WALDEN AND MUSKOKA, WHERE ONE LOSES PACE BUT GAINS HEART

I watch over The Bog hourly these days of emerging winter.....these enthralling blustery hours that etch frost onto my window pane, and slap tree limbs against the house in those ferocious, unpredictable gusts that bellow from the churning bay, and rip over the wooded hillside, tearing away leaning old birches that Robert Frost found so dimensionally poetic. It is a scene that one moment can inspire fear and trembling, and in another, a sense of inevitability, such that I could see myself surrendering to gale force, and being blown into a winter oblivion. I challenge not, the will of God, of nature, but do suspect failings in the structure of wood and shingles that keep me warm and dry at this precarious moment.

At times the sun pokes out and cascades through the two panes of glass that protect me from the serious cold.....and for awhile I bask, in reward, stopping this mad typing in order to enjoy a respite from creativity......which heaven knows can suck the life out of the most fit and ambitious author if left to run free. Then suddenly the good graces of clear sky diminish and it all becomes very dark and forboding, as if a storm-front has just then announced its intention, to re-create the order of things into a mosaic chaos......which in a strange way compels me to watch closely as this day becomes more interesting with golden light and creeping shadow, vestiges of good and evil.

It might prevail again soon, a settling calm, to allow the sun another opening in the canopy of December cloud, to print brightly upon this old cluttered desk.....of which I mire down in confusion, when not a humble, silent victim of my own freedom. Questing in search of the insightful words to lead myself in memory, down those narrow, winding forest paths I have travelled in this life.....or it could well brighten up evermore, as snow begins to tumble down, and be dashed against this same window pane, affording me a wreathed view of this precious lowland. I will be able to feel the vibration of the wind, if it should dominate this landscape, as it shakes the house awake, and sense the loose grip I have on secure items, should this glass ever break, and expose me to these rigorous, unclenching elements. I’m not sure how I would react if one day, this speculation of doom upon Birch Hollow, should occur in just this fashion, when wind and determination of storm-fist might transform this cabin to rubble, and send me flying forth to settle, unceremoniously in some other locale. In flight might I find a split second to ponder, or rather be delirious to the situation as a result of sudden shock? Me thinks the voyeur would capture the moments for posterity......and then, disheveled, but eager, look for the last pencil and paper on earth to make copious notes, about that most recent and precious experience of survival of the fittest. Unless of course, I don’t survive and then the chapter ends rather abruptly I’m afraid.

For many years now, I have sat in this same spot on winter afternoons, to benefit from a most beautiful dominion, this Muskoka, offering the writer so many different moods and distractions from normal course. Even if it is a visitor ambling up the lane, or a vehicle rattling down the road, every hour is a chapter filled with small but significant occurrences that in their own way represent a punctuation I might not have used otherwise; to paint the scene into a more realistic, navigable landscape. There is more here in this Walden of mine than trees and tiny crystalline cataracts, snow drifts and strange anomalies of all nature. While some might think it odd and a misspent resource of time and effort, to sit here and watch out over a run-of-the-mill lowland in a region known for its bogs and swamps, I might argue that my own connection here is not on a for-profit efficiency but instead, a healthful feeding period of heart and soul. It is this kind of beautiful, dynamic place on the landscape, I find restorative when other functions of lifestyle prove exhausting and depressing. There is no judgement here, no acceptable way to interpret the scene or precise protocol for finishing work. I am under no pressure to produce for any hounding editor and there is no financial promoter demanding chapters for money. While there have been many occasions when I have been forced to work on a writing-to-survive basis, I listen now to the common, basic protocol of sensible proportion and human satisfaction. I wrote for many years without the least contentment and virtually no satisfaction at the end of a work week, other than having felt a wee flicker of hope when my byline topped a story I was particularly proud of.......and many of my writing contemporaries at the time felt the same.

My biggest distress was that, in the evening, when I should have wanted to write for myself, the rigors and frustrations of the day drained all enthusiasm. When I sit here and watch this beautiful world transform in the prevailing weather, I am enthralled to be a witness. There is a peacefulness I can’t quite explain, an ethereal adventure that gives much more meaning to the vigil than what the written page contains in ink. I can’t expect that those who read these pages will be able to recreate what I have experienced, or imagined, interpreting the change of seasons, the evolution of weeks, days and hours into minutes of joyous existence. While some find exhilaration in physical adventures and impending danger, I find it in this ghost hunt for wayward spirits, who will lead me to that elusive truth we both fear yet celebrate as clear vision, and honesty about the meaning of life.

It is late afternoon now, and I must face the necessity of travel.....and the fuss of adorning myself to fend against the bitter winter rattling eerily at this window pane, as if something beyond is trying to get my attention. I shall trundle off down the road and feel as robust as humanly possible for a man of my vintage, having the passion stirring within, to once again return to my office, and rejoin quiet contemplation with all that nature can afford the eager voyeur.

WALDEN IN MUSKOKA MY RETREAT

It’s hard to explain to folks who don’t write, paint or wax poetic, how important it is to have a ready source of inspiration. Like legendary Canadian artist, Tom Thomson, I face a shortfall of inspiration when everything is green and fulfilled. While this isn’t to suggest, as a human being, I’m not enthralled about the woodlands of Muskoka in the spring and summer, it’s the case that autumn and winter are more profoundly diverse and unpredictable. I’ve been a landscape writer all my professional life, and the seasons have been a huge influence on when I write and what I write about. As Thomson complained that Algonquin was too green and plain in the late spring and summer, I too have issues with contrast. As a writer. Not as a path-wandering admirer of nature. I could live in these woods permanently. It’s just that as a creator, I find writing in the midst of an autumn storm, or a winter gale, is so much more rough and jagged around the edges, so many more things happening around the homestead, such as trees banging against the side of the house, hitting the glass pane of my office window.....there are wind-sounds that remind one of the Call of the Wild and inspire the imagination to incorporate ghosts and wee beasties that thrive in such tumultuous times.

My trips into this beautiful Bog I have recently come to call “Walden,” in respect to Thoreau’s own Walden Pond, are fantastic at this time of the year, as the frost has begun painting the hardwood leaves, and the wind has started to tear them away, spiraling them back to earth, to be trodden down by my intrusive travels each day. It is all so amazing. Even as these leaves fall and the solemn days of late fall evolve upon the landscape, it becomes haunting in a passionate, engaging way. We look upon the demise of one season as the birth of another.

I have now just decided it is time to travel the path this morning, long overdue from a walk with the dog before sunrise. I trust I will return with a heightened sense of discovery, as it is seldom I arrive back at this doorstep without something new and exciting to bestow upon you.

WALDEN - MY TIME TO WRITE

I have never written well or often in the summer months. Maybe I’m a little like Canadian landscape artist, Tom Thomson, who enjoyed painting Algonquin scenes from the fall to the spring but found the summer months too green, and without the dramatic contrasts he most admired about the lakeland vista.

I don’t enjoy the heat and humidity and I only own one small fan that is more annoying than refreshing. I prefer being outdoors, perched lazily on the lakeshore, or sitting comfortably beneath one of my wonderful maples in our homestead forest. This year the shade didn’t help relieve much more than the direct sunlight, as the humidity was impossible to escape. I did what they do in a lot of tropical countries, and got my work done around the property before late morning, when the temperature and closeness began to rise. I’d venture into the Bog with my mate Bosko, my canine companion, and we’d take a slow walk to nowhere in particular. It always seemed cooler down on the level of the marsh grasses and deep fern cover, and while the dog rolled on the hard-packed path, I’d satisfy myself by leaning up against the tree that has been my stalwart support for the past 20 years, its curvature perfect for my aching back. Dog and human spent a lot of time pondering this summer.....when would the heat end, and “I can’t wait for the chill of nightfall.”

It was one of the hardest working summers in recent memory, despite the hot climate, as there were many projects of homestead repair that simply couldn’t wait for completion. Most often the summer is when my wife (a teacher) and I, set out on daily antique hunts, searching for those evasive pieces to offer our customers......who have long known us in the profession, as folks who can come up with unusual, unique and even strange art pieces and primitives. This summer, we simply had to put it all on hold, except for travels locally. We’re pretty happy about improvements here, and new shelving to hold our thousands of books. Around here, moving one table or buffet, can displace about a thousand items on and within, and surrounding, so considering we moved about one hundred pieces of furniture at Birch Hollow, in the past two months, you must surely be able to appreciate the widespread chagrin of being obsessive collectors. We were the poster kids for a hoarding reality show.

As a writer, my biggest problem has been keeping old clippings, manuscripts and reference material. I’ve had to bring this volume down considerably, in order to have any place to sit and work in my office. I’ve even gotten rid of my small collection of old manual typewriters that I used up until a few years ago, before my son Robert got me to switch to the computer keyboard. Now he uses the old manuals in his recording studio, to get those historic sounds mixed with contemporary music creations by string and drum. What used to be my vehicle to creation, is now a sound effect device. Well, glad it could be of some use in this era of high tech everything.

I have found the Bog very peaceful this summer season, and I have very much needed it to ease the inner turmoil of change. I like commonplace, and even the change of the chair I sit in daily, is enough to throw me off my stride for a couple of weeks. I’ve had a plethora of new chairs around here, and much more, so when things have gotten too crazy for an oldtimer, ....well, I retreat, sometimes often........where my wife and curious neighours can find me standing out on the brink of the Bog, listening to the overhead owls and the distant loons, and the gentle wash of wind through the tall grass and ferns. These sojourns have been enough to soothe the savage beast within. Actually, it wasn’t all that savage, just disenfranchised from that stuffy, stale old way of living, my wife was determined to revamp. She was quite right, and I now very much enjoy the additional space and ease of movement, without fearing an askew stack of books may, at the slightest nudge, domino wildly across the parlor.

I will attempt to write more this autumn season, which by tradition, has always been my most creative time of year. I need my Walden, away from all this work and stuff.

OF CONTEMPLATION AND PHILOSOPHY
At a time when Muskoka has been transformed into a safer haven, for the most powerful leaders on earth, it’s crossed my mind several times in the past six months of constant media scrutiny, criticism and debate, whether or not the dignitaries to our beautiful region on earth, will have any gentle time for contemplation and enjoyment of the hinterland environs during their brief stay.
From what I understand of their 24 hour or so, lodging in Muskoka, the answer is probably no, as there are far too many security impositions and intrusions, for anyone, citizens and dignitaries alike, to actually enjoy the very nature of Muskoka, that was the allure for the summit in the first place.
I can’t help but feel this is the biggest shortfall of the whole international event. Our world is such a precarious, dangerous place that we can’t even allow nature to intrude upon the business of world politics. Instead we finance a "Fake Lake" in Toronto, to impress the media, many who won’t be able to attend the actual Muskoka summit. There’s a bigger and better looking lake now at the base of my lane from the rainfall of a few hours earlier, and it’s a genuine Muskoka resource that I probably could paddle.....and it didn’t cost me more than a few coins of property tax. After the Muskoka immersion, these government representatives, will have only slightly touched on one of the most important global issues.....the environment that is so close yet so strategically and safely removed from the actuality of the magnificent location. As for Muskoka playing host, well, many important opportunities have been missed. The only thing that could have been further imposed, was a tinted glass dome over the entire resort community.
Instead for the money invested, it should have included a woodland hike, a canoe paddle at sunrise, a swim in a beautiful lake, and the chance to sit out on a dock at sunset, and see what Tom Thomson witnessed of a haunted lakeland in Canada.
I have already, this morning, seen and experienced more of Muskoka’s natural resources, than will be enjoyed by our international guests, in the northern climes of the district. First thing, I got a soaker in a puddle, that had formed on a path in The Bog,.....the result of heavy rain last evening, and I had a little slide down a small embankment when Bosko the dog took off after a squirrel, dragging me behind. I felt the chilled water droplets on my back when the wind blew the huge overhead maple leaves that held storm residue. I saw the cool mist drifting across The Bog at sunrise, and watched as several deer ambled across the path on the other side of the hollow. I enjoyed the gentleness of a less-humid morning in South Muskoka, and the shrill call of the Loon from somewhere near the lake shore; it was the kind of haunting that makes you think about life and meaning, and the precious observations and insights of all the country philosophers over this grand world, throughout history, who have been inspired by such wondrous places, such sanctuary, such joy in the midst of life’s complex and befuddling cycle.
While the iron clenched security plans, hands and weaponry that ensure our guests will be safe in our region, give us all a sense of a general insecurity about the world’s future, I will celebrate nature on their behalf......by immersing myself for work and pleasure in the environs of this beautiful region, because its importance to the soul outweighs all else in this mortal coil.
This is my celebration of Muskoka. It’s not one bit different than the respect I have always possessed for the nature around us......that so many ignore on purpose, until that is, our folly in its destruction makes us all the victims of neglect.
It doesn’t really bother me to be called "naive" or "unrealistic," because whether I am, or not, nature is our keeper, and that is fact. We don’t always appreciate this, especially when we’re more concerned about the re-creation of nature, for the photo-ops, and good publicity, than its welfare as a whole......which is always a lagging consideration in a world consumed by everything else.

WORK AND MY WALDEN WALKS
Most recently I have been terribly pre-occupied with work, and then there was a flood here at Birch Hollow, when a pin-prick hole developed in a pipe, leading from the hot water heater, causing a book, art and paper collector a " fit of temporary insanity," getting everything away from the wave of nice hot water. Fortunately it happened at a time when all our family members were preparing for bed, and we caught it before there was too much damage. Even in a short period of time, most of the floor was soaked by this tiny spray of water. It has taken almost two weeks to dry out.
On top of this I opted to help a fellow historian edit a book of stories, inspired by his own Muskoka homestead, where he and family have reverted to simpler times, and lesser conveniences that we possess at Birch Hollow. They don’t have water taps as such, but they do have a pump handle. And they don’t have electricity, which by today’s standard in Canada, is pretty much unheard of, unless you happen to be a trapper or prospector in the far north.
His interesting book is a mix of fact and fiction but the background of both is the "roughing it in the bush," chronicle of a new century. While I have great admiration for these hardy souls, when I read the story collection, I can’t help clenching my teeth about all the dire consequences they face daily, with bear and moose, frozen water and isolation. Of course, having suffered greatly from a pin prick in a water line, I’m probably a terrible candidate for the complete homestead lifestyle. Of course, as my colleague notes so eloquently, throughout the book, the environmental joy far outweighs any disadvantage. I agree whole heartedly. It must be marvelous waking up each morning, and staring out at a beautiful pine forest and blue sky, and not hear the sound of earth movers and jack-hammers, too familiar and intrusive in my urban world.
I live more like Thoreau, I suppose, than my friend, because I’m always in close proximity to civilization’s new age conveniences. Thoreau’s sister, I believe, used to deliver fresh baked goods from the family kitchen, out to his humble cabin on the shore of the legendary Walden Pond. I don’t have a cabin over in The Bog, across the lane from our house, but I’ve got plenty of cookies nearby to fuel my latest hike through the pinery.
I haven’t edited a book in awhile, and I’m pretty rusty. As the editor of the former Herald-Gazette, in Bracebridge, in the 1980's, I used to work my way through a mountain of hard copy (paper submissions) every week, and I resorted to the non-computer way of handling my latest editing challenge.....preferring instead to have a real manuscript in front of me, versus staring for hours on end, at a wavering computer screen. I’m not sure if my author friend will appreciate these pioneering contributions to his new book. Maybe he won’t be able to read my edit marks, which were passed down through decades of newspaper tradition. The scribbled-on pages actually looked like a wee bit of folk art from the golden years of the community press.
I talked with the author about nature, the other day, and wondered if he felt the same about it all, as when he originally planned his exile into the hinterland. I questioned whether he paid attention to those magnificent sunrises and sunsets, the first winter snow upon cedar boughs, and the first wildflowers of the spring, with the innocence of discovery he had commenced homesteading in the first place. He was admittedly surprised I would ask that question. As I venture into the forest daily for my own respite, I can return later to this office above The Bog, and sit in a comfortable office and write away in relative comfort. Of course I don’t exclude the fact that some time in the day, a water pipe might spring a leak, or I’ll need to replace a board or two on the back deck, or need to improve the drainage of rain water away from the building’s foundation. These are standard to any home owner. But I believe my life as a wanderer and a writer is easier, in many ways, than the survivalist who has to deal with life threatening issues from the get-go each day, based on what he doesn’t possess. As for a response about his appreciation for nature, it was a rigorous rebuttal, that in fact, his was an intense relationship based on his own appreciation of sanctuary, environmental resources, and a farmstead heritage, and the relationship with each sunrise, sunset, each season and every natural event, was the patina of lifestyle. I was the one separated from immersion by choice of convenience. I wasn’t living in a rustic cabin on the moor. I was living in climate controlled luxury on the knoll above nature, in his eyes and opinion. He wasn’t wrong.
Editing through the book was an adventure that for a few days, did keep me tied to my office, yet I have thought about his observations about nature as a close companion, in my recent hiatus periods out, looking affectionately over The Bog.....and I do think some philosophy has rubbed off.....and I’m always eager to find new insight, and a clearer way to look at something that has perplexed me. I thanked him for letting me have a week peak at his tome, and the chance to get another opinion on our precious nature.

WALDEN FOR ME - LET BUSINESS BE
As I noted recently, my aimless, enjoyable wandering through the Muskoka woods, had been unceremoniously interrupted by the reality..... commerce has its place....just as the forest and bog holds me spellbound, our business accountant occasionally gets on her high-horse and demands that I work for the luxuries (of wandering) I enjoy.
Over the past two months, business has been trumping just about everything else, and while it has been very much profitable and rewarding, as it has involved my passionate relationship with antiques and heritage items, all work and little play has been difficult to tolerate.....especially with beautiful weather and a lovely forest beckoning. I am so clearly reminded of the words written by David Grayson in his well known book, "Adventures in Contentment," where in his early days of "back to the farmstead" living, having left the urban stresses behind, he couldn’t seem to cast off the necessity of working long hours, being in a hurry to get things done, and to always have nice straight furrows at the end of plowing. Until one day, wiping sweat from his brow, he looked up at the beautiful valley sprawling out to the horizon, and was instantly amazed at what he had been missing about country life.....and life values generally. He had been so jaded by urban habits and necessity, that even in the hinterland, he was living the urban lifestyle of hurried pace, and reckless avoidance of real life and health issues.
I tried to explain this to my life partner, who is also my accountant, and she balked at the suggestion she is a taskmaster....but did agree that it was simply necessary to employ the cycle of economy, unless of course, one wanted to starve and be cast out of our present homestead by the fine folks who loaned us money in trust.
I have joyfully embraced the Muskoka woodlands again, this time having pacified the bean-counter, that our business is deserving the same attention as these forest inhabitants, trees and ferns and squirrels and well, you know. I’m just a little more determined now to fit it all in this remaining spring-time, before winter puts me closer to work than play.

WALDEN INTERRUPTED
It wasn’t much different in Thoreau’s day either. There were lots of distractions, like work for example, that took the author away from his cabin at Walden Pond. Canadian painter, Tom Thomson, was always being interrupted by necessity, and would have to guide in Algonquin Park to raise money to support his artistic endeavors, which never became particularly fruitful until after his demise in 1917. Although it’s a pretty long stretch to put myself in their shoes, and their circumstance of which they were both quite successful, I too have succumbed to necessity and conventional thought. While I quite enjoy ambling away on this forest path, daydreaming of all sorts of fantastic eventualities, over the past while it’s been work heaped upon more work. Enjoyable pursuits mind you, and in the field antiques which I adore but none the less, a practical period for an impractical thinker. I’ve been glued to this keyboard for more than a month, working our online business which has certainly been a global enterprise recently. We’ve been shipping Canadiana and advertising memorabilia all over the world. True enough, business has been good.
I have finally cleared a little portal on my furniture-stacked porch, so I could set up my summer office, where I work frequently past midnight in the glow of a treasured old oil lamp, I rescued from a Muskoka farm auction some years back. I love sitting out there, looking over the lush ferns and wildflowers of our Birch Hollow, and then across the lane, The Bog and woodland, that truly makes this place an oasis within the urban jungle of even rural Ontario. I am enthralled to hear those faithful Loons that have been haunting this lowland for decades, and the Owls hooting away in the halo of mist and shadow on cool spring nights. I will sit and write for several hours and feel as if it had only been minutes. After a winter of hugging the hearth, it is truly amazing to be afforded this horizon of new growth, and regeneration of fern and flower, the sprays of lilacs now weighing down the boughs.
From mid December, when my father Ed suffered a stroke, ultimately ending his life later in January, to the work-load of an estate we were asked to sell for the family of a Toronto Minister, it was a season largely missed by pre-occupation. Although it wasn’t much of a winter, by Muskoka and Canadian standards, I do feel bad about missing my hiatus periods, writing this journal....which of course is based almost entirely on the escape, even if only mindfully, into my Walden....this adjacent bog and woodland that has been my source of inspiration for the past twenty years or so.
I have again been venturing into the awakening woods numerous times through the day, and finding all sorts of inspiration from what is considered commonplace to others in this neighborhood. There are fewer trees in some quarters of The Bogland, due to the powerful wind storms that have pounded over our region in the past few weeks. There are more birds chattering in the tree tops than I’ve seen for years, and there are at least three Owls residing in a small acreage, trying to find enough to eat. The Loons have been more numerous and closer to our homestead than in years past, and although I haven’t taken a scientific count, I do believe there are more this year than in the past two. We haven’t seen our area wolves and coyotes yet this season, and we hear that a bear has been visiting a neighbor’s bird feeder for snacks. But it is all very restorative to the weary soul, and I’ve vowed to reduce business a tad, to get out and meet the demands of property and appearance, which admittedly my wife prides moreso than another blog entry for her writer husband.
Get out and enjoy what Muskoka has to offer......and it is magnificent. Stop and enjoy the view. It’s a healthy thing to do.

WHEN BUSINESS CALLS - EVEN WHEN THE THOREAUESQUE BECKONS....

I must offer an apology for my lethargy as of late. It has been very much the case that business has come before pleasure. And while it is true that I garner great joy working in the antique profession, nothing can trump my forays in writing at Birch Hollow. But as the accountant in this household is currently of the opinion we should balance the books, it was necessary for awhile to put other, more enjoyable pursuits aside.
We have had the privilege of selling off a considerable quantity of interesting Canadiana, antiquarian books, old paper and some wonderful advertising nostalgia. Now we are close to completion and we can honestly say that the past six weeks have been exciting and well worth experiencing. There just hasn’t been much time for anything else, and seeing as I have for long and long subscribed to the philosophy of dear old Mr. Fezziwig’s (Dickens, A Christmas Carol) belief, that "money isn’t everything," I do intend to happily return to my cherished blog sites, of which there are numerous, and pen copiously once again. As a poor writer I shall continue following this life-long path.
Today the forest canopy is filling in, and the lilac buds are growing ever more significant, ready soon to burst into bloom. The ferns are poking their heads up through the soil and our patch of trilliums has almost doubled from years past. There are a few blackflies but not so bad.
Once again, my apologies for this rather unanticipated but profitable hiatus.

SPRING RAIN, ALONE IN THE MIST
One moment, I swear that a canoe is passing somewhere close, as I can so clearly hear the thrust and then ease of the paddle against the current. It’s impossible, of course, because the creeks that dissect the Bog are tiny, and the ponds are shallow, dotted with the hazards of fallen trees and large clumps of earth, matted grasses from some previous flood and erosion.
If you stand here long enough today, in this dimly lit environs, you will swear to have heard footsteps coming toward you along the trail, and thought someone, somewhere close, had whispered your name. In the mist and low light in the thickets, you might see a ghost....a shadowy image wavering between the trees and crossed branches. At other times you will only sense a soft, regular heartbeat within, and the touch of damp cold against your skin. There will be an unsettling silence. Not a trace of wind or sound of even a single raindrop falling onto a leaf, or exploding into the stillness of the tiny black pool of water to your left or right. As the mist becomes heavier, as it blows off the expanse of Muskoka Bay, it will become very haunted in this Bog, as if an English moor, where one might expect, at any moment, to see the silhouette of Sherlock Holmes himself, in hunt of the elusive Hound of the Baskervilles. The mood will change many times today as the rainfall becomes heavier, and this fog moves further inland by late morning. Now it is a feast for the imagination, to be standing here pondering what other mysteries and supernatural events might be revealed.
Even after a half hour of wandering this Bogland, I can still hear the sound of that phantom canoe, its hull trickling the water along its invisible traverse......the water droplets falling from the tip of the paddle blade. I don’t know what has been making these familiar sounds yet I know it can not be what I imagine. It is probably a blocked-up cataract, and a diversion of water down a narrow artery, making this pushing, tinkling sound. With the high ridges of matted grasses, and mounds in the landscape created by old stumps, it’s impossible to see all the little creeks and waterfalls that exist throughout this wetland acreage. It is a haven for anyone with a vivid imagination.
There have been occasions in the last few minutes, when the wind has picked up and sent a spray of icy rain over this ridge, causing the voyeur to button up his coat and pull down the hat that was almost raised in flight. A stronger curl of wind tightens across the lake, and soon it will push up over the rock shoreline, and rush across these pine ridges and unthawing bogland. It will push away the rest of the fog and reveal the brown, barren ground of early spring.
Even in the most adverse weather, there is a splendor to these woods, this lowland, that I cherish with every mortal fibre. Even amidst its dull colorations, and matted grasses and fallen over trees, there is a beauty of life that overpowers shallow observation, and narrow, unimaginative contemplation. It is the rebirth of a season, and it is our own time for resurgence and discovery, and this path will take me from here to there in adventure, around the year, till once more, a winter snow will capture my footprints in its icy mantle.
I feel a tug at my coat sleeve and look to see who beckons. I turn quickly to witness who it is that whispers my name. I will swear to having seen some other watcher in the woods, waft as a mist down a distant path into the basin, and I will tremble a wee bit, about my lonely, vulnerable vigil in this grandly haunted place. I trust that some artist will stumble upon this place one day soon, a poet wandering aimlessly along life’s path, a musician plucking at some stringed instrument, and find this tiny parcel of nature a perfectly enchanted place in which to muse....., to create and be delighted by the convergence of all natural and supernatural qualities and quantities.....as if at the very invitation of C.S. Lewis to explore and taste the fruit not forbidden.

OPEN GROUND, OPEN UNIVERSE, FREE AT LAST
It was a gentle winter season. The fact that there is open ground here, and lots of warming, healing sun, means that the growing season will start at least two weeks ahead of most years. It is a wonderful reprieve from the Canadian winter, which can be brutal and last well past the calendar change, in late March. It feels like we’ve cheated somehow, and that nature must be preparing some wild spring retort to make up for the kindnesses unseasonably bestowed.
I will take this gift and suck the marrow of each and every warm and sparkling day. Even a warm rainy day may find me holed-up in some dry portal overlooking this emerging bogland, so full of sounds from tinkling, invisible run-off water, to the rustling of mice and moles working beneath the matted grasses. This little paradise on earth is my story-book....the natural place on earth that amazes and inspires me daily.....pleases me by simplicity and uncomplicated companionship, which asks nothing from me in return for my observances. I wish more people would take a few moments daily to visit spots like this, to appreciate how nature rises to the call of the season, the strength of the sun, and nurturing of the moist, rich soil of its own history.
Throughout the winter months I have found a few minutes daily to be its observer, a recorder, and its has left an imprint on my soul. It can be a lonely, even threatening place in the midst of a winter storm, a poetic place on a snowy winter’s eve, a remarkable place when the sunrise sparkles in those first few moments reflecting off the newly fallen snow,..... and a peaceful, wonderful solitude for contemplation, when the pace of modern life becomes an unhealthy burden. On a beautiful sunny day as this, it is as much a contradictory place,.... as it is both peaceful and a sanctuary for the weary, yet it possesses a powerful aura of regeneration and rebirth, that reminds the soul how dependent and lowly it is in the grand scheme. It kinship to the heart-broken, the depressed, the life-weary, restores good faith in the relevance of all life....the coil of seconds, minutes, hours and days spinning in this cycle and universality of mortal existence. I can experience fear and trembling, as might a sage watcher, a bard, looking out upon this huge transition of life-force, and at the same time allow myself the liberty of spiritual freedom, fearing not the consequence of being in the path of a ravenous nature, bursting at the seams to touch the sun. It is at times, like watching a huge, unwieldy creature rising up from the muck of pre-history, and being unsure whether it will be kindly to the observer, or devour the intruder as a means of sustenance. Just as one shields from the storm-front thundering over this peaceful place, there is that subtle reminder about survival of the fittest. Is this watcher in the woods strong and resourceful enough to keep step with nature’s progress? Might I perish as a bystander, in this sudden storm, a product of this same nature that has so graciously cradled me against this sun drenched tree? Yes it might well do this. I could be drawn up into the vortex of rotating wind and spit out like a seed down onto a far away neighborhood, where my body will imprint for awhile, be written about by some on-call reporter, and return to dust and soil as is pre-determined and non-negotiable. One must then rely on the wits nature implanted in the mortal, mental capacity, of utilizing logic and reason, as peaked by sensory perception....the instinct to seek cover in the event of storm and flood.....and trust that our instincts are in rhythm with the rigors of the impending situation. In the meantime, we watch and absorb the world around us, honing survival skills.
It is a seductive aura that lures me deeper each day, and keeps me here longer and longer, away from my tasks.....eroding my serious side and flourishing the ambition and nordic Thule for endless adventure, quite beyond my mortal means. It is the fatal attraction, a heartfelt allure to wander to the ends of the earth, because it feels so naturally intended. Yet I bask here in the afternoon sun thinking about exploration and investigation, preferring instead, at this moment, to allow my senses to invigorate as they see fit, while body rests against this old pine, contoured to the shape of my back....in the perfect place above the Bog to hear, feel, and see this concert-in-regalia perform.....to my peril or my profit, I can not tell.
Soon there will be the spring storms that pound down over the open waters of Georgian Bay, and our lakes here in South Muskoka, and many more of these leaning old birches will be toppled by the wind. The rain will bring stronger greens and deeper, broader roots to hold these grasses tight to the earth. It will turn lush and cool in the summer heat, and I will again come for a daily respite, to wander through the outstretched ferns and berried shrubs that thrive upon the embankment above the bog. There will be wind storms and dry spells, and humid periods that will keep us with fan and beverage on overhanging decks; and there will be pleasant days of moderate temperature, when the footfall on this path will be of the young and old, travellers from here to there, with a desire to see the land as if it was a theater, the actors, the creatures, the moose, deer, bear and squirrels that live in this moor beside the lake,..... and all will be contented in the seasons of the year.....until of course, they are inconvenienced by the sting in the air from December winds again, and the driving snow of a future January. Ah, what pleasure there is in recounting the days of our seasons, when there is so much to love and loathe, celebrate and tolerate, but be inspired by, as it is the mirror of life itself we ought better to know.

MARCH RAINS
This is the first overcast day of the past week. Maybe even a little longer. With the dull gray canopy of cloud will soon come the forecasted deluge, to wash away the surviving mantle of compromised, dirty snow. Walking along the trail with a light rain falling, isn’t a hardship to any one with a passion for the out of doors. It is a most quiet and soothing place at this time of the year, as most folks are either at their professions, or still huddled by the crackling hearth, leaving this place a splendid solitude for daydreamers like me.
The shallow mist over the Bog, and the gentle rainfall gives an old world, primeval aura, quite removed from the hustling of urbanity at its door. This is a most isolating time of year, and those who suffer from depression would undoubtedly choose to bypass it altogether, as they might wish away the often gloomy month of November. It’s impossible for me to be disenchanted whatsoever, at this conclusion of one season and rebirth of another. To see these ridges of open, muddy ground, is entirely uplifting, and it won’t be long now until the shoots of plant life burst through the soil, to meet the warmer, more promising days of April.
All around me now are the sounds of transition. A few weeks ago I stood on this same spot and listened for some time, to the heavy, water-logged snow hitting these evergreens, and feeling as if spring was a long way off. Now this solitude is of a different character. A landscape emerging from its entombment over the past months, ready to absorb the life-restoring March rains. What a beautiful respite this is, not just in the more inviting day-glow and the warm temperature but in the midst of a wonderful solitude, to see first hand the spring melt in its final hours. Now a barren, lonely place upon casual glance, it is so full of life sounds as to be deafening to the sensitive ear. The veil of mist protects the feeding deer, clustered on the ridge to my left, and several wild turkeys are ruffling up the snow a short distance to the right, and they show no interest in the watcher’s morning vigil.
We moved to Muskoka in the spring of 1966. It was my first spring in the hinterland. It was the time of year that was always most profound to me as a child, as it meant I could spend more time outside, and being free to wander about always translated into such amazing adventures. My adventures are more tame these days, and I confess to being more of an observer than a participant. Wandering this short path into the bogland contents me quite effectively, after a long stint at this keyboard for example. Each time I’m out here, I see something else that begs a closer look and lengthy study.....all excuses to stay out longer and shirk work as a matter of responsibility. I don’t want to miss anything about this emerging spring upon a retiring, weary old winter. The fact that water has now found a weakness in the soul of my boots, is less relevant than the brush with spirit, that wafts hauntingly with the mist, over this modest pinery of South Muskoka.
In springs of yore, my childhood rambles up the creeks and spring ponds, kept the skin of my feet wrinkled for two months, and my mother in heartache......she knew every one of the diseases I would get by having wet feet. She warned me that if my feet stayed wet, I’d actually begin to take root, and then I’d be in big trouble.
As I’ve wondered before, out here amidst this splendid scene, what would be so wrong should I suddenly take root today, and latch onto The Bog in a more profound way as a truly legitimate Watcher in the Woods.

THE WOES OF AN EARLY SPRING
You would indeed be lucky to find one person who thinks like me. To suggest that winter is a partner to revere. A partner who has a character of grinding steel and arctic fist, clenched and braced for a knock-out strike. It’s unthinkable to suggest the winter this year, has been unfairly gentle. How dare I unsettle the earthly spirits of inner nature, suggesting she has let us off to easily, from a burden we are so used to in this clime of hinterland.
Yet amongst the sage oldtimers, who still care to watch and predict the weather, there is a price to pay for a weak winter and an early spring. History has so informed us, should we care to study past records, that whenever such a winter occurs, and spring buds and flowers emerge before their time, a recoil of winter snaps across the landscape, to make us pay for sloppy indifference. Like kicking snow into the face of a bully, there is a dire consequence.
It is so incredible to see this sunscape, rich and golden, making long black silhouettes through the woodlands, like retreating soldiers after a battle bravely fought. It is a heaven on earth, and the sun beats down on our tired bodies, and restores comfort and pleasure, revitalizing our will to push harder and further in mortal quest. Yet be warned, the old man grumbles in verse, about the balances of nature yet to restore, winter to winter, spring to spring; a season done no sooner or later, planting to harvest, harvest to planting.
We will be reminded of wicked spring storms that buried us in snow not so many years ago. The ice that left the lakes in late May, and the Easter Parades that had bunnies covered in snow. These watchers of the weather, chortle to themselves, about snowflurries in June, and frosts in early July. The diminished winter still coils away, tight into herself, as if planning for something more spectacular, a storm better stated, to force us indoors again, huddled to the hearth.
I have heard many of these stories from folks who had experienced many harsh and long winters, and been beaten down by the sudden outbursts of a winter thought defeated.
I listen for the sound of a wind twisting over the lake. Now I only hear the plaintive cries of the gulls over a bit of open lake. Might it be that the storm predicted, for later this week, will damn us for the rest of a reclaimed March? Just when the bare ground of old earth shows along the embankment of this Bog, it might soon be iced-over in a cruel portrait of nature’s revenge. Such is the artistry of a season scorned. Such is the misery of mortal folly, that we could naively believe, as fact, history won’t repeat.

MARCH ARRIVED WITH THE GENTLENESS OF A LAMB
One would be forgiven today, for wandering aimlessly beneath this universal, cloudless, blue canopy of late winter sky. After the dusting of snow over the past few days, this is one of those temptations the watcher in the woods can not resist. The prognosticators are already announcing a particularly early spring, for our region of Ontario, and few of us care to diminish their soothsaying, and have blind trust they’ve picked up their information from natural signs, not simply wishful, fraudulent intent. Might there be profit in good news?
It is true than I can easily become lost in this ethereal, poetic contemplation, taking these crunching steps out into the woods. I can easily take myself away from the work-a-day world, and lose myself in the merging of wonderland and actuality, where dreamers find their ecstasy, but realists measure it all proportionally. Until that is, they find themselves imagining things, as if this portal within nature, even in real terms, has unspecified enchantments that need to be investigated. I’ve always been a realist with an annoying penchant for bending the hard and fast, usurping the logical, and straightforward, just to get a better view.
Escaping here this afternoon at times seems irresponsible, when I think of the many capitalist-chasing projects awaiting my attention with our family business. Yet I know in my heart, that whatever time I steal here now, restoring my heart and soul in such a tranquil spot, will return to me in unfettered, plentiful ambition later on, when the sun goes down and chores are yet to complete. My wife often wonders aloud if I shouldn’t have been a vagabond instead, a hobo, riding the rails to places unknown. I know she’s kidding yet strangely I think about this wanderlust myself, and whether in another life, I was some stalwart navigator racing the high seas, or an adventurer challenging bush, prairie and mountain-side toward some unspecified discovery. We all wonder, from time to time, what we did in a previous existence, if there was one at all. Why do we quest? What truths do we look for, that will make us enlightened. Each of us has a different reason, I think, yet sometimes we cross paths, and wonder silently, if fate has intervened.
Out on this bogside, I cherish being without phone or electronic messenger of any kind, and only a few feet along this path, the frustrations of the day become so insignificant and untimely; a nuisance I can do without......just as a hobo might relate of a profession once that was too demanding and confining. My open rail is this keyboard , when I finally return to my office, overlooking the woodlands......it is no trouble at all then, to settle in this too low chair, at this cluttered, note-posted desk, and feel such excitement about my walk, and what I had seen while outside. It doesn’t have to be a profound experience, in order for me to be able to write again. Rather it has to be the refresher in my day, reminding me that there is nothing at all more important in the world, than this relationship with our nature. It is at our center, our core, and we would subtly diminish to an unremarkable dust without its interplay and cycle, yet our arrogance toward it, means we fail within, what we consider, the vast accomplishments of adaptive mankind.
As I bask in the brilliant light, engulfing this hollow of landscape, above Muskoka Bay, it is impossible to feel removed from the cycle of days, the seasons, this evolution of landscape and atmosphere, so vibrantly electric and powerful. And when I hear the dull, thudding rumble of the earth movers this spring, I will tremble in soul, to think of a place like this, being bulldozed in the name of progress. The painful etching of the urban mantra that crackles with its own inherent horror.... "expansion for the prosperity of us all!" It is then that I wish a great sweeping storm would thunder overhead, and in a great calamity, strike hard against the folly of presumed self-divinity..... warn that desecration to a beautiful world, for the sake of profit, is the work of the false prophet, who cares not for survival of mankind or the environment, but that its exploitations be plentiful and self satisfying. It could only be the damnation of greed that would consume the qualities of earth that sustain us, the hopeless gamble that the alchemy of commerce, will arrive like a thundering cavalry, to save us from our excesses in the end.
My wife asked me one day, after she found me leaning against a sunny tree, while looking out over The Bog quite dreamily, "Are you trying to take root?" I thought about it for several moments, without answering, and with a wee wink of the eye, suggested something like, "Wouldn’t that be something. My fortune however, as has proven many times in the past, would herald the man with the chainsaw to find me all plump and prime, and set about to make me into a window sill or a two by four.....a hockey stick or a bit of flooring in a bathroom.
It is a day with endless possibilities. A day for contemplation and self discovery. It’s a day for youngsters to make the best of the remaining snow, slide on the puddle-ice, and toss a few poorly directed snowballs at innocent bystanders. It’s a day to stay outdoors, bask awhile in some portal away from the still chilled air. And it’s a time to admire nature for what it is......a survivor, a nurturer, a soul-mate, a temptress and an enforcer. It is truth personified. Reality actualized. The contradiction between reality and the supernatural, the poet and the painter, the explorer and the wanderer, and all the mutual satisfaction in between.
We are free to take root if we choose.

WINTER SNOW, WILL IT EVER GO?
No sooner had the words been published, in the last entry of Walden, than winter, feeling undoubtedly slighted for being critiqued as "toothless," had returned with a new vigor of snow and cold wind, ...... so poetic of comebacks and revenge, against those prognosticators thinking her retired and unresponsive; particularly with so much time remaining for her to play and decorate the landscape, before the spring arrives in earnest by late March.
Wise oldtimers, from around here, will tell you late-season snow is what rots the existing mantle, although I have no scientific proof of this at my beck and call. Presumably they are right, and this is one of a few more snowfalls, that will presumably reduce the existing canopy double-quick. Yet it’s hard to look at this most appealing of local scenes, attired so brilliantly in new snow, and think about anything as unpleasant in optics as "decay" or "rotting away." I suppose in a way, I would enjoy the sun instead, melting the existing icy burden, rather than needing more snow, to shovel of course, before we get to bare, mucky ground. In fact, there wasn’t all that much snow anyway, because I can still see the imprint of my boots from a stroll the day before. So it was hardly a major inconvenience to any one with a laneway or sidewalk to shovel. It’s at this time of year when even the snow out on The Bog appears duller, and with less sparkle, and a closer examination, with a clump in one’s hand, would reveal a considerable amount of dirt and other unidentified bits and pieces. The snow absorbs a lot of atmospheric impurities over a winter season. A lot of it is windblown and may contain everything from industrial pollution to granules from all our eroding asphalt shingles.
I love each of the seasons and I find no serious disadvantage to waiting a littler longer for spring’s triumphant return. Despite our family having one of the busiest and most stressful winters in decades, due to illness and unforseen circumstance, I have been so pleased to come home from unpleasant business, to walk these moonlit, snowy old woods......... that have given all of us comfort and pleasure for so many years here at Birch Hollow. It is but a small bit of hinterland amidst the urban environs yet it might as well be Algonquin Park, for all the generous respite and inspiration it provides us daily, as we watch over the birds flitting about in the tree-tops, the deer meandering the far ridge of the lowland, see the squirrels chasing one another through the shadows on the snow, and see friends and neighbors strolling with their children and pets, lost in the peace and enchantments of the Muskoka landscape. In our case, having been forced to contend with the sudden loss of a family member, just standing out on the brink of the hillside, looking down at the expansive lowland, and feeling the afternoon sun against our chests, our faces, and being a part of such a beautiful natural scene, has made us feel so much more at ease, and resolved to "soldier-on" as my father used to say. It is a healing place and a locale that has given us hope and comfort at our lowest, heart-sick moments.
Despite the recent accumulation of snow across this woodland, it is not enough to muffle the tell-tale sounds of the melt. All around me today, are the tiny invisible waterways working down from the elevation to The Bog, and there is gurgling now at the base of a giant leaning pine but I can not see the melt-water’s turbulent decline. There is more snow predicted, and possibly an event of torrential rain two days from now, as March officially assumes the helm of its earth. It may well be that this countryside is unburdened of its snow cover by the third week of March, if the temperatures rise as some sage individuals predict.
As always, even though I lament about the inconvenience of snow and cold, it will sadden me to watch this particular winter conclude. It’s a funny thing, this human nature, that we can actually become emotionally attached, to a time which has knocked us down emotionally, hurt us physically, and been otherwise injurious in one of many forms. Yet like saying farewell to an adversary, we must, at the same time, acknowledge that our lives have changed forever as a result of this imposed liaison; and strangely we can not help but wonder, like a lost, lonely soul, if we would feel its embrace ever again. So as much as this winter has been a burden, as time and events can burden us all in life, it has been a season like all others, in the cycle that will soon bring spring, then summer, fall, and winter again.......just as it will generate life, age and then demise, as we spin through the universe, in a blue, white, brown and green sphere, in that perpetual mystery begging the question..... "so what’s it all about?"
I shall consult my copy of Thoreau’s, "Walden Pond," to see if he had the answer.

THE CHANGING SCENE AT BIRCH HOLLOW
The tiny creek that snakes black and silver through this snow-covered lowland, is flooding over its banks due to the recent early thaw. A substantial snowfall in predicted for our area within the next 24 hours but it could just as easily be rain. This would cause substantial flooding, of our area of the hollow, and rapidly decline the two feet of snow that has covered this part of Muskoka since December. It has been a gentle winter and it makes me suspicious, and at the same time validates that there is something ominous lurking out over the Great Lakes, to make up for the shortfalls of a traditional Canadian winter. It is nice here now, to look out and see open patches of earth, where the sun has melted ice away over the past four days of warm afternoons. I make it a personal philosophy not to wish away time, as it is precious, yet it is hard to quell the inner spirit when the first signs of spring begin, most often, by the middle of March to the first of April. I’m pretty sure though, winter will make a raging return, as she always does, just when we get the urge to down-dress from bulky coats, toques and mitts. Premature mild weather in the midst of a Muskoka winter, can herald cruel punishment when bitter winds and drifting snow, show up before and after, the festive Easter Parade.
There is a great deal of movement around the Bog this afternoon. Deer have been parading along the embankment on the other side of the basin, and there are at least three or more cataracts audible, from my vantage point on the early part of the path. Crows are calling one another about something or other and squirrels are leaping overhead in pairs, a high-wire race to a food source I suppose. I can imagine we might soon even hear the gulls over open water on the lakes, and the honks of geese flying over the Bog in point formation, and it might also be possible to get down the slope, in the next several days, to my creekside portal, to see more clearly the tiny waterfalls as they tumble through the mounds of sodden field grass, and flow silently under the limbs of fallen birches covered in wraps of old vines. It is a most pleasant place in the spring. A perfect hide-away for the writer to wander and analyze; lazily I will remind, as one must be patient and take it all in, experiencing the subtle nuances of regeneration..... new life on top of the old. I ponder if I might also experience a spring resurgence, cleansing through these old bones and veins, even sprout new hair on my balding crown., just by standing in the current of this all-consuming life-force energy, merging of nature’s earth and sky. The spirit, however, has most definitely been reborn hastily, prematurely, and it refuses to wait a moment longer......demanding quite aggressively to be whisked away on those adventures, so well suited to ambitious vapors of the netherworld. I fear this detachment, much as Peter Pan felt uncomfortably alone when he lost his shadow.
Soon these tree-tops will be filled with birds on their way to and from places unknown, and I’ve entered these woods many times, to find the environs quite busy and sound-filled,....... especially on sunny spring afternoons, when the golden light so cheerfully illuminates that which has been dark and cold for the past four months. It is a din, a hub of activity that I thoroughly adore, and the sun beams on these gnarled old writer’s hands, takes the pain away for a contenting while. The damp and cold inspire aches constantly, yet I would rather suffer the pain than give up writing. My wife caught me one day, sound asleep, in a half leaning, semi-sitting position against a sun-drenched trunk of a towering evergreen. I don’t think I’d been there for hours because there wasn’t much pain in my back and legs from such a compromised position...... but what time I had been slumbering was wonderfully restoring to the body none the less. I won’t brag to my wife that I come here to daydream, because she might then offer me a well intentioned, helpful list of progressive chores to keep me at task. I’d sooner keep my hiatus here at the Bog far from detection......because no matter how sincere my explanation that writers need to be inspired (and that this wonderful moor inspires me), it is interpreted rather to the opposite degree......that this writer/husband is simply lazy, and full of folly at the household economy’s disservice. It’s just better to wander away when the tasks are complete, and keep it a private matter between watcher and woods.
There is a powerful aura settling over this landscape today, and it is almost impossible to pull oneself away from being engaged by a late season transition, apparently quite desirous of benefactors like me. It has felt like late March for weeks now, and it makes me wonder what it will be like a month from now, seeing as we have been privileged to such warm and calm now. The watcher today doesn’t experience much fear and trembling, as the beams of sunlight evaporate ice into a wafting mist over the hollow. I can remember standing in this same spot earlier in the winter, and hearing the most unsettling roar of twisting down wind, smashing against the forest like a huge hammer, knocking venerable old trees, three times my age, into an oblivion of splintered wood. There were snow drifts up to my waist and the cold was intense, dangerous, threatening to life and limb. And it was driven by a thundering, cutting wind-force that brought an unbridled revenge, to those who wondered if winter had forgotten the time.
I suppose I feel a little guilty here now, taking advantage of winter’s weaknesses. It’s much more difficult to find profound events in this forest.....without the rage of winter. There’s a subtle resignation today that the writer should wax poetic instead, and like Robert Frost, write about leaning birches instead of the tumultuousness of weather yet to come.
How pleasant for the plaintive heart, the bleeding soul, to feel the soothing accommodation of this tranquil place on earth, and to settle into a sunny patch, against a supportive pine, and feel the strains of anticipation, decline like melt-water into a strong current of deep irrelevance. I will allow myself this lapse in preparation, and think happy thoughts about enchanted places......and give not one stray reservation that it all might soon end, with an arctic-inspired blizzard. I would hate to ruin this harmonious, ethereal vigil with ugly anticipation, about the next bout of winter which might, on a whim, clench down hard upon us with her icy grasp once more......with nary a warning. I dare say to freeze over paradise, just to show she can!

THESE LAST MOODY DAYS OF FEBRUARY
There’s a detectable inner vibration, this morning, from all things buried beneath this failing mantle of old snow. It’s the unmistakable rumbling, in the dark earth, from all the life-forms anxious for that seasonal drip-down, of melt water, to set them free. A warm February, we are lulled into that false security of expecting winter, to be over quite hastily, before its rightful, God-given time, you might say,....and resolved for yet another emergence from hibernation and stalemate. This is a mistake, of course, as these myriad ferns and wildflowers, mushrooms and insects, have been tricked into the same complacency as us weak-willed mortals, such that they would willingly expose themselves, at the first opportunity of spring light, and then be dashed in cycle by the next wave of Muskoka winter. Legendary for being quite unpredictable and harsh. Still having this sense that spring is stirring, not only in the atmosphere but beneath my feet, is indeed a welcome respite if nothing else.
The warm temperatures have caused a considerable melt and any new snow that falls in the overnight period, has diminished by the early afternoon. Those pensive mortals, who despise the winter months, can be seen more regularly now, poking heads out their neatly appointed shelters, to see if they’ve outlasted inclement weather. Like the early buds and reckless ferns that poke through the winterscape early, a change of weather within hours, can bury this place in ice and snow for much of the next month. The ice on the lakes can last out the entire month of April, if it has been a particularly cold season with less snow. I too can get gently cradled by thoughts of an early spring but I might walk out here tomorrow morning and find the trail drifted over by a sudden flurry of snowfall.......and then be burdened by the wickedness that is a Canadian winter.
Without doubt, it is this temptation of early spring that inspires the imagination toward parallel recklessness,...... to bud, blossom forth, set ourselves free to wander, regardless of the setbacks that might now be spiraling undetected in a bitter west wind, building over the expansive Great Lakes. The voyeur, at this moment, worries less about the future than the width and breadth of this present hiatus from the coldest, harshest days of oldtime winter. It is easy to daydream and that is my specialty after a long week of writing in a stuffy office, in company of our cats that also can’t wait to be liberated from indoors. Ah, how wonderful to bask in a pool of sunlight, beating down on an exposed rock face, to make a lingering watcher, feel unfettered and alive.
The trickle of water down a pine trunk, is as pleasing as if a harpist played at my side. The warm, damp wind, has that nostalgic feel that reminds me of childhood, and the million soakers I got on the way, to and from school each day, as the spring and I collided pleasantly in adventure. My mother Merle used to be furious when I got home and left wet footprints on the freshly polished kitchen floor. Even if I wore boots, I could manage to slip into a pool a centimeter deeper than the height of my boots’ best intentions.
I know it’s wrong to unwisely attach spring-time values, to an old and lingering winter but it’s virtually impossible not to allow the spirit a little down time, puddling about and roaming this sunlit birch hollow, like the vapor of goodwill it is.......hoping only it will return when satisfied, to join with this tired old body...... tickled in fact, just to survive for our mutual enjoyment of one more beautiful spring.

WIND AND SUN, SNOW AND ICE, WHAT CALMING PARADISE
The artist might find the wind too strong, the sunglow too intense this afternoon, beating down upon this basking old woodland, of gnarled, venerable friends of the earth. Tall pines seem more immense this moment, poking high into the azure sky. The snow mantle is a sea of twinkling prisms, and the ice appears so deeply black against the enclosure of sculpted white. The painter might feel intimidated by all the truths in this clearly exposed winterscape, where vulnerable creatures of fur and feather, emerge starkly to their predators. They have no place to hide in this stunning light...... with just skinny grey shadows bleeding-out from leaning birches that can not possibly conceal prey from adversarial pursuit. It is free of dishonesty. Free of interpretation....."it is too clear, too exposed, too demanding," poses the irritated artist, as he packs up his kit, and trudges back out the path toward the cabin. Possibly fearing he might also be exposed and hunted. Yet in this bestowed honesty of winter landscape, is the poetry of reclamation. It is the place in this universe, where imperfection is irrelevant, as all is beautiful in the grand merging chaos we see, the amazing sense of order and selection we can not see.....but suspect of nature’s defiance to reveal all inner truths,...... of seasons and evolutions, until by the grace of her first green sprouts that push toward this divine light, we are exposed to its new reality.....the first cascade of water to crack this ice-covered slope, flowing heavier each melting day, into a powerful cataract to force change upon the entombed lowland. Nothing stays the same. Even now in this frozen moment, ice crystals fracture like glass against glass, from its own magnification of light and heat. It self destruction for the regeneration of something else. It does not interest the painter, who cherishes the rage of wind and snow, the inherent art of the winter storm.
It is a calm not wasted on the watcher in the woods, who consumes the peace and tranquility as the thirsty wanderer lusts for the oasis pond. I have arrived just now in a place of raw perfection that asks nothing of the voyeur but acceptance and passive enjoyment. There is no expectation for any random interpretation, whether by paint and canvas, or by heart and imagination. I am able to lean back against this towering evergreen, and feel so very small in this great old world, a mere speck of contrast in this illumination that radiates in a glow, more intense than I have ever witnessed. It pains the eyes, to look out over this brilliance, reflecting back like glowing spears toward the sky, and not feel the ache deep in the skull. This hollow of landscape usually presents in mid February, as poetically dull and listless, the mantle white having deteriorated in the mid-winter melt, to earth tones and slithering black creeks, winding down along grass-covered knolls.
It is a vibrant place, in this contradiction of deep silence, and suspended animation, where for a time, even my pulse seems to have ceased. Yet I sustain to watch the afternoon sun mature, and this yellow glow turn golden, the shadows become tarnished silver,...... and the warmth I felt earlier, has been compromised by the chill wind coming off the frozen lake. It is a precious opportunity afforded me, to watch the mature season slowly losing its grip over the wildflowers and curious creatures of the earth, suspended precariously beneath in their frozen habitat. The coils of new ferns ready to emerge into the sunglow sometime soon. It is, as I feel today, a bright hope eternal that I might, by nature’s grace, evolve here yet one more spring,.... to be a part of this grand revival.....this grander illusion. As the artist may return to capture a more contrasting nature, to his liking, alas I shall remain here in spirit, to cast poetry onto his palette, as silver onto gold paints subtly dull but historic. My footfall now crunches in the hardening snow. Farewell.

An Endless Horizon - A Vision of a Lifetime to Now
Last evening the starscape over The Bog was breathtakingly beautiful. It was a typically bitter February night, the wood snapping all across the woodlot but it was the kind of invigorating environment that encourages one to drink it all in.....enjoy it just in case the rest of the moody second month of the year, provides a succession of storms for which it is known. This morning the air is as clear and refreshing, the sky so blue it beckons us outdoors as if there is some great revelation in this clear, wonderful atmosphere, making us feel the universal connection.....that heavenly feeling, a nirvana about the untold possibilities for the adventurer.....and no earthly reason to box-in one’s eager imagination.
It is on these rare winter days of sun and snow, magnificent blue cloudless sky that the woodland trails pull me onward regardless of what else I may be committed or occupied. I could stand out on the ridge here and be splendidly mesmerized, watching the leaning birches and giant evergreen contrast against the sunglow reflection of those trillion diamond lights, off the mantle of snow, covering so neatly over the picturesque lowland. The wind causes the dried field grasses that rise above the snow crust, to brush together momentarily, and without the chatter of overhead birds and a squirrel annoyed by my intrusion, there would be an intense hush, a sudden silence, a subtle peace even from the bustle, the typical din and earth rumbling of trucks and snow-movers, characteristic of the hometown beginnings of a new work week. It is a moment of reckoning I wish to share with every urban-weary soul, who has become painfully used to jack hammers and earth movers, jet engines whining overhead, and sirens coming from all directions. This silence, this scene in front of me presently, heals the wounds lashed upon the soul, the result of the jagged teeth of frantic pace.....unrelenting life ambitions. After only minutes here, leaning up against the venerable old evergreen, I can feel the gradual unburdening of responsibilities, and if I’m not careful an hour or more will pass, the soothing sun on my face and the glorious silence, removing me effortlessly, from the work week schedule. I will surely catch up on my chores but I will always long for these hiatus periods, wandering this snow-packed trail to nowhere in particular. And this is my passion. To stop when the vista beckons, or there is something unique I wish to examine more closely. Certainly not because I am forced to march from point to point, by some ridiculous command, in a set time for a set purpose.....and the only details I can see are what fall into that perimeter of budgeted time and distance; before I must hustle to the next appointment. Humbug, I say! Alas I am disciplined to be undisciplined when it comes to my strolls in this remarkable, ever-changing Muskoka woodland. And I see nothing at all to feel compromised about. After returning to my office, well, I have no shortage of observations to make via this keyboard. For the writer me, I don’t deny for one second of time that it is the good and vibrant graces of a boundless, limitless nature that continues to nurture the watcher in the woods.......and certainly not the rough and intrusive sounds of mankind chipping away at the earth, to impose something else we don’t need.
To not experience this heaven on earth, is to rob the soul of its nourishment. To ignore this enchanting splendor of winter, is to disregard the true dimension of life itself; the evolving seasons of our cycle, from birth to death, as stark reality of all living things. It is within this illumination and insight that we discover our needs are more elaborate than money and accomplishment can afford. Yet when we pause, and look up from our freshly plowed "straight furrows," as David Grayson initially thought was important, as noted in his book "Adventures in Contentment," the world, the universe it rotates within, is the most precious appreciation to, as they say, the meaning of life.
I have returned from my morning stroll invigorated and excited to write again....though I must confess that even the tap of these keys now seems so atrociously intrusive....and sound nothing at all, like the wondrous symphony of wind and field grass, and snapping cedar in the February cold.

WHAT WE SHOULDN’T MISS ABOUT A WINTER’S DAY
What a great shame, a sin, a betrayal of our instincts, to watch a day unfold from the foggy abstraction, the distance of stress, worry and hurry. How many folks will drive speedily past the beautiful winter scenes between home and destination and back again. What a crime against life, to ignore these tranquil scenes that afford us, each and every one, an opportunity to escape, even for a moment the rigors of the work day. We have become desensitized to so much today that it has become a danger to our respective health and welfare. It’s as if life was meant to be frenzied and frayed, the pace intended to be wickedly fierce and unforgiving. It’s nonsense. Clearly mankind has forgotten the importance of such beauty and allure of nature. We have become a population of zombies, wandering the earth at the command of beepers and gadgets that keep us tethered to the work place longer and longer. It is that unreserved commitment of soul that is sacrilege in this wonderful world, this amazing life. A sacrifice that his killing our humanity molecule by molecule. How fettered we’ve become as a race trying to survive and prosper. It is at the expense of soul, because it is within nature we will find the truth of ignorance, and the ravages inflicted by indifference to our purpose on earth. On our death beds we will appreciate, only momentarily, that the pursuit of wealth and success is invisible at this final accounting. Instead of nurturing our souls and engaging nature as the great healer, we push on to new and more incredible extremes that are impossible to sustain. And when finally, one day, the weary traveler, the work-a-holic, pauses momentarily to casually gaze upon a scene, such as I see every morning from my front window looking out over The Bog, it is often too late to heal entirely mind, body and spirit. Being enslaved by society’s interest in achievement, at the expense of self discovery and pleasure, is a damnation of greed. It is in these snowy woodlands today that the weary voyeur can find inspiration and peace beyond anything man made, man imposed, man inflicted. Away from the false truths, this well trodden path affords a comfortable view over the snow-laden cedars and birches, the towering evergreens along the horizon and willowy saplings that dot the landscape with such an interesting contrast of silver and green. A few moments here, watching out over the sparkling snow in this strong afternoon sun, hearing the trickle of melt water down the little creeks that run toward the lake, and being pleasantly haunted by the windsong in the tree-tops, one can feel peace of mind applied everso gently upon injury.
I watch through the day this traffic parade, and I do ponder how many passersby take but a few moments to glance at the magnificence of their surroundings. Do they recognize that this is the hinterland of Ontario, the rural clime, with a greatly reduced urban conundrum? Or is it true that technology and its advances in communication, have unfairly imposed an urban lifestyle on the dwellers of the countryside......without anyone really thinking about how life has changed in rural Canada, where the urban-weary used to escape the impositions of technology, and the long time rural folk were satisfied with less convenience but more of what they loved. And that always had a lot to with family, quality of life, and wide open spaces. With their headsets on, and management devices in every available pocket, laptops and positioning devices, ready to engage, having a snowy landscape sprawling along the country roadway doesn’t appear to be the wonderful distraction it has always been, living here in Muskoka. It’s wrong. It’s just wrong. Especially when our homegrown youngsters are equally distracted and urbanized despite the fact they life in the heartland of one of the most beautiful districts on earth. Is this reason enough that local politicians and developers should be concerned? To me it is, of course. I don’t really suspect that a naysayer, historical, traditional type like me, will have too much impact when it comes to preserving this beautiful lifestyle we have had in these snowy, tranquil woods for long and long. Some say it’s progressive to embrace technology, and what it can do for us is a blessing of productivity and connectedness in a shrinking modern world. Well, what it has done to us, in a country nutshell, is remove us from the true appreciation of the nature surrounding us, and that is dangerous to quality of life no matter how you look at it. When those who embrace this concept arrive at that last moment of life, will they remember a romp they once had through a beautiful meadow or lakeland, a canoe traverse of a sparkling Muskoka lake, or a business meeting that turned an enormous project into an equally enormous profit. Think about it!

SUCH A GENTLE, PEACEFUL, REMARKABLE DAY
I read in a local publication recently, how our regional government is planning to seek our opinions (in the near future) about the kind of future we wish for Muskoka. While I’m always delighted to find any government body that appears even modestly interested in what the public has to say, I’m skeptical there’s any room at the table for someone like me, who might wish instead to refuse development for a rather lengthy hiatus period, versus encourage urban sprawl further into our beautiful hinterland in the name of progress. I firmly believe we have sacrificed a great deal of our environmental future already in this region, by accepting unnecessary development for the sake of appearing progressive and dynamic. And yet when the local hospitals face serious cut-backs in services, and have an uncertain future ahead, where are the progressives when you need them. They’re hiding, that’s where, hoping it will all blow over. You see, much of the salesmanship to developers, coming from government in our region, is based, as security, on the fact we have a competent medical community and a number of health care facilities close at hand. In the case of luring retirement community investors and citizens to our area of the province, there have been many mistruths presented, such that a hospital closure would be as remote a possibility as a recession. Guess what? The same folks who denied we were going into a recession, over a year ago, are likely the same ones who would argue that nothing could ever compromise our local health care services. So if my opinion is ever sought, which I’m not counting on, I would draw to their attention that greed and speculation mixed with poor insight and projection, is what has endangered Muskoka all along.....and given a writer like me reason to doubt whether public opinion will ever outweigh the determination of developers to strip, bulldoze and build upon every open foot of paradise. It would be nice to think that, for the record, some of our over-development concerns would be noted for posterity at least, so historians in the future can look back and see "what went wrong with public policy" and how money speculation, as a holy grail, sold out another natural gift for profit.
As I look out from Birch Hollow today upon a snow-laden Bog, (one that we almost lost several years ago to development interest), I only wish it was possible to more fully explain to those in power, those with money and influence, just how restorative a place like this can be, if only, one would take the time to walk its paths.....free of cell phones, pagers, and deadlines; and discover that there is an inner truth here about life, death and eternity, beckoning rediscovery. Alas I fear that business will continue to get in the way of objectivity, the kind of insightfulness that might lead local politicians to guard our natural resources with the same zeal as they worry about the health and welfare of their own families. The injuries to our region, the compromises to our way of life in rural Canada, affects us all in one form or another.......and if you have read any of my outdoor writing whatsoever, you will appreciate that destroying our landscape for quick profit would have given this neighborhood in our little town, another row of houses to stare at, at the expense of the natural environs of an important wetland that filters run-off water which eventually enters Lake Muskoka. Was the fight to save this wetland, The Bog, worth it? Just think if we could save many more important natural areas because they’re not just environmentally sensitive but because they are vital to our way of life in the hinterland.....where being surrounded by healthy forests and waterways is good for the heart and healing to the soul. Is there any room for an old poet, a weary philosopher in this new initiative to map out the future of Muskoka? I think not. Unless of course I can make this all an economic stimulus! Heart and soul.....well being, peace of mind, inspiration not found in a bank roll? Preposterous!
Most recently my father, Ted Currie Sr., passed away in his 85th year. When I was ten or eleven years old, existing in an urban neighborhood in Burlington, Ontario, my father jumped at a chance to work for a lumber company in the Town of Bracebridge in this beautiful District of Muskoka. He didn’t want his son growing up in the city, as he had, in Toronto’s Cabbagetown, one of the toughest neighborhoods in Canada. I can’t explain what the move has meant to me over the decades other than to say it brought me to this present Walden at Birch Hollow.....a quiet little street abutting this tranquil woodlands not so far from the main street of Gravenhurst. He lived his final days in an equally picturesque spot on the Muskoka River, near the Bass Rock rapids, and I know that he never had even a sliver of doubt, about his 1966 decision to move his small family north.....a calculated adventure to a region of open spaces and thriving forests, tumbling waters and oh so much potential for escaping the workday stresses. When we received the call that Ed had passed away, I looked out upon the snowscape covering over The Bog, and I thanked him, spirit to spirit, for giving me this precious experience of life in this important ruraldom on earth.

WALDEN IN THE DRIFTING SNOW
My woodland journeys were on hiatus over the past month and a half, as my father’s worsening health condition kept us close to the hospital in Bracebridge. Today, on the cusp of the year’s second month, is the first opportunity I’ve had to venture to the edge of The Bog, to admire the fresh snow of the night before. It is truly an uplifting scene, and several passersby I encountered on my short walk, seem equally uplifted, as if the new snow was just the brightness needed to carry on into what has been a dull, bleak and rainy winter thus far.
My father, "Ed" died on the 20th of January, after a short illness which followed-up what we believe was a minor stroke in mid-December. It was a terrible period of uncertainty for him and us, and it also meant we had to move his furnishing to our already cramped abode, as it was apparent early on, that this 85 year old veteran sailor would not be returning to his apartment in Bracebridge. While I have stopped at the end of our lane many times, longing to push out into the woods for a wee respite, there never seemed a moment when the demands of health care, moving, transporting and sleep left any loose moments for dilly-dallying around these leaning old birches and gnarly pines that have always been my escape from daily burdens.
We have now finished most of the shifting of furniture and dishware, pictures and ornaments, boxes and boxes of them, and it has thusly left us a few quiet hours to think about the whirlwind Christmas season that wasn’t very merry at all. As for my father, the confluence of medical conditions beyond the stroke, made recovery quite impossible. He had enjoyed a good and long life, and after living almost two years beyond my mother, who died in 2008, it was obvious in those long hospital conversations, that while he was sorry to leave us, he wasn’t frightened of what fate had in store. Ed wasn’t a particularly spiritual guy and yet he was abundantly aware of his wife’s presence...... just beyond the reality of which he was tethered in this mortal coil. When Ed finally passed that early winter evening, we felt that strange but welcome comfort we humans experience at the end of difficult struggles. I can remember standing out on the walk beside our homestead, just after we had received the call from the hospital, and looking up into the winter sky, and feeling such universality and liberation, as if I was also a heavenward spirit in that angelic nirvana of strong faith and unfettered spirit. It was an unearthly but welcome feeling, a subtle validation at that precise moment, that we are foolish to deny experience ends when the body dies.
This morning the woodlands are heavenly, and beg me to trudge through the snow that has drifted over our region during the night. Even a few steps along this path is enough for the watcher to be enveloped by a most striking solitude, as if you are the only one allowed here at this moment in time......and that there is something important within to observe and understand, as if quite frankly, invited into a sort of heaven on earth. Of course this small bit of hinterland amidst the urban conundrum has always been a touch of heaven for me, a place so restorative of heart and soul that on any day of a typical week, I will retreat here seven or eight times each day just to absorb the ambience of this tiny plot of paradise. My family always knows where to find me.
I have not been able to spend much time writing these past few weeks, and I hope now to be able to return to many of the projects that were suspended from mid-December. I had many good visits with my father, before his final serious decline, and I know he would want me to return to the work and travels I adore. While he seldom referred to, or wanted to discuss my work as a writer, unless there was a newspaper column or editorial of which he particularly approved, or otherwise, I was quite speechless, when going through his papers at home, I found many clippings from publications I wrote for, tucked neatly into books and albums on his bedside bookshelf. I don’t think I could have had any greater inheritance, than to have found that he did have an interest in what his son was penning for all these years. To that point, I confess, it was the one question I had always wanted to pose to my father, but the timing never seemed quite right. I suppose I thought he would have offered a stinging critique of my work, and that frightened me dearly. Writers can be kind of fragile, and seeing as we have usually suffered for our craft, particularly in monetary consideration, I didn’t want our relationship to suffer as well from brute honesty. Yet I’m kind of glad I didn’t ask him because obviously, it would have been insulting, based on the clippings he kept. Maybe he would have been disappointed that I had doubts about his respect for my work. Alas, my deepest fears were put to rest. I thanked him in thought.
The scene across the lane is mesmerizing at times, the wind off the lake is shaking the fresh snow from the evergreen boughs, in huge billowy plumes of spiraling ice crystals. The sound of the wind washing down over the Bog is pleasantly haunting but unceasingly calming to the work-a-day mortal, stopping by the forest on a snowy afternoon.....just for a wee glance. I expect poet Robert Frost, my favorite bard, might have found something interesting and profound to write about in this enchanted woodland now, those leaning old birches remind me of the burdens of a long life. Equally, they remind me of the successes and milestones that are both beautiful, and eternal, as one life generates into another. Soon more snowfall will replace what has been shaken from the long willowy boughs. And these few footfalls toward the interior, will be filled in once more, yet I know the nuances of this old forest in my heart, after so many miles and hours spent packing down the trail.....in contemplation of a good life. I will never forget my way, in life or the hereafter of which, in this gentle place, I have found a portal divine, from which a final chapter has been inspired.....but alas, it reads as a beginning just as life cycles eternal, as the seasons caress this landscape......soon to show the emerging heads of spring wildflowers pushing up through the frost.
Godspeed old friend.

OUR WALDEN IN THE DEEP OF WINTER
Over the past two days Muskoka has been graced, enchanted and so grandly illuminated by a most soothing brightness, the sunglow warmly bathing this little rise of topography above the hollow of "The Bog." After many days of bitter cold and an unrelenting wind, sculpting the snow into deep drifts throughout the lowland, it was so pleasant to just stand for a moment, in this restorative glow......still feeling the chill of winter but not the bleakness of mid January.
Today has already shown a rigorous return to winter with blowing snow and a colder snap to the wind. There won’t be much melting today. Yet what an interesting collection of days to commence 2010. There’s a pronounced solitude this morning that invites the explorer to wander the woodlands. A calm prevails despite the spirals of snow that touch down like whirlwinds, and then disappear as suddenly as they arrive like ghosts of the haunted moor. The voyeur will not be in any discomfort out on this wind-etched ridge, as the temperature is not yet low enough to sting the skin. By later this afternoon, we are warned the climate is supposed to change drastically, and we will all need to beware of exposed skin and the danger of frostbite. Now it is just a magnificent sojourn from the busy day.....a chance afforded by path and nature to observe mid-winter in the snow-laden woods of South Muskoka.
I have had very few walks in the woods these past few weeks, as our family has tended the needs of my father who suffered a debilitating stroke on the 15th of December. He has the same name as this writer, the name also of my grandfather, Edward John Currie, known simply as "Ted." It was my father who first introduced me to the District of Muskoka, on a trip to Bruce Lake in 1965. He liked the region so much, we moved here less than a year later. In the late winter of 1966, I officially became a resident of Bracebridge, Ontario. It was my paradise almost immediately.....once I shook of my urban barnacles, and from an early age I began writing about our adoptive home-district. Despite many set-backs staying employed in the hinterland region of Ontario, my father vowed we would stay in this amazingly beautiful area, even if it demanded extreme compromise and compliance with the jobs available. I think he actually worked a short time as a waiter in a local tavern, before landing a job in his own field of expertise.....the lumber industry, where he was employed until retirement. It wasn’t easy and money in those first ten years, was pretty thin.....just enough to cover food, shelter and not much else. But then our vacations were really affordable. Afterall, we were residing year-round in one of Canada’s historic vacation retreats, well known since the mid 1800's. I had forests, rivers and lakes surrounding me, and for a lad who always had wanderlust coursing through his veins, it was pretty much a dream life. While it wasn’t easy for a transplanted urban kid to fit in, at the local public school, a few rough patches weren’t enough to scare me away from celebrating my new link with the great outdoors. It was the greatest gift my father could have given me because it led to a lifetime’s investment in Muskoka. While I’ve moved ten miles south from my first hometown, our Birch Hollow homestead in Gravenhurst has been an equally inspiring portal, from which to write, and live abundantly and prosperously with my two grown sons, Andrew and Robert (musicians) and my wife Suzanne, a local high school teacher. We’re all pretty committed here, to protecting the nature that nurtures us each day of the rolling year. We’ve been known to join activists to protect wetlands and forests, and maintain the well being of our water resources. That’s our debt to the region that we will continue to pay, happily, for as long as required .......and to vehemently insist, in our own activist perpetuity, that developers and local politicians respect the well being of a healthy eco-system......and place conservation and our global well-being above profit-at-all-cost enterprise.
I have most recently, of course, spent some time thinking about my father’s decision to move his family to Muskoka, and how enlightened he was to see that the city was changing, the stresses of urban life broadening, while the countryside offered a slower, gentler, less aggressive background for all of us to benefit from. Yet he was a Cabbagetown boy who had spent his entire life in one city or another. After one weekend stay at the Bruce Lake cottage, his opinion of city life was far outweighed by all things Muskoka. On a day like this, I can so clearly recall those first winter walks to Bracebridge Public School, stopping on the Hunt’s Hill bridge, to look over the black, winding course of the Muskoka River......one of the coldest spots on earth when the January wind was blowing west to east over the frigid water. Many a young, brave student placed the tip of their tongue on that cold steel railing, being suspended there until some kind passerby would assist. Winter in Muskoka has always offered a profound and generous inspiration for me, and I believe it all has to do with that very first winter in 1966, the year my father made a huge gamble about quality of life for his family. He made the right decision, and even though my mother Merle objected initially, she happily remained here for the balance of her life......enjoying so many walks with her grandchildren along this same stretch of Muskoka River, winter, summer, spring and fall.
It’s hard not to dwell on the possibility that my father will succumb to his illness, and leave in mortal form this beautiful place on earth. I don’t think his spirit will travel too far away from what was his own respite from urban stresses, and I believe that in this enchanted old woodland where we used to stroll, his spirit will continue to step along through storm and calm, beneath sunlit canopy and moonlight, maintaining that eternal foothold on a beautiful life of once. My father wasn’t a poet, an environmentalist, an activist or a dreamer for that matter. Those were the traits of his son, and activities he didn’t agree or disagree with, before his own careful, patient scrutiny. He was keenly aware of how paradise was being threatened by development and tolerated this writer’s penchant for getting involved in the fight for conservation. He was always supportive. He just wasn’t one to carry a placard. And he was always kindly and caring about the quality of hometown life, and he was very much part of the fabric of the community, whether it was in his own apartment complex, or in his daily travels where he enjoyed the company of many friends. There was no question in my mind, that he himself knew the move to Muskoka had improved all of our lives.
In the short time since beginning this little tome, I can already feel the change of temperature and hear the clicking of the radiators trying to keep up with the frigid new reality. The snowfall has intensified, and the dusting of snow has made the woodlands, abutting The Bog, the perfect portrait of a Muskoka winter. It is the postcard image that has long attracted visitors to our region. It is the subtle beckoning of nature, a simple, uncomplicated message, for all of us watchers in the woods, to pay attention to what is most important in life......and when I don my coat and hood, boots and bulky mitts soon after this last paragraph, I will trundle down this narrow lane, and feel again the great sanctuary, the amazing peace and restorative goodwill of the Muskoka lakeland.....and extend a wee prayer, and thanks, to Ted Currie Sr., the chap responsible for our family’s lifetime in the joyous embrace of nature.