My Sweet Spot

I have never liked this phrase that much. It sounds a bit cloying. I like sweet when it refers to something to eat or to some element of romance. Nowadays this modifier is used in many ways.

However, the phrase is out there and it’s ingrained enough even in my mind that it came to me this morning as a description for a favourite spot of mine. I was reading our morning devotional about Jesus retreating to the shores of Galilee after hearing that his dear cousin John the Baptist had been imprisoned by King Herod. Jesus obviously wanted to put some distance between himself and the king down south in Judea. He went home.

I have recently had the fortune of being able to read diaries of both of my parents from the time I was a young child. This relates to the subject because it told me something of how my sweet spot came to be. Apparently, my parents, one or both, used to take us young children down to the river bank and sit and watch (We were living at the time on the Saskatchewan River, where it empties into Lake Winnipeg). If you have ever just sat by a body of water this might resonate. We also had many picnics with our family and friends, invariably next to a body of water. 

I wonder now if that riverside experience did not plant something in my mind. I have fond memories of a habit I had as a teenager living on Lake Winnipeg. I loved nothing better in the evening before turning back to bed than to go out to the point, as we called it, just down the path from the front of our house. I especially liked to do this in spring. Not in the winter when it was cold and everything was frozen and covered with snow!

I would stand alone in the quiet and gaze eastward over Loon Bay, looking across to the mouth of a river we loved to explore, or the beaches and rocks of the Canadian Shield north of it, or the distant marsh to the south. I might be favoured by the call of a loon from one of the small bays on the eastern shore, or the pumping sound of a bittern from the marsh. Some ducks or gulls might fly quietly by. I loved to watch the colours of the sky fade from blue to shades of grey, mauve and pink. As I reflect on it now, it was probably a centering or grounding practice, a moment of mindfulness, clearing my mind before retiring for the night. Those words were not in my consciousness then though. 

Thirty eight years later I first returned to that spot. I was so disappointed to see that the current owner of our former home had taken a line from the house due east and cut down all the trees to the right. Some four years later I had another occasion to return to the spot. I loaded a canoe and a tent; I was going to camp on that point. No one was in our former home at the time. Well, things did not turn out as hoped. There must have been more rain than usual as my car got stuck in the approach to the house, a spot where this had never happened before. So, as it was getting late, there was nothing to be done but carry the tent through the water and deep unmown grass past the house to the rocky shore of the point. On the plus side, it was one of those calm evening so that should have allowed me to re-live my teenage experience. On the negative, if you are familiar with standing water, deep grass and calm evenings in the north, you know what I stirred up! Hordes of mosquitoes. I had left my runners in the car so as not to walk through the water around the car and the pests were already fastening on to my ankles. There was nothing to it but to get the tent set up as fast as possible, close and zip the flap and try and get some sleep. 

As you can imagine, it was a night not to be forgotten. Not because of any calm beauty. The hungry swarms kept up their banshee buzzing around the tent all night. I don’t know how much sleep I got but when the sunrise was imminent I gave up. I got up, put the canoe in the water and paddled to a friend’s. It was lovely on the calm morning water, although the mosquitoes still tried to follow my canoe. After a lovely breakfast, my friend drove me back with his pickup and pulled my car out in no time. 

So much for revisiting my sweet spot. I have never been back. Well, it would be a 2500 km drive from where I am now. If I want to go to the water these days, I have the choice of three arms of the Fraser River, the Salish Sea or the shores of the beaches and inlets of Vancouver. Problem is, they are all too far to walk to first, before walking along those shores, and I like to keep my carbon footprint low. We still go though – once in a while – myself and my wife, or a friend. 

2025 5 30

I have something to add to this post. A few years back, I noted friends have a beautiful painting over their fireplace that captured as well as anything I'd seen my memories of the spot written about here. It turned out to be a painting by a Canadian artist Wayne Mondok (http://www.waynemondok.com/biography.htm). I wrote him and got permission to print an 8X10 of the image which has hung in my office for some years. While currently finding and sorting out old photos to share at a family gathering this summer, I came across a photo my father must have taken. I have it dated 1959, close enough. It's something of a 65 degree turn right from the straightforward view to Lake Winnipeg I preferred, but it does show part of what I would have seen looking that way, the right side of the picture, shall we say. The bay in back of the trees was where we swam and from which we boated; there was a dock there to tie up our boats. Indeed, you can see a red canoe there. We had cleared the underbrush with the help of an axe and a powerful home made lawnmower from an innovator in Plum Coulee in Southern Manitoba.

We siblings who so enjoyed our five years in that community plan to return this August. We'll see what awaits us where we once lived. I would like to have uploaded Mondor's painting and the photo I alluded to but Blogger doesn't seem to want me too. If you are my friend on Facebook I'll re-linkthis and post the pictures there.