Paddling the canoe when it's empty of cargo is something else altogether. There's room to be comfortable, to enable you to switch positions as the mood takes you. And to allow you the leisure required to fully appreciate your surroundings. Anxiety to settle on a site to camp on is gone, the rush to get everything done before dusk descends has passed, and the full realization of where you are and the sights to be seen can be fully appreciated.

The expanse of the lake, and its sightlines in every direction. The sight of an osprey gracefully winging across the lake, to settle on a far shore and begin preening itself. The loons surfacing here and there, sometimes a family of loons. You sight them and suddenly they submerge, to pop up again a surprising distance from their first sighting. And when they call their high-pitched lunatic sound like someone in an asylum maniacally chortling, unlike their more mournful night-time cry, it's attention grabbing.

The water lapping against the canoe when you decide to pull in paddles and just drift along the shoreline, to look at closer range at what lies beyond, within the forest circling the lake, to enjoy the beauty of the white-flowered water lilies, the purple-spiked pickerel weed plants and others whose name you don't know, but whose delicate floral blooms are as exquisite as any of your favourite garden plants at home in your own garden.

The water is warm, much, much warmer than the ambient atmosphere, and as you paddle along, the wind brings with it the warmth of the lake, washing over you, presenting a temporarily brief challenge to the cold air of the day's outing. It's an environment unlike any other, and one to be relished for its effect on your sensibilities, an elevation of awareness of your natural surroundings.

The trees, though of species you're familiar with, particularly the softwoods of pine, hemlock, spruce and fir take on a different appearance here in the wilderness. They seem more robust, greener, more assured of their place in the natural world. The mosses are more luxuriant, brighter green, thicker. The impudence of the little furred animals, the mice, chipmunks, squirrels, more engaging as they inquisitively scurry about their environment that we happen at this moment to blunder into.

Mist rises from the lake, part of the temperature inversion from the cool of the air to the tepid warmth of the lake. It seems all-embracing and it is, with more than a touch of the mystical about it, reflecting our fascination with and ignorance of, the natural world around us.