. I was pretty excited about being home. And by the way, at that time, most university grads from our ballywick, didn’t think it much of an accomplishment to finish with a degree and then move back home. I could never understand their reasoning but then I’ve always be particularly fond of home and all its nurturing qualities.
On one bitterly cold evening in mid-December, I decided to take a little late afternoon ski on a newly created trail running from what is known as Kerr Park, adjacent to the Muskoka River. My girlfriend wasn’t coming home from Toronto until later that evening so I thought there was plenty of time for a several mile ski junket to enjoy the Muskoka winterscape. It was beautiful in every way. I stopped frequently to admire the painted winter valley and hillsides.
Growing up in Muskoka I had long been fascinated by forests, lowlands, cliffsides, meadows, and all mysterious natural places. If my mother couldn’t locate me on the first few bellows from our apartment up on Alice Street, she knew I’d be over in Bamford’s Woods next-door, either up in a tree or playing cops and robbers with the local lads. It didn’t matter what season it was....I’d be on a hillside, lowside or any side that had trees, rocks, and a plethora of wildlife in all forms. On hot summer days Bamford’s Woods was always at its most enchanting and it was a perfect place for a daydreaming kid to hang-out with a pop in the cool shade, soothingly amidst that magical trickle of mosaic sunlight coming down through the hardwoods and scraggly evergreens.
I have never looked at such magnificent natural scenes here in Muskoka, and not found them sprinkled liberally with what some would call....the paranormal....not the paranormal that would make you feel anxious or frightened. I have always had a rather curious pre-occupation with what surrounds me on nature walks for example;.....what is it about the environs on that occasion which has made it all seem so welcoming and comforting to a weary, long-travelled soul. I’m the same today and there is still a keen attraction for me, to wander about the vast woodlands in quest of mystery and discovery.....and I’m seldom disappointed. If you were ask me if I’d seen any ghosts on my travels.....I’d have to respond, "Of course." The ghosts I witness are not fantastic or frightening enough for the pulp non-fiction racks at the local drug-store. They are subtle ghostly experiences from the interplay of life and nature on our everyday world......the sensation on a countryside stroll that someone is walking at our side, or that a child’s hand has just then brushed yours.....or that a particular scent of wildflowers and wash of wind against your face has reminded you of a deceased family member, a lover, an old and dear friend who might have walked this same path many times in the past. They are as real as if a textbook-defined ghost met you on a dark corner of winding lane or crept out of an old homestead with creaking door and rattling latch. Just because there is no defining image or reality to photograph doesn’t mean an absence of spirit-kind. By being perceptive, and open to all types of sensory stimulation, you will find plenty of company on your countryside strolls.
On this particular skiing adventure, I travelled eastward along the trail for what seemed to be a distance of several miles but I was enjoying myself so much that I didn’t really pay much attention to how long it was going to take backtracking to the ski chalet. I came through a canopy of snow-laden evergreens on what appeared to be a country lane and into a vastly different topography.....a lowland full of dead trees and a sharp, snowless rock wall marking the most striking contrast in landscape, just to my left..... and straight ahead I could see a thickening of trees on the lane and a substantial hillside, with an even narrower path which a few skiers had passed that same day. Most had stayed below and turned to the left to avoid the climb. At about the three quarters elevation on the icy trail I got my first glimpse of the old farmhouse I had been told existed, although I’d never seen it before.....always quitting the outing just short of this barely visible, grown-over path winding up to the front porch. I must admit it was a striking image on a declining winter afternoon, adorned by the wreath of snow on evergreen and the silver crystals of windblown ice making it appear quite legendary.
I stood just below the house for several moments in awe of this isolated old farmstead, thinking about what it must have looked like when it housed a family so many Christmases earlier......and there was a pathetic, sad aura attached that I have never forgotten more than thirty years later. Maybe it was looking for some memorial it had never received; recognition by someone passing by that there were proud spirits here.....strong, lasting memories, lives spent, emotions expended, new lives commenced and futures determined. If none of the others, who had skied by this place, had felt the presence of the spirit-kind on that old homestead hillside, I most definitely did. In fact I remained at the homestead, on that near-Christmas Eve, until darkness enveloped the landscape, frozen white in history. I could feel the kinship of this ramshackle, half-fallen farmhouse that was emanating from within.......and it was as if this windowless old structure was crying that night.
I had watched the contrasts in the winterscape as it effected the patina of this homestead. From the sparkling sunlight and dazzling diamond prisms of frost-laden air, the homestead evolved gradually....poetically in sentiment, from the reality of its modern dilapidation to, in the late afternoon low-light, looking elegantly mournful......and then in the early evening winter-glow of moon reflecting off the snow, the ghosts of the past floated across this hillside as if butterflies across its spring meadow. On many occasions I thought I saw lights-on in the upper rooms of the house but on closer inspection it was the play of the remaining shards of glass sparkling in the moonlight. I thought there were voices coming from behind me a couple of times, and I assumed that skiers were heading home down the trail. But none ever passed where I was standing. When the wind picked up and sent great sweeping veils of blowing snow across the lowland, and bursting clumps from the towering evergreens, this spot on earth was overflowing with enchantments. I could hear sleigh-bells at one point and singing.....even the sound of pots hitting pots from a busy kitchen, which I later thought was most likely an animal rummaging inside the dwelling. This was the perfect place for the mind to play its tricks. It was perfect for the raising of hob-goblins and wee beasties, and might have been a scene penned by Washington Irving or Charles Dickens. Yet it was an honest experience that made one truly appreciate the dimensions of time and space, light and shadow, and the intricate details of man within nature, normal and the paranormal.
It was a Muskoka scene that has remained with me most of my life and it has been documented in quite a few stories and feature articles published over the past thirty years in a variety of publications. Not because it was the most haunted place I’ve ever witnessed.....but because it was the most haunting place I’ve ever studied.....and not actually having experienced anything that was by itself, proof that something paranormal was indeed going on. This was however, the adventure that made me realize just how incredible the interplay of man and nature, and how we have come to ignore so much of what is important and life-enhancing about the world around us. As Washington Irving portrayed the historic Hudson River Valley as being substantially haunted by a myriad of entities large and small, including phantom sailing ships and their ghostly crews, it was easy, in this snowy, moonlit environs to believe in the interplay of nature on the vast dimensions of the supernatural......such that, yes, this homestead was indeed haunted but not in the way every passerby would agree. No ghost was going to stand there in the centre of the path demanding a toll, or that ominous, ill-tempered entities were going to put fear into hearts by sudden emergence from dark places on this hillside. This was a perception deal. If you were sensitive to the paranormal range of activities, then there wasn’t reason to question the house’s internal unrest. If you were disinterested in anything but the physical enterprise of skiing then it’s unlikely the sight of the old home caused much more than a question about its present ownership or whether it still had an outhouse.
What I discovered on that evening which was much more profound, I believe, than if I had actually come in contact with the ghosts of its Christmas past, was this incredible sensation of the supernatural....... as it related to me in this particular location, at this precise moment, to experience in solitude, history, reality, memory and its sensory stimulation amidst a most powerfully moving and lonely landscape of life and after-life’s "light and shadow." Much like what Canadian landscape artist, Tom Thomson felt while painting the Northern Lights as they manifested in the autumn over the Algonquin Lakes.....and that admirers of his finished studies would eagerly confess made them feel cold and so very lonely. It was very similar to this homestead scene then, being consumed by winter’s haunting calm.....when for this watcher in the woods, even the sight of a ghostly waif in a pale white shroud wouldn’t have surprised or frightened me. I felt in company of many such paranormal entities on the evergreen-wreathed hillside that night, and never once did I feel unsettled or discontent. They needed to confide in me and I needed to know they existed to my perception.
I skied down the winding farm lane to the connecting trail back to Kerr Park, and felt great awe seeing that barrens of dead trees and cliffside bathed in milky moonlight. It was a Group of Seven art panel I was skiing through....and all that was missing on this night was the howling wolves and blizzard that never came. When I looked back at the old house on the hill, I had come down too far to see it clearly once more, though I do remember offering it a Christmas blessing before I finally trundled off down the icy course. The vision of that house is as clear today in recollection, as it was when I first saw it, in the crisp and clear December light in which it had been so mysteriously illuminated, from the dark and ominous background of overgrown pine and cedar.
Washington Irving once wrote, in his sketches from the 1820's, that while botanists and scientists can reduce existence of one and all, flora and fauna, to a most minute reckoning of life’s components, there is still room for the expectation and imagination of those seeking out enchantments, whether they be the fairy-kind or other.....and noting that it would indeed by a very dull world if it wasn’t for the realm of possibility.....and that one day, while travelling the same woodlands as I, you might find the remains of a fairy ring near the mushrooms, evidence that there just may be things left in this grand old world that still can’t be explained......and that’s all right with us dreamers and intrepid explorers who live for discovery.
I have always believed Muskoka woodlands to be haunted. I will always believe Muskoka to be a very spiritual place on earth. As a writer, in the spirit of Washington Irving, and sharing the vision of artists like Tom Thomson, I will carry on enjoying the permeation of lore and legend and enthusiastically receive discovery when afforded me. While I don’t believe Muskoka is any more enchanted than other places on earth......it is none the less, my enchanted home district and I’m enjoying every moment in its kindly embrace.
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