Above: Not scenes from a Scandinavian art film.

We spend today driving west across the open lands of rural southern Ontario, attempting to fill our lungs with country air and our eyes with country sun. (We also hit some antique stores en route, to fill our lungs with dust and cat hair and varnish fumes and our eyes with allergic tears and ghoulish basement-bulb light.)

Our destination is somewhere, anywhere, on Lake Huron. We just want to lay eyes on it. In the afternoon we stop in the lakefront town of Grand Bend. The beach district there is still in its off season until May, so the shops are closed and the area is deserted except for a handful of beach-walkers. The beach is quiet and peaceful and a little bit surreal and ends-of-the-Earth. The sky has turned overcast but the weather is still warm. A soft lake breeze comes up from time to time. The lake water is green-grey and waveless. There are no bugs. The dunes are under construction.