Stretch your legs in Arnprior’s outback Hiking the Nopiming Game Preserve BY HARRY GALLON HARLES MACNAMARA had a way with animals and people. As he hiked the forest adjacent to Marshall’s Bay on the upper Ottawa River in the early1900s, he visualized a living, breathing sanctuary for future generations. Equipped with his camera, field glasses, sketchpad, notebook, hot coffee and lunch, Macnamara scoured the woods for the life forms that fed the greater whole. He documented the breath and bud of the forest, a living organism shaped through natural change and inevitable succession. Macnamara’s October 4, 1925 journal entry reads, “The leaves are just beginning to change colour. The green is fading to yellow, and a maple here and there is turning to scarlet. There is scarcely any air moving down here, but in the sky, fleets of small white clouds are sailing up from the west. It makes me feel small but gives me a sense of protection.” Macnamara shared his vision with local landowners, and with their support in his back pocket, lobbied the Ontario government to protect what gave him a sense of protection. On December 22, 1920, the lands were declared a game sanctuary. The Crown Game Preserve stretched to the north bounded by the Mississippi and Ottawa Rivers, to the east by the line between lots 22 and 23 on the 5th concession in Fitzroy Township, to the west by the Madawaska River and to the south by the Canadian National Railway. The lands remain a game sanctuary to this day, and it is one of only a handful in Ontario located on private land. Macnamara named the sanctuary “Nopiming,” an Ojibwa term for “in the woods.” The Macnamara Nature Trail, located on the eastern edge of the town of Arnprior, is the gateway to the Nopiming. The interpretive trail is
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4.5 kilometres in length and maintained by the Macnamara Field Naturalist Club (MFNC). Beyond the maintained trails are many kilometres of stone, wood, foliage, soil and animal life undisturbed by the human hand. With the exception of a cluster of homes and cottages between Pocket Bay to the east and Indian Point to the west, nature has been left to evolve on its own. “I’ve always felt at home in a natural setting, and this is the perfect place,” says Maryanne Koot of Arnprior, a member of the MFNC who has hiked the Nopiming for 15 years. “Being here gives me peace of mind, but it is never dull in the forest. I love seeing what stage of growth plants are in, what’s blooming and what’s in bud.” I tighten up my well-worn hiking boots and stretch out my limbs. It is a beautiful mid-May morning. The sun is bright, but the air is cold. I hoist my backpack, weighed down by my camera, notepad and lunch. Macnamara would be proud. I feel the solid rock beneath my boots. The flora and fauna of the Nopiming share a rich existence on a scant layer of soil. The sanctuary is anchored by the Canadian Shield, where billions of years ago, heat and pressure transformed the existing rocks into the metamorphic rocks found here today. Exposed escarpments of Precambrian marble mark the trail. High above the forest floor waves the tree canopy, fighting for species domination and succession. White ash, butternut hickory, large-tooth aspen, eastern hemlock, white pine, white birch, mountain maple, striped maple and sugar maple all take breath – and space – where they can. OTTAWAOUTDOORS SUMMER/FALL 2005
PHOTO BY HARRY GALLON
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