Oct 18

Well, this is a surprise – fall lasted 5 days, and now it’s suddenly winter on the prairies!  Leaving the edge of the Canadian shield after Kenora, the lovely coloured hardwood forest changed to golden larch amidst black spruce.  As we descended into the ancient Lake Agassis of the southern prairies the birches appeared, bare and stark against the grey skies.  The wind came up, the cold descended, and suddenly we were in the grip of winter.  Last night by Lake Winnipeg’s shore our water bucket froze in the icy blasts.

We’re still cozy in the camper, with light, heat, water, as long as we can plug in!  It’s becoming more and more difficult to do that though – all the provincial park campgrounds are closed, as are most of the private ones.  Only the hardy Parks Canada people seem to think winter camping is a viable option!  Tonight we are lucky – by simple serendipity we saw a year round campsite mentioned in a guide book.  So we are alone in the tall grass prairie, nestled amongst groves of aspen, and surrounded by the rolling sand dunes of southern Manitoba.  The dunes are the remnants of the ancient shore of Lake Agassis, brought by the receding glaciers into the wide Assiniboine River delta, which covered most of southwestern Manitoba twelve thousand years ago.  It’s a soft, beautiful landscape, gentler than the bald prairie, and verdant with life even on the cusp of winter. 

Earlier today we stopped at Oak Marsh bird sanctuary, just south of Lake Winnipeg, to see the migrating snow geese, Canada geese, trumpeter swans, and various unnamed ducks and sparrows.  It’s so flat you can see the curvature of the earth as the arrow-straight roads fall off into the horizon.  So flat that the rising dyke over a culvert looks like a ski hill on the prairie.  So flat that the Vs of arriving geese are visible for miles across the grassy marsh, coming in the hundreds across the sky.  An amazing spectacle!

So now we are clearly in the west, past the geographic centre of Canada (between Kenora and Winnipeg), on Central Time.  We stopped in Winnipeg and Pine Falls to see my Manitoba cousins, and Gimli to see the Goolies, and now we’re headed home.  I have mixed feelings – Canada is so astonishing, and so vast, I could spend another year exploring quite happily.  But I miss home, family, friends, and clean showers, so onward we will wander.  We’ve got a few hikes and hot pools to visit enroute, so we’re still a couple weeks away, if the weather cooperates.  Will keep you posted!