The canoe slips into the early morning, quiet water and mist everywhere throughout the lake. The only sound is the occasional gloop of the paddle. I come out of the marsh into the open lake, but the mist pervades as if the lake were under a spell that some intrepid knight must break. Above the crown land reserve an orange grey ball is rising, and I am suddenly reminded that the Chinese astronomers knew about sunspots long before the invention of the telescope, because they would view the sun through morning mist. So it all becomes an oriental painting, with the distant blue hills, and the paths up through the winding rock, and occasional cottagers tucked along the water's edge. I cannot imagine that the cottagers are exchanging pointers on calligraphy or the poetic teachings of Wang Wei, but one can dream.

More strokes of the canoe, and the mist begins to dissolve slowly. The outlines of the forest come into view. In the near distance, a loon, like something out of a parks commercial, breaks the silence, comes out with that Hank Williams lonesome cry, and submerges. I stop the canoe for one of my favourite games -- where will the loon surface, given that they seem to swim endlessly beneath, and can come up anywhere? The trick is that they usually try one closeup look, and the next time they bob up in the next county. It will check me out. Everything quiet, mist rising, sun beginning to break through, and somewhere under the water the loon swims. A minute passes. We are in a Chinese scroll forever. Endlessness.

The loon pops up 20 feet away, black head, perky. We eye each other for a few seconds, then begin to exchange pointers on calligraphy -- he with his head of black Chinese ink, and the exquisite silver trail in the water behind him, and me with my clunkier canoe and paddle -- we discuss Wang Wei and the merits of different brushes and inks, and then he is gone. I give the canoe a J stroke, and behind me spreads a pretty good swirl and forked tail of water writing -- not in the loon league, but pretty fair calligraphy. Of course it is all in the materials: painting with canoe, paddle, water, mist, mountains, lake, and tips on brushwork from the reclusive Taoist loon.

He pops up again at the far side of the lake, and I can see the shoreline and the docks. The mist is gone. We bow to each other, and go our separate ways. Morning has come to the lake. Canada. late August.