escapism

Sometimes, escapism hits me and I hop into the car --still, even though I live in "cottage country" -- and drive to beautiful places like the lakes in the Bancroft area of Ontario. In my mind, of course, there are all the associations the landscape has for me with my childhood memories. Many Finns live throughout the Canadian Shield geographical region of northern Ontario and report that it reminds them of "home". The lakes, the birch and pines, the rocky shores certainly evoke Finland for me too, even though I actually lived in Finland for only three years.

It was to the lakes of northern Ontario that many of our ex-pat Finnish friends migrated to build saunas first, then cottages or even year-round homes.

In the summer, we escaped the suburbs of Toronto, making many trips in the old Valiant to go camping near these lakes as a family. Loaded down with a huge and heavy canvas house-tent, sleeping bags my mother lined with sewn-in quilts, and enough food for a small army, the car sagged dangerously. I remember enduring the long car-ride, trying to ignore pesky brothers and an irritating sister, trying to drop into my fantasies by watching the landscape go by as we drove north.

Most often, we spent a weekend at some of Ontario's many provincial parks. Other times, we visited friends. And most memorably, we went camping with another family at Algonquin Park. Naturally, we always tried to get near the water for lots of swimming and canoing.

And it wasn't camping if there was not woodsmoke somehow, from the stove in a friend's sauna, or from our campfire in the evening. We just had not been camping if we didn't come home with every article of clothing smelling gloriously of woodsmoke and insect repellent.