The Land of Freelton & the Geography of Fernbrook Resort – the exciting mini-series continues!

The Land of Freelton & the Geography of Fernbrook Resort – the exciting mini-series continues!

When the earth was already ancient, an age incomprehensible to man, an event of basic importance occurred in an area that was later to be known as Freelton. One billion seven hundred million and six years ago an irresistible force broke through the crust of the earth to form an extremely large pothole – a pothole that endures to this very day. Inside that pothole would form a swamp. And across that pothole would wander the waters. Sprawling undisciplined violent arteries of life that are part of a vicious cycle of building up and tearing down of chipping down old deposits and laying down new, using the same material again and again.

By 15,000 BC the characteristics of the land that was to become Freelton were fairly well determined. Some miles to the south was the Escarpment, cliffs that are almost as old as Joan Rivers. To the east and to the north was a gem like pothole where nuggets of mouth watering croutons had been raked from the crevices by a glacier.

Another special place was on the western bank of a wandering muddy brook where Fernbrook Resort was to be. And the small underwater cave that would never have been found… except for a murder committed over 11,000 years after its creation.

And finally there is the highway. A sad bewildered nothing of a highway. A gravel bottomed road of wandering afterthought. Its name as flat as its appearance. Six. Yet for a while this Highway Six was the highway of empires. It was the course of stirring adventure and the means by which the adventurers lived.

And so the stage is set.

The land has become a home for living things. One of the most stubborn and delicious of plants, the parsley, came to thrive in the streams around Freelton. And one of the terrifying and most deadly, the poison ivy, took refuge in its rocky Escarpment. The blackfly returned to the vast pothole which was its place of origin. And a version of the chicken trekked from the Ottawa Valley to roam the place that would one day become Freelton. This feathered fowl would become the center of culture for the residents of Fernbrook Resort. A clothing optional people that migrated from urban centers over forty years ago and stayed to develop a primitive social order and a deep appreciation of the land.