Jottings West, Day 2

March 17th, The Ecotone

My last jotting ended with a questionable analogy, so, to repair my relationship with the Gods of pedanticism who cast down upon those who abuse the name of literary devices, I must provide you, dear reader, with a better one. 

Heading north at the junction of Highway 11 and 71 (finally leaving the former in my tracks), up past the farmland that surrounds the town of Emo, through the twists and turns on the eastern shores of the famous Lake of the Woods (re-entering the Canadian shield after temporarily reaching its borderland around Rainy Lake), and riding past Ontario’s westernmost town of Kenora, I noticed the forest hills beginning to recede.

{The famous French Canadian Voyageur and Fur Trader Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, colloquially known as La Vérendrye, cut through the Lake of the Woods to reach the Prairies, looking to find the Pacific. Manitoba's partially French, and indeed, Métis identity, owes gratitude to these initial expeditions}

This recession, however, did not happen all at once. Bedrock appeared less and less frequently, and when visible, was no longer as towering or imposing. Small fresh water lakes, incredibly common in Northern Ontario due to the bedrock’s ability to trap water overground, gradually become marshy bog over a sand, silt, clay ground material, from the legacy of Lake Agassiz. Then, right around Falcon Lake, Manitoba, there lay an initial turning point: finally, the highway started to run relatively flat, with wide lanes and long stretches of straight-forward driving. It felt like I had crossed a boundary, past a certain checkpoint, and through to another world. Though, the old world was not gone entirely, and I could not pinpoint an exact location where it began to disappear. 

Thus is the gradiential nature of reality (i.e. existing on a gradient). Colour can be adequately used as an analogy (interconnections are ubiquitous in this universe, hence why analogies are so useful). For instance, we can take the green-ish blueing of turquoise as an analogous equivalent to the small patches of wheat-producing arable land that appear in the lead up to the towns of Richer and La Broquerie, towns where the prairie identity of Manitoba first becomes apparent. But look no further than the mathematical definition of the term. Here, ‘Gradient’ is essentially a synonym for ‘the rate of change of a slope’ (remember grade 7 math class - rise over run). The far left and right side of the line represent end points at which our slope is measured, and we do not care as much about the lines incline at a specific point in between, unless measuring for tangents. This is similar to the platonic conceptions of ‘shield’ and ‘prairie’, which, at least in my mind, are ends that the transitional ecological environments lead towards (rather than a unique ecosystem in and of itself).

{In ecology, an ecotone is the transitional area between two ecological communities}

It's a shame that most of our brains cannot describe the infinite number of beautiful possibilities along a gradient, forced to simplistically label colours and ecosystems ‘violet and lime’, ‘shield and prairie’, preventing appreciation of their idiosyncratic characteristics. In practice, most of us mentally subscribe to Plato’s ‘theory of the forms’, in that we use categorical ideas that exist beyond the material world to order our lives (ex. “Mom, please, I want to vacation somewhere tropical!”). 

We also tend to forget that categories exist on top of other categories (progressive academics call this “intersectionality”). The political borders of Ontario and Manitoba, for instance, do not cut between two separate ecosystems. No, parts of the ecotone are within both provinces. The border does not follow a single river system or mountain range. Hell, when I initially drove into Manitoba, I failed to notice that I had even crossed over, probably thinking about some distracting element of the various sub-plots of my life. This is because, as is true of so many borders created in the modern era (let’s say, Post-Confederation, U.S Civil War), political boundaries were drawn out from up high as a matter of convenience and compromise. After the Métis rebellions were crushed once and for all in 1885, the Dominion provinces of Ontario and Manitoba concluded their own prolonged political struggle over claims to the very lands that I passed through today. It was not until 1912 that the border was officially solidified (much to the dismay of Manitoba), due-north from the “confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers”.

Beyond the challenges of accurately labelling this land I was driving across, it was also a shame that, upon being infused with the urge to visit my old tree-planting camp site near Marchand, my car got stuck in the dense, hardened snow on the unplowed bush road. 

{My former Planting Camp, which also happens to be a Horse Camp}

It was undoubtedly a poor decision to venture onto this ‘road’ during such a season, for no other reason than pure curiosity and a sense of longing (those intangibly powerful drivers of human action!). In areas like this, cell service cuts out almost immediately after exiting the highway. I realized, tossing the snow out of the way of my two front tires, that it was solely me that was going to have to solve this problem. Outside help was far, far, away - at least, moving on foot. 

Leading up to this day, I had the half-baked idea of staying the night at this camp, with my tent and -10 degree sleeping bag, huddled amongst the forest walls offering protection against the wind. The truth was, this stemmed more from a desire to avoid paying another $130 in hotel costs, rather than a genuine love for such an unprepared form of wintering. When eventually I succeeded in digging my tire out in the midst of an incoming blizzard, the "budget" hotel nearby dreadfully called to me, yelling my name louder and louder until I finally gave in and appeased that voice within me that craves to hide away in comfort. I thought for a moment about an alternative plan to post an advertisement on one of those community facebook groups, in a plea along the lines of “will pay $50 to sleep on your floor for the night; will be out by sunrise”. Could you imagine the revolutionary social potential of the internet in a high-trust, communitarian type of society (though, perhaps the internet facilitates the conditions leading to breakdowns in these areas!), where generous individuals who have are matched with desperate individuals who need? It’s a nice idea. But it is likely true that humans are naturally hardwired to distrust strangers, particularly those who are “passing through town and hoping to sleep on” their floor. And in our advanced, globalized, market economy, such a roof-mating system would completely destroy the hotel industry. I suppose, too, that we have tried this type of matching in the world of dating, mating, and romance, and… the effects seem to be quite corrosive. 

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As I write now in the evening, I have made it firmly out of the forest lines, resting in a hotel neighbouring a grain mill. Next stop - the Paris of the Prairies.