Nature Epiphany

I remember that one morning about 37 years ago, like it was yesterday. I was at University and six of us had gone canoe camping in Algonquin Provincial Park in eastern Ontario. We had portaged to that pristine lake and canoed on to a small island on the lake. I got up alone at dawn. It was cool and crisp. The air had this special smell of damp nature. I walked across to the other side of the island and sat on a rock by the lake. There was this mist rising above the mirror like lake. Then, I saw a sort of triangular wave coming across the lake. It was a beaver swimming along in the mist. It ducked its head down and slapped the water hard with its tail. I hadn't really realized it then, but I just had had an epiphany sitting there by the lake alone with nature. I believe that I became a Pantheist right then and there although I only heard that term and recognized that fact 32 years forth. I have had many beautiful and special nature moments since but nothing like that one morning marked in my soul forever.

I was so naive and one-dimensional back then, at 21. All I was interested about was hockey, football, girls and my science/ engineering studies. I was raised a Catholic, went to Catholic school and all I knew is that I rejected all that had been crammed into my head. I didn't even know what an atheist or agnostic were, never mind a Pantheist. It makes me smile how innocent I was back then. I had no sense of searching for spirituality or other interests. As a child I had been raised in the middle of nature at the edge of a small village and my cousins and I used to go into the woods to play all the time. I had forgotten that closeness with nature moving to the big city for my studies. After the canoe trip above, something fundamental changed in me. I wanted to know more about the world and my place in it.