EAR FALLS, Ontario, Canada — There are moments of quiet reflection among the jack pine, ash and birch trees swaying gently under the watchful eyes of soaring eagles on Lac Seul, a vast tea-colored oasis in northwest Ontario.

In between jolts on lines from trophy walleye and toothy northern pike, it is a place that puts the world on pause. The air smells different. The pace slows. The needling annoyances of daily life fade, along with cell phone signals.

It’s in treasured corners like this, a flowage bound for Hudson Bay that stretches as far as a crow-flies trip from San Diego to Mission Viejo, that perspective lives.

In a return trip this month, my ninth with Iowa friend Ken Pink and others, it gained increased importance. My last year has centered around my 15-round prize fight with stubborn and unrelenting bladder cancer.

When your world includes near-weekly lab visits, chemotherapy treatments, a bathroom cabinet bulging with pill bottles and side effects that ambush you at every turn, the rippling water and the riches it holds delivers powerful medicine of its own.

Lac Seul has become as much a cherished friend as a destination.

You see and feel the landscape slowly morph as you travel the 10 1/2 hours from Minneapolis and onto the winding, remote roads north of the border at International Falls.

Each turn promises a surprise, from a breathtaking glimpse of a cliff-lined bay to a moose loping along the roadside. Concrete and traffic congestion vanish, reminding us over and again that this boundless solitude forever belongs to nature.

As the camp we long ago began calling our second home each June nears, anticipation spikes. It’s not just the bounty Lac Seul holds — walleye nearing 30 inches, writhing pike that fold like Slinkys into oversized nets, feisty smallmouth bass — that lures us year after year.

It’s the people. Lac Seul Evergreen Lodge owners Kathie Taylor and her husband, Brent, have become family. We share stories and beers, swap hugs and relish the annual ritual.

Ear Falls is a sleepy place befitting its foothold in the remote wilderness. When the Edmonton Oilers were trying to become the first Canadian team in three decades to win the Stanley Cup, no place in town was open to watch a country claw at history.

Kathie and Brent insisted we come to their house and take in the game in their basement.

When I unloaded a boat one afternoon, a member of another group yelled back to one of his cabin mates, asking if he would like a post-fishing old fashioned. I jokingly blurted to the stranger that I would take one. An hour later, the man delivered a perfectly poured drink to our door.

This is a place where unfamiliar faces become fast friends.

And, oh man, the fishing. Iowa TV and radio personality Andy Fales is another “founding father” of the trip. One year, we anchored over a spot that normally is dry land until high water opened a rare door.

As we sat in less than 5 feet of water, over freshly submerged grass and cover, the walleye — Canadian caviar, as we call it — began to bite on nearly every cast.

Fales and I started a game: If both of us went three consecutive casts without landing a fish, we would pull up the anchor and move. Six hours later, we were still there.

In the shallow water, pike began to rise up and attack the boat-bound walleye, gripping them in their teeth and fighting as if they were hooked themselves.

The limitless abundance caused Fales and I to laugh.

Each cast mirrors some of our best moments in life, when unknown and adrenaline-spiking potential awaits. You’re never sure what’s next. Finding out, that’s the addiction.

On the most recent trip, San Diego’s Nick Jones made his second visit. The first trip was so compelling that he invested in an expensive camera lens to capture and bottle up as much of this place as possible.

Jones returned with stunning photos of eagles, majestic pelicans, ducks and broad-shouldered beavers.

In the first year of this trip, Fales, Pink and I saw a black bear calmly patrol a shoreline we stood on just minutes earlier. Every year brings a moose sighting, including two this June on the drives up and back.

It’s a color-soaked zoo without enclosures.

The whole of it is soul-enriching escapism, a trip back to simpler times when work assignments, mailbox bills and the nagging realities of adulthood did not dominate your days.

The baton is being passed. We have watched Pink’s son Wyatt and his friend Max Sparrey become capable fishermen and the types of trip mates who jump into carrying the cabin workload without being asked.

You see our past — and hopefully their continued future — ignited in their eyes.

A vacation? Hardly.

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