The cabin sits where the trees lean low over the water, close enough that the first light of morning arrives filtered green and gold. There is no road in, only a portage, a canoe, and the patience to carry both.
By the second day you stop checking your phone. The lake keeps a different kind of time: loons at dawn, the long quiet of midday, and the slow burn of the maples turning red along the far shore.
Autumn in Algonquin is not loud. It does not announce itself. It simply arrives, one cold morning at a time, until the whole forest is the colour of a campfire and the water has gone black and still.
We paddled out on the last evening with no destination in mind. The season was turning, the cabin was waiting, and for once there was nowhere else we needed to be.
