In his book, "Arctic Dreams", Barry Lopez writes.... "The edges of any landscape quicken an observer's expectations. That attraction to borders, to the earth's twilit places is part of the shape of human curiosity."

It's mid-February and looking east from Hecla Village, on the shore of Hecla Island, only horizon arcs edge to edge, across and past my peripheral vision. My retina registers the meeting of sky and lake as a thin black line of nothing.

Unbroken horizon. Unbroken sky. Unbroken lakescape.

In mid summer that line might be defined by a distant sail, waves breaking on themselves or an approaching storm front's heap of cumulus.

Boundaries by definition break a pattern, here mid-winter, the pattern remains unbroken, sky and Lake a concert.



My last visit to Punk was a passage past, leading a group of kayak's from east to west along a handrail of Islands girdling the throat of the Lake. We paddled a lake void of movement but our own. A humid mist enchanting the August long weekend Lakescape.

Hazy passage past Punk Island /05

Trudging today on snowshoes, through blinding clarity, I turn west and leave Hecla Island near Sunset Beach to find the pattern broken by Punk Island and it's small accomplice Little Punk, each a nautical mile offshore to the north west, bearing 335 magnetic from the beach.

Punk Island emerges on the horizon.

I've brought compass and map with bearings and reverse bearings for this trek.

This Lake is a trickster any season.
Squalls, winter and summer can obscure the navigable breaks in this pattern in minutes leaving one exposed, directionless and quite possibly, ... dead.

Today though comes with a favorable forecast, little wind, lots of sun.
Noon's temperaure read -20C, not to bad by Manitoba's mid-winter standards.













The nautical mile, an easy twenty minute paddle in August, an hour's walk on ice and snow today and a lone birch becomes beacon as I near the southern center of punk.













Tracks and trails cris-cross a line parallel the island shore, a pair of tracks that in antarctica might betray a penquin's march. Here a freshwater Otter and mate slide across the frozen lakescape taking one, two maybe three steps before pushing off from leg to belly to leg again.


I follow the pair, nearly straight west from Punk's south tip to Little Punk where they continue on, disappearing into that "thin black line". Little Punk is more limestone lichen and birch, ice covering it's gravel shore. After exploring I stop offshore for a snack and tea from my thermos.

Mid-hike break


Checking my return bearing I head back to Hecla and Sunset Beach, if my bearing's are true my own tracks should intersect just before I make landfall.

Sun and Hecla

As I wander imaginary magnetic lines of converging trails, the sun keeps to it's low arc in the southern sky, bright and reflecting off the Lake's snow and ice I wonder if I should have packed sunscreen, now deep in storage with paddles and PFD's.

True to my bearing about an hour later I trudge across my own trail about 50 meters off Sunset Beach. Punk and Little Punk on the horizon behind me now.

Converging out and in bound trails


Back at my car the thermometer reads -16C, a good day for a walk.