E-mail A Friend Tell a friend about the information found on this page by sending them an e-mail.   Your Name: Your E-mail:   Type an e-mail address, then click add: Add a Personal Message: (Optional)

January/February 2007 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Feature: Polar police Feature: Pond hockey Feature: Mountain pine beetle The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations Explorer À la carte Mosaic

Standing on a limestone shelf, I plunge headfirst into Georgian Bay’s aquamarine depths. As I split open the water, I recall that this first instant of paralyzing cold is always the surprising part — the tropical blue-green of the water fools me every time. I’m not in Cuba or Fiji. I’m in Ontario on the Bruce Peninsula and I can see straight through the crystal-clear water down to the stone floor that stretches along the spine of southern Ontario, the Niagara Escarpment.

I’ve spent the afternoon strolling the Bruce Trail, Canada’s oldest and longest marked hiking trail, which runs the length of the Escarpment from Queenston to Tobermory. I’ve meandered up and down near the trail’s most famous spot, the water caves of The Grotto, and chased my three year-old son Quinn along the rocky shore. It’s usually a chore to get him to walk half a block in the city, but here, where the terrain is craggy and full of crevices, cliffs and caves, he tears around with glee.

Underwater: no shouts of children, no hikers’ chatter, no barking dogs. Only a watery silence. I am 10 years old again, holding my breath and swimming to see how far I can get, gliding through memories of one of my favourite places on Earth.

The Bruce Trail was established in the early 1960s, and as a child, I hiked a different part of it every weekend with my family. In my twenties I would go on an annual pilgrimage to the Bruce Peninsula, starting south of Cyprus Lake at High Dump — not the most romantically named bay from which to embark on a pilgrimage — and walking 20 kilometres north to camp and swim at a beach full of whitewashed rocks before continuing the next day to Tobermory, the trail’s end. Now, years later, my husband Rob and I take Quinn camping, cross-country skiing and hiking on the trail, hoping it will cultivate a love of the natural world in him, just as it did in me.

For the rest of this story, visit your local newsstand or go to our store to buy this issue.