Back in August, while dog sitting for my parents in my hometown, we escaped our duties to seek out a nearby lake listed in Eric’s cottage country map book.

Gignac Lake was described as having a decent amount of fish. That there were no directions on how to get there only fueled Eric’s interest.

With some Googlemap screenshots saved to his iPod, we drove across the bay and eventually found the entry point: a kind of driveway on a dirt road next to a small, fenced municipal building decorated with Do Not Enter signs. But there was a trail.

We hiked through the woods for a good 20 minutes before finding a lovely swampy ditch. A jar of deer bait under a hunting lookout was the only sign anyone had trampled this way in the last year or so. I actually wondered if Google’s satellite image was so old that the lake had since evaporated.

Right as we were getting back to the car, with my overfull bookbag hurting my shoulder and feeling stupid that Eric had carried his fishing rod through a forest, a man walked by and asked “Catch anything?”. I was trying to detect mockery in his voice as Eric answered frankly that we couldn’t find the lake. The man then pointed us in the right direction and advised us about what to do if we met a bear.

Turns out the lake was less than 10 minutes away, the true trail barely noticable. We balanced on logs to cross a muddy pond and also past bear poo to find a very pretty lake.

I didn’t read for fear of a bear creeping up on me, and Eric didn’t catch any fish. But there was nobody around, no cars, no boats, no noise… just a singing loon, waves, and the breeze on the camera mic.