The nobility of just being

Good Friday was appropriately dark in the Haliburton Highlands. All night and all day, a northeast wind blew, straight off our bay and into the face of the cottage. By morning, it had already torn branches out of our Eastern hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) and a large limb of yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis) beside the neighbour's deck.

But Easter Sunday dawned clear and bright. After breakfast, my two daughters and I hiked across the dirt road and through the forest behind, dense with sugar maple (Acer saccharum) saplings and the slender trunks of striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum). I love crossing the gurgling stream that by July will be barricaded with lush raspberry canes and become the impassible domain of mosquitoes.

A place to be

In April we can visit my favourite outdoor sanctuary, the foot of a massive granite outcrop. Ancient hemlocks arch like cherubic statues, casting perpetual shade for the circles of interrupted club-moss (Lycopodium annotinum), common polypody (Polypodium virginianum), and wood-fern (Dryopteris sp.) The cliff faces north, but the dark stone is shrouded bright with mosses and glaucous lichens. This place is verdant.

In a remote spot of sunlight that penetrated the canopy, we glimpsed a ruffed grouse(Bonasa umbellus) alight on a mouldering stump. He danced nervously onward, as though leading us on our path to scale the slope. Once or twice he flickered through another bath of light, like a feathered dryad leading us to our fate. The top edge must reach at least 25 metres above the thick leaf mould below. It overlooks the canopy of giants.

Being happy

"I wonder why I'm scared of heights when I'm not really in danger," said Marian, my elder daughter, as she mounted a dizzy overhang. "But here, when it's actually dangerous, I'm not afraid."

"Because you're on an adventure; you're having fun," I said. "It's harder to be scared when you're happy."

We took a handful of moss tufts to garnish our garden in a small clearing beside the cottage.

The art of being

Later that afternoon I lay on the dock, feeling the sun through my black jeans, warm on the backs of my legs and buttocks. My face extended beyond the dock's edge, practically touching the high water, recently free of ice. The loons(Glavia immer) had wasted no time in arriving and beckoning to one another from various corners of the lake. I rinsed my hands of dirt left from garden work.

Brenna had gone inside to play. Marian, who is eight, walked onto the

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