Lost Pigeons

After a few days of cold weather and long stretches of paddling, we welcomed the sight of our friends cottage. Mike and Sue, the owners of Adventure Guide, invited us to spend the night. Sue made homemade chocolate chip cookies and their children, Jonathan and Ben, entertained us with many stories of their own. It was a little taste of luxury - a nice bed, a warm shower and omelettes for breakfast.
That evening we paddled into Cape Crocker Indian Tent and Trailer Park. Cape Crocker, in the late 1800's, was infamous for having hordes of passenger pigeons migrate through the area. Although they could reproduce quickly, the fate of this bird was short lived. By the early 1900's, widespread hunting lead to their disappearance. That night, tucked into my sleeping bag, I thought about how passenger pigeons were taken for granted - a bird so plentiful it was believed that they would never become extinct. My mind also drifted to thoughts of how we, as North Americans, often take freshwater for granted. As I pondered, in the darkness of the night, I hoped that somehow we have learned from the story of the passenger pigeon and that the future of this precious freshwater resource, the Great Lakes, will not fall into the same fate.