I got out of bed very late again today. I didn't have far to go so I was very pokey around camp and making breakfast-dehydrated barbeque baked beans. The beans are very good but needed to rehydrate longer as there are some crunchys. I want to camp across the lake at Rebecca Falls on the Canada side of the lake. If I want to do an overnight in Canada it has to be tonight because it's the last day that my Canada permit is good for. By the time I get started the thermal winds have picked up. There is a big island on the Canada side in the way of my destination. If I go the long way I can scout campsites along the way so that is what I attempt to do. About a quarter mile from turning the corner of the big island I am ducked in next to a small island assessing the wind situation. I wait for a lull but it doesn't look to die down. It is wide open water from here and the waves are a bit too scary for me so I take the more sheltered way around the island and let the wind push me along. When I finally do get around the island I don't find the portage to the bottom of the falls and find myself at the top. I'm lucky that I don't because Rebecca Falls is a split falls meaning there is an island right in the middle of it and there is an open campsite here with excellent viewing of the falls. The pictures just don't do justice to the sheer power of it. For lunch I have pancakes (I know...) with a chunky apple sauce on top along with fried spam. For dinner it's more baked beans only this time I let them rehydrate for about 6 hours-no crunchys. Other than that I wasted the day away as the wind has really picked up now and I am glad not to be out there in my solo canoe. A couple fishermen stopped by the island to clean their fish above the falls. I noticed earlier a fish cleaning rock that had previously been used. After cleaning their fish they just let the remains go over the falls. I don't know if the forest service would like that but then again we are in Canada so maybe it's acceptable here.

A word: I was taught that the word "senator" came from the Roman Empire but I have come to learn that they got it from the Greeks or more specifically the Spartans. In ancient Sparta it was required that a man be about sixty years old to become a senator. It seems that in those days if you managed to live past your twenties you had a good chance to live to be a very old man. I think that the Spartans had it right. Any kind of brawn that a young man has is replaced by the wisdom of a lifetime of lessons. When I was young I sought excitement, in my middle years I worked for success (though with little to show for it) and now in the twilight of my life it is only honor that has meaning. There are many who think themselves enlightened and to a certain degree they are but of those who see only a few I would consider really can and of those only the truly cursed really know what it is they are looking at. I feel a bit like I am spreading the curse of enlightenment to you, Mariel, in these letters. I hope you don't see it that way.