Getting Some of that Blue Inside

On the evening before the Summer Solstice this year, the sky was clear and there was no wind, so the water on Georgian Bay near Waubaushene was glassy.  We wanted to do something to celebrate the longest day of the year, the beginning of summer.  Last year we went out in the boat with some friends and launched Chinese lanterns into the night sky.  But this year I wanted to do something quiet.

So my partner and I decided to take the big freighter canoe out into the middle of Sturgeon Bay about an hour before sunset.  We got out of the boating channel and he cut the engine.  We put lawn chair pads on the wooden seats and life jackets under our heads for pillows and lay across the twenty foot canoe with our legs dangling over the edge.  The boat rocked us as the wake from other boats traveled across the lake.  We looked up at the big wide blue sky and watched a few wispy white clouds make their way above us.

Floating out there on the lake, the horizon formed a big circle around us.  I thought about the social philosophy of the circle and how it can get bigger or smaller to accommodate those in it.  I thought about all the life within this circle we had chosen that night.  The gulls, terns, turkey vultures and cormorants flew overhead.  Canada geese, ducks and mergansers moved along the surface of the lake along with a few boats.  And hundreds of fish, mollusks, and water plants lived beneath the surface of the lake.  Beavers, muskrats, otters and weasels moved through the water as well. We were a part of all that life.  And all that life was part of us.

The sun sank closer to the horizon in the west as the full moon rose in the east. Grandmother moon and grandfather sun equally balanced in the sky as we rocked in our canoe cradle on the still water coming into balance with ourselves, with each other and with all of life.

Finally the sun set and the sky blazed with purple, orange and yellow light.  Clouds above us glowed with soft pink light and the sky turned darker blue. 

I had a copy of Richard Wagames’s book Keeper ‘n Me and I read from my favourite part of the book. where the young man goes out into the lake in his boat and watches the sun set.  “A peaceful, silent blue. The only word I ever heard that comes close to explaining how that blue feels inside me is ‘eternal.’ Eternal blue.  My favorite color and my favorite feeling.”

Turning the bow east, we faced the moon`s silver light on the water, guiding us back to the dock before it got too dark.  I held a large flashlight to alert other boats to our presence but the light of the moon was all we needed to navigate by.

It felt right this year to start the summer with stillness.  The cottagers have arrived from the city with all kinds of plastic watercraft, loud music and alcohol.  They bring the city`s noise and bustle with them.  I work in the city and I understand how it becomes a part of you.  But as I get older, I want to be a part of what I find out on the lake and know that it is a part of me. Wagamese says it best, “I go out on that lake to get some of that blue inside.”

Richard Wagamese (1994) Keeper ‘n Me. Anchor Canada, p. 212