Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
lowed by more traffic behind. There was no leeway, no room for them to swerve. With
horror, I imagined the bus careening into the ditch, rolling onto its side.
And then, somehow—it didn't happen.
The bus leaned forward, lumbering to its knee as it slowed. The pickup truck made a
languid weave halfway out of its lane. And the rest of the oncoming column seized up
and stopped. As the scene dwindled in my mirror, I saw the mechanized army of the Syn-
crude evening shift pause, like Godzilla offering Bambi a bouquet of daisies. And there
they waited, patiently, as the ducks reformed their little rank and waddled off the highway
back into the woods.
Crane Lake is a nice spot, enclosed by a belt of young forest, with reeds clustering along its
swampy shores and a nature trail running a mile circuit around the lake, through tall grass
and wildflowers. The only footnote to the idyll is that the entire place stinks of oil sand, the
same heady aroma that you would smell at a restaurant if the waiter set a bowl of bubbling
tar on your table. The trick to experiencing Crane Lake, then, is to appreciate this smell as
part of the environment, to remember that it's coming off of oil sand that God himself put
in the ground—even if it's humankind that decided to rip it open and expose it to the air. As
for the constant, popping reports of nearby bird-deterrent cannons, if they weren't enough
to bother the birds that had come to take the waters at Crane Lake, then why should they
bother me?
Forget that Crane Lake is called Crane Lake, though. It should be called Duck Lake—or
maybe something punchier, like Suncor Ducktasia Lake. It is nothing less than Suncor's
duck showcase. No nature area has ever been so completely tricked out with signs calling
attention to what a lovely little nature area it is. There are duck blinds, and a duck-identi-
fication chart from an organization called Ducks Unlimited, and a good number of actual
ducks present on the lake, possibly including several I had recently failed to murder.
So ducktastic was it that I began to wonder whether Suncor was trying to stick it to poor
old Syncrude, with all its duck problems, just up the road. Surely some Suncor PR rep had
hoped for a newspaper headline proclaiming, “Suncor, Neighbor to Duck-Destroyer Syn-
crude, Offers Clean Water, Reeds, at Waterfowl Haven.”
I set out on my hike, keeping the lake on my right, ambling through a spray of purple
wildflowers. There were dragonflies, again, and mosquitoes, too—snarling, clannish mos-
quitoes of the Albertan variety, with thick forearms and tribal tattoos. But I was ready. Don
had lent me a bug jacket—a nylon shirt with a small tent for your head and face—and I had
