When I was young at the Ainkee Channel

When I was young at the channel, I would plunge and run with my cousins and the neighbours. I remember playing manhunt and racing to the berm, so they wouldn’t catch me. I remember sitting at the campfire with my family making s’mores, fishing and watching the sunset, or the cranes and the herons flying over the channel. At night, you could smell all the neighbours barbecuing and having a campfire.

When I was young at the channel, I could always hear the people kayaking because the water would ripple and the kids would screech as they were pushed off into the water, paddleboarding, and boating in the morning. When I was treading water in the channel, I could feel the seaweed and algae at the bottom. I would jump in the water, I could taste the saltiness of the seaweed on my lips. I was consistently excited to wake up early and go boating and paddleboarding. It always made me happy to go to the berm across the channel with my cousins. One time, when we went out on one of our boats, I remember we ran out of gas and had to paddle to the shore and walk back to the cottage.

When I was young at the channel, I was always scared that a snapping turtle would bite me. My uncle always told us stories at the cottage. He once told me that he saw people trying to get a snapping turtle off the road, and when he went over to help them, the snapping turtle almost bit off his finger. My grandparents used to surprise us there, it made me excited to see them because I only could stay with them a few times in the year. I will never forget the times, my family and I would walk to the beach with all our stuff, and we dropped something along the way, and we had to scamper back to get it.

When I was young at the channel, once, I remember looking for snakes and saw a bullfrog for the first time. I tried to catch it, but it slipped out of my hands, and my cousins laughed. In the morning, I would always go outside with bread and feed the fish, they always swarmed the dock when someone came up.

I remember when I saw beavers swimming in the channel, as well as water snakes. I remember catching frogs in the slip with a net and went fishing off the dock. Not only that, but I remember catching frogs and snakes with my cousins on the berm and miss playing on the treehouse with them as well. Once, when I went to the beach with my family, we were attacked by horse flies since it was about to rain, and we had to sprint home.