The Woods

Tourists have been coming to Niagara Falls for over two hundred years. One early traveller embarked from New York City in August, 1808 and kept a diary of his journey, from the thirty-hour steamer ride up the Hudson River to the days-long overland trek to Buffalo Creek and then north to the Falls.

Staying one night at ‘McCracken’s Inn’, a crude log cabin, he retired to the loft and ‘the candle was extinguished and we could perceive sky light through twenty places in the roof.’ A far cry from the high rise hotels of today, but the trip was worth it. The Falls, he wrote, ‘beggars all description’.

To future travellers, he advised ‘it is necessary to be provided with a good stock of patience and a determination to bear the little privations which must of consequence be endured in a country which is yet in many parts little better than a wilderness.’

He journeyed when pristine Carolinian forests blanketed the area. Before lots were parcelled out and neat little cultivated squares formed, the timbered woods—maple, ash, birch, chestnut, hickory, oak, walnut—prevailed.

Untouched woods are wondrous. Making your way through them taps into body, mind and spirit. Rough terrain tests your toughness and tells you what you’re made of. But at the same time, you’ve entered a world of magic and mystery. The trees wrap their arms around you and put you in a poetic frame of mind, restoring your belief in unseen things, including your own soul.

Such is the journey through life. We plod along, tripping and picking ourselves up in the undiscovered country, laying tracks, hanging on to faith, going forward. As does the main character in my upcoming novel, Annabel Cameron.