I made it out to the Walking Trail again on Sunday (June 27) afternoon. This time we left from the Heritage Centre in Marysville. It wasn’t very busy, perhaps three or four other cars. Most of them were cyclists.
After a kilometre or so in, we stop at a bench for a little while to soak up some atmosphere. Plenty of birds to hear, the sound of the breeze riffling through the leaves. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes find us pretty quickly and soon we are on the move again.
We pause for a moment to look at the Nashwaak River. My son happens to glance back to where we’d just been parked and notices a turtle crossing the trail. Of course we go back for a brief and respectful look. Roughly the size of a bread-and-butter plate, he wisely withdraws his various parts into his grass-green shell. We leave him after a minute or two to continue his journey from a swampy area on one side of the trail, and down the hill to the river on the other. My resident biologist tells me it was most likely a painted turtle.
A little bit further on the way back to Marysville, we spot a deer. It’s a good size and mature, but there are no telltale antlers or a fawn nearby. It doesn’t know we’re here because it’s in a swampy area below the trail and the wind is blowing away from us. We watch for several minutes while it grazes peacefully here and there, and then finds a good spot to lay down. It vanishes almost completely behind some green shrubs. Just a little bit of its brown face is still visible. The magic of camouflage.
I feel privileged and even reverential when I’m visiting the natural world and am lucky enough to see wildlife. It’s the best way to decompress that I know. My blood pressure slows and I breathe deeply. It’s healing. For a moment I leave behind the horrors of residential schools, Covid variants, and a deadly heat wave in BC. It’s just me and mother nature.