What was my inspiration for the Bon Echo book series?

As I reflected on the inspiration for my book, Bon Echo and The Competition, I realized just how much the world around us influences us all. No one writes a book in a vacuum, so I, like everyone else, used my life experience in its creation. And so you might ask, what was the background story for my "Bon Echo" idea when I wrote this book? Here is my account.

I always had a great love for nature that I can trace back to approximately when it started, but not exactly where it took place. Few people remember much from the first five years of their life. I am much the same, except for one vivid memory from four or five years of age. To this day, I can see this scene play in my mind as if it were yesterday: the vision was that profound.

I remember looking at a beautiful, sunset-lit, towering rock face and, at its base, its beautiful reflection of golden hues shimmering upon the surface of a lake below. The cliffs seemed to generate their golden glow from within. From where I was, I detected a distinct quality and stillness in the atmosphere that converged into what some might call a childhood mystical experience.

I often meditated on this vision to calm myself throughout my life, which endured throughout my lifetime. As beautiful as this was, it bothered me that I remembered the image so well but could not recall where. I knew this experience happened while I was very young, so I wondered if the vision might just have been a very vivid childhood dream.

Later in life, I decided to explore if those memories were real, research the places where I lived as a child, and see where this vision might have originated. At the time, I lived in two small towns in Ontario, Mactier, and Kaladar. In the summer of 2017, my husband and I decided on a road trip to see if we could find this elusive magical place from my childhood. That fall, we embarked on a "vision quest" to my old childhood haunts to see if we could find any place that even remotely matched that beautiful vision in my mind's eye.

Our first stop was Mactier, a small railroad town in the heart of Muskoka country, where we lived before we moved to Kaladar. My father worked as a conductor for the CPR and, along with my mother, built their first home on Fern Avenue, located just off Muskoka Road, in Mactier. I found my old family home on Fern Avenue, now boarded up, waiting for someone to renovate or even tear it down and build new. It was sad to see all their hard work turned into such disrepair. I walked around the old house, searching for any flicker of old memories. I could remember sitting on a beach towel on the grass in the backyard with my cousin, but this was all that I could remember from that time.

From the house, we moved on to Stewart Lake beach, which was the truest heart of the community. I have happy memories of playing in the water at Stewart Lake and playing with a beach ball on its sandy beach with my friends and cousins. Mactier is unique because Stewart Lake is almost at the town's center, so it was always a popular place for everyone to socialize and enjoy nature. This small town was the place I remembered the most, and I looked forward to revisiting it once more.

I walked from the parking lot to the park's well-kept grass portion and then along its small sandy beach. There it was, just as I had remembered. I could see the small rocky outcropping jutting out into the lake. I couldn't resist and quickly walked over to sit on its welcoming, warm, and radiant flat rock surface. I remember doing this little ritual many times as a toddler because it was here where I would warm up in the sun after wading in the lake's cool waters.

Happy childhood memories flooded my mind as I sat there while taking in all the views from this familiar vantage point. This experience was so worth the trip, but then I remembered the vision I had traveled so far to find. While I sat there with my old friend "the rock" and scanned the rolling hills surrounding the lake, I couldn't see any massive cliffs from my childhood vision. I knew this wasn't where my childhood vision took place, but it was still so beautiful that I decided to wait for the sun to set before moving on to the next town of my childhood.

Our next stop was Kaladar, located at the junction of Ontario Highways 7 and 41, where I spent the next few years of my childhood. At the time, my parents owned Kaladar Hotel, which was old even when they purchased it back then. When I visited it on this trip, I wasn't shocked that the town was preparing to demolish its old landmark. Knowing that soon my old Kaladar Hotel would no longer exist, I took many pictures. Perhaps these pictures of the old hotel in such a sad state were heart-wrenching, but I was grateful to be able to say goodbye to a kind old friend from my early childhood.

As it was getting dark outside, we realized the need to hurry and find a room for the night. I could relax and process the memories at the hotel and remember more parts of my life from so many years ago. I was quite disappointed because my beautiful cliffs were nowhere in sight. Since it was rainy the next day, it wasn't possible to explore something further, where its discovery was related to and dependent on sunshine. Reluctantly, we decided to make our way back home.

It was a long drive home, but this was good because it gave us a chance to talk about our trip. My husband asked me to tell him more about my parent's old hotel history. I recalled that most patrons were vacationers who would stay overnight at our hotel on their way to Bon Echo Provincial Park. These were the right magical words I needed to hear because, right there and then, this question triggered a specific memory of when I used to live in Kaladar.

Quite simply, like all the vacationers, I remembered my family traveling by car to visit Bon Echo. I could recall sitting in the back seat of our family car, chatting away with my older sister. I could see us stopping and feeding some deer along the way and then finally stopping at the gates to the provincial park entrance. At this moment, it dawned on me this might very well be the place of my childhood vision. I couldn't wait to get home and start researching that possibility.

Most people have a romantic notion of how a vision quest takes place in the wilderness, so, ironically, I hoped to find the location of my vision on a laptop in the comfort of my own home. Go figure, right? I recall that it didn't matter so much because now I had a strong feeling about where my vision originated. I opened my laptop and began to finish my vision quest online. As you may have guessed, I found that place where I first witnessed my beautiful childhood vision. I may even have narrowed it down to the exact spot where I stood as a child, trying to take in this fantastic display of Mother Nature. I found several pictures taken from a rocky, sandy beach across from the massive cliffs of Mazinaw Rock at Bon Echo Provincial Park: exactly as from my childhood memory.

These pictures confirmed the place where I had my experience, but they could never have captured that magical moment from my childhood vision. Who knows, maybe I did receive a special hug from Mother Nature back then. I'm so glad I connected with her on that fateful day. I'm so happy that our relationship has lasted all these years and that I'm writing about Mother Nature still, to this very day.

I hope you visit Bon Echo Provincial Park someday and, hopefully, develop a special relationship with Mother Nature. Its located in Southeastern Ontario, north of Kaladar in the Addington Highlands, and is about 6 km north of Cloyne. Geographically, it extends 1.5 kilometers along Mazinaw Lake and is part of a 3 km. vertical pink granite cliff face. Mazinaw Rock has this incredible history that stretches far back in time. The escarpment area features over 260 pictographs and is the most extensive single collection in the Canadian Shield, including the Ojibwe trickster and culture hero, Nanabozho, the unofficial mascot of Bon Echo Park.

If you are interested in researching this amazing place, you may want to start with the rock paintings found on Mazinaw rock. They differ from petroglyphs, which are rock carvings. These Mazinaw pictographs have been designated as a National Historic Site of Canada since 1982, which is a great place to start your exploration of Bon Echo Provincial Park.

After visiting Mactier in the Muskoka's and Kaladar in the Addington Highlands and then discovering my beloved sunlit cliffs of Bon Echo Park, I thank you so much for reading and traveling along with me as I recounted this adventure. You also know the strange but true inspiration for my Bon Echo Book series. Hopefully, as you read my new book, this background may provide a more profound meaning as you follow Maven and her adventures at Bon Echo Bay, a fictionalized recreation of this region in my book. Until then, as always, wishing you happy trails and fun adventures :D!!!