ON A BRIGHT, cloudless day this past September, I had my first chance to visit Eden Mills and witness its annual love-in, the Eden Mills Writers' Festival. A virulent rumour had been going around that in past years visitors to the festival had vanished, later to turn up in Leon Rooke's basement drinking red wine and eating petits fours. These people had been brainwashed and no longer wanted to return to their day jobs. To guard against this, I kept a diary of my every movement on that day, lest I too disappear:

12: 10 -- Toronto. Mary and Chris drive up in their decomposing blue Honda. They're my lift to the festival. In the four years since it began, I haven't gone, but after two days of the films at the Festival of Festivals, Guelph is beginning to look good.

1:08 -- Eden Mills is actually east of Guelph, 15 minutes down a slender, bumpy road. As we drive in, a town crier in full regalia hollers "Live readings! Come one, come all!" This must be the place. Eden Mills is one of those Ontario towns that surprise you because you figure hamlets this idyllic exist only in England. A crumbling mill at the top of a bend in the road straddles the Eramosa River, which rambles down from the east. And now, a crowd of people assembles behind the mill for the 1:40 reading by Susan Musgrave. Behind us, as we park the car, the David Sereda Trio is belting out hurting songs. The sky is unbelievably clear: September's penance for ending summer.

1:51 -- The other reading venue is the home of Leon and Constance Rooke, who started the Eden Mills festival in 1989 on a whim. Their home overlooks the river and now there are 200 friends and strangers sitting in their garden, transfixed by the voice of Tomson Highway. They're sitting in chairs, on the lawn, in the trees. A few balance on their toes in the flowerbed or teeter at the very back, one foot in the river. Highway warns us that hes going to read a very ridiculous passage from his ridiculous play A Ridiculous Play. "Close your eyes and imagine I'm a woman," he says.

2:14 -- Lynn Crosbie comes up to read as a number of people depart the Rookes' backyard. "I'm the room-clearing poet," she says. The lucky ones stay. Crosbie's poetry comes out tough, which is why it's so startling when you sense the fragility inside it. When she reads the line "a waspyellow fury," a scene out of Jung's memoirs unfolds on the lap of my sleeping neighbour: a bumblebee the size of his thumb lands on a book he holds and tries to suckle a red flower on its cover.

2:30 -- The publishers assembled in the parking lot beside the community hall are distracted by the scent of grilling sausage. It is an excellent chance to make a deal with some hunger-deranged booksellers.

2:40 -- At the mill, Anne Michaels reads. She stands on the other side of the river. Her voice must cross the sound of moving water and the path of bluebottle flies. The voice seeks us out: "I can only find you by looking deeper. That's how love leads us into the world."

3:15 -- Lunch by the Eramosa. The food tent is working overtime churning out smoked salmon and Linzertorte. Purchasers of cakes and cookies are beset by bees, and run howling into the forest.

3:50 -- An after-lunch walk through the woods with a friend. Some stragglers are sitting with their feet in the river. Mary says shes feeling listless (but this may just he unexpected feelings of peace). The sound system carries someone's voice over the water. From the trees it sounds like Charlie Brown's teacher. "You'd better not use the word 'idyllic' anywhere in your article," my friend warns me.

4:00 -- Leon Rooke reads. His voice could crumble what remains of the mill. He's apocalyptic, his voice rising and falling, his hands in the air, his white hair flying, his hook flapping in his hand. We're laughing Our heads off, but secretly we're relieved that he's on that side of the river and we're on this one.

4:22 -- A line of people slides down the loose soil beside the Rookes' house to catch the end of Don Dickinson's softly read stories. They look like a train of half-mad Sherpas, dressed in their bright button-downs, mini-skirts, and Argyle vests. The sun is coming down in the sky and some of the shady areas are beginning to darken. Some cicadas are Out. The grassy area in front of the podium has begun its irreversible slide toward becoming a mud pit.

4:25 -- Now the winners of the Eden Mills Writers' Festival Literary Contest come up to read. One of the third-prize winners, Victoria Harrop, reads her poem about carrots. It begins with the line

Thank you for peeling my carrots, he said. I catch up with Victoria to ask her about the poem. "I'm not sure you want to know this," she tells me, "but I'm a cleaning lady by profession, and this man asked me if I would clean his apartment. So for four years I cleaned his apartment and he was an accountant and I fell madly in love with him. And he liked to cat carrot sticks, right? So after every cleaning session I'd spend an hour or so peeling five pounds of carrots, hoping he would eventually notice me." Victoria tells me it hasn't paid off yet, but they're great friends. Obviously a writer with some deep- rooted problems.

4:40 -- Steven Heighton, nervous on his way to the river podium, does not trip 1 and fall into the canal forcing his embarrassing rescue by a trained RCMP airedale. Instead, he gracefully ascends to the microphone and reads the first section of his National Magazine Award-winning story "Five Pictures of the New Japan." Ever the gracious winner, Steven introduces the next reader by saying, "Sandra Birdsell -- a hard act to precede."

5:22 -1 finally catch up with Leon Rooke. Spent from his performance, he's mellow and eager to answer some questions from a young piker. I ask him what his garden looks like after the festival. He says it's survived in the past, but agrees that there may be some cause for late planting this year.

5:3 5 -- The last reader of the day is out on the Rooke veranda. As Janice Kulyk Keefer (another Eden Mills native) reads to a quiet crowd, some cars are beginning to drive out of the village. The torches that line the river behind the Rookes' house will be lit tonight for a feast and late-night dancing. The air is cool now and the fish pick off dinner from the surface of the Eramosa, leaving concentric rings spreading. Janice finishes reading to applause.

6:03 -- We Pull Out of Eden Mills. More than 500 people came down a bumpy, narrow road to listen to stories and poems. "I guess Canadian literature is really dead," laughs Chris. David Sereda is singing "Dreamland" to a line of cars and a circle of tired but dancing bodies. It's hard to leave an oasis of peace like this. But Toronto is a long walk.