Beaver Country in November

I spent the weekend up in beaver country, just on the edge of the Canadian Shield near Georgian Bay. It's not the prettiest place to look at, compared to many of the world's sweet sights. Too much grey. Too little order. No comfort at all, in November at least.

But it's the landscape my body loves best: shady pine and oak glades where the soil is springy beneath the feet, interspersed with rocky outcroppings just made for short, vigorous climbs. There's always a minor mountain to catch your breath upon after one of those perfect bursts of effort.

There's water everywhere, in the form of elongated ponds, some growing over into meadows, others flooded up with autumn rains. All maintained in a bewildering array of interrelating watersheds under the engineering mastery of the beaver.

Beaver ponds are all alike and yet every one is different; if you had to navigate around them you'd soon go mad trying to find your way. Many would-be explorers probably did just that; it's a small wonder that when Champlain first landed in the area it was by boat.

In fact, it's not a land explorers would ever have had much to do with, had they not been after the beavers. The climate is bad enough, but the weather is heartbreaking. Beaver country in November is uncomfortable. Unless you're a beaver, anyway. Or wearing a beaver pelt.

But it's where I was raised, and I'm fond of the place. You can never be king of the castle in beaver country; at least, not at this time of year. Only moments after heroically ascending some rocky mass or other, you're likely to find yourself knee-deep in freezing runoff, or stuck in a juniper bush, or just plain lost.

Chickadees chirping cheerfully in the trees won't save you; you'll be just another lost guy in the bush with no birdseed, as far as they're concerned.

Beaver country in November keeps a person honest. It's just you and the Creator out there, and it's pretty clear who's not in charge. Some folks think it's beautiful, but it's meaner than it looks in postcards. You can die pretty easily on the wrong kind of day in beaver country, when winter's coming on.

You can get a chill in about 20 minutes that you won't lose all weekend. You can freeze your fingers trying to work a stuck zipper. You can lose feeling in your toes just stacking firewood for a half an hour. And nobody loves to shit in the woods in beaver country in November.

But when it's time to hit the road again and head South, back to the paved four-laner and the long, slow snake of red lights rolling over the hills... no one in his right mind would be glad to go.