Many years ago, our friend Art introduced us to a special Thanksgiving tradition: a sunrise paddle on Meech Lake. We would start in the dark, see the sun rise and would often just see shadows in mist rising off the water and, if it was cool enough, ice crystal patterns on our boat deck. The glory moments were when the sun rose high enough to illuminate the trees on the slopes surrounding the lake. It is very special (see last year’s here) and one thing that we miss. So this year I asked Art if he planned to keep the tradition going. He agreed to do the sunrise paddle on Meech Lake and we would do a sunrise paddle here and then we would exchange pictures. Here, we hoped to see at least a colourful sunrise over the water, since we know we would never see the reds and oranges of Ontario. He kept his end of the bargain and shared pictures with us yesterday; they were beautiful.. We didn’t even expect to paddle this weekend because of the dire weather forecast.

But low and behold we had great weather today and although we did not start at sunrise we still had a great paddle, and I’ll call it an “Awe-Paddle” instead of a sunrise paddle. This comes from a great article shared with me today that reminds us to find the ‘awesome’ in simple things of life especially this year. It can be as simple as an ‘awe walk’. We found the awe in a paddle very close to home.

We started out and I was in awe of the mountains, blue sky behind the marina. Pretty nice view!

Then I looked the other way and I experienced fear-induced awe. Formation of what looked like a very threatening cloud formation but juxtaposed to the blue sky:

We continued to paddle around the inlet and discovered why this part is called Oyster Bay:

Look closely here and you will see “Island Color” on the trees – essentially the color comes from drying leaves. But the trees, sky, clouds and water are pretty awesome!

Clouds were always changing and as we continued, some of the scenes could almost ‘fool’ you that it was a sunrise paddle. Patches between the clouds had some sunlight so it looked like sun rising early in the morning. But it is really about 10:30 am!

Then I found a piece of Ontario, floating in the water. That was pretty awesome!

And I’m always a sucker for reflections. This was an awesome way to end the paddle as we returned to our put-in.

So our ‘sunrise’ paddle was an ‘awe paddle’ close to home in the morning. I’ll take it any day! @Art – please take these pictures as our part of the bargain. If we get our for an actual sunrise, we will share those too!