My Foothold is tenon’d and mortised in granite...
I'm making myself sit down and tell this story and share these pictures because I want to be able to remember my trip to this place. I'm sure I sound a little crazy, but it's a hard thing to do because it's a personal thing....a little like the trip to Japan. I dreamed about Mazinaw Rock for a little over a year, ever since the first time I saw it. Being able to go right up to it and touch the rock and hear the wind...it was a very special thing.
Backtrack to June of 2010. An awful, tense, horrible year for me. Everything sucked except for my kayak escapes and the trip I took to Canada to visit my friend. If I could have just run away from home and stayed there with her, I would have. Things were pretty bleak.
On the way there, I drove past such beautiful scenery (if you ever have the opportunity to drive north on rt 41, the section between Nappanee and Ottawa, I suggest you do it), but the thing that made me STOP and pull to the side of the road was this perfect mountain lake, and on it, this perfect sheer granite cliff rising straight up out of it into the sky like a monolith. I'd never seen anything like it...it called to me and I just stood there at the side of this highway, listening to kingfishers call and staring across this still lake at this huge implacable rock. I finally made myself get back in the car and continue driving, but I promised myself I'd be back. The sign on the road said "Mazinaw Lake"
After a wonderful, relaxing weekend visit with golden_meliades , I found myself back on that road heading south this time, looking for that lake. When I saw it, I was as excited as a kid seeing the gates of Disney for the first time. I saw a boat ramp symbol (universal sign for a free boat launch) and headed towards it, following a winding mountain road down to the lake where there was a quiet little boat ramp and a clear view of that cliff. I got out of the car and just stood there breathing in clean pine-fresh forest air and staring at that rock. It stared back, daring me to touch it.
But I was at the widest part of this little lake, perhaps a mile across from the cliff face, and it was a very windy day. I saw whitecaps on the surface, and the wind was whipping sideways across Mazinaw away from the rock so I knew it would be a long fight to get there if I could get there at all. I only had my short little whitewater kayak back then (and not the much more stable Wilderness kayak I have now) and it would have been highly unlikely that I could get across that chop in my little boat safely. I had a long drive still ahead of me, and responsibilities back home. With tears in my eyes I turned away from the lake. It felt like a small personal tragedy, a personal defeat, to get back in my car and drive away from that magic place. I promised myself that I would be back. No matter what.
And then I went home, and did some hard work and some hard thinking and went about piecing my life together again. All summer I thought of that deep lake and that magical cliff. Mazinaw Rock...I researched the heck out of the place and learned everything I could about it. But obligation and circumstance kept me from going back. At one point I even had a room reserved at a nearby hotel, but foul weather moved in and made me cancel my trip.
I thought about that lake and that cliff all winter.
When May came around this year, I had every intention of visiting Mazinaw as soon as possible. Again, circumstance conspired to delay me. The deer vs car drama took away my transportation for most of the summer, and then it was time to get Charlotte to college. Then work, and obligations to my mom here, and and and...
A few weeks ago I felt the first bite of Autumn and panic set in. My window was closing. I had made a solemn promise to myself that I would see that place again, last June, and a promise made to yourself in your heart should never be broken for such mundane reasons.
I found that the little hotel I'd booked last summer was closed. Panic! I researched for hours. It's very hard to find a place to stay in that part of Ontario. They call it "cottage country" for a reason; people own or lease summer places and it's just not the kind of place you can visit casually. Cabins require contracts and leases and yeah...just not the kind of place you can stay at a Howard Johnson's, because there are NO hotels and really, no call for them. The people there like it that way. Isolated, clean, exclusive and quiet. I figured I'd have to stay at a tent in a park somewhere.
Then success! I found a little place that rented adorable cabins by the day, so I reserved one for a couple days and packed my overnight bag, loaded the Koiyak on the car, got ready to leave. Overjoyed! Finally I would keep my promise.
The night before I left, I was babbling about the adorable cabin and the amazing cliff at Mazinaw and I asked Greg (on a whim, because it was going to be the kind of trip he had no interest in; nature, fresh air, no TV or computer, and plenty of exercise...I didn't think he'd want to come in a million years) if he would join me for part of the trip. I intended to stop at Mazinaw for a couple days and then continue up to see golden_meliades again. He could come up in his own car and then drive back. For a wonder he said yes!
So I loaded the extra kayak on my car too, extra paddle and vest, packed extra snacks and bought Greg his own Tom Tom so he could find his own way up there if we got separated (which worked like a charm...I just love the Tom Tom, though I call mine "Fay-Fay" because she has a woman's voice). And off we went on a pilgrimage to Mazinaw Rock.
Janice, the woman who owns the cabin resort we stayed at, is my age and almost exactly like me in so many ways. We hit it off right away. We think alike. The cabin was adorable and absolutely lovely, and only a few steps from another tiny mountain lake; Marble Lake. Too shallow for motorboats and so, perfect for the kayak. But I wasn't there for Marble Lake.
The view from our cabin porch.
We left our stuff at the cabin and I took Greg back to the place I saw last year...the boat launch on Mazinaw Lake.
And there I was again, only this time with Greg (a thing I wouldn't have thought possible last year, last time I was there).
And there was that cliff, calling me still, with the moon rising over it.
But the sun was setting, and the cliff far away. So we went back to start a fire in our firepit, eat dinner, and enjoy our little cabin until the next day.
Finally, Mazinaw. We launched from a perfectly located free boat ramp at Bon Echo park. The park had a fee of course, though worth every penny. Really, it's the best place to see the rock.
We entered at the "narrows", a place where the lake pinches in like a girl's waist, then opens back up so you have the rock right there on your right and the whole big lake on the left.
Passing through the narrows, the south heights rise immediately. It echoes there, like being in a huge cathedral.
All over the cliff face, people were climbing, kayaking, speaking in hushed tones because the place is obviously magical.
People kayak or canoe up to the base and tie off their boats to stray branches or boulders, then immediately start climbing. It's a climber's paradise. The rock face goes straight up out of the water over 300 feet high...healthy granite that offers easy footholds for serious climbing.
I had Greg get this picture of me, kayaking near the Southern heights. I am so happy in this place.
I gave him the Koiyak because it's stable and safe and he's not as skilled in a kayak as I am. I used my old short whitewater kayak, because it was a very calm, warm and lovely day. Even Greg, who avoids going outside at all costs, had to admit it was wonderful.
Here's Greg by Turtle Rock...an outcropping that does look just like a turtle's head.
He was afraid to ever get very close to the cliff, but I kept intentionally bumping up to it and touching it...I wanted to know all of it. I paddled right up and underneath Turtle Rock a few times; it was exactly the right height so I didn't have to duck. What a treat, to drift beneath it looking straight up at the underbelly of granite cliff right above my head and then suddenly, blue sky.
Looking straight up...
...and up, and up. You have nothing here for reference in a flat picture so you can't tell, but it was 300 feet or more right up the side of the cliff.
You can get some clue to scale here...just look at the base at those kayaks.
this is my favorite picture of the Northern Heights, looking back towards the Narrows.
I couldn't even fit the whole cliff in. The incredible part is (and I saw this for myself because I was right up against the cliff face in my kayak) you could look down and see the cliff continue on under the waterline. As high up as it went, that's how far down it goes below the water. Straight down. A glacier came along as the last ice age advanced and basically sheared this big mountain in half, and cut the gash deep alongside it too. When it receded it left this perfectly cross-sectioned granite mountain with an equally deep lake at its foot. Like a monument to time and the power of ice and water.
It gave me vertigo to be alongside it, looking up at the heights and then down to the depths. It was like being suspended in the sky halfway up a massive cliff. That's really what it was; a 700 foot tall cliff with water halfway between base and sky. And me, precariously perched like a waterbug between both worlds.
No wonder the ancient people in this area thought this place was sacred.
Between 500 and 1000 years ago, the native Algonkian people drew pictures at the waterline...all along the base of the highest heights. At first I couldn't see them. I knew there were pictographs because I'd researched the rock and I knew it was famous for them; over 290 pictographs here...the single largest collection of pictographs in North America. But I just could Not. Find. Them.
I even asked one fellow in a kayak on his way back from the Heights "Excuse me...where are the pictographs?" He smiled and said, "You're looking at them! Just keep looking...you'll see them".
I'm glad he didn't tell me, because after a half hour of looking I suddenly noticed this one...
...obviously man-made. Obviously the universal native symbol of a bear's claws...Bear Clan.
And suddenly I saw them...everywhere.
some faded and ancient, barely still there on the weathered rock...
others more protected...clearer. An arrow pointing up. The Great Lynx and another animal. A trail.
Here was a whole, wonderous wall of them.
The famous Nanabush lives here, Nanabozho, Nanabouz...trickster, Rabbit-man, shapeshifter. Fourth son of the Great Spirit. Abenaki peoples thought him the inventor of fishing and heiroglyphs, so this was his most sacred place.
You can see his large rabbit ears...he holds a writing stick and a fishing spear. He took my breath away. I fell in love with him instantly.
Next to him and above, higher than the others, the Great Turtle.
His head points towards the waterline, his tail is a comet. He is a messenger and a helper to the Ojibwa...a guide to the spirit world in the stars.
The pictures where everywhere on the cliff and once I saw them, like a magic picture, I couldn't un-see them. The rocks were covered with them, right at the waterline, right where a brave person in a canoe could carefully stand next to the rock and paint with ochre and hematite. It was right there, all along, in the name of the place. Mazinaw comes from the Algonkian Mazinaabikinigan-zaaga'igan, meaning "painted-image lake".
And suddenly I felt like I was in church (or at least, I felt like I imagine devout people feel in church). I was in the presence of something greater than myself. It was the presence of humanity, compounded by the magic of spiritual belief, multiplied by centuries, and magnified by the natural grandure of this place. I understood the artists who made their marks on these rocks and shared their wonder and reverence for the place. This is what had called to me across a highway over a year ago, obscured by the distance but right here. Right here. People existed. They looked at the stars and wondered. They talked about creation and put their hands on this rock and made their marks and dreamed of forces bigger than themselves.
On a part of the cliff, carved in the rock, is an inscription. I have mixed feelings about that, because who knows how many precious pictographs were destroyed? Still, the inscription is beautiful. The words are Walt Whitman's. ‘My Foothold is tenon’d and mortised in granite, I laugh at dissolution and I know the amplitude of time’. That describes this magic place perfectly. Long after Nanabush and Walt's words fade, that rock will still be there. Standing. Laughing at time. Daring people to dream and make their mark.
Later, I bought myself a little pewter charm from the gift shop. It's the same thousand-year-old image of Nanabush from the rock wall...standing so confident with his ears perked. In one hand, a writing tool so he can make his mark. In the other a spear, so he can continue to live and survive. I keep it at my desk, where he inspires me to live, to work, to dream...and to make my mark while I'm here. Every day. Make my mark.
Backtrack to June of 2010. An awful, tense, horrible year for me. Everything sucked except for my kayak escapes and the trip I took to Canada to visit my friend. If I could have just run away from home and stayed there with her, I would have. Things were pretty bleak.
On the way there, I drove past such beautiful scenery (if you ever have the opportunity to drive north on rt 41, the section between Nappanee and Ottawa, I suggest you do it), but the thing that made me STOP and pull to the side of the road was this perfect mountain lake, and on it, this perfect sheer granite cliff rising straight up out of it into the sky like a monolith. I'd never seen anything like it...it called to me and I just stood there at the side of this highway, listening to kingfishers call and staring across this still lake at this huge implacable rock. I finally made myself get back in the car and continue driving, but I promised myself I'd be back. The sign on the road said "Mazinaw Lake"
After a wonderful, relaxing weekend visit with golden_meliades , I found myself back on that road heading south this time, looking for that lake. When I saw it, I was as excited as a kid seeing the gates of Disney for the first time. I saw a boat ramp symbol (universal sign for a free boat launch) and headed towards it, following a winding mountain road down to the lake where there was a quiet little boat ramp and a clear view of that cliff. I got out of the car and just stood there breathing in clean pine-fresh forest air and staring at that rock. It stared back, daring me to touch it.
But I was at the widest part of this little lake, perhaps a mile across from the cliff face, and it was a very windy day. I saw whitecaps on the surface, and the wind was whipping sideways across Mazinaw away from the rock so I knew it would be a long fight to get there if I could get there at all. I only had my short little whitewater kayak back then (and not the much more stable Wilderness kayak I have now) and it would have been highly unlikely that I could get across that chop in my little boat safely. I had a long drive still ahead of me, and responsibilities back home. With tears in my eyes I turned away from the lake. It felt like a small personal tragedy, a personal defeat, to get back in my car and drive away from that magic place. I promised myself that I would be back. No matter what.
And then I went home, and did some hard work and some hard thinking and went about piecing my life together again. All summer I thought of that deep lake and that magical cliff. Mazinaw Rock...I researched the heck out of the place and learned everything I could about it. But obligation and circumstance kept me from going back. At one point I even had a room reserved at a nearby hotel, but foul weather moved in and made me cancel my trip.
I thought about that lake and that cliff all winter.
When May came around this year, I had every intention of visiting Mazinaw as soon as possible. Again, circumstance conspired to delay me. The deer vs car drama took away my transportation for most of the summer, and then it was time to get Charlotte to college. Then work, and obligations to my mom here, and and and...
A few weeks ago I felt the first bite of Autumn and panic set in. My window was closing. I had made a solemn promise to myself that I would see that place again, last June, and a promise made to yourself in your heart should never be broken for such mundane reasons.
I found that the little hotel I'd booked last summer was closed. Panic! I researched for hours. It's very hard to find a place to stay in that part of Ontario. They call it "cottage country" for a reason; people own or lease summer places and it's just not the kind of place you can visit casually. Cabins require contracts and leases and yeah...just not the kind of place you can stay at a Howard Johnson's, because there are NO hotels and really, no call for them. The people there like it that way. Isolated, clean, exclusive and quiet. I figured I'd have to stay at a tent in a park somewhere.
Then success! I found a little place that rented adorable cabins by the day, so I reserved one for a couple days and packed my overnight bag, loaded the Koiyak on the car, got ready to leave. Overjoyed! Finally I would keep my promise.
The night before I left, I was babbling about the adorable cabin and the amazing cliff at Mazinaw and I asked Greg (on a whim, because it was going to be the kind of trip he had no interest in; nature, fresh air, no TV or computer, and plenty of exercise...I didn't think he'd want to come in a million years) if he would join me for part of the trip. I intended to stop at Mazinaw for a couple days and then continue up to see golden_meliades again. He could come up in his own car and then drive back. For a wonder he said yes!
So I loaded the extra kayak on my car too, extra paddle and vest, packed extra snacks and bought Greg his own Tom Tom so he could find his own way up there if we got separated (which worked like a charm...I just love the Tom Tom, though I call mine "Fay-Fay" because she has a woman's voice). And off we went on a pilgrimage to Mazinaw Rock.
Janice, the woman who owns the cabin resort we stayed at, is my age and almost exactly like me in so many ways. We hit it off right away. We think alike. The cabin was adorable and absolutely lovely, and only a few steps from another tiny mountain lake; Marble Lake. Too shallow for motorboats and so, perfect for the kayak. But I wasn't there for Marble Lake.
The view from our cabin porch.
We left our stuff at the cabin and I took Greg back to the place I saw last year...the boat launch on Mazinaw Lake.
And there I was again, only this time with Greg (a thing I wouldn't have thought possible last year, last time I was there).
And there was that cliff, calling me still, with the moon rising over it.
But the sun was setting, and the cliff far away. So we went back to start a fire in our firepit, eat dinner, and enjoy our little cabin until the next day.
Finally, Mazinaw. We launched from a perfectly located free boat ramp at Bon Echo park. The park had a fee of course, though worth every penny. Really, it's the best place to see the rock.
We entered at the "narrows", a place where the lake pinches in like a girl's waist, then opens back up so you have the rock right there on your right and the whole big lake on the left.
Passing through the narrows, the south heights rise immediately. It echoes there, like being in a huge cathedral.
All over the cliff face, people were climbing, kayaking, speaking in hushed tones because the place is obviously magical.
People kayak or canoe up to the base and tie off their boats to stray branches or boulders, then immediately start climbing. It's a climber's paradise. The rock face goes straight up out of the water over 300 feet high...healthy granite that offers easy footholds for serious climbing.
I had Greg get this picture of me, kayaking near the Southern heights. I am so happy in this place.
I gave him the Koiyak because it's stable and safe and he's not as skilled in a kayak as I am. I used my old short whitewater kayak, because it was a very calm, warm and lovely day. Even Greg, who avoids going outside at all costs, had to admit it was wonderful.
Here's Greg by Turtle Rock...an outcropping that does look just like a turtle's head.
He was afraid to ever get very close to the cliff, but I kept intentionally bumping up to it and touching it...I wanted to know all of it. I paddled right up and underneath Turtle Rock a few times; it was exactly the right height so I didn't have to duck. What a treat, to drift beneath it looking straight up at the underbelly of granite cliff right above my head and then suddenly, blue sky.
Looking straight up...
...and up, and up. You have nothing here for reference in a flat picture so you can't tell, but it was 300 feet or more right up the side of the cliff.
You can get some clue to scale here...just look at the base at those kayaks.
this is my favorite picture of the Northern Heights, looking back towards the Narrows.
I couldn't even fit the whole cliff in. The incredible part is (and I saw this for myself because I was right up against the cliff face in my kayak) you could look down and see the cliff continue on under the waterline. As high up as it went, that's how far down it goes below the water. Straight down. A glacier came along as the last ice age advanced and basically sheared this big mountain in half, and cut the gash deep alongside it too. When it receded it left this perfectly cross-sectioned granite mountain with an equally deep lake at its foot. Like a monument to time and the power of ice and water.
It gave me vertigo to be alongside it, looking up at the heights and then down to the depths. It was like being suspended in the sky halfway up a massive cliff. That's really what it was; a 700 foot tall cliff with water halfway between base and sky. And me, precariously perched like a waterbug between both worlds.
No wonder the ancient people in this area thought this place was sacred.
Between 500 and 1000 years ago, the native Algonkian people drew pictures at the waterline...all along the base of the highest heights. At first I couldn't see them. I knew there were pictographs because I'd researched the rock and I knew it was famous for them; over 290 pictographs here...the single largest collection of pictographs in North America. But I just could Not. Find. Them.
I even asked one fellow in a kayak on his way back from the Heights "Excuse me...where are the pictographs?" He smiled and said, "You're looking at them! Just keep looking...you'll see them".
I'm glad he didn't tell me, because after a half hour of looking I suddenly noticed this one...
...obviously man-made. Obviously the universal native symbol of a bear's claws...Bear Clan.
And suddenly I saw them...everywhere.
some faded and ancient, barely still there on the weathered rock...
others more protected...clearer. An arrow pointing up. The Great Lynx and another animal. A trail.
Here was a whole, wonderous wall of them.
The famous Nanabush lives here, Nanabozho, Nanabouz...trickster, Rabbit-man, shapeshifter. Fourth son of the Great Spirit. Abenaki peoples thought him the inventor of fishing and heiroglyphs, so this was his most sacred place.
You can see his large rabbit ears...he holds a writing stick and a fishing spear. He took my breath away. I fell in love with him instantly.
Next to him and above, higher than the others, the Great Turtle.
His head points towards the waterline, his tail is a comet. He is a messenger and a helper to the Ojibwa...a guide to the spirit world in the stars.
The pictures where everywhere on the cliff and once I saw them, like a magic picture, I couldn't un-see them. The rocks were covered with them, right at the waterline, right where a brave person in a canoe could carefully stand next to the rock and paint with ochre and hematite. It was right there, all along, in the name of the place. Mazinaw comes from the Algonkian Mazinaabikinigan-zaaga'igan, meaning "painted-image lake".
And suddenly I felt like I was in church (or at least, I felt like I imagine devout people feel in church). I was in the presence of something greater than myself. It was the presence of humanity, compounded by the magic of spiritual belief, multiplied by centuries, and magnified by the natural grandure of this place. I understood the artists who made their marks on these rocks and shared their wonder and reverence for the place. This is what had called to me across a highway over a year ago, obscured by the distance but right here. Right here. People existed. They looked at the stars and wondered. They talked about creation and put their hands on this rock and made their marks and dreamed of forces bigger than themselves.
On a part of the cliff, carved in the rock, is an inscription. I have mixed feelings about that, because who knows how many precious pictographs were destroyed? Still, the inscription is beautiful. The words are Walt Whitman's. ‘My Foothold is tenon’d and mortised in granite, I laugh at dissolution and I know the amplitude of time’. That describes this magic place perfectly. Long after Nanabush and Walt's words fade, that rock will still be there. Standing. Laughing at time. Daring people to dream and make their mark.
Later, I bought myself a little pewter charm from the gift shop. It's the same thousand-year-old image of Nanabush from the rock wall...standing so confident with his ears perked. In one hand, a writing tool so he can make his mark. In the other a spear, so he can continue to live and survive. I keep it at my desk, where he inspires me to live, to work, to dream...and to make my mark while I'm here. Every day. Make my mark.