My favourite waterfall is nestled in the northern Ontario woods on the most beautiful stretch of road in Canada - between Espanola and Manitoulin Island. The road winds between peach beige rock cuts and a dozen pristine lakes. The area is largely uninhabited and at special times like early spring - you can be alone for hours watching deer heading back to their migratory grazing lands or chasing butterflies across the fields.

My ancestors have travelled this road for more than a hundred years. It was the courting ground for my father and my mother in the 1950's. And when there was only a dirt path, my grandfather and grandmother walked this road before they were married in 1905.

My favourite waterfall is located halfway between Espanola and Little Current - the halfway stopping off point for pilgrims making the journey from the Trans-Canada Highway, the main artery connection with civilization - and the wild unspoken beauty of Manitoulin - the island of the Great Manitou. The waterfall is a place to contemplate, to journey, to meditate, to make the transition from one world to the next - from the physical material world to the ethereal spiritual kingdom of the shaman of Manitoulin.

Manitoulin has never quite been civilized. It refuses to be conquered, in a misty, foggy, not quite in focus, sleepiness that never quite wakes up to the modern world. I make this journey often, and I always stop to make the connection at the waterfall - as if the waterfall is a spiritual toll I must pay to gain permission to leave one world and enter the next.

The waterfall is a gateway to the underworld - and provides a glimpse of the beauty and mystery of the grand Manitoulin. I call the waterfall Widgawa Falls, although it has never had any formal name - because it is located across from the entrance to Camp Widgawa. Widgawa has a lovely up and down sound - curvaceous and jagged as the road.

The waterfall itself is not spectacular. It is the size or any ordinary falls - mountains on either side of it - surrounded by the usual jack pine, birch and popular. It is the essence of the falls that make it stand out from the rest - the fog that seems always to shroud it as if they are monks humming homage to some hidden deity just out of reach. It is never quite in focus - never quite clearly visible as if might disappear at any moment if we try to hard to see it - if we press too close to try to touch it and understand its secrets.

I swear the falls talk to me and what they say is – “come closer - come deeper - try harder” - to see with heavenly eyes the eternal beauty that cannot be seen by earthly eyes but only by the soul meditating on the meaning of life.

It is a prayerful walk down to the falls. I have painted it, sketched it, taken its photograph for almost thirty years - but these visual replicas never quite conquer its essence - something is lost in the translation - like trying to recount an experience with God.

I can never drive down that road without paying my respects to Widgawa Falls. It is a gaping entrance to a world I love to enter and hate to leave. I always recognize that something is happening inside of me as I pass it. I am entering or departing from something sacred - something I cannot take with me to the outside world.

It is said that the aura of death can be erased by swimming in a waterfall. I believe this may be true of Widgawa Falls. It does give life in a most restorative manner. It creates a song in my heart that I cannot quite sing but I will always hear when I am on that road.