Slept in a little bit. For some reason, upon waking this morning, I was convinced I was at a university buddy's place on Golden Lake. Sure, the lake outside my tent was indeed golden in the morning light, but I was nowhere near Calabogie. Just goes to show I needed that extra bit of sleep.
Got everything packed up adn tucked away behind the canoe before heading up and over the ridge to clear some hazard trees on the hike-in site on Boudary. Took our sweet time over there chatting with some hikers and were back by noon on David. Hummed and hawed for a while about whether to move sites or not before finally deciding to do an enforcement tour of David.
Eventually got my hammock set up and treated myself to a royal feast of what I have leftover as far as food goes. Ate till I was stuffed and then took an hour to revisit and ultimately finish Hesse's Steppenwolf. What a stunning read!
While it philosophizes a lot it still retains the feel of a novel, with believable characters that are more than easy to empathize with and a plot that proves to be quite a page turner. Nice synchronicity between the conclusion of the book lining up with the conclusion of this trip and pretty much the conclusion of the summer.
I've been in a fairly reflective mood on this trip, thinking about my summer's idyllic wanderings through the wilderness, wondering how much it's changed me (other than the obvious physical changes). So, just in time, comes along 100 pages of a book that spells it out perfectly and walks me through a literal regenesis. When I closed the back cover on the last page with Harry Haller heading towards his new life, I realized I was ready to move along too.
Ready for the summer to be over, aching to get back to a certain state of domestic bliss. Ready to begin what may very well end up becoming a career in education.
One knock against the conclusion of Steppenwolf though: why is Hermine suddenly a passive character in what is most definetely the most important part of Harry's transformation? Literally becoming an insignificant chesspiece to be put in Pablo's pocket. Is this some kind of veiled misogyny on Hesse's part? If that is the case it kind of sours the motives behind the author's attention to Hermine's "lure of the hermaphrodite". Is she thus simply because a wholly female character cannot play such an actively significant role in events without being, in some way, masculine?
Spent the rest of the evening swimming, setting my tent back up, trimming my mustache, playing harmonica, spying the opposite shore through binoculars and messing around with birch bark. Had some fairly decent success making a box like container that was even able to hold water thanks to some handy cedar sap. Spruce roots are soaking overnight.
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