WANDERING AIMLESSLY A PASSION OF MINE

Since my day to day writing-job was abandoned, when I took up antique hunting over journalism, back in 1990, I’ve rarely had writing jags as prolific and successful, as I’ve experienced, quite joyfully, for the past six months. I love to write. Sometimes I do get anchored down by certain subject material, and this year it was local politics. I’ve never been a political animal, as a hobbyist, and have shied away from spending too much time analyzing it.....even when I was working as an editor for the local press......I’d make no apology for fobbing off a political story to a reporter interested in local government. I used to fall asleep at council meetings.....as did four or five other district councillors bored to slumber by the proceedings.

. I’m particularly strict about what makes it to print, these days, and what is destroyed before public consumption. I’ve always worked in this fashion....much like an artist with sketches and paint boards that don’t measure up, and are destroyed to avoid any future appearance in the public domain. Starting about six years ago now, I began seeking out all my early notes and essays, and commenced shredding like a man possessed. I couldn’t even stand to read opening paragraphs. I knew what they were, and my only question was why I had hung onto them for so long. I don’t want my family to have to make these decisions later on, about what can be re-published, and what should make the waste bin. So I have cleansed the trial and error copy and although I had regrets, over the reduction generally, it was a good feeling to cut the rope, on what I have long perceived, to be a cumbersome anchor, encrusted in the barnacles of writing misadventure. Now I’m far more precise and with the computer, versus the old Underwood typewriter, I can zap what I don’t want, without crumbling one page of actual printed copy.

Today it’s so nice to wander out here through The Bog.....my English moor, and think about some new writing projects I want to pursue this spring and summer. I’ve joined a new publication, The Arrow, up in Almaguin, and I’m re-introducing some feature columns on artist Tom Thomson.....and his mysterious death on Algonquin’s Canoe Lake, in July 1917. I like starting new, even on semi-retired research projects, such as the Thomson story, which I began writing initially for the Muskoka Sun, back in the mid-1990's. It’s a great story with all kinds of strange twists. But it’s Thomson’s fabulous art, more than anything else, that compels me to stick with the story-line. Out here this morning, I can see a number of natural scenes Thomson might have found worthy of closer study, possibly a sketch or two. What a privilege it is then, to be so pleasantly immersed in the middle of remarkable nature.

Over the past six months I involved myself with political debate and local government-themed editorials, on my blog-sites, and it is such a departure for me to do so, that Suzanne felt compelled to remind me of the more inspiring things in life, I’ve been blowing off.......in order to write about tax increases, social neglect, over-governance, under governance, and general malaise at town hall here in Gravenhurst. Not that I don’t believe my work over the past six months, was worthwhile, just that Suzanne knows that if I drop my landscape writing for more than a couple of weeks at a time, there’s an obsessive-compulsive problem brewing. I need to wander these well trodden paths, and stand here looking out over all the fresh growth, the new and emerging life forms, that call this splendid little haven, their home. For the first few serious outings, through the wetland, I will still grumble about this or that, an objection from some newspaper account I’ve read, or kick at some fallen birch, as if it represents all the political problems we face in this municipality. You should see what I kick when disenchanted about provincial and federal politics. I have to remind myself constantly that what I’m kicking is some

critter’s habitat. So I refrain.

I’m not interested in politics. I’m interested in good governance. It’s in darn short supply.

I will stand, overlooking The Bog this morning, and arrive at a more contented state of mind, feeling markedly more poetic than activist. It is election day in Canada. I hope everyone votes. This beautiful place will stay on my mind throughout the day now, and when I sit down at this keyboard, I will feel empowered, not burdened-down by things I can’t change or improve upon. This nature, I study, is perfect as it is. The freedom I have to explore it, is a freedom known to the spirit, as the greatest escape of all. A burden cast off,.... a heaven-on-earth to explore.