Rainy Days

The canoe especially connects us to rivers – timeless pathways of the wilderness. Wave after wave of users have passed by. Gentle rains falling onto a paddler evaporate skyward to form clouds and then to descend on a fellow traveller, perhaps in another era. Likewise, our waterways contain something of the substance of our ancestors. The canoe connects us to the spirit of these people who walk beside us as we glide silently along riverine trails.

Kirk Wipper, founder of the Canadian Canoe Museum (1923–2011), in the foreword to Canexus: The Canoe in Canadian Culture (1988)

My head is still in a hammock and the sound of rain on the roof outside remains me of a similar, but oh so different, sound that it made on the cabin's roof. And so my mind drifts quietly.

Perhaps this is the same rain that fell days ago and miles away, that nourished the earth, heightened the colours, evaporated, and then drifted eastwards to fall again and again, repeating the cycle. I am here, but my mind is connected to a lake miles away.