by Cecily Ross
The Young family home is a large rustic lodge flanked by several rough-looking outbuildings and set high on the rocky ridge. There, in a high-ceilinged great room overlooking the lake, the most amazing feast of bush dainties I have yet encountered in the New World awaited us. Spread upon a white linen cloth (a relic of a gentler time and place) that covered a large table rudely fashioned from rough boards supported by carpenter stools was an array of meats: venison, pork, chickens, ducks and various fishes. There was new butter and fresh cheese, molasses, preserves of all kinds, pickled cucumbers and wild onions, boiled peas and potatoes from the garden, as well as all manner of pies: pumpkin, raspberry, cherry and currant.
It never ceases to amaze me how alternately generous and withholding is this Canada, pouring such bounty upon us during this season of growth that we risk gorging ourselves to death. And then, like a fickle mistress, doling out such meagre, grudging favours all winter long as would have us starve.
During our meal, the whisky flowed copiously, which naturally elicited an anthology of outlandish storytelling, mostly having to do with wild animals—of a deer captured by hand, of outsmarting hungry wolves in winter. His emotions loosened by the generous libations, Mr. Young expressed his great love for his adopted country, standing to make a lengthy toast, hand on heart, to “this great and bountiful Canada.” His maudlin, though heartfelt, outpouring aroused in me a frisson of pride that took me by surprise. I half expected him to burst into song, and if he had, I fear I might have joined in, but he sat suddenly and began lamenting how difficult it is to procure suitable wives in the wilderness for his two sons (the girls, Norah and Betty, both being wed and proud mothers of several little ones, who were running about the room half-clothed like little savages, while our own girls watched in wonder).
“Look here at young Matt,” the old man said, waving a duck leg in his son’s direction. “Has God ever fashioned a more handsome gift to womankind?” Matt, seated on my left, blushed deeply and gave Moodie and me a sheepish, sidelong look.
“Consider yourself blessed, Mr. Moodie,” the old man continued (as though I were a prize hen), “to be in possession of such a fine woman as the missus there. And I’d wager she’s good for more than paddling a canoe.” He executed an elaborate wink and reached for another biscuit.
I marvelled again as I sat listening to Mr. Young’s inebriated woodland tales, and as our little ones assisted a trio of urchins in grinding black currants into the floorboards, at the set of circumstances that brought us to this place. At how different my life would have been had I never set foot on the sturdy little ship that brought us here. What, I wondered, was my sister Agnes doing at that moment? Toasting the King in some Regency drawing room? Putting the finishing touches to her latest royal biography? And what, I wondered, if she could be here now, would she make of all this? Perhaps it was the whisky affecting me, but I could not shake a feeling of disconnection, as though I were outside myself, watching a dream.
It was after two o’clock by the time we rose from the table, and Moodie, most eager to resume our journey and never one to linger over meals, thanked the Youngs and took me by the arm. He was about to ask if one of our hosts would help portage our canoe when Mr. Young, still somewhat lubricated, insisted that he, his daughter Betty and his two sons would lead us on a guided tour of Stony Lake. I thought I detected a flicker of disappointment in my husband’s eyes. I do believe he had envisioned for us a romantic tryst of some kind. (Once again, his capacity for hubris was showing itself. Adventures in a canoe being a Canadian aptitude I doubt I am ready to tackle as yet. Still, I was touched and amused by the idea.) Daughter Norah kindly offered to remain behind with Kate and Addie, who, smeared in currant juice, had by then fallen asleep on the hard floor.
The Youngs had purchased two brand-new birchbark canoes the day before, and Miss Betty, with me in the middle and Matt in the stern, climbed into one. The other held Mr. Young, Moodie and Pat. In grand style, we paddled in silence through Clear Lake, so named for the brilliance of its waters, for about a mile, until we came to the far shore, a monumental wall of rock rising perpendicular to the water’s surface 150 feet or more, its ancient and impervious surface broken only by narrow ledges running across it every fifty feet or so. These terraces, Matt explained, are favourite haunts of black and brown bears, which apparently enjoy nothing more than lounging about high above the water, on the lookout for unwitting morsels such as ourselves. (As luck would have it, old Bruin and his friends were not about that day.)
We proceeded skirting the shore closely enough that I could smell and then see a patch of pale pink wild roses flanking a small natural beach that formed an opening in the underbrush. Matt slid the canoe onto the sand and, holding back some low cedar branches so that I might pass, led me along a narrow path to a clearing that was dominated by an outcropping of limestone perhaps a hundred feet long and half again as wide. Deep crevasses scored the length and breadth of the rock.
“Shhh,” said Matt, stopping at the edge. “Listen.” I did so, and over the rush of wind in the pines, I could hear something else—from below the outcropping came a chaotic, almost musical, cadence. It was the sound of water running, underground streams reverberating in unseen rocky caverns.
“The Indians say it is the voices of the spirits calling out from the underworld,” said Matt. It was like nothing I had heard before, and my forehead prickled with the strangeness of it. Matt led me closer to the rock. In the sunlight coming through the trees, the inanimate expanse of it seemed to pulsate with millions of infinitesimal jewels. My companion knelt in a carpet of pine needles, and taking a stick, he tapped the limestone in front of him. “Look closely,” he said. “What do you see?”
I knelt down beside him. There, faintly but unmistakably, was the shallow etching of what looked like a rabbit carved into the surface of the rock. Matt moved the stick. “And here.” I could just make out the rudimentary outlines of a turtle, like a child’s drawing. And then as we clambered over the smooth stone on our hands and knees, we found hundreds of carvings, of snakes and birds and other half-human creatures, some tiny, some nearly life-size.
“What,” I asked in a whisper as I traced the images with my fingers, “is this place?”
“No one knows how long it has been here,” said Matt, “perhaps a thousand years. The Indians call it ‘the rocks that teach’—Kinomagewapkong, in their language. It has great spiritual significance for them, and even those who have long since converted to Christianity still come here to pray and leave gifts for their gods.” He pointed to a smouldering heap of dried leaves encircled with bits of shell and feathers. “Tobacco, sage, cedar. The smoke carries messages to the spirits.”
His words sent a shiver through me such as I have not felt since I was a girl of eighteen. Ridiculous. The heathen practices of a childlike primitive people. But I was strangely moved by the aura of the place, and I have resolved to ask Mrs. Peter what she knows of it. Kinomagewapkong. I asked Matt to repeat it. Kino-ma-ge-wap-kong.
Then, off to the side of the clearing, I beheld something that stitched together for me the chasm between this world and my own and caused me to blink back tears: a tuft of blue harebell cascading from the rocks in delicate profusion. A vision came to me immediately of the carpet of these unpretentious blooms that decorated the rockery at Reydon Hall throughout all the summers of my childhood. A longing for that time of happiness and innocence overwhelmed my senses, but it seemed like a sign, and I vowed then and there to embrace this savage land, its fierce beauty and brooding secrets.
“Bells of Scotland,” said Moodie, who had come up unseen behind us. Seeing my tears, he looked questioningly at Matt. We showed him the rock carvings, but the spell had been broken, and their earlier significance seemed to slip away with the waning light of the afternoon. My husband put his arm around my shoulders and guided me back to where the canoes were beached at the water’s edge.
When finally we rounded the last peninsula, the full glo
ry of Stony Lake burst upon us, its spreading waters studded with islands too numerous to count, some towering green peaks, some low undulations of pink rock, and others ghostly groves of the white birch that the Indians prize for their canoes. The stillness was profound, broken only by the loons calling and, in the distance, the shrill cry of a bald eagle. We sat in our boats, listening to the silence, and I was awed by the majesty of the scene and humbled by my own insignificance. Even Moodie, whose habit it is to disrupt such moments as these with some form of jocularity, remained reverential and still. Behind us, the sun was setting and its light cast rivers of gold across the still waters. I would have loved to go on, to explore this mysterious place, but Matt, remarking on the lengthening shadows, broke our reverie, and turning the canoes, we began paddling back from where we had come.
JULY 28, 1835
Today, on the morning after a summer storm of such devastating fury that I thought God must be re-enacting the original deluge, the skies are grey and calm. At my side, my innocent daughters play with their dolls; my precious son chortles sweetly in his cradle. The dog sprawls across the cool hearth, snoring, unaware. A light rain falls, plucking at the puddles—pockmarked mirrors spreading out across the clearing, swamping our careful rows of wheat, my deliberate hills of potatoes.
It is hard to believe that yesterday, a Satanic storm swept down upon us, raging across the lake and through the forest. At first, we felt only a deathly calm as the evening skies turned from blue to a bruised purple and a menacing yellow light hung heavily over the clearing and the forests to the east. Then came the thunder, low and continuous at first, rumbling vibrations we could feel in our bones, accompanied by sheets of platinum that set the horizon alight. When the first calamitous explosion shook the cabin, Hector crawled, whimpering, under the bed. Then jagged spears of lightning split open the sky, and the wind rose, bringing with it thick, heavy rain, falling in a pounding staccato that I feared would demolish us all. Terrified, I pulled the children from their beds and, holding Dunnie close, ordered them—as well as the girl Lizzie and a stunned Moodie—to sit with me in a circle on the parlour floor and hold hands until the full force of the storm had abated.
All night long, the wind and rain continued. At last, I fell asleep in my own bed, clinging to Moodie in the hot, airless room. Sometime in the hours before dawn, we came together. With dreamlike urgency, I awoke into the centre of a passion that spent itself quickly and violently, almost unawares. I was not myself. This morning, my bosom rises and falls steadily, evenly with each breath. Unhurried. No one would ever guess. This is the peaceful, oblivious aftermath, the disarming lull that follows upon the upheaval.
It sounds crazy, but the storm undid something in me. Broke through like flood waters breaching a dam. I can feel myself being carried away by the current, helpless before the tide and yet still afloat.
AUGUST 3, 1835
For weeks, it has been wet and cool. An English summer. If only we were growing roses instead of wheat.
But today at last, the clouds parted and Emilia and I took advantage of the sunshine and paddled out to the place the Indians call Blueberry Rock. In no time at all, we had picked four pails of the tiny fruits and eaten half again as many. We will have jam to last the winter. We spread out part of our harvest on a piece of canvas to dry in the sun. The heat at midday was impressive, so we sat in the meagre shade of low-hanging cedar boughs. Before long, Emilia had stripped down to her petticoat and camisole and waded into the shallow water. She pulled the white cotton up between her legs and tucked the hem into her waist, fashioning a pair of billowy pantaloons that clung to her long legs like a second skin. The bulge of her impending child was visible and she took no pains to hide it. (I think of the way I have draped and covered my own body in an effort to disguise the fact of procreation, the thing that is surely a woman’s greatest triumph. Where does such shame come from?) When she was chest-deep, she called out to me to join her. But, embarrassed at the state of my mended and discoloured underclothes, I held up my skirt and ventured in only as far as my ankles. Emilia splashed me lightly and, laughing, fell back into the lake, her arms outstretched, her short hair spreading out around her face like a halo.
And then I didn’t care. Modesty, like coils of birchbark, fell away and, half naked, I too was soon in the water with her. Glorious, weightless, suspended in this wild place. How is it that all this time, living on the shore of this bright lake, I have never once just let myself float, never once relinquished control to the clear, cool water? It was a kind of baptism. Like being born again into a life I never expected. Afterwards, we clambered out onto the rocks and stood shivering until the sun warmed us, and we dressed again. As we pushed the canoe into the lake to head for home, I thought I glimpsed, in the shallows where the water lapped the rocks, a small snake, black and lithe and shining, as it slid away into the rushes.
AUGUST 22, 1835
Moodie continues to fantasize about Texas. The rain has barely ceased these past four weeks. The wheat is drowning in mud and the corn is not even waist-high. Lizzie has returned to her family and John Monaghan has left us too, heading out for the western territories and the prospect of a better life. With sixteen acres cleared and planted, we had anticipated a handsome sale of wheat if the weather co-operated, more than enough to cover the fifty pounds spent on labour and seed. Now we will be obliged to harvest the meagre crop our sodden land will yield this year ourselves, without the help of servants or hired labour. Thank God (if he can be held responsible for anything) that the summer fever has not struck with last year’s ferocity and we are still strong and able to work.
Necessity is an uncompromising master. With Moodie’s assistance and my own determination, I have nearly conquered my fear of the cows. There is no one else to milk them. My mastery of hoe and axe would astonish, or should I say appall, my gentle and cosseted English sisters. They may have soft hands and good manners, but I know how to roast dandelion roots and grind them into a reasonable facsimile of coffee. Unlike Kate and me, my fair siblings have never learned to appreciate the benefits of steeped sage leaves instead of tea, nor have they had to come to terms with a diet consisting almost entirely of coarse bread, milk and potatoes. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a joint of English lamb!
Sometimes I am as proud of these small victories as I am of my poems. Sometimes I can feel this place entering me, as penetrating as shafts of sunlight in a blue-black forest. And for hours, even days at a time, I forget who I am. Can it be I have never really known?
OCTOBER 10, 1835
Yesterday Sam stayed for supper—which he provided: a plump hen from Mary’s flock of prized Dominickers—and regaled us with tales of Mackenzie’s rally in Peterborough last weekend. Hundreds turned out to hear the Scottish firebrand, who is travelling across the province to deliver his traitorous message to the increasingly intemperate Irish and Yankee riff-raff.
My brother claims he attended out of curiosity. “I wanted to see for myself what havoc the rascal is raising with the less prudent among us,” said Sam when Moodie questioned him. My brother cautioned us once again to keep our political leanings to ourselves. “The little rapscallion is not above inciting violence in the interests of promoting his radical propaganda,” he said. “More than a few heads, and windows, were broken in the brawl that erupted after that hothead’s little speech. Tempers are running high.”
Moodie could barely contain his excitement. “Just let the bastards get out of hand,” he fumed. “We’ll give them a trouncing they’ll never forget.”
After my brother left, Moodie’s temper continued. “Oh, how I miss a soldier’s life, Susanna: the company of men, the action.” I did not say the many things I might have at that moment. Maybe now he has an inkling of what it is to feel like an imposter in your own life. I left him to his thoughts and went to bed.
We received word today that Moodie’s Ten Years in South Africa is at last going to press, published by Richard Bentley in London. A cheque for f
ifty pounds accompanied the letter. Our benefactor will never know how opportune these funds are. Molasses for a Christmas pudding, and real coffee!
My own publishing successes, though meagre, have lifted my spirits a little. I have received word from Mr. Sumner Lincoln Fairfield, accomplished poet and editor of the North American Magazine. He has published two of the sketches I sent him last summer and has asked for more, and for some of my poems. It makes me blush to record this here, but in his editorial, Mr. Fairfield alludes to “the former Susanna Strickland” as having “a genius as lofty as her heart is pure.”
No matter how difficult it is, I will find time to write.
Another baby is on the way. I am exhausted at the thought of it. But Moodie is overjoyed and hoping for another son, a brother for Dunnie. Kate, too, is expecting a little companion for young James. I only hope that a healthy baby will rekindle the light in her eyes that has dimmed since the loss of her last. And Mrs. Caddy reports that the Shairps are in Peterborough, where they will remain until Emilia’s baby is born and the weather improves. I pray we all come through our labours safely.
JANUARY 10, 1836
Ten of six and there is still light. Through the open front door (to clear the smoke from the cooking fire), I can see the sun sinking behind shredded clouds that linger above the lake, streaking the ice rose and blue. In a quarter of an hour, it will be necessary to light the lamp or I must put my pen away. I had hoped to have the children asleep by now so I might spend an hour or two with my poems, but only Dunnie has finally settled. Moodie is in Cobourg, negotiating with the army of creditors who are like hounds baying at a sliver of the moon. The girls are under the table at my feet—Katie berating her doll for not finishing its supper, Addie trying to climb onto my lap, her entreaties rising in my ears like hot blood.