Deep River Hangover

Last night, last picture of the Ottawa

Blame the air in Nashville. That’s when the longing for the northern Ontario cemented itself in my conscious. Leaving baggage claim, one confronts a gauntlet of stenches – the designated smoking area with fully loaded ashtrays, gurgle of diesel engines idling in the shuttle lane. The low overhang rallies them all, then wraps them in a blanket of dense, humid air.

It’s a bad introduction to any city, worsened by a long weekend in the crisp autumn air of the Upper Ottawa Valley. With every step I kept wishing the easterly wind would strike up to cast away the odors. Relief was not coming.

 Had Canada spoiled me, or did the little outpost on the edge of wilderness merely reveal itself as totally opposite my Nashville routines? I only knew I could not shake the cabin outside Deep River easily.

Alternating between air-conditioned days and heated nights also clashed with autumn on the Ottawa River. Nights ended with everyone congregated around a fire, watching satellites amble across the brilliant Milky Way.

Cold as the nights might grow, blankets and warm clothes block enough chill for comfortable rest. In my Ohio days, the bedroom window stayed open until temperatures reached the mid-30s, so it meant resurrecting an old tradition. An extra blanket allow enough cold to permeate the thin sheets that I struggled to wake every morning despite knowing chances of spotting wildlife faded as the sun crept higher. Here I can always claim a comfortable temperature, albeit one completely disconnected from the actual temperature.

The hangover creeps in slowly. No traces of it lashed into me as we sprinted across Ontario to Detroit. We endured traffic between Barrie and Toronto, laughed at the sheer number of breweries we had no desire to visit and watched fields of wind turbines suddenly twirl in time with the car stereo. The Tim Horton's lines were still long, the road signs still bilingual and in kilometers, the march toward U.S. soil inexorably all morning.

Leaving the cabin swiftly minimized any immediate impact. We left a few minutes after waking, softening the parting glances by leaving in the darkness before 5 a.m. The crimson paint of the cabin bled into the silent woods. The mountains formed a stark horizon of dark and darker night. We wouldn’t even contemplate dawn until North Bay flicked past.

Practical reasons demanded we start the 12-hour return trip at an ugly hour. The cabin and its surroundings also demand leaving in the dark. A daytime departure threatens the chance of leaving at all. In those four short days, some cabin goers scrubbed departures for another few hours of campfire talk beneath the Laurentians’ gently majesty. The Ottawa Valley is persuasive, and it only requires a little daylight to offer a hard bargain.

Hangovers fade. As with alcohol, the only salve is time. This hangover will stall a little longer. Every time I glance at my left wrist, a small gash running parallel with prominent vein mentally thrusts me 1,035 miles northeast to the Laurentians, where our hike from a sloping ridge descended a steep, pathless route to the Ottawa. As we climbed down one chute, the spongy vegetation buckled under my feet, dropping me swiftly. The cut came from broken limbs scattered among the rocks and decaying logs. It never really bled, yet through that cut, my thoughts instantly shift to the river.

As the cut dissolved into a red scratch, the memories sharpened. Still I close my eyes and feel the epic sweep of winter whipping the Ottawa River Valley. Those ephemeral days in northern Ontario must be inked on the brain matter, because a dulling of those memories would unleash an uglier hangover.