Canada's wild lands.

All self-propelled travellers have places that stick in their minds. They
come to places slowly. A fact: all self-propelled travellers "come to places
slowly." These are places that linger poetically in one's mind years later
and come to the forefront of long distance gazes and imaginative daydreams.
One might inadvertently ponder at the oddest times, "I wonder
what it is like at 'X' now. This might help explain those "blank looks"
not uncommon to otherwise urban dwellers who are also travellers in
Canada's wild lands.
The Canadian bush, also referred to by Robert Service as the land
"back of beyond," or described by Labrador traveller, Elliott Merrick,
as the "country way back in," is perhaps too immense to be grasped as
a whole, but it is a good exercise of the mind to try. Rather, we connect
with places; places that allow us to extend our thoughts to the whole of
the "beyond" and "way back in." Each such particular place can be
informing to one's spirit or soul. The necessary "time out" must be taken
to consider spiritual meanings and mysteries linked to the place. I have
always loved the idea of the German visionary Goethe, that truth and
mystery were dancing partners.2 A favourite campsite, a once-visited lake,
a hilltop winter view from snowshoes, a particular waterfall, that one
portage: these areas are all possible "Xs" that inform. Likely they are
places where we have settled, quietly and serenely, allowing the setting
to wrap around us. We all have such places that we have internalized at
the gut level where the relationship between the beholder and the beheld
epitomizes adventure, beauty, truth and mystery. The first three of these
constitute "civilized virtues" for philosopher Alfred North Whitehead.3
Nueltin Lake straddling the Manitoba/Nunavut border is such a
place for me. I associate the lake with the best of a 40-plus-day canoe
trip in 1983.1 also associate the lake of 225 kilometres (140 miles) in

length with people, although it is relatively without people now.