Kioshkokwi Lake, Algonquin Park

Outside our cabin, a garter snake throws a tantrum into sunward rocks.

I help a chipmunk stuff itself with red pepper.

A pair of loons play a keening game of hide and seek. 

Crows scream like jackasses in the pines.

Across the water, the deciduous put on their green.

Dad says they look like paint-by-numbers trees.

‘Or a Lawren Harris,’ my uncle suggests, and they laugh. 

Later, dad tells me they look eerie. 

We pack rods and tackle a trail through birchwood to bluer pastures.

Our spinners feel and reel in rubber worms and weeds.

We want brook trout and lake trout. We catch bass. 

When I grip one it’s all soft stomach and serrated scales. 

I pinch the hook out of sharp and punctured lips. 

Bass gills look like frilled watermelon when they

gasp for air. I get fishblood on my fingers,

release the slashing thing back into the water. 

In the cobalt night, we eat beef chili on plastic plates around a campfire.

The water washes behind the snap of fire logs. 

My uncle teaches me and my cousin the word hibernaculum:

a place where creatures seek refuge.

Text: Brendan Stringer

Photography: Leemarc Lao