pretty pond

May 10 2008
Another day of hiking with a friend. We decide to go to the pond not named yet. The names I use in these journals are often names somebody I know,or I, gave them, they are not official names. In the Yukon, few landmarks have names. And hopefully soon I will name this special little pond. We will bike to the beginning point. I fix up this old bike for Sylvie to use. I am sure it is a 30 year old bike. Possibly older, it was already old 15 years ago when a friend used it for a summer, The tires need air and only one needs it again on the way back. Again I follow the compass going straight north and mark a trail. It's different again. For a while we follow an old creek bed, thick with moss on its boulders, on the sides there's evidence of a very big tree, it's been down for a while. Again we come out at the same hill and have lunch on a rock bluff.

May 13 2008
Another attempt to make it to, now called; 'pretty pond'. I love her. It's easy going following the trail we marked Saturday. From the now very familiar hill, I bushwhack to where I think the pond will be. And Indeed, there she is, lovely as ever, grassier already, I think she will dry out for the summer. On one of it's big boulders I rest. As soon as I sit down I hear a sound and a flock of geese fly over! I always get so excited and before I totally identify them they're gone again. There was 2 dozen off them, they had dark wings, and to me they sounded like,"ew, ew".
I explore the surroundings of the lake, first going north. I follow the boulders on the side, having to cross some marshy sections but come out in a narrow, where a game trail is very well defined. And now I am among walls of rock. I have to climb up one side and cross a little miniature Pine tree forest. It opens into a little meadow surrounded by thick, big,spruce. Here I turn around.
I explore the south of 'pretty pond' and find she has a little brother, which is dark and round, and a little sister with long blond hair, the grass, which here has dried flowering stems. I decide to take a shortcut to where the marked trail is, wrong... Well not wrong, but I don't find the trail till I come to a big meadow, which I knew was there, but hadn't come upon lately. I do some brainstorming, and find the trail where it goes into the old creek bed. Still I keep losing the trail sometimes. On the way back with Sylvie Tremblay we must have been accompanied by Fairies as it was amazingly easy to follow this new marked trail back to our bikes.