Spruce Woods Provincial Park
If you wanted one less reason to visit Manitoba then make it Spruce Woods Provincial Park.
We arrive on a suffocating day in August and can’t find the Main Office.
When we do, it seems friendly Manitobans are, more accurately, indifferent Manitobans.
Lungs strain between low hanging dust from gravel trucks rocketing down the nearby highway and air like steam.
We seek refuge in the shade of the campground beneath twisted, stumpy trees where rectangular sand plots have been carved out of knotted, dark, thorny brush.
We’re told the provincial bird is the mosquito which seems to check out.
Crows laugh at us like malevolent, old drunk men.
We think that a swim in Kiche Manitou Lake will offer respite.
It offers stagnant, muddy water and more mosquitos.
We hope the widow makers hanging in every dying oak tree don’t impale us during our walk out of the park.
The park is adjacent to The Spirit Sands, where rogue sand dunes rise 30 metres into relentless prairie sky.
By “adjacent,” Manitoba Parks means “about a 2 K walk along a busy highway, over a dusty bridge crossing a wide, brown stretch of the Assiniboine River.”
First Nations in this area believed the sands were sacred.
It was a place of peace and diplomacy for feuding Nations to talk.
A sign barks at us to stay on the trails because there are live artillery shells from mid-twentieth century military drills lying undetonated throughout the area.
They should have fired them into the campground.
We never do find the gift shop but a T-shirt can never fully express despair anyway.