The Island That Isn't, and the Swans That Are

Start with the name, because it's wrong. Saskatoon Island is not an island. It used to be one, a knob of land in Saskatoon Lake, until the water dropped and the lake let go of it. Now it's a strip of aspen and berry bush with Saskatoon Lake on one side and Little Lake on the other. Nobody bothered to rename it. That seems correct. Around here we don't rename things just because they stopped being true.

The park sits just off Highway 43, near Wembley, close enough to town that you can decide to go after supper and still catch good light. People treat it as a campground with a lake attached, and in July that's fair: the sites fill, the boat launch gets busy, and the beach on Saskatoon Lake does what beaches do. But the campground is not why you should go. Little Lake is.

Little Lake is shallow, reedy and unglamorous, the kind of water you'd drive past if nobody told you. Trumpeter swans nest there. These are the birds that put "Swan City" on our signs and on more municipal stationery than any of us can count. They are enormous. A trumpeter on the water looks like someone set a piece of good furniture afloat. In the air, with the neck stretched out and those wings going, it is a little alarming, in the best way.

They come back in spring, once the ice lets go, and they get down to business: nests built on muskrat lodges and mounds of vegetation, eggs, then the long dull work of sitting. By midsummer the cygnets are out, grey and slightly ridiculous, trailing behind adults who look permanently put out about it. That's the stretch to see. Bring binoculars and leave the drone at home. Nesting swans do not need your company, and the viewing areas are where they are for a reason.

The swans aren't the whole show, either. Saskatoon Lake is a federal migratory bird sanctuary, and in spring and fall the place fills up with ducks, geese, grebes and plenty of birds you will confidently misidentify. Serious birders arrive with scopes and notebooks. Everyone else arrives with a phone, takes a photo of a white smudge, and tells people it's a swan. Odds are decent.

Now an opinion: September beats July. The mosquitoes have given up, or at least lost their enthusiasm. The aspens go yellow. The campground empties out, and the swans start gathering before they leave. On a still evening you'll hear them before you see them. The call is less a trumpet than a car horn with a head cold, and somehow that's better.

The trails are short and flat, easy enough for anyone who can manage a stroll, and they won't impress people who think a walk only counts if there's elevation gain. That's fine. You're not here to summit anything. You're here to stand on the shore of a muddy little lake and watch a twenty-pound bird decide whether you're worth noticing.

The saskatoons that gave the park its name are still there, too, all along the edges of the trails. Come midsummer they're purple and ripe, and the birds usually get to them first.