A love letter to Grundy Lake

I love camping. Not glamping, or caravan camping, but plain old fashioned tent camping. I love the feeling that it really doesn’t take much to have a fabulous time, just a tent, an air mattress and sleeping bag, a couple of pots and a mug for coffee, a hammock and because I camp in Northern Ontario, an effective brand of mosquito spray.

Although I have camped in other parts of the country over the years, there is one place I keep going back to almost every summer, at least for a few days. That place is Grundy Lake. Grundy Lake is a large Provincial Park situated about three and a half hours from Toronto, with amazing lakes for swimming, many hiking trails, and it is also filled with memories of my three boys catching (and releasing) frogs, asking how much longer we had to walk before the end of the hike, playing on the beach, fishing and roasting marshmallows on a campfire.

We just came back from a four days/three nights stay at Grundy and although my now grown up boys still sometimes accompany us on camping trips, this time it was just the two of us, my partner and I. Traces of my younger boys are everywhere, invisible to all eyes except for mine, but so vivid, as if time had stopped.

I had this idea that I was going to look for old photos of past camping trips there with their dad, but the truth is that I left it way too close to the time I am supposed to have this post ready for and it is very hot in Toronto tonight and I just don’t have the energy to look for them and scan them. I took photos on this recent trip, of course I did and they’re the ones I am going to post here.

If you look closely or listen carefully, you might see little Austin, Thomas and Noah or hear them laugh (or complain about the bugs or the length of the hike), just the way I do.

Valerie