Drewry Lake Symphony 1995

As we pulled up at the waters’ edge, canoe strapped onto the truck, gear for three people and three days it looked like it was going to be a washout camping trip. It was later on in the afternoon than we had wanted to arrive. The high heavy cloud cover reflected a somber dark grey Drewry Lake. A bald eagle was disturbed by our coming. He left his hunting perch and soared away down the lake.

The steep foreshore insured we were all in a sweat before the truck was unloaded and the canoe loaded. We had decided not to look for a campsite in the Provincial campground on our way into the lake, we wanted complete wilderness/privacy. Instead we were depending on finding a suitable spot along the lakes shore.

Within moments of setting paddles to propel the canoe forward we rounded a headland and sidled past a deer browsing on shrubs a few feet away. She was startled by our sudden quiet appearance and bolted a few feet before she stopped and continued feeding. We were immediately good with the clouds. Paddling along the edge of an unexplored mountain lake was the only place to be.

She was a long, almost fjord like narrow lake with mountains 5,000 ft above; there was a beautiful wooded oval bowl along her flanks on both sides unto a stone oval at her heights. At each end the lake opened into valleys wider than the lake itself. The lake shore and bottom were rocky and steep in sections with occasional sandy estuaries where run off ravines carrying silt and sediment came down from the mountain tops. Piercingly clear water made it possible to see into depths of fifty and sixty feet, a hundred feet when a stray sun bolt escaped the cloud cover. The lake edge was littered with trees that had fallen helter skelter into the water rendering the water’s depths a surreal reflection of the shore. At the narrowest end of the lake, an island gave way to a mud bog and swamp that opened into a large grassy valley.

It wasn’t long before we spotted a flat spot for our tent that also had a good landing site. It had been a summer full of camping expeditions and we had the drill down pat. In no time, camp was set up and we were back on the water to explore until nearing darkness and our stomachs forced us back for dinner. As we ate we discussed the sighting of a large predator bird that we’d flushed at close range. Bald eagles were a dime a dozen on this lake, the fishing was obviously excellent, but this had been a grand daddy size golden eagle. When we hit the sleeping bags that night our prayers for sunshine and heat on the morrow were accompanied by the ululations of loons.

We woke to fog. Everything in camped dripped including our spirits. Coffee and a big breakfast helped dispel the gloom and by the time we were ready to push the canoe away from shore the fog had lifted completely. Instead of following the same shore we paddled straight across the lake. Ordinarily you’d stay away from the centre of a lake if there is any potential for stormy weather, but the narrowness of the lake meant a lee shore was always close. As we pulled toward the middle of the lake the lake’s face changed form. Now the lake became small as it reflected the soaring mountains capped by drifting clouds. We neared the middle of the lake and discovered ourselves in the company of dozens of loons.

Loons have always meant summer, at the cottage as a child and camping as an adult. We have swum with them, sang with them, done courtship dances with them. That morning it seemed as if every loon we have ever met was congregated in the middle of Drewry Lake. We stopped paddling, hoping to drift through the gathering of loons without disrupting them. We had heard their calls intermittently through day and night. We had seen pairs and family groups, but we’d never seen the likes of this. We were transfixed by the sight and grateful to have set our course across the lake perfectly timed to arrive for such a gathering. We knew we were being engulfed by a sacred moment and there was no need for words or eye contact between us to validate the feeling, there was only the moment.

The experience was peaking; the loons had unobtrusively opened a path for the canoe to drift through their number. We sat motionless in their midst when they started their ululations as a group. Within seconds twenty, thirty, forty birds added their voices to their chorus. Then…the echoes off the steep stone mountainsides coming back as hundreds and hundreds of loon voices… We were encapsulated by a cathedral of sound. It was an early morning service with a tribe of celebrating fishermen singing praises for the bounty, wonder and glory of All That Is. Today I have only to hear a lone loon call to remember, and revel again in that otherworldly gift from the loon tribe.



This picture is one of a series of stainedglass panels with loons that I felt honour bound to complete. I took this picture with winter snow in the background, a delightful fairy setting for the scene of summer loons diving in blue water.