There is a place in the far north, in the hard rock and lake country of northern Ontario, just before the Ottawa River slows to form Lake Temiskaming. A place where English and French blend together. Where white pines and old cedars still stand. Where time doesn’t stop exactly, but doesn’t move in a straight line either. It folds back on itself, compacting memory and moment until the difference barely matters. The past isn’t gone. It just lingers on top of the present.
At the bottom of a rutted road, above a small lake called McNab, sits Camp Bang Dang. To call it a cabin is generous. It’s four walls and a tin roof, a small kitchen, a back annex with some beds, and a main room stacked with bunks. The floors are warped. The ceiling is low. The mice are frequent. It was once a rest stop for power line workers, but my friend Sam’s great-grandfather moved it here in the 60s and claimed it for something else: a family hunt camp. His grandfather Leo came here. His dad Denis. Now Sam. And each brought their friends. You can see the pictures up on the wall in the camp, the celebration of good times and dumb decisions and the bond shared with each other across 60 years of Camp Bang Dang. The ritual repeats. The responsibility of the rite passes down.
That’s how Tanner, Thomas, Nick, and I ended up there this year with Sam. Some of us were returning. Others were newer to the tradition. We weren’t hunting. Fishing was our game. But the target didn’t matter. The point was to be right there, in that moment. In 2025. Or in 2011. Or in 1983. Time, like everything else out there, didn’t need to behave.
A young guy named Kyle joined us a little later. He didn’t travel with our group, he lives in Canada about an hour or so south, but his roots at the camp ran deep. His grandfather had been coming here for years too, best friends with Sam’s grandfather. Kyle showed up carrying that legacy and a quiet kind of grief. He’d just lost his grandfather, but he didn’t ask for attention. He brought beer, a good attitude, and a whole catalog of wild Canadian sayings that instantly became part of our lexicon. Every sentence ended with "oh, fuck" like it was punctuation. We repeated his expressions for the rest of the trip.
On the second morning, Sam and I were standing outside camp while the others were off fishing or napping or recovering from the night before. It was quiet and still, the kind of quiet that makes you feel like you’ve stepped out of time. We weren’t talking about anything in particular. At some point in the conversation, Sam described this kind of trip, this kind of group, this kind of place, as "sacred time." He didn’t deliver it like a grand insight, just said it in passing, like it was obvious. But the phrase landed and stuck. I knew exactly what he meant. This place, this ritual, these people added up to something you couldn’t replicate anywhere else. Something that asked for nothing but presence, and in return, gave back a kind of grace.
It’s not what you’d typically call sacred. Most of our days were spent drinking beer, talking shit, drifting across the lake in tin boats. Most nights ended with whiskey, bad jokes, and decisions no one regretted. At one point we found an old golf club and started launching crushed beer cans across the clearing, cheering or heckling depending on the arc. We ate better than we had any right to: steaks and wings and caught fish and percolated coffee. Everyone found ways to chip in, keep the camp running, keep us all in the moment. We owed this little wooden hut that much, at least.
And yet there was something reverent about it. An unspoken sense that we were participating in something bigger than ourselves. The camp doesn’t ask much. You just have to show up. You have to be there. You have to want to be there instead of any place else.
We spent a lot of time out on the inky black water of McNab. Sam, Thomas, Nick, and I were in one boat, while Tanner paired up with Kyle after he arrived. They were the better fishermen anyway, they spoke the same mysterious language. The weather was perfect, breezy and cloudy, not yet hot enough for the bugs. We zipped the tin boats across the water, let the wind carry us back over and over. We got a few bites. I almost landed one, but it wriggled off at the last second. Kyle and Tanner, much better fishermen than the rest of us, were the ones who caught the lake trout.
That night we stayed up late (again): beers, cards, whiskey pours, more jokes. Kyle revved his modified truck because he just had to “make it bark for the boys, oh fuck”. There was no one for miles and we took full advantage. Blasting music, shouting into the night, drinking games and the eventual morning headaches.
The next day, after Kyle had headed home, we wandered out to a few smaller lakes. Still no luck, but the fishing was beside the point. Tanner gave me a refresher on fly casting. He’s a patient teacher, and you could see the joy in his face when my form started to improve.
There’s no cell service out there. No schedules. No updates. No performance. Just presence. Real, full, unrushed presence. The kind where you look around the campfire and realize you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, with the right people, doing the right thing. It’s not necessarily polite up here, but it is kind.
And the laughs. My god the laughs. They came fast and often, building on each other until our sides hurt and our faces ached. No one remembered all the specific jokes the next morning, only the sound of laughter and the feeling it left behind.
One night early on I stayed up way too late with Sam and his uncle Terry, who had come in to the camp to spend the night. Too much whiskey, too much food, too many stories. I knew I should’ve gone to bed. I didn’t. I poured another. I stayed up. I sat there in the hum of the generator light listening to Terry spin yarns and thought: if heaven exists, maybe it’s this moment stretched out forever.
The old photos on the wall show Sam’s grandpa and his buddies sitting in that same spot, at that same table, in that same room. Maybe with a fresh coat of paint and a new back annex, but otherwise unchanged. They were doing the same dumb shit we were: telling jokes, playing cards, drinking too much whiskey, and not regretting a minute of it. We’re part of that legacy now, and they’re part of ours. Time collapses out there. The past and future blur. The old guys told stories of when they were our age, and we can already see ourselves doing the same down the line. No one is really gone if time doesn’t pass in quite the same way.
Sometimes, late at night, with the fire low, I could almost see those old guys through the smoke. Walking the path to the lake. Stoking the logs. Sipping the same whiskey. If they could see us, I think they’d nod and hand us a glass. Maybe they already did, just by keeping the place standing all these years. Maybe it’s our turn now. I’d like to think we did our best to honor the place. Maybe our picture will hang up on the wall with theirs someday.
The first time I came to Camp Bang Dang was 14 years ago. I was 19. Sam brought Nick and me then, same as now. The camp looked exactly the same too. But now it’s us who have changed. Someone, maybe Thomas, pointed out that if we came back in another 14 years, I’d be 48. I felt a flicker of grief, not for aging, but for the idea that this too would end. Then I looked around. The fire was still burning. The beer was still cold. The laughter was still real. Just because I have changed since then doesn’t mean everything has. Bang Dang is still out there, outside of time really, ready for us to come back.
Maybe that’s the point of sacred time. Not to preserve something forever, but to notice it while it’s happening, honor it, perhaps even pass it down to the next generation.
To show up for these moments with and for each other. To say, this is it. We’re in it. Right now. Together.
