Leaving the sanctity and beauty of Mt. Bore Stone and the treasure of old Maine friends behind, was bitter sweet for me. Shann had told me how when she first came to Maine 35 years ago, she had wept, with the knowledge that its specialness would be to her, like that of the unrequited lover. We are both Westerners and although we could dabble in the seduction of the North East, it would never be our ‘home’.
I have such strong and mostly sweet memories of my life in upstate New York growing up; the lovely and evenly distinct seasons; the access to the out of 
doors; the extended family of neighbors , friends and blood kin that nurtured and guided me!
There was a cloud in both our van, and a storm in most of the territory that we traversed as we were not seeing the full autumn colors that we so wanted to experience. It’s a bit like the tourists in our islands asking when the orcas are gong to come by; they will when they will! The heavy clouds and rain followed us though into Vermont and then New York, as we drove through the lands of J. F. Cooper’s famous novel: The Last of the Mohicans.
This region is the land of my fantasy Native Ameri
can roots. Poor old Grandma Mae la Plant, and her daughter (my mother) Virginia Barnes would no doubt do summersaults in their graves were they to hear me ruminate on the possibility of my having some Native American ancestors. But then what is the truth of where I came from and who my forbearers were? Why not “stretch it’”out there in the ethos somewhere, as I close my eyes and chant in some aboriginal tongue that on occasion comes to visit me? Could a Native root exist along with the French and German and English parts?
The broken bridges and destroyed homes left in the aftermath of Hurricane ? were evident on the various ‘blue roads’ of our journey down to the Mohawk river and then over to the gloriously beautiful Finger Lakes region of my home town of Auburn. Owasco, Cayuga, Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, Skaneateles, Canandaigua, all Lakes of 10 to 20 miles in length and one mile in breadth, that were parts of the ancestral home to the Iroquois Nation. I felt this surge of excitement and ‘coming homeness’ that I always feel as I fly over the Tanana flats and into Fairbanks, as we made our way along the Erie and Barge Canals and into the embrace of my network of old high school buddies, and my own family, that has stayed on in the region I left nearly 50 years ago.
Enough on musings, but I do want to state that the clouds lifted after nearly a week of rain, and we got to walk in the warm Indian Summer sun. Scarlet colored leaves (sumac, elm, maple,) and silage harvested fields and hedge rows on the Trans Canada foot path in traveling through the north side of Lakes Ontario & Erie. It lifted our spirits and was warm enough to make young Jack pant in the 80 degree temperatures.
Perhaps it is this Native root that inspires me to immerse my body into the cold waters of the lakes and rivers we pass, as I did last night under a full moon on the Michigan side of Lake Huron. 
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