Imagine, if you will...

Temagami? Algonquin? Haliburton? Muskoka? I wish. Try Richmond Hill - on the edge of Toronto. I had to settle for the lakeside trail around Bond Lake today for my fall flavours. If there is a better one-to-two-hour walk in southern York Region that makes you feel like you're 200 kms. north of here, then let me know. The trail I'm talking about is not the official Town of Richmond Hill walking trail which skirts around the southern side of Bond Lake, in north Richmond Hill. I'm talking about the unofficial, but well-trodden trail that circles the entire lake at the water's edge. It's easy enough to find, on the east side of Yonge Street (on the big curve), just south of the community of Oak Ridges. My photos above do not do justice to this historic, moraine kettle lake. Extremely tall and mature Oak, Maple, Spruce and Ash soar up the steep slopes that encircle Bond Lake. It's a popular spot, but it is so beguiling in its northern Ontario disguise, that you feel like you're on the infamous 3-mile portage between Lake Opeongo and Dickson Lake in Algonquin Park. On my walk, I saw one of our smallest birds, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, and one of our largest birds, an Osprey. There was a fellow fishing who told me there were metre-long Pike in the lake. At another spot, a middle-aged couple were sitting in small camp chairs, eating sandwiches and passing a litre of red wine, back and forth between themselves. On top of everything else, the weather was perfect...the kind of day to which Rip Van Winkle succumbed, methought.

Please comment if you wish.

BtheB