My dad, younger brother, a family friend, and I had rented two canoes for a week and set off on a weeklong canoe-and-portage journey through the marvelous Killarney Park lake system in central Ontario. It had been hard work, but beautiful, camping by the water, eating freeze-dried food by a campfire, and each having an evening tot of Ballentine’s Scotch whisky as we watched the stars emerge.

Gliding along a river or lake in a canoe is one of my favorite outdoor activities, and doing it in good company made it so much better, with laughter, joshing, swapping stories, and sharing jokes.

We crossed big lakes in warm sunlight, swampy areas with reeds and ducks, went skinny-dipping in the chilly waters, and hiked up and down hills between them, carrying our canoes and backpacks.

Once, as we were portaging, we came across a forceful social comment by a member of the local wildlife: a big pile of bear scat, right in the middle of the trail! We chuckled as we side-stepped it – and made sure that we secured our food supplies high up in the trees at night.

The second-to-last day was rainy and had turned cool. We all had wet weather gear but still finished the day damp and shivering. Our shoes were soaked, and we were down to our last freeze-dried meal, which was not very appetizing. Yet, I knew I needed the food as fuel, so stuffed it down, flavorful or not.

The fire we were able to start felt good, though, and we stood around it rather than sitting on a wet log or the ground, laughing and talking about what we had seen and done, knowing that we would be going back to so-called civilization the next day. Then we all turned in, changing into dry clothes before getting into our sleeping bags, grateful for the warmth, and slept soundly.

The next morning dawned cool, brightening, and clear, but most of all it was quiet. Not just partly quiet – there was no noise of any kind. It was a silence that was too loud; it overwhelmed us. The only time I have experienced anything like it was outdoors in a snowstorm, but even there I could hear the flakes falling, whispering by as they landed on my face and the snow around me.

This was a silence beyond even that.

We emerged from our tents and sleeping bags, then just stood, wondering, amazed, eyes wide, mouths open. The silence was a presence, palpable and close, yet as vast as the scene before us. It instilled in all of us a sense of holiness. We didn't say good morning, contenting ourselves with nodding. We stood, hardly daring to move lest we disturb the vast peace. We gazed off into the trees where the sun was hiding, yet to emerge from its fastness, or out over the lake, where a mist clung to the surface, or at each other with rueful smiles.

It seemed to us as if all of Nature was joined in worship. No birds flew. No fish jumped. No squirrels scampered. Everything meditated in awed silence.

Our breath billowed slowly from our mouths as we stood companionably, feeling as if we were privileged to experience something that happened much too infrequently in our lives. We felt no need to bustle or hurry. We just stood, steeped in a feeling of overwhelming reverence.

I don’t recall how long we stood there, unmoving but deeply moved. No one wanted to be the first to break the reverie…

Then we heard something, very faint and distant, but growing louder, an annoying buzzing sound.

A float plane zoomed overhead nearby – and the spell was broken. We smiled at each other, then set about making coffee and breakfast.

But each of us shared a look, for we knew we had just experienced something precious, something that we would remember all our lives.

Silence – sacred and clean.