Beginning of an essay I mean to finish some day

That summer I carried Sylvia Plath around with me. There are pictures and pictures of her and Ted Hughes camping, trying to get pregnant, getting pregnant, miscarrying, sometimes in Canada. In Algonquin Park. I've never been there.

 

Being from Alberta, I never really understood the Group of Seven, Margaret Atwood's woods, drowning in lakes, lakes at all, really. My landscape was a lot different. The trees were similar, perhaps, but rolling, not rocky, and with precious few bodies of water.

 

Wendy and Jonathan invited us to Wendy's family cottage that summer, for the Labour Day weekend. Everything was new to me. Adam was still new to me. So Wendy and Jonathan and Dominic and Suzanne, who would also be there for the weekend, were new to me. And so was the lake. Sitting on the dock looking at the cottage and the trees and water and rocks, I recognized what Ontario had been on about all these years. It was not superior to the landscape of my head, of my memory, but I recognized the landscape of theirs.