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Hey there! Mind if I join you for a spell? Been a long day of paddling, and I need a rest. I'll just pull my canoe up onto the rock here, that should be okay. There we go.
Walter Ryan's my name. Is that the portage from Alice Lake into Russell Lake there across the way? Thought so. I had wanted to make that one last portage today, but I don't know. It's starting to get dark. I might just make camp a little further down and wait until tomorrow to press any farther.
Been in the park long? Three days? Hmmmm. Me? Oh, I've been in the park a while. Not sure how many days its been. But I know where I am, and I know where I'm going, and that'll get me through. Yes sir, nice extended vacation I'm on.
I love it up here in Canada. There's no water purer than this lake water, no air fresher than the wind that blows through these pines. It's been blowing pretty strong the past few nights, eh? Enough to blow my tent over, almost.
Coffee? Why, sure, I wouldn't mind some. Thank you much. Yeah, I do have a bad sunburn. I've been out here a while, like I said. Does it really look like my skin's starting to crack?
Not many people would choose to go alone through Quetico Provincial Park! I'm sure that's what you're thinking. The rigor of canoeing all day, of having to portage everything over land between two lakes, without anyone to help. And what if anything happens to me? That's what people always ask. Well, I'm too careful for that. I'm not going to make a mis-step on a portage a break my ankle, and I'm not going to drown. I'm not too worried about that. Muskeg Molly, though; that gave me pause to think. Wouldn't want to tangle with her.
Oh, you don't know the legends of Muskeg Molly? Well, looks like it's getting too late for me to move on much further anyhow. I'll just make camp down the way a little. I've got time then.
Muskeg Molly, she's one of those legends that just won't die. See, she was an Indian woman, big strong thing, but young. She had been born on a reservation not far from here. Ojibwa. She got married to an Englishman; he was quite an outdoorsman too. They decided they'd take their honeymoon out here - rigorous honeymoon, eh? It was about twenty years ago now. So they went into the park. A few weeks went by,'til it was well after they were supposed to be home again. Relatives started to get worried. They had the rangers start to search the park. The husband... the husband they found pretty soon. He was out of clear view but not far from a lake. Not far from their canoe either. His body was smashed on a rock, broken in several places. They decided he must have fallen from a large rock right there. Thing is, though, he must've fallen in an awfully strange way to do that much damage to his body. Cliff wasn't that high...
Ol' Molly they never found. A little distance from her husband's body they found their campsite, with everything just left there. They figured she went crazy, seeing her new husband die like that. Although some allow she was crazy to begin with, crazy with some of those Indian legends... Anyhow, they kept searching but didn't find her, so they figured they wouldn't. Either she was dead someplace they'd never find her, or she found another way out of the park, or she'd drag herself into someone's camp soon enough. No one really expected her to be alive though.
What they weren't figuring on, see, is that she was one of them Indian women! If anyone knew how to survive in the park, it was her. And soon enough, there were some strange sightings. Some say it's Molly's ghost, too attached to the park, but then, some fools say her husband died naturally. Me, I think she's still alive. Maybe she doesn't know her husband's dead and is still looking for him; maybe she's looking for a new one. Here's why I say that.
My old friend Bob, he thinks he almost fell into her trap one time about ten years ago. We were camped way south of here, and as it started to get dark, he went fishing. Pretty soon the wind blew up and he was further away than he could paddle back to camp easily. Over on the shore he saw another campsite, with a nice inviting fire, like yours. So he made his way over there. Found a nice neat campsite, but no one nearby. Coffe was sitting over by the fire, so he helped himself, figuring he would talk to the people whose camp it was when they came back. Shoot the breeze for a while. When he looked around, though, he realized something was wrong with the campsite. He couldn't put his finger on what at first; just had the feeling something weird was going on. Then he got spooked; felt like someone was watching him from the edge of the camp. He started to look all around, but he couldn't see anyone. Then he realized what was wrong; the camp's stuff was a real hodgepodge. A lot of it was the kind of stuff that hadn't been made in a while. It looked like someone had just kept whatever they found and was living with it. Like I said, Bob was spooked, and he got out of that camp awfully quick. He swears that it was a trap set by Muskeg Molly. Maybe it wasn, maybe it wasn't, but you had better be sure I saw people sitting around the fire before I approached this campsite tonight!
Other people have their own stories about Muskeg Molly. Being followed over a portage by something big but quiet in the bush, something they could never see... but that whistled like a person sometimes. Silhouettes cast on a tent wall by a fire, like a person going through their camp very quietly. Anyhow, a lot of the people who camp here regularly swear that she's real. And that's why it took some determination for me to camp here alone. Ol' Bob, we used to camp together, but he hasn't been back since that time. So if I want to camp up here, it's alone or it's not at all.
Oh, so you think you can laugh at the stories of Muskeg Molly, do you? Well, you've got another thing coming, because I've seen her, you know. And it's not something to laugh about.
Listen to the way that wind howls! Funny how it does that right about the time it gets completely dark, often times. What do you think causes it? Heh heh.
Oh, now you're getting impatient. I guess Muskeg Molly does have your attention, if you're so anxious to hear about my run-in with her. Well then...
It was shortly after I came into the park this time. I was a couple of days in... It was an evening like this, you know? Wind was howling like anything. It was loud--almost seemed like a voice, calling, calling all night. The sun had set several hours before, and I had to use the facilities. Time to dig a hole, if you know what I mean. I muttered to myself because I knew the mosquitoes would be biting fiercely at that time of night. Wasn't anything to do but to get out of my tent, though, so I got out of the tent, got my trowel, and got moving as quickly as I could. Didn't even use my flashlight - it was a well-moonlit night and my eyes had long since adjusted to the night. I got going into the woods - didn't intend to go more than fifty feet from my tent though. Underbrush was pretty thick and all. I probably went a little further, cause I wanted a nice clear area to dig my hole, right? Nothing worse than squatting in a bunch of bushes. Finally I found a clear spot. As soon as I put the trowel to the moss, though, I had a feeling I was being watched. At first I shook my head to clear it. If anything was watching me - man or beast - it would make some crackling in the undergrowth. But I couldn't shake the feeling, so I stood up and looked around. Sure enough, off to my one side, I saw a shadow of a figure hunched over. The way it was hunched, I thought it was a bear. I didn't want a bear attacking me, so I made some noise to scare it away. Only it didn't scare. Matter of fact, it stood up. Not quite straight, but straight enough for me to tell it was human. I was really scared by this point - a person lurking in the woods at night can be up to no good. I figured maybe I could call it out into the open, though - she knew I had seen her, so what good was stealth. I called out a greeting.
The only response I got was a gust of wind. It scared me, how much that gust seemed to be an answer. But how can the wind answer? The figure did come out a minute later though. Oh, how I wished it had stayed unseen, but there was a little too much moonlight for that. She came into the clearing - just seemed to drift there, like a leaf caught in a breeze. Didn't make a sound. Didn't move her feet. It was like she was lifted and set down a few feet away from me.
And then I got a look at her. She had some kind of crazy clothes, the kind you can make out here in the wilderness, but I don't know what they were. Birch bark, maybe. But the clothes weren't what got my attention. It was her face - all her skin, really, but the face was the worst. The body was limp, like there was little life left in it. I think maybe it did get blown around, or at least led around by her mind. All the life that left the body, though, it was in her eyes. Those eyes gleamed, sparkled with a green fire, and it wasn't the moonlight, either. It was some strange power, some strength inside her. Those eyes were most of what was left of her!
Oh, but that face! I still can't bear to think of it! The skin was all blackened, by almost twenty years of being out in the wilderness. Only it wasn't the sun or anything - it was the air! It was the air rushing around her face, hot air, freezing air, chapping that skin again and again until it was all but dead, cracking all over the place, still oozing in a few spots, chapping right off her bones. How could there have been anything left? Oh, the way it burns! The way it must have burned her!
That sight was all I needed. I was screaming like a banshee and scrambling through the forest. She had been kinda between me and my camp, but I just tried to get around her. And I did; she took a minute to take after me. But once she did take after me - there was nothing stopping her. Branches that hit me, roots that tripped me, she just went right around her, moving in that way she had of not moving. Because she kept right after me, but never did I see one of her limbs move. And those fiery green eyes, right behind me.
I stumbled right through my camp, grabbed the canoe near the shore, and dragged it, stumbling, down into the water. I found a paddle somehow and got going. Don't know why I did; she seemed to go at whatever speed she cared. Why run? But I did. I got that canoe moving over the water faster than I ever had in my life. When I got out to about the middle of the lake, I finally dared to look back. Not like I could see that much at that distance, but there sure weren't any gleaming eyes back on the shore.
But then I heard it. High overhead - this keening sound. The lake had been calm before, but all of a sudden the wind was whipping it up. I knew I had to get to shore right away if some kind of storm was blowing in, so I paddled with everything I had until I neared the opposite shore. But when I got there - she was there first. Waiting for me. Never saying a word. I paddled away, got to another part of the shore - and as I went I could see her flit through the trees, moving like nothing human ever moved. I just couldn't get away from her. And she could cross the lake, but didn't like being right on it... I guess she must've gone way over it.
Eventually I gave up, exhausted. I slumped down in the canoe and gave myself over to whatever Fate had in mind for me. I just didn't have the strength to care.
The waves and the wind blew me onto the shore pretty quick. And of course, there she was, waiting for me, that horror worse than any hell could hold. She wasn't human. Not at that point, though maybe she was once.
She never touched me, but in an instant I was lifted up. I hung in the air, barely brushing the ground, like she was doing. And we were off - right through the densest forest. We blew between all the branches - I swear we blew right through some of them. Then we went up, high into the air, and it was like I could see the whole world up there.
It was then that I realized the world held worse things than her. One of them was right above us. Maybe it had been a man once, too. Still had this real hazy outline like one - but it was huge. And those eyes blazed with the same impure fire that ignited the woman's. And the power that I could feel up there - you know the way the air feels right before an electrical storm? It was like that, only more. And I was held there, my body unresponsive, in that field, with terrible Molly and her even more horrible Master. I still don't know what he was. I think she was becoming like him, though. And I think I might find out what he was, someday.
Nothing was said there, nothing was done. I was just held, powerless, and shown an awesome power. And then I dropped.It seemed like I dropped forever, down and down and down. I passed out, and when I came to, I was back at my camp, lying on a rock, and the sun was shining. Now don't go and tell me it was a dream, because it wasn't!
I haven't seen Molly or that other thing since. But... oh God, help me, but I feel the same kind of thing inside me. I have the strangest dreams - I don't know what happens to me at night anymore. But my face! How it burns in the morning!
>No, that last part is nonsense. It's just that what happened scared me so much. And I don't sleep so well anymore. Don't look at me that way! Why do you stare at my eyes so?
Oh God, what's happened to me? What am I?
Excuse me. I'm sorry to have troubled you; I've just been unstrung lately. Ignore my story. I'd better get back to my canoe and find a campsite. I'm sure you don't want me here anymore. Odd, though, the way this wind blows - isn't it?
Copyright © 1997 Peter A. Worthy
"Wind on the Lakes" © 1997 by Peter F. Guenther
