pilgrimage

This Sunday I am driving up to Muskoka to visit the lodge my mother and I vacationed at for six summers.

I wanted to do this in July, and now it is pulling me, so I must go.

A week from today is the second anniversary of my mother's passing (and today, the anniversary of her mother's passing), and memories slip up and catch me unaware. Sad memories of her illness and last days, but also, more often now, good memories of laughter and friendship.

There is so much I cannot go back to. Her house has been sold, and is another's family home. This Muskoka lodge is still there, and according to a recent talk with the receptionist, still the same.

Some places are magic, or hold a magic place in your life. Patterson-Kaye is magical, to me. I first came upon it in my early 30s. During the Olympic summer of the Ben Johnson scandal, I had gone on a backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail in the eastern U.S., with Willard's Expeditions, an adventure group led by a former car dealership owner from Barrie, Ontario. My tent partner was a doctor from Bracebridge, who happened to have recently been dating Johnson's coach, Charlie Francis. I was sure Johnson's tests had been rigged, when a look from her told me otherwise. (A true scoop, when I had no -- professional -- interest in scoops.)

Every fall, Willard hosted a reunion for people who had made his trips. He opened up his home in Barrie. Since the good doctor lived nearby in Bracebridge, she invited me to stay at her place when I came up for the reunion.

Her place happened to be Patterson-Kaye Lodge. She rented one of the suites with a kitchenette, as it was the off-season. Her 'apartment' was mere metres from a mirrored creek that wrapped around the front and side of the one-storey building. From the large window one looked onto this grey, liquid glass, and beyond, to a small wooden footbridge separating the creek from the lake. All of it in an autumnal stillness.

I don't recall ever having seen a more peaceful, beautiful spot.

More than a decade later, when my mother and I were looking into spending a summer in Muskoka, I remembered this place, but had no hope of finding it, because I never knew its name. And then, I saw a photo of a seaplane in an advertisement, placid near a dock, and I recognized it as that place I had seen years earlier.

And once we stayed there, we knew we had to come back. And we did, every summer for one week, for six years.

Recently, I discovered that P-K had been sold and was concerned about how that had come about, as the Miller family who owned it often spoke of keeping it for their four growing children. But, one of the comforts of the lodge -- that things remain constant and unchanging, like the wind and the rocks and the pines -- still remains. The Millers sold the resort to a niece, and kept it in the family, and the tradition continues. Not an easy thing to do, necessarily, when so many resorts have been bought by international interests. The Millers too, had been approached by Japanese interests offering them millions for their operation and land.

The town of Bracebridge encroaches, the cottages encroach, but still P-K remains a lovely respite and a haven.

So, on Sunday I will drive up and walk around its grounds, and breathe the air in deep.