A PREAMBLE:

The short story was written for my Muskoka as Walden site. It was inspired by this winter’s rather gentle sojourn, here at Birch Hollow, a period set aside to write and occasionally shovel snow. Published below is the result of this even mix of home maintenance and creativity explored.

I have remained steadfastly loyal to non-fiction. Since giving up the idea of being a novelist early in my writing career, I have been pre-occupied with nature, history, actuality, politics and story-telling in general. I was employed for many of those years as a reporter / editor and columnist, a position that should, of course, be as far from fiction interests as possible. Of course I’ve known and still do, a few scribes who come dangerously close to merging the two.

In my senior years, I have admittedly changed direction a tad. There are many ideas and personal ambitions in writing that frankly defy my old standards. Over the past ten years I’ve been dabbling in non-fiction, writing short stories that allow me liberties of opinion, and emotion non-fiction can not. At least the non-fiction I compose. While I’m still a long way from considering myself a non-fiction writer, or soon-to-be novelist, I have aspirations to continue this foray in creative writing. It’s how I began in University, having numerous Canadian poets as writing mentors, which did have an impact. I’ve never ceased writing poetry just not for publication. With my deep respect for legendary writers like Washington Irving and Charles Dickens in particular, I recognize that my influences will undoubtedly be the skeleton beneath the story-line. Truly, there are aspirations I have, as a writer that can not be handled by non-fiction alone. Even if my fiction attempts are confined to short stories, there is a newfound adventure in all this.....beginning with the reality that no fiction I could ever produce, will be totally divorced from my passion for story telling, and my insistence on incorporating as much truthfulness and actuality as I insist of my non-fiction authordom.

The short piece of fiction published below, is a reflection of my childhood infatuation with nature, and a wee lass named Angela. It is based on a memory of this period of my young life but it is embellished of course. In part it was inspired by my immersion in this beautiful region on earth, Muskoka, and this homestead, we call Birch Hollow, across from today’s snow-laden lowland known as “The Bog.” As a child however, growing up in Southern Ontario, my first paradise was a city greenbelt that abutted our apartment complex, on a street known as Harris Crescent. I spent every moment I could down along Ramble Creek, on its meandering run toward Lake Ontario, and it was my “sailing away” dream, to one day build a raft to make it all the way, out of this creek, across the lake, and out to the sea. I was always adventure-minded. Much less today.

The short story was composed while looking out my office window, and my passion for this hinterland, here in Gravenhurst, is the thread running through the piece, and all of them past, and I dare say, the common silken line in all of those creative jags planned for the future. When my wife and sons read the rough draft of this short story, they agreed, it was biographical with a trace of fiction. Truthfully, I nearly drowned four times in my life but only two are identified in this story.

I could never have composed this piece, or much of anything else, in a city environs, or working away from this place that has been so nurturing and fulfilling to my enterprise. While it is not a blog by definition, it is very much an honest re-telling of values, interests, devotions, love, sadness and an unyielding respect for the cycle of life; the existence of guardian angels, and the power of nature to evoke change, command attention, renew, restore, destroy and then grow anew. It is the awesome power of nature that draws me to this magnetic place, where I can most clearly watch the seasons in the rolling year, and never become bored or complacent with my surroundings.

I hope you will find this lengthy tome of some interest. If nothing else, it is a shred of a biography I’ve been meaning to write for decades. When I was writing it, I did, at my own convenience and inspiration, substitute feelings I have for people around me today, to seed into the characters of the story. It is a patchwork, composite piece that truly spans a half century. Some of my critics and friends argue that I’ve always been a strange confluence between fiction and non-fiction, a dreamer and soothsayer but by honest approach to every story, definitely not a liar!

Enjoy!

MY DROWNING IN RAMBLE CREEK

I was guilty of fatal neglect on the water. Of fishing in a calm little bay, at the bend in the river, forgetting how the silent currents can sneak up on a dreamer adrift. Re-coiling up from the murky bottom, striking sharply against the keel, as a viper first traps, then lulls its kill to an obedient surrender. A serpent’s lash, lifting up the canoe and then tugging it gently, at first, pulling more aggressively once beyond the shaded inlet, where I had first dropped a fishing line.

Without knowing it, I emerged into the final straightaway of the winding river, just above the small cataract and rapids, that I’d portaged around earlier that morning. What had been a distant, dull roar of river, washing down a small rocky decline of Muskoka landscape, was becoming a distinct rolling thunder that I couldn’t yet see, but felt as a tremor vibrating through the watercourse.

By time I was able to react, I couldn’t back-paddle fast or hard enough to change course, and decided the only escape, would be to angle toward the narrow ribbon of black water, over the brink, by paddling hard instead, in order to maintain the direction of my choice. My hope was to at least keep the canoe upright and miss the many smooth rocks I could see just inches above the surface.

The initial steep tip and first hard lurch to the right, should have been the violent end of the adventure but by some crazy fortune, the current spit me out into a shallow eddy to my right. There was no place to exit with the canoe, through the rugged canyon, so I thought that if I made it half way down the first level of white water, I could navigate the last thirty or forty feet of turbulence. There were a lot of precedents banging about in my head, each insisting to command my actions. I resisted them all.

I tried to ease the canoe from the calm eddy, slowly into the black water of the lower rapids. The current, after only two feet of immersion, jerked the bow down hard, and then abruptly right, then left, smashing against a submerged rock. I was thrown out before the canoe had actually capsized. A numbing series of heavy thumps against rock and submerged tree trunk, made the traverse a precarious spectacle of mortal frailty. I had no hand, at this point, in survival. There was no way of gaining control in that heavy wash down into the bay.

When I did have a final, weak thought process to exercise, I knew it was futile to panic. I needed to hold onto something. Find a rock or submerged branch to grab. Tumbling helplessly, head over heals down into the icy white water, I made a desperate attempt to set my feet onto the bottom to halt the fall. The top half of my body was always further downstream than my legs. The relentless pressure and pull of the current made anchoring impossible. If I was sucked down the rest of the rapids, I knew the turbulence at the base would have an undertow. A matter of only metres from the strongest current of the falls, my left foot somehow locked into a crevice between slippery boulders, at just the right angle and body spin, to correct my position, and eventually be able to stand up.

My hands were badly cut from the underwater rocks, and the foot-hold was precarious because of the slime on top of each. I felt as if my position could be compromised at any moment. The waist-high water was viciously determined to knock me down but as it was a matter of life and death, only winning this contest was good enough to preserve life. I could look out and see my life-jacket caught in the whirlpool below, with my tackle box and sealed lunch container bobbing in the ring of froth. The canoe had already hit shore half submerged. As a writer, I couldn’t have asked for a more poignant final chapter, even before I’d penned out the first line of the preface. It appeared someone else would be writing my biography. Better stated, my obituary!

I don’t know how long I stood in that frigid, beating current. All of a sudden, and not seeing where it came from, I was hit on the shoulder by a thrown rope, tossed out to me by some nearby campers, and then ungracefully tugged, almost a dead weight, up onto the sun drenched rocks. It was during that onshore rescue celebration, and wonderful hot coffee, my rescuers provided, that I mindfully sketched chapter one. A story set more than fifty years ago, two hundred miles from this terrible misadventure. I’d survived a half century between near death incidents. I began the rough sketch for a retrospective called “The Lucky Bastard I’ve Been For All These Years.” It seemed a good launching point in my life, to assess guardian angels. Why was I spared? A second time?

As I sat drying out on those hot rocks that day, I thought about angels and what role they’ve played in my life. These folks, behind me, my rescuers, didn’t think of themselves as angels. Just run of the mill weekend campers who happened to be on the campsite for my unceremonious shooting of the rapids. I’m the only one who knew just how close the end was, as I’d experienced it first as a school-kid, about a half century ago, in a creek so much smaller than the Muskoka River.

I sat with my hands back on the rock, stretching to look up into the bluest sky I’d ever seen. Being spared from death can cause this tingling of the senses, and sudden unyielding devotion to reclamation. Those sparkling diamond lights, sun rays filtering down through the thick cover of summer leaves, reminded of similar afternoons reclining along the embankment of Ramble Creek, in my old hometown. Almost a lifetime ago, I thought. It seems more of a short story, vaguely familiar, than a fact of my own life. It was then that I could see her outstretched hand, as if heaven-sent, to remind me of life unfulfilled. The life I was to continue, as a debt of moral gratitude to Angela, a childhood chum, who couldn’t make the journey with me.

There was always a constant pulsing gurgle of full-life, down deep in the subtle confluence of golden currents that smoothed in silken streams, over the flat bridging rocks of our Ramble Creek. It was mesmerizing, watching the twisting funnel of undertow, sucking away leaves from the eddy, along the shore, quickly pulling them below the surface. Propelling them invisibly, far out into Lake Ontario. We were all warned about the undertow that swam like a diving serpent, when the water flow in the spring heightened, and each drain in several abutting neighborhoods discharged raging white-water, into the limestone basin of the creek. We were all told about boys and girls who had drowned down there in the past, but none of us believed stories our worried mothers spun.

It was calming to sit along the grassy embankment and watch the waver of hardwood leaves make sunlight dance, off the deep black pools that held suckers in the spring, long silver minnows by June. For most of the year, this place was calm and gentle. An afternoon and weekend sojourn, for all us kids, who hung out along its banks, and fished joyfully for smelt and gathered up huge black tadpoles for jar-aquariums. We built roofless forts and climbed trees that were covered by thick vines of wild grapes. It was Kipling’s jungle adventure at our beck and call. We arrived home with sloshing soakers. Covered in mud and blood from well deserved injuries. Of course my mother had a lot to worry about. There lots of ways a child could die down in that ravine.

The kids of Harris Crescent played in the ravine for lack of a nearby park. Most days the shallow creek was gentle, only of consequence to those who couldn’t balance on the limestone slabs that allowed us to cross from side to side, up to the Lakeshore Avenue bridge. This is where the water was deeper and closer to Lake Ontario, and there was a smell associated with this locale, that stuck on our clothes like a huge stain. It wouldn’t take Merle more than a few seconds to identify, “You’ve been down to the lake, haven’t you?”

Angela lived halfway between my jumping-off point, above the ravine, just below the apartment complex where we lived, in that late, strange,1950's Peyton Place of fear and trembling. My parents lamenting at cocktail parties, and on euchre nights, about big bombs landing on our heads. Cold War threats and bomb shelter digs, accenting the gardens and shrubberies of neighborhood backyards. Everybody had a plan. Larders full to overflowing with enough food to survive an apparent eternity. A week anyway.

There were lots of homegrown ideas, how to escape and survive an atomic bomb. I was in love with Angela, and at times it sure felt as if I’d been whacked by one of those pulverizing Russian bombs. She glowed with radiation, in my eyes. I adored her from afar. That was our relationship. My vigils in the woods of Ramble Creek, watching out over her back swing-set, for when on these bright afternoons, she would take flight as is, of course, an angel’s heavenly privilege.

Frankly Angela scared the hell out of me. I was sure I’d piss my pants if she ever stopped to talk. When we’d pass each other in the hall, it was as if I might vaporize into a fine dust, to be then met by the janitor’s large sweeping brush. I only knew her from school and admittedly held a damning schoolboy crush, the kind that makes the love-sick seek out any number of coincidental, opportunistic meetings in the class and beyond. I’d followed her home one particular afternoon, in the beginning of our non-relationship, after she parted company with girlfriends, and found that her house was a familiar ticky-tacky bungalow that backed onto the creek. It was on the opposite side from where I lived but it was only a five minute walk down the narrow creekside path.

In retrospect, I suppose I was her childhood stalker. It was a compelling situation that left me worse-off day by day. I had no idea what it was, about this classmate that held my heart suspended, sending tremors of withdrawal through my body, when at the opening bell, she didn’t grace the desk next to mine. When she did arrive I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, and nothing was normal any more. I recall my mother being blown-away because I put on clean shirts and pants without command, and brushed my teeth twice before trundling out of the apartment each morning. I asked if I could have a comb? That’s right, Angela gave me reason to own a comb. My first. It was when I asked Merle if she would buy me a package of Valentines that year, she knew it was my first dance with the potentially catastrophic, “femme fatale.” She agreed with resignation, her wee Teddy was growing up. There were very few, if any, of my contemporaries, male or female in Mrs. Carter’s class, that year of atom’s threat, who weren’t penning piles of punched-out Valentines for their favorite mates, and promising others.

Slipping a romantic card into a paper pouch, hung off the bottom rung of the chalkboard, wasn’t all that profound, as most students got a full compliment. Except those poor gangly souls who mired in their own awkwardness, by choice or not, and always got lesser hits from Cupid’s bow. The same who were picked last in team selection, and who walked home alone every night wishing it wasn’t so. I was amongst this special group but we forgave ourselves with cards between us.

Angela’s poise put her above my outstretched arms. My attention would be undesired. All of a sudden I wished to grab up the card I put into her pouch, and run from the classroom all the way home. Of course you’ve felt this way. Embarrassed. Humiliated. Smaller than small!

Our teacher would hand the stuffed pouches desk by desk, and there would be a huge hush except for the sniffler and sneezer, amongst the anxious gathering. On that day, with what appeared a better haul than years previous, I violently ripped open the package just to find one Valentine in particular. I would be able to recognize it by the silken touch and a heavenly perfume all angels are naturally anointed. It wasn’t there. Angela had snubbed me. I was devastated and continued to look through the cards, on the floor, on my lap, searching for any evidence the card had simply been lost by misadventure, the result of nervous fingers. I had been stood-up. The one Valentine I’d expected was not delivered. There’s nothing worse, for the hopelessly lost in love, than to be denied a Valentine. I turned to look at Angela with visible disappointment, just shy of tearful complexion, and watched her fingering the now ridiculously large Valentine I’d saved especially for her. Not once did she look at me. For the remaining few minutes of the day, she never once glanced to her right, even when the teacher put a homework note on the chalk board beside me. I’d made a giant fumble of protocol, giving a girl who didn’t like me, such an elaborate card. Oh the humanity. I wanted to climb into one of those bomb shelters.

I couldn’t get out of that school fast enough. Instead of hustling down the Lakeshore road, as was my habit, I took the rear exit strategy, and disappeared like a phantom down the shady paths and back-streets, away from any one who would think of asking about my haul of Valentines. After a brief hiatus at home, feeling of lesser substance than the old budgie, “Tinker Bell,” flitting in her cage, I headed down to the only healing place I knew. The ravine. The narrow hollow of land, where this tranquilizing little creek washed away trepidation, and frustration, silently in its powerful, cleansing undertow. A water flow that beckoned to current me through the golden beams of sun, the silver crust of February ice along the shore, out to the expanse of lake where my dream-boat bobbed lazily in the diamond lights, all the way toward the open sea.

I sat for a long while that afternoon, in that Valentine thaw of premature spring, thinking about the fool I had become, the result of a simple infatuation I couldn’t possibly understand. It was beautiful here, alone, with thoughts of exploration whipping about the brain yet lost in the sickness of heart all foolish boys nearly drown in, at one time or another, before becoming cynical and disinterested in self-defense as a strategy of survival. It wasn’t long before I began rambling along the path, and it was no coincidence I wound up in a snow-laden thicket, offering a narrow view of Angela’s backyard. I saw footprints in a well trodden path across the property, leading down to the creek-side, and it was no problem at all, for me to imagine the golden-haired lass standing there, with her red knit hat, and long pink scarf, hanging loosely off her shoulders. It was her angelic aura, the blue twinkling eyes and beautiful lips that brought the watcher in the woods to his knees. How could she have been so cruel? Not getting a Valentine from Angela could ruin my life.

Angela never appeared that afternoon, and she was away for most of the week after, which made me wonder if my card had caused some sort of wild embarrassment she couldn’t face in our classroom’s side by side situation. Maybe she was going to transfer to another class or change schools, all because of one big ugly Valentine, sent to a love interest who couldn’t stand me.

She did return to class eventually but I couldn’t face the humiliation of any more rejection than already delivered that lowly winter month. I refused to look at her. At least when she was looking my way. I stole a lot of glances, when she wasn’t watching the board over my shoulder. I still half expected that she’d flip me a Valentine, from inside her desk, even though the occasion for giving such was long since over. I didn’t want to admit I was less love-struck but I was slowly recovering, and with the exception of sundry half-hearted daydreams, Angela wasn’t all-consuming any longer. Of course I was delusional. I had a profound, enduring love for her I couldn’t shake, no matter how many times she ignored that stupid, painted on smile over the exhausting winter of my discontent.

We had an early spring that year. The snow was being washed away by torrential rain and it was obvious winter’s back was broken. Amongst the neighborhood lads, we were hell bent on adventure seeking wherever it presented. My mates Ray and Bobby decided to help free Ramble Creek of the last bits of ice-cover that cloudless, warm Sunday morning in March. It was dare on dare all that morning. Ray and Bob jumped over every inch of that last black ice of the season, sending shards into the air, shattering down the snowbank. We had broken hockey sticks from the arena, to use as poker poles, to pound many new fractures into the ice.

There was one section of still thick ice, over a dark pool we knew, by experience, was deeper than we were tall. Merle had warned me to stay away from that part of the creek because it’s where the dreaded undertow dwelled. Hers was just a voice I’d learned to ignore. After both mates had failed to crack the surface, I gave it a whirl, jumping from a rock on the bank, dropping several feet onto its shimmering surface. Nothing could break that ice, except nature herself. Just as we were planning our next assault, my position changed in so many ways.

As I stood on the ice over that encased water, without warning it suddenly cracked through, and in a weird slow motion, I slipped down in stages through the jagged ice pushing up. In seconds I was up to my chest in frigid, fast moving water, trying to pull me under the ice. Without us realizing it, the heavy rain had brought about one of those seasonal peaks my mother warned about. We had only witnessed flooding conditions several times before, usually in the late spring and autumn. My snowsuit filled with water and it was impossible to lift myself out of the creek without the help of my mates. My legs were numb in seconds, and despite Ray and Bobby’s repeated efforts to pull me up, the breaking ice and my water-logged weight made it an impossible rescue. They decided to run for help, or out of fear, I don’t remember. But the last I saw of my chums, was the gyrating silhouette of their snow-suits, as they scampered up the hillside of Harris Crescent.

I had begun to panic and was losing a lot of energy trying to pull myself up onto the remaining ice sheet. Although I could stand on the bottom, because I couldn’t feel my feet due to the cold, I knew it was just a matter of time, before I lost balance on the slippery rocks on the bottom. Once that happened there would be nothing to stop me from being sucked under the ice by the strong current. It was clear to me though, in that jumble of thoughts and frigid reality that I couldn’t get out of the water without help. Unless the boys had gone to get Merle, I was going to have a short life with a tragic ending. There was going to be an empty desk at Lakeshore Public School.

I have long felt, over these many decades since, that I was very close to succumbing, and simply letting go of the ice crust, allowing the undertow to take me out to the lake. Everything was numb. Even my brain. I was certainly muddled and when I heard a voice initially, it sounded far away and fading, as my glazed-over eyes stared up toward our apartment, thinking it might be the voice of my mother yelling, “hold on Teddy.” It was someone calling “Teddy,” repeatedly, and I felt a tug on the hood of my snowsuit. “Teddy, Teddy, look at me,” was the directive, in a muffled voice coming from somewhere behind me. I couldn’t turn to see who it was, for fear of losing my balance, and that being the ultimate end of a failed struggle. I felt a severe pulling of my hood, and I began to panic about this new force on a conflicted, injured body. “Teddy, Teddy, it’s me....give me your hand.....now Ted, give me your hand.” I tried to raise my arm but it felt like rubber. I soon made a connection, of someone or something at my back, and then another sudden, heavy pull up on the shoulder slack of my jacket. I was being twisted up out of the water by forces unknown, and I remember feeling a sudden panic that my feet were leaving the bottom of Ramble Creek, and being helpless at that point to do anything more than follow the commands from persons unknown..

Up over the jagged ice that ripped the entire back out of my snowsuit, and roughly scraped about two feet of my skin, waist to shoulder, I recall seeing a revolving vision of water, trees and blue sky, as I felt myself being fully raised, and spun around from the rushing water, back first, onto the snow embankment, as two forms wavered above. I couldn’t recognize their faces. It took awhile before I could distinguish voices. “Are you all right, are you,” came an agitated voice. The light above was making their faces black. If I was dead, I was with company. The dead could talk. Maybe I’d even survived. Alive? Was I alive or not, because I didn’t know much about death or its expectations on the newly deceased.

When my muddle began to clear, and true fear and trembling overtook me, it was obvious I had been rescued from certain death. I was too cold to be grateful, and too scared that one of those faces might have belonged to my mother Merle. When I focused on the forms huddled over me, at first I didn’t recognize either person. It wasn’t until one of the two fell to their knees beside my head that I clearly saw the face of an angel. Her shimmering hair falling out from a red knit cap, and her heavenly blue eyes and enchanting smile. “Teddy, are you okay?” I couldn’t answer at that moment. I nodded. She seemed satisfied with my short but none the less clear response.

I was okay. I took inventory of my mortal parts, and they were all intact. I had been saved. Spared over, to live another day. To adventure forth to far horizons and challenge the world yet again. I sat up, let my rescuers haul me to my feet, and let the gallons of ice water drain from my snowsuit. I wasn’t out of danger just yet however, as I heard the familiar blood curdling scream from my mother, just then bouncing down over the snowy hill in that paternal instinct of rage and “damnation of Faust,” as she used to call it, that always ended with a rough snag onto the top corner of my ear, for an unceremonious, stumbling and crying trip home.

In our years of friendship, after this near fatal childhood misadventure, Angela never mentioned my Valentine’s Card that February 14th, or why she hadn’t stuffed one into my envelope. Angela had given me something even more remarkable, you see, when she and her brother hauled me from that watery grave of Ramble Creek.....of which I appeared to belong as human toll of the serpent undertow. And all that sunny, wonderful spring, she would invite me to cross the flat stones over the shallow, golden currents, softly gurgling away in such a poetic place on earth, at such a memorable time of life. To join her on the swing set in the backyard, where we shared our innocent fantasies about sailing away, one day soon, to traverse that dazzling jeweled lake in summer light.

I can still remember the soft, warm touch of her hand in mine, as we stood on the grassy shore of Ramble Creek, and the warm kiss she gave me on the cheek, just before I let go of her delicate fingers, to cross over on the limestone bridge still wet with my footprints. I couldn’t stop looking back at Angela, standing there alone in the late afternoon light, stumbling as I did, on the exposed roots and strewn rocks someone had pulled from the water. It was an experience, with Angela, I enjoyed many times that spring, swinging on that old creaking metal-works, talking about nothing in particular, especially about Valentines or the lack thereof. I do reminisce even a half century later, about the last day I knew Angela, holding her tiny porcelain hand, and looking at her tear-streaked face, pale in the low light of an old day. I didn’t know why she was crying. I didn’t ask. I have always felt dreadful that I didn’t understand our final moment, and why she didn’t want to let go of my hand. I realize now, she had fallen into her own deep pool with perilous undertow of which there was no chance for rescue.

I never saw Angela again.

We were told some weeks later, Angela had passed away peacefully in hospital, after a short illness. I heard my mother talking with a neighbor, that afternoon, and they used the word “leukemia,” that had apparently resulted in some local child’s death. That same night my mother had to come down the path with a flashlight, tripping along the perilously narrow creek-bank, to bring me home from my vigil, across from Angela’s house, watching pathetically for a light to appear in her bedroom window. I didn’t know what leukemia was, and I didn’t understand death. I understood about survival and that is what Angela had imprinted upon me. I’d somehow, by some physical weakness, let her get pulled under by the current here, and I was ashamed of letting go....., of letting her slip under the ice, away from me forever. It was just as the undertow had pulled those leaves from the shore, and pushed them far out into the lake where I could no longer see them. I knew she was out there, somewhere.

It was and remains the mystery of Ramble Creek. The undertow that nearly killed me. In that sepia aged memory, the recollection of that gentle child will always enchant the soul of the lone survivor.

My first chapter, well, it was also my last. I’m no writer. Just a survivor, that’s all!

WATCHER IN THE WOODS - A NEW YEAR AND MANY ASPIRATIONS

I watched some kids building a fort, in the woods this autumn, and thought it was nice they were actually playing outdoors for a change. Although we have quite a few youngsters in our neighborhood, usually you only see them coming and going from home to the school bus pick-up, and reverse in the afternoon but only occasionally after that......even during weekends, holidays and during the summer months. I do see them whip by on skateboards and bikes, and a few times in groups headed up town here in Gravenhurst, but as far as playing outdoors......hiking through these woods, not very often. Building this fort from spare items around their home(s) was at least getting these kids away from television and video games out into nature. There’s a troubling disconnect these days with modern living and child rearing, and immersion in the hinterland. Not happening like it should.

Both my wife and I had great and enduring associations with nature, growing up in respective areas of Muskoka. Suzanne grew up in beautiful Windermere, on Lake Rosseau, where they had both a cottage and home, a business on the lake, and a lot of nature surrounding each location. She was always trekking through the forests and pastures in the area, when not paddling along the shoreline in her favorite canoe. I grew up a little more urban than she did, first in Burlington, where I called a ravine with a creek my stomping ground, and then in Bracebridge, where Bamford’s Woods and The Grove were my hangouts from the bustle of town life and times. My life was directly hinged to the welfare and dynamic of these treed, natural places. In Bracebridge we didn’t have an abundance of nearby parks, especially in the Hunt’s Hill area of town, and having these tiny but thriving woodlots provided daily respites, the benefits I find difficult to explain simply. I could retreat to the woods fed-up and angry with the toll of the summer heat and responsibility, and within minutes of entering that beautiful forest, feel as if I’d crossed over to a soothing eternity. My mother Merle always new where to find me, that’s for sure. Suzanne and I have always found generous quantities of inspiration from nature, as we do today, here at Birch Hollow, our home adjacent to the beautiful “Bog,” we nearly lost several years ago in a development square-off with the Town of Gravenhurst.......wishing to sell off lots from the highly significant urban greenbelt. We won. Common sense won.

Seeing youngsters playing in the woods is reminiscent and encouraging, and it is critical to the overall appreciation of undeveloped areas in the urban scheme of the future. If future developers and investors themselves, never appreciated those gentle, spiritful liaisons with nature, growing up, and wouldn’t gladly choose a canoe outing over a weekend of video games in the recreation room, then how will they treat conservation issues with the municipalities they intend on transforming. I have met many of these folks who had never paddled a canoe, or spent more than a few days of their lives camping or being on outdoor adventures, beyond what school provided. These folks, in my humble opinion, will be crappy stewards of green places like The Bog, in the future. There idea and aspirations of civilization now, seems to be influenced more by the nuances of the urban jungle fore than outdoor living.

There isn’t a day that goes by, that I don’t wind-up wandering these few beautiful acres of snow and evergreen, leaning old birch trees and venerable maples, that have been here longer than this urban development. I see and hear things, of natural origin, each time I visit, and get real human joy knowing it is a sanctuary to all kinds of critters, from snakes and frogs, to deer and owls, the occasional passing moose, bear, racoons, hawks and weasels to name a few. You can hear the soothing trickle of some tiny crystalline waterfall, somewhere down in the snow-covered bog, and catch storied creaking of the “talking tree,” on the top of the hillside that I’ve been acknowledging, as such, for more than a decade. It is as much my Walden, as Walden Pond was to the good Mr. Thoreau, and my respect for it is shown daily, when I visit and celebrate the life within. So to see this modest but healthy immersion into the woodlands, of our neighborhood, is encouraging, and reminds me of the many forts I built in my youth, important portals to a life I wanted to explore.

Today began dull with a trace of snow flurries spiraling down over The Bog. By noon the sun was beating down on this white and green landscape, and it was wonderful to stand against the rail of the porch, and consume the nectar of a brand new year. I wish every one who races past here, in the harried mission from here to there and back, would pause, even for a moment.....possibly while picking up the mail, to pay some attention to the picturesque embrace of this special place. The future, afterall, depends on their interest in its conservation. I’m not at all confident of this outcome, as reality shows, the most attention The Bog gets these days from neighborhood adults, comes when they have some yard debris they wish to dispose of, and opt not to pay a dumping fee at the local landfill site. It’s true. I wish it wasn’t.

It always discourages us a bit, when a walk through the woods nets us a half bag of strewn garbage, pop cans, beer bottles, paper and plastic cast-offs from young and old. We’ve been picking it all up for years, and I expect many more to come. We are volunteer stewards and we take our role seriously.

We need to do more in schools, and within the community, to teach stewardship of all our precious resources. Right now, I’m just tickled to have kids roaming the woods the way they’re supposed to......and that is a start to a possible life-long relationship with the wild places that remain. The wild places we need preserved, in order to survive ourselves.

Just now two squirrels have raced branch to branch, disturbing the routine of some large crows, and chickadees flit about through the bare branches.....while blue jays call and a hawk circles overhead, and the sunlight makes this such a dynamic scene of profound light and shadow......that might have caught the attention of landscape artists like Tom Thomson, or A.Y. Jackson, as a scene to capture for posterity. A Canadian scene. One we are familiar with, and are beckoned to explore. And responsible for preserving for the benefit of future generations.

Have a wonderful year.

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.