4 August 1986: 333.3 km, bombing along down the Dwyer Hill Road, much more built up than it was when we first used it for this purpose, but none the less magical. As always, we found the road by a different way, this time as Third Line Road, directly off Hwy 17. There are an incredible number of houses along here, but as they are presumably inhabited by Civil Servants, they are shut up by an enchantment at 19:30, so there is no traffic on the road — it is like a private road, as if nobody ever uses it except when we want to come down from Northern Ontario, and in one long smooth anti-Connecticut sweep it takes us from the outskirts of Renfrew and deposits us in Burritts Rapids, like a meteor or satellite going across the sky. You go either slowly or fast — 60 or 100 km/hr.

5 August-9 August 1986. At home we found the grass unmowed, and the house slightly sooty and very cobwebby. We gradually moved in… There were no juvenile Rana pipiens (Leopard Frogs) in the grass, or at least few, but by [9 august] they had arrived. We saw several Thamnophis sirtalis (Garter Snakes) in the grass. The water in Elsa’s pond was higher than it has ever been before, and the creek was spring-time high at the bridge in the village.

29 October 1989: The last run to home. Left at 08:30; light overcast; calm: Hagar, rezeroed here at Hwy 535. 87.0 miles: turn in the road in Mattawa. No more notes. We cruised on down Hwy 17 and the Magic Road (Dwyer Hill Rd), revelling in Fraxinus (Ash), Thuja occidentalis (Cedar), and Typha x glauca (hybrid Cattail). Aleta stopped to buy some Pumpkins from a roadside vendor. We reached Bishops Mills in the afternoon, and found our houses ransacked but standing.

Aleta told me about your site. Are you ever having a lot of fun, looks like.

I’ve never been too close to chickens, even when I was living on a farm, but I’m supposing that’s because I’ve never spent time with them as you obviously have. Singing to them! I’ll have to try that sometime.

Cindy