When we first moved to this area over forty years ago, and our children were young, we made our second home in Gatineau Park, acquainting ourselves with its lakes and forests, its substantial hills and valleys and the diversity of its wildlife which we were privileged over a long period of time to view and to embrace as a portion of our heritage. 

From hummingbirds to Indigo buntings, chickadees to vultures, ravens to nuthatches and Pileated woodpeckers, we became familiar with the birds and the many fawns we would see in pairs or accompanied by their does in the spring; majestically horned bucks in the winter when the snow was piled high.

From spring to fall we would hike the remote forested semi-wilderness trails and canoe the wonderful lakes.  We picked berries in season, from wild raspberries on to blueberries, raspberries and blackberries and even once rose haws, to make jam with.  Occasionally coming across bear scat, our rivals for the berries.  And we did come across black bears as well, brief encounters during which neither the bear nor we were invested in deepening our acquaintanceship.

In remote areas of that wonderful wilderness, we came across beaver kits disporting themselves in the shallow lake of a beaver pond, calling out in pure animal joy to one another with shrill little yelps as they seemed to dive off a floating log into the pond; unaware of our presence quietly hidden a behind nearby copse of trees.

In the winter we would float on fresh powdery snow, thickly laid and ephemeral beyond beauty that can be described in a wonderland of crisp white, the sun glinting off the crystals, as we literally walked on air descending a height from which we had encountered a sturdy horned buck surprised at our incursion into his domain, angrily confronting us, repeatedly pawing the ground before him until his hoofs had displaced enough snow to spark off the rocks beneath.

We saw a great snowy owl sitting high in the bare branches of a tree one particularly icy, windy winter day, marvelling at its sheer size and disinterest in our gawping presence.  We came across a descending-order family of raccoons covering the outstretched bough of trees more than once, and once, while canoeing, a family of tiny muscovy ducklings that had completely covered a rock in Lac la Peche dissolved into a dive as we approached in our canoe.  We heard loons and their lunatic cry, dipping and diving in the lakes as we proceeded, and watched great blue herons descend to the periphery of the lake.

We saw salamanders, toads frogs and snakes which our son would gently grasp and bring to us to examine at close range, handing us a snake with precise instructions how best to hold it and feel its steely musculature.  We did get lost a few times on trails that hadn't been used or blazed in generations, but found our way back eventually.

Our familiarity with the place was our comfort, our escape, our haven in nature, and we loved it, even marvelling at the scene of a deer skeleton picked clean on a bank of Meach Lake.  We watched as deer reared up on hind legs to reach apples hanging low on a wild apple tree.  We once picked garlic on an island that had obviously once hosted a settler's home.  We even came across an asparagus plant at the side of a remote trail.  And the wild shallots which are protected by law were occasionally fair game when we wanted to taste their fresh appealing spring taste, popping up on the forest floor around tree trunks.

We never did get lost, however, to the extent that two people did this past week-end, setting off on snowshoes and finally being rescued by two men who embarked on a search for them after being informed at 9:30 in the evening by another pair who had set out with the lost ones, that their friends appeared to have become lost somewhere along the Wolf Lake trail.  They were eventually evacuated, suffering from a degree of hypothermia, exhaustion and in the case of the man, an injured leg.

Gatineau Park was always far more kind to us in our countless forays into its fabulous natural depths.