#4: [23-Nov-08]

#3: [17-Jun-07]

#2: [18-Aug-04]

03-Mar-2001 -- After visiting the confluence at 43N 81W, my brother Tim and I travelled southwest along highway 401 to highway 402, the freeway that runs between London and Sarnia. Our destination was the confluence at 43N 82W, just north-east of the junction of highway 402 and the Forest Road, about 5 kilometres south of the village of Forest, in Lambton County. This is flat agricultural land, covered with large, prosperous farms.

As we approached the Forest Road exit, we found that there was bush to the north of the highway, and we feared that we might have to fight our way through untamed undergrowth and melting snow to find the confluence. But as soon as we got onto Forest Road, we found it to be a very narrow strip of bush, with open fields beyond. We saw a car parked beside the road, and for a moment were afraid someone else had got to the confluence ahead of us (when Tim visited his first confluence in Alberta, he met another confluence-hunter, so this wasn't an impossibility), but then found that the car was well short of the mark.

We drove about 800 metres north, until the GPS was indicating that the confluence was 290 metres straight east in the plowed field. Since there were no fences, and the farmhouse and barn were about 500 metres further on, facing the Egremont Road, we decided to go to the site without first getting permission. Here in southwestern Ontario, there is little danger of getting shot for trespassing.

As we headed into the field, we found that it was very wet from the recently melted snow, and we tried to find higher areas as we zig-zagged toward the confluence. Despite these efforts, our shoes were soon carrying large gobs of brown mud. Tim (a soil scientist) explained that the colour of the soil indicated that this area had at one time been covered by hardwood forest, that its brown colour came from centuries of work by earthworms processing the fallen leaves. He said it was very different than the black soil of southern Alberta, whose richness comes from the decomposing roots of prairie grasses. From the bits of plant matter lying about in the furrows, he concluded that the field had grown beans last summer.

After about 150 metres, we came to an area that had been seeded to spring wheat. This made the going a little easier, but it was still very muddy. Just before we got to the confluence, we crossed a dirt track coming straight back from the farm buildings, and we wondered whether it might have been better for our shoes if we had gone to the farm and walked out on this lane. But it was too late for that.

We found the spot a few metres beyond the track and took our photographs. It was almost 5 PM, so the sun was too low to take a photo directly to the west. To the west, north, and east, there are fields very much like the one we were standing in, with farm buildings at regular intervals along the roads. To the south was the strip of bush by the highway, but beyond that were similar farms all the way to Lake Erie.

After slogging back through the mud, we came out on the road across from an old windmill that is obviously still used to pump water for cattle in the summer. We cleaned our shoes as best we could (using snow, meltwater, and an old lawn rake we found in the ditch), drove north to the Egremont Road, then east through the village of Warwick and on to London. We arrived just in time for our older brother's birthday party.