TWO DAYS IN THE MUSKOKA DISTRICT – My Idea of North

I finally visited the Muskoka District in Central Ontario! 

For my friends who have never heard of it, this area is only a small part of the famous “cottage region”, where all real Ontarians spend all their weekends, sometimes just in the summer, sometimes all year along, lining up on the main highways with other thousands of people on Friday to go North, only to do the same in the opposite direction a few days later. 

I was lucky enough to visit a “real” cottage, built all in wood literally directly on the rocks that are so typical of this region: the red-shaded rocks of the Precambrian Shield. I drove for hours between hundreds of little, and not so little lakes, and hidden bogs covered in water lilies and floating logs.   

I also managed to spend a few hours jumping in and out of the fresh yellowy waters of a lake, rimmed by the typically white-bark of the birches (betulle, for my Italian friends), which accompany pines, maples and oaks all the way to the water line. Very much like in the paintings of the Group of Seven.

Tom Thomson - in the Northland

Thank you to all the wonderful new and old friends that made this experience possible! The loons will have to wait for next time!