the autumn festival.

there were so many folks at lac phillipe on sunday you could barely find a place to park. it was a zoo. as i walked around the corner on a path along with many others i half expected there’d be a tim hortons. it was warm-ish and sunny, the trees were brilliant, of course there’d be many folks at lac phillipe. what was i thinking?

nevertheless i‘d driven into the park to walk around alone, commune with nature, feel close to the creative intelligence, perhaps talk to god, whatever that means. i’m not sure what i wanted to talk to her about but i have to admit i felt let down. i really could not believe the throngs, the sheer number of humanoid creatures up on their hind legs making all manner of noise. i felt dismayed. of course i coulda just driven somewhere else, further up towards lac de loupe perhaps or down chemin eardley into the park. well, i didn’t.
 
the secret to enjoying the park the way i wanted to that day, i figured, was to just walk and keep on walking. as time went on i saw fewer and fewer people. and eventually of course i was all alone. still i walked and walked, then sauntered and sauntered, and then lumbered. i lumbered on through parts perhaps never before mapped. i made my way over hill and dale to parts perhaps never before explored. the only weeee problem was that i really seriously was all alone, a bit lost and my feet hurt.

i wasn’t the least concerned when i realized i’d lost track of where i was, even though my phone was nearly dead and i actually was more than a bit lost. but it was early. i wasn’t concerned about running into deer and bear. i like running into deer and bear. well, not exactly running into them, but seeing them was cool. the only thing that bothered me was that i was already rather tired, pooped, fatigued, flummoxed, frazzled.

i’d like to write about how a white wolf showed me the way back, or maybe it could’ve been a hawk. i’d like to write about how i re-oriented myself using the direction of the sun. in actual fact i simply wandered around stupidly for what seemed like hours and with what felt like a degenerative nerve issue in my aging legs until somewhere in the distance i heard someone speaking mandarin. i followed the beautiful welcome sound of humans talking and laughing, as it got louder and louder until eventually i was back.

once i made my way to lac phillipe i sat at one of the many picnic tables there and enjoyed the joyous joyful scene on a late sunday afternoon. there were so many folks there, it was like one big party, an autumn festival: kids running around playing while parents watched or chased, picnics going on and as the sun only just began to soften.