Well, as expected, the adventure is now over. Each one of us is back home under the rain and I no longer write this under the moonlight.
Remember the first day when we all said a prayer to the totem the Air Eau Bois base (It had a raccoon, and an eagle, and an instructor made of wood on top). We had then prayed for: the sun to shine, some cool breeze (possibly to our backs), a lunar eclipse, and an aurora borealis. We got three out of four, not bad at all!
Totally in synch with our prayers, the clouds held back their rain until our departure; as we got up on the last day, the sky was not blue, contrary to the preceding days. It is then that we started the series of ‘lasts’. Last wake-up call to guitar music (Eric Clapton and Eddie Vedder this AM), last toasts with peanut butter from Mario, last disassembling of the dome, last folding of the sleeping bags, last portage of the rabaska by the group, last war chant, last stroke of the paddle, and finally, last look at the Poisson Blanc.
Yup! We put away the boat, the life jackets, the oars, the flag, the boots, the songs, the neoprene socks, the polar vests, the sun glasses, the guitars and the ukuleles, Mario’s pasta and peanut butter, the salt and vinegar jokes, and we all boarded the minibus headed for Ottawa, Lachute, Montreal, Saguenay…
It was the end… Yet, not quite, for there was friendships formed here that will last and they have changed all of us. On the beach after our last stroke of the paddle, we all looked at what we had learned: some of us got to know themselves a little better, or have learned a lot about their relations with other, and still others had learned a lot about clouds and trees.
After a few last words around the totem pole, some goodbyes as we left the Poisson Blanc, and since we were after all quite happy of what we had just experiences, we decided to let the clouds cry in our stead…