I’m a goal-oriented person. In March of this year I came up with a summer vacation goal to walk 250 kms in 10 days. I looked at the Ontario map and came up with the idea of walking to Kingston which is 250 km. I spent weeks looking at the waterfront trail and figuring out how I could do it without having to camp and carry all my stuff. In June, my partner Chris looked at this idea more closely, realized it was mostly highway walking and wanted no part of it. I didn’t want to do a vacation without Chris. We both agreed that we liked to have a low carbon footprint and to not fly anywhere.
Instead we rented cottage in the Frontenac region and visited the near by provincial parks and swimming in a new lake each day, drawing and collaging the new lake and writing about it.
Today I walked 21 kms out of the way to pick up the rental car. We drove the car to the family cottage in Coboconk. I wanted to try out a new lake along route. Chris thought it was crazy to not just swim in the cottage lake. That’s not new! So we went 20 minutes out of the way from the cottage to Fenelon Falls which has a public beach on Cameron Lake. I was nervous about the swim. As a swimmer, I love lake swimming but feel more comfortable in a pool. Cold pools I can handle better than cold lakes. The air temperature today wasn’t so warm and going into a cold lake when you’re not hot isn’t appealing. But I wanted to face fears, and stick to my goals. I went in and it was really warm! And if I wasn’t being rushed to get to the cottage, I’d have spent a lot more time in the water. When I got out I wasn’t anymore cold then when I got in.
The beach was busy, there was a nice playground, sandy bits, lots of grass with kids running around, a path making it the go-to place in town. For my first lake that was a nice way to ease into my fear of cold lakes! We’ll see how the rest of the week goes as the temperature goes down.
