Once before, on another occasion, I had inhabited on that island for a night, in that case with my then friend, Barry. I recall nothing of the trip, really, except one thing, and if you asked for more details I believe I would scratch my head and puzzle in vain. That "one thing" constitutes the reason for this memory. Barry and his wife, Petrova, must have been visiting us in Thompson at the time of this event. They made the trip twice or thrice in the nine years that Marty and I taught in northern Manitoba, first for two years in the hydro town of Grand Rapids and then for seven in the nickel-mining city of Thompson. They appear in our photographs of Christmas one year, Petrova and Marty still vibrantly youthful-looking and Barry, with his straight thin hair shoulder-length, typically somber and aloof, silent, somber and aloof.
So, on this summer adventure out to this remote and mildly inaccessible lake, we two, unfamiliar with Philips Lake outside of knowing of the waterfall somewhere in its farthest reaches, arrived at and set up camp on the island of which I wrote earlier. I clearly remember our excitement about the site, so "luckily situated" with a front row view of the raging waterfall. The earth trembled a little with its rushing force and it appeared to entertain and welcome us in the deep, complex discordances of a natural choir. Vaguely, I recall casting in our lines and bringing back from below the waterfall enough pickerel for the evening meal. As darkness came and the sun awayed, we stoked the fire and rolled a few joints. Habitually a pipe smoker, I likely interspersed marijuana between bowls of either red-packaged and fully aromatic Amphora tobacco (which I still think of as one of the two or three best tobaccos ever) or the bright yellow-packaged Sail, both Dutch-made and delicious.
On my own I lived quite comfortably without grass, hating the sensation of dizziness it inevitably gave me. Also, the very first time I used it back in Winnipeg, it must have had some hallucinogen cut into it because I experienced an eight hour trip from hell, not unlike what I imagine a day-long hellish ferris wheel ride at twenty rpm would feel like. Here, in the gathering dark, we smoked, we drank a few beers and a glass of red wine, we crawled unsteadily into the tent and then proceeded not to be able to fall asleep. Immediately and increasingly the ground began to tremble and shake, the trees on this windless night moaned and moaned, and the dread of some unknown but terrible threat overwhelmed our senses. And ever louder, ever more threateningly, a gathering presence, that waterfall made its way horribly over the waters straight for our tent. Oh! the fear! I whispered to the "somber and silent" Barry, finally, if he, too, felt as if we were being stalked by the roaring thing out there and he admitted he did. But, he added, much more aware of the effects of grass on the senses, that that can happen when you're high at the wrong time and space at an unfamiliar place. His wisdom helped. Though the roaring increased, and the falls crept closer, blessed sleep finally freed us of our terror.
That is the other story of Philips Lake in my memory. One trip exhilerated us and the other tortured us. Not only a few experiences with Barry caused me painful memories. A trip to Prince George with Barry and his wife, a winter hike on snowshoes deep into the bush on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, a morning around the breakfast table when I felt mortally insulted, and more, are not joyful memories and best forgotten. Ah, well! Life pitches its curves regardless of the relative blindness of the catcher. Life throws at us. Life's "thrownness."
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