Through and Under

Through and Under

McKenzie Maxwell

Osprey, Ontario is an ordinary village that sits high on the slopes of a famed valley. Looking over the valley, a person can see snow approaching six towns over. In the center of Osprey, a manmade lake pulses water over the falls, into various streams and rivers. These veins curl through the valley and spill into the tumult of Georgian Bay.

The town boasts one well-established restaurant, some abandoned ones, and a gold rush parade in honour of the prospectors who established the first camp in town. Men and their families came in droves to cut away at the face of the falls, forming a deep cavern. In the end, there was no gold. Power became the industry.

1, 900 acres of farmers field were bought and flooded in order to dam the river leading to the falls. Osprey's falls stand mutated and muted; fenced while people pose for photos near her mouth. Her power was harnessed for energy and, for a while, the town boomed. Under the shallow lake are turn of the century fences, fallowed fields, bones, pots and pans, jewelry, clothes and trinkets of a life before the hydro-electric efforts that remain today. There were those who protested and refused to leave their sunken farms and those who happily sold and survived.

Today, the community is a bubbling mixture of cottagers, locals, retirees and young families. Some have long legacies and some just showed up, drawn to the proximity to ski resorts and a semi-rural life. Whenever they arrived, lake politics quickly swept the people up in back-and-forth condemnation of each other, about the rights of community versus the comfort of the cottagers.

One set of my grandparents are from Osprey and as a child, I was often on the lake. The 1918 flu necessitated that my great-grandmother wed her brother in-law when their respective spouses died. This unfortunate pair conceived my grandmother and co-parented 8 other children in Lady Bank, near to the town of Osprey. My grandmother, an educated and spiritual woman, never left the lake. As an adult, I was pulled back, arrogantly, like there was some deeper meaning to my return.

My partner and I moved here in 2020, during a different pandemic, and noticed that, in all the combat, no one was talking about unmarked paths that webbed the woods or the moss-toppled stump with the rotting boards beneath it. No one discussed the makeshift shacks in the pines or the people who visited them in the grey-light of dusk.

We adopted a German Sheppard, Nino, and walked him three hours, daily. In the wet-black dirt on the edge of the slope to the lake, the dog began to dig, fixated on the moss-toppled stump. The stump clearly covered boards that were covering something else, more insidious. We continued quickly, unsettled by the potential of a gruesome discovery. Everyone dismissed it as the aftermath of “kids having bush parties.”

As a rule, I didn’t walk through the woods at night. Kids having bush parties and coyotes loiter there. Instead, Nino and I walked through the town which mostly dies at night. Last November, before the snow stayed, Nino chased a tabby cat, pulling away from me and darting into the woods. He lost the cat but teased me, enjoying the feeling of being chased. The deeper into the woods we ran, the clearer the web of paths became. The paths led to the well-established century homes, the shacks in the woods and joined around single blackened tree.

There are distinct moments when you know it’s time to leave a place. It is an inner dialogue you have with yourself that tells you “take stock of your surroundings and run.”

I did just that and Nino chased me into the light of the highway. We caught each other and our breaths. I leashed him and scuttled home.

That spring, another chase ensued, and Nino led me to a gaunt but cheerful, elderly man. His beard was grey and wet, and he spoke to reveal a decaying smile: “I’m glad you found each other again.” Only after he passed, I realized the strangeness. I looked after him and squinted, following him with my eyes, until he was indistinguishable from the woods.

Summer came and went. The water-access debates spilled over into arguments about the pandemic and vaccines and climate change. The lake was dredged again for winter and someone reported a chimney protruding from the lake: “Boater’s beware.” Some people speculated on who the roof belonged to, impressed that it remained intact. On Facebook, someone claimed to see smoke. Someone else said it was fog and the original poster was heckled until they turned off commenting.

Last week, in daylight, I walked with my Mother into the woods to show her the tree at the heart of the wood and the stump, which I imagine to be concealing a body. The tree reached taller than I remembered, bare, with winter approaching again. The light shone on hundreds of carvings some aged, some new. We moved in towards the stump to find it moved, boards ripped up and earth exposed. No evidence of a body. No evidence of litter. No evidence of anything beyond my curiosity.

It snowed last night, dusting the ground and brightening the woods. On our evening walk, we braved the path which skirts around the woods and the lake. Nino whined nervously towards white movement in the woods. I dropped the leash and felt an absent pull. It moved me in towards the rhythm of the woods. Nino stayed on the fringe, whimpered and waited. I saw fire, heard hymns and a sermon-like calling. The bearded man spoke to a flock of greying women in white as a familiar neighbor carved a name into a tree. I moved closer again and was visible to the party. No one looked towards me. They were intent and focused on the thing about to happen. I was in the middle of something warm, energetic and important. Abruptly, the fire dimmed. I searched for Nino in the dark. “He’s gone home. Come.”

The women latched on and lifted me with ungodly, uniform strength. Collectively, they placed me in the earth, under rotting boards and a moss-tumbled stump. They sang and circled and buried their witness deep. I thought I would die from the damp weight of the dirt but, with sudden urgency, ancient hands clamored towards me. They pulled me through the earth into the tangle of the world within the lake.