By David Gilbert – Contributor
Today, I write to you from the Mount 7 Recreation Area, Golden, British Columbia. Elevation: 1,937 meters above sea level. Summit: 2,933 meters.
I am thinking of home as I stand amongst the clouds looking down on the small town of Golden, the fork where the Kicking Horse River joins the Columbia River, the Rocky Mountains to the east, and the Selkirk Mountain Range to the west, and the Trans-Canada Highway running through it all.
Norfolk County does not have any mountain ranges, of course. Looking at a topographical map of the area will be a rather boring experience, but when we dig deeper, we find what makes Norfolk special.
Our loftiest snow-tipped peak sits an impressive 278 meters above sea level — a nondescript piece of land situated between Windham Roads 2 and 3, just to the west of Little Lake, a conservation area and site of a former campground. It is not marked by a plaque announcing your achievement of reaching the summit, but by what appears to be a cow barn.
Little Lake is an interesting spot to visit and go fishing or paddling. Sometimes called Lake Hunger depending on what search engine or map app you are using, Little Lake is what’s known as a kettle lake. Kettle lakes are formed when glaciers retreat and force down large chunks of ice into the ground, which later melt and leave a large depression. This makes Little Lake uncharacteristically deep compared to some of the ponds and smaller lakes scattered across the north shore of Lake Erie. The last ice age might have ended 11,700 years ago, but if we look around, we can still see the signs.
The RV park and campground are long gone — the seasonal trailers and campers having pulled their trailers out or packed their tents up for the season for the last time decades ago. Operating costs and maintenance once again outweighed the magic that so many people grew up with, but here’s to hoping the memories will never fade.
There’s a legend — or perhaps just a rumour, maybe even an old wives’ tale, or a figment of my younger imagination. It tells of a man clearing a track with a team of horses and a road grader, for the motorcycle ice races once held on the frozen lake. Partway through his work, the ice gave way beneath them, and the heavy steel grader pulled the horses — and the man — into the dark depths below, never to be seen again.
Perhaps my grandfather thought this would be a funny story to put in his young grandson’s head the first time he took him fishing. Whether that story ever really happened, I’ll never know. But every time I pass Little Lake, I still picture the scene — the ice, the horses, the echo of my grandfather’s voice. Norfolk may not have mountains, but it has its own peaks: moments, memories, and places that rise higher than any summit ever could.
