The Picturesque as Haunted –
A scene penned, painted, poeticized

The sweet scented air reminds me of the naturally enticing aroma of Nottingham’s Sherwood Forest. The low mist tumbling over the mounds of matted grasses, might well be the stage-curtain’s opening to reveal the stark, historic English moor. The voyeur even might expect momentarily, to watch either Robin Hood and his Merry Men cajoling by Major Oak (the tree they could hide inside), or see Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, seeking out clues about the Hound of the Baskervilles down in this bog of ours.
This urban green belt tangle is mysterious as always. Even though I’m close enough to the old homestead to yell to my sons or wife, the enclosure, only steps inside, is as if the traveler was miles beyond the bustle of civilization. It is as much like a child reading a story-book. The adventure in story-land begins in earnest, once the choice of titles is selected from the bookshelf. The moment I make my intention known, to all who care that I shall be walking the great beast, Bosko, over to the Bog, my imaginative process commences to concoct and churn, in sincere hopefulness something unusual will be encountered on this latest foray.
Maybe we will cross in front of a deer or two, a wild turkey, a fox or folly of grey squirrels wrestling noisily in the dead leaves. It takes only a few strides down this beaten path to glorify the unanticipated. As Bosko intently studies every scent and wind-inspired knock or creak, I am at the mercy of an unbridled fascination, where indeed it can be said the writer expects it just as likely as a deer or bear, to cross paths with a specter, troll, gnome, fairy, witch or hobgoblin….take your pick. It’s just the way I view life. Escaping into this storied woods, provides a wonderful hiatus from the electronic world I have been unceremoniously dumped by profession. I’m not at all sure I could even muster the energy to type a full page now on a manual typewriter. I don’t remember even once, feeling I needed to escape the keyboard of the old Smith-Corona. If it did cross my mind that the typewriter had a smothering, confining effect over a day’s work, it was certainly not as much then as now.
The spring rain has generated much activity in our neighborhood, particularly noticeable down in the bog where the brown, dry stands of field grasses are slowly being replaced by vivid green plants at their base. It is hard not to feel that same potential in heart half expecting that old bones will strengthen and ambition flow eternal just standing amidst this inspiring, strong, earthly re-generation. I suppose it would be nice if this strong seasonal force could re-shape humanity, as it is now transforming the winter landscape. It is changing daily as the sunscape through the still bare tree-tops warms away the last ground frost, which the oldtimers here claim was down a fair piece in the aromatic bog muck.
I used to reference David Grayson’s writings frequently, from his book, “Adventures in Contentment.” He writes about his stint in farming, having turned his back on city-life in order to preserve his health. He was tilling the field one day when he happened to look up to witness a most impressive sprawling topography beneath a gentle, universal sky, and it seemed to him momentarily, as a strange, unfamiliar scene; one that he knew had been there before, since creation, but in his days at the farm it had never seemed so important to study. The hillside view of the valley below was as if the world had immediately opened to him. When he looked back at his impressively straight furrows created that day, and then contrasted them with what had been provided naturally, he felt foolish about having ignored the bigger picture of life and times. He had been so concerned about making the furrows straight and appearing expertly contoured to the land that he had ignored all the magnificent world and life forces thriving around him. His preoccupation with the task had blocked out all else, the loss being a deprived existence. This bothered him moreso, because it was nature, this sprawling, inspiring landscape and its unlimited possibility, that brought him to the farm in the first place. It was as much an escape as a quest for salvation from city life.
There are times, even as a longstanding student of “Adventures in Contentment,” I find myself immersed in modern day commerce up to my eyeballs, such that I am just as ignorant and blind to the world around me as Grayson complained. It takes a great resolve to stop and admire the view in the course of modern day commerce….modern day hustle. We risk our health and sanity at this mill wheel because we find it impossible to invoke, impose, command change upon our condition. I have had to stop myself many times this past year, to break from the obsession of business at all cost. With exception of these daily walks over to the bog, and down this peaceful country lane, the computer commerce glowing in my office, beckoning me to invest just a few more hours, has been a powerful force to reckon with, and occasionally forcefully escape. It is a terrible reality, one that should never have happened to someone who claims dutifully to being of “the enlightened.” Yet it has happened to millions of folks who have given up entirely on the possibility there is something more in life other than technology….. and straight, perfectly spaced furrows.
When I used to look up from my typewriter keyboard, I might have been privileged to see the lilacs blossoming in the front yard, and the storm clouds blackening along the horizon. I might have looked out in time to see a hummingbird at the feeder, or a squirrel sitting up on the fence post having an afternoon respite. When I look up now I see this wavering white on grey screen, and beyond that is a dark opening of cabinet with an askew wall of books behind. Where the window should be in a visionary’s office! To look out the window at the world around me, I must get up and strain my neck to sneak a little peak out at the front yard, and the bog across the lane. And the humming. My old typewriter made a lot of sounds but all acceptable in the pursuit of story-line. This infernal racket of buzz and internal function, makes me crazy after only a few minutes. I can feel the radiation penetrating my soul. At the old Smith-Corona, the worse symptom was a stiff neck and some ribbon ink on my fingertips from undoing a key jam.
I have to be particularly disciplined at this computer terminal, to step away every half hour or so just to connect with what is real and breathing in this environment around me. Even if I was to stop right now, in the middle of this sentence, and head out the front door and down into the bog, it would take about fifteen minutes to adjust to the new normal. Adjust to the fact there is no sustained humming and neatly boxed, tailored viewpoint ahead. I resisted a computer for many years and only agreed to purchase one as a facilitator of more efficient office operation. It is true that work in both writing and antique professions has become easier in many ways because of computer technology; yet with improvement and efficiency has come isolation and numbness of spirituality. I have been known to sit at this fool contraption for upwards of four hours. When I proof-read what has been composed, it’s quite usual for the work to be flat, sloppily written, and rather lifeless even when read aloud. I put more work into corrections and re-structuring columns and editorials than was ever necessary from the greasy rollers of a manual typewriter.
Even though I have the advice of David Grayson imprinted on my soul, because it is truly what I believe important in life, I fall victim regularly to the modern trappings of the so-called “better-easier-most efficient way” of living and making money. The only salvation is having the determination to pull up from this post, this whiter than white monitor screen (despite enough furrows to make up a day’s work), and wander off into the woods for a brief sojourn from the world as it has been manufactured. I never leave this sanctuary without feeling restored and invigorated. If there is any misery at all in my life, it is the reality of this unhealthy, uninspiring attachment to the modernists’ convention and new century accepted practice of blatant disregard….for anything that doesn’t smack of new technology..
I need these sojourns, as Grayson needed his vista of heaven on earth. I want to kick this habit one day soon, and spend more time haunting these woods, than hovering over a space-age keyboard in half-spirit dreaming of a better way!

Everyone should experience this side of Muskoka – of Ontario – of Canada

You just want everyone to experience this scene. As if it will change opinions and philosophies about earth and its stewardship. Seeing this morning’s first light breaking through the trees is an enlightening span, a subtle, effortless time travel through the ages. From my vantage point on the hillside, overlooking The Bog, the scene unfolding was timeless. This same vista has existed for centuries, and I might just have found myself back in the 1600’s, as in the present domain of this new century. It’s what to me at least, remains so fascinating about these natural places remaining on earth, still largely untouched by progress, yet so precariously on the verge of change to meet the demands of the all-consuming modern-day citizenry.
But you need to see this kind of natural wonder regenerating here, to appreciate the true magnificence of the ever-changing, ever adapting realm of environment. We are humbled in the presence of such grandeur and complexity of life and its powerful forces. Imagine how this one vista, this one tiny bit of wild acreage amidst the urban jungle, will transform in a matter of weeks now, to an almost tropical vegetation of ferns and marsh grasses that will block from view all that is presently clear. Even the black, snaking ribbon of creek that dissects the lowland will be invisible in several weeks, and I will only be able to imagine what the tiny crystalline cataracts will look like, as they gurgle and churn in black pools along the watershed to Lake Muskoka.
It’s at first light that this place is most healing to the weary soul. You can’t stand on this point of land, jutting out above the bog, and not feel in some way invigorated by the way life pushes up from the decay of the past seasons. From these heavy burdens of old brown grasses and fern canopy will generate beautiful new vegetation that will weave like a carpet to the adjacent tree line of evergreens and birches. I could never come away from here, this vigil, and feel uninspired. I’ve arrived at this portal feeling depressed and distressed about life and times, and left again as if granted new wings of flight. I have mired down in self-loathing at this same typewriter and then strolled to The Bog as respite, and been restored to hopefulness that another story-line has been born. I come away with a feeling of calm. My only regret at times likes these, is that I couldn’t stay longer to watch the rest of the day unfold….to be able to watch the tiny rolls of fern unfetter themselves from tight buds into full, rich, deep green sprays that dance tenderly in the sheer poetry of windsong.
You can’t get an environmental conscience overnight, or simply from the lead-stories off the evening news, or from the banner stories in the daily press. You can attend rallies for the environment and commence a new “green” way of living but to be part of this world in earnest, requires a full and committed immersion. Not simply stepping outdoors and then initiating a hasty retreat but actually appreciating the true dynamic of earth and its cycles. Like getting your feet wet in this bog, and truly celebrating the privilege of being part of its life force. Standing here while the new sprouts are breaking through the newly thawed ground. This is where it’s happening. This is the zone that will make you a believer, mother earth is worth saving. If you are not humbled by this scene, or any other immersion in a pasture, a woodland, on a hilltop or down in a bog like this, then you haven’t yet found the meaning of life. It’s here. Right here. To find your place in nature, raise you arms, do a wee twirl if you like, look up, look down and all around, and thank your maker for allowing you this role, this heavenly experience right on earth.
Long before there was a bandwagon to jump upon, in the new century bid to save the environment from its intrusive, “we’ll fix it tomorrow,” human-kind, I was preaching to any one who would listen, about the critical need for outdoor education to immerse youngsters in the real nature of things. I campaigned for years and received nary a nod of approval for my efforts. When I confronted educators about the time and budget of curriculum devoted to technology, computers out-weighing almost everything else in assumed importance, finding a few extra bucks to make outdoor education available to more students each year was simply out of the question. A ridiculous endeavor, they said, to think that students would be better prepared by graduation, having studied from a canoe on an Ontario lake, or hiked the forests and lowlands in quest of the meaning of life. As I made it clear ten years ago, I shall state once again that unless the curriculum wizards get youngsters outdoors more often, and balance outdoor educational opportunity with in-class study, we will continue to launch careers of environmental destruction, instead of graduating good stewards of mother earth.
There is no way to save the environment the way we are going. The massive change necessary requires a sensibility of conduct that seems impossible. Convincing even a public schooler to come and explore this lowland “without a cell phone,” or other, would prove daunting and punitive. Getting a business obsessed adult to step into these woods without some form of technology to interfere, would be next to impossible. Yet it is imperative we get the message across, of just how fragile future existence will be, at the pace of environmental destruction. If indeed we are to save what has already been given a catastrophic blow for all these decades, enlightenment is the only grail that’s holy. If we want to save ourselves, our offspring, we need to re-introduce nature in its deserved light and integrity. Not as a backdrop for our sprawling subdivisions and urban tarmac winding from horizon to horizon. Not viewed as an inconvenience, “an unfavorable weather report” when the conditions turn adverse, offering rain, then snow, then black of night to some mortal’s chagrin….that it all can’t be changed to suit lifestyle pursuits. Designer weather possibly! We are a silly bunch of asses aren’t we, that we have for all these years taken our life force, or sustainability on this planet for granted?
The way to save Muskoka is first of all, to recognize that it is in serious danger of being over-developed by societal craving and greed. The only way to fight this is to see for yourself what is at stake in the next ten years. This lowland, this beautiful, peaceful, life restorative place, might one day soon be the host site of a new condo project, or a recreation centre….maybe a tennis court or sprawling, silly looking bungalows. Instead of these leaning birches and hunched-over evergreens that add so much life and poetry here, we might have street lamps and boulevard signs to point us from here to there.
I don’t make a visit to The Bog at any time of any day that I don’t offer some reservation about leaving, such that I might arrive again to find a bulldozer diverting a waterway for building convenience, or then infilling a pond full of life, to make a cul-de-sac for yet another subdivision…… for the ample profit of the money spinners.
If you want to help the environment, immerse yourself in the nature you are a part. Instead of driving by and looking at the hiking trail across the Muskoka hinterland, park the car and go for a walk. Please. See nature up close and personal, and I guarantee you’ll be damn mad about the bullying that’s been going on around here…..and then possibly you won’t mind lending a hand to an old friend.
Give a thought about how many creatures will be affected by those landmovers. I can tell you with grave honesty, I could not survive in this locale if this bog was destroyed. So like the wee creatures of the bog habitat, I would have to find somewhere else to live. I would surely perish in heart at least, to find this wonderous, enchanted, life giving place compromised by the greed of social circumstance.
Excuse me now. It seems I have to go and discuss the inappropriate act of “refuse dumping” in the forest, perpetuated once again by a neighbor’s hired help,…. who insists on fouling the good graces of The Bog with materials he won’t pay to dispose of otherwise. Apparently it’s his democratic right, or so he thinks, to change natural history to suit his disposal needs.
And we wonder why we have an environmental crisis.

PLease check out my other blog at www.gravenhurstmuskoka.blogspot.com

Storied Muskoka –
Canada’s Haunted Lakeland

When I pass from this tired, frayed mortal coil, I too shall find Muskoka an accommodating domain for the still-unsettled spirit…..in this hauntingly craggy, gnarled, forested landscape that has for too long been taken for granted by her users and abusers.
I can’t take but one footfall from this homestead, here at Birch Hollow, than I feel the invigoration of unspecified old spirits and musty legend left to its own devices. Even when I sit in this creaking office chair, looking out over The Bog, I feel the presence of so much more than does the everyday traveler, who out of imposed necessity is too busy to stop and ponder the grand virtues of nature, and the subtle intrigue of the unexplained.
There are many good folks who reside down this lane, who have little use for “haunts” and the “marvels” of the hinterland. They have more important things to do in this frenetic world in which we live. There are aspects of this ballywick I feel are important and life-enhancing but a few of my contemporaries believe I am wasting my time selling virtues of enchantment and poetry; fantasy and the good graces of both legend and lore. The woodland I see now has a depth beyond what the naturalists identifies. The snaking creek through the hollow means more to me as analogy than the science of watershed alone. I suppose I am forever locked into the confusing hiatus between the natural and the supernatural. Yet I am contented to experience the joys of reality and then expectation while walking down these misty, well-worn pathways down into the hollow.
When the wind gusts bang at the light fixtures on the verandah, it’s as if the spirits are attempting to awaken the dead to their own new reality. Right this moment the gale force wind of an early spring storm whines through the cracks in this humble abode, and it’s as if there’s a cauldron of boiling souls somewhere beyond.
There are those who prefer to acknowledge weather as weather, wind as wind, and sunrise and sunset as a matter of sheer routine. There is no reason to question the quirks and peculiarities of a given day, other than possibly to offer some complaint about the inconvenience of having to go out in the rain or snow, or the blast of spring wind that puts sand into eyes, and hair into disarray.
I am rather passionate about these blustery circumstances, as I can always find something to write about when the sky is black, or the lightning flashes ignite so much brighter than white. I might sit here for an hour in a gentle submission, listening to birds chirp from the lilac boughs. In the event a fringe of dark, ominous looking cloud was to appear suddenly over the horizon pines, my typewriter would be employed in a rapid transmission from mind to key to paper. It is so wonderfully provocative when the wind howls and this house creaks in the thrusts of a storm’s initial bluster. Just as the wind etches down upon this vulnerable landscape presently, as we reside precariously on the brink of yet another spring storm. It is oh so much more interesting when nature decides it’s time to shatter mortal complacency. While the calm of early morning inspires the poet to write sentimentally about new beginnings and the rejuvenation of life, a mid afternoon storm cascades a wild fury of emotion and contempt, and it’s difficult to keep the fingers in tempo with the peaks and valleys of a powerful gale force.
I can sit here in the company of modern conveniences, a hot cup of tea and fresh biscuit, in warmth and comfortable sanctuary, yet feel as if, with this display of violent weather outside, I am alone in some remote wilderness cabin with a modest fire in the hearth, and most basic, humble shelter. I can feel the reaper’s long nails scraping at the window pane to harvest yet another wayfarer at the end of an adventure. I feel the icy grasp of death on my shoulder and shudder at the possibility this fire will extinguish, this hot tea run cold, this storied cabin left to erode into the landscape from which it was raised. There are many faces pressed against the glass, of travelers once, who may have lodged here for a time, partaking of nourishment to continue their passage to a homestead allotment further down the road.
Muskoka has been a tantalizing, alluring mistress for all these years. She has inspired me onward to discover the road less traveled, and left me questioning pertinent legend and lore at lakeside, when a spring sunset ignites the water into a great ball of liquid fire. I watch phantom canoes drift slowly across the lake, and have heard the whistle of a long lost steamship, and then saw the vapor off a lakeside bog float across the waterscape like two dancers in a tango. Nothing is quite as it seems. There is an intermingling of fact and fiction, legend and lore, ghosts and wee beasties that travel in the twilight of summer nights, up and down the rock faces of frozen-in-time ogres, and assorted other malevolent entities who curl up in the story-lines yet to be written.
There is a deep satisfaction in making a connection, with the qualities and quantities of unspecified manifestations; the ghost witnessed along the fern-laden garden path, or the fairy-kind found in dance ‘neath the midnight moon. It’s truly marvelous to find yourself in company with some goblin or other, at a time when a source of inspiration proves hollow and boring. How could any writer or artist-type, fail to be thoughtfully provoked, when provided exposure in some fashion, to the curious facets of what is often called the supernatural. I consider myself quite fortunate indeed to feel the hair on my neck standing in the chill of strange company, possibly encountered on a cemetery walk, or on a misted-over trail from one cottage structure to another.
I have no interest in protecting myself against all exposures to what a soothsayer might call “the paranormal.” I drink it all in as would any inspiration-starved creator, having this unnatural craving to compose until the final, ultimate collapse into exhaustion. It would be an unremarkable enterprise should these paranormal encounters suddenly cease. My goodness, what would I do? What would inspire me to sit for hours on end at this typewriter, if it wasn’t for a well placed, unanticipated haunting?
It’s apparent from what visitors to Birch Hollow tell me…. that we have quite enough ghosts already, to keep me company for many years to come. As an antique collector it is said that these wayward spirits may have arrived in our abode, quite unceremoniously attached to a work of art,….possibly an old pine cradle, a painting, book, or even a Victorian era teddy bear. My wife claims we have haunted dolls, and I have nary a reason to challenge her assumption.
Muskoka is most definitely a haunted, spiritual place, and there have been many testimonials from some of the country’s great poets and artists, agreeing there’s more here than just rocks, trees and water. There’s an ecstasy to experience. A spiritual freedom, a universality of potential beckoning free-thinkers to explore and create.
For those who wouldn’t recognize a spirit if they had one hop on their back for a wee joy-ride, sensing out the paranormal from the normal, the supernatural from the natural, is a matter of letting one’s imagination run unencumbered. It is necessary to allow your sensory perception to delve beyond the obvious. Pre-conceived notions block out a great deal of sensory perception. It’s a modern day condition consuming the child before its time. Possessing the good graces of a child’s imagination is the catalyst of unfettered adventure.
What do you feel sitting out along the Muskoka lakeshore in the darkness, and watching the magnificent fanning colors of the northern lights? Do you hear voices in the wind, when a spring gale washes down over the rock bluffs, and then through the pinery highlands? Do you feel that sense of awe when a storm-front rages down over the lakeland with a powerful fist, unclenching onto vulnerable lowlands, and then culling old leaning birches and evergreens as it rages through the woodlands.
Muskoka is a storied place, much like the historic valley of the Hudson River, made famous by American author Washington Irving. Muskoka has a collection of tales and legends to bestow the keen watcher….the curious traveler, the seeker of adventure, with the truths of good, faithful and historic hauntings.
If ye are the seekers of such adventure, you are welcome to join this mission of discovery…..and yes, I’ve known a few spirits in my time. If you don’t believe in ghosts and the paranormal, then consider these coming entries as wild speculation, ravings of a lunatic, and flights of unfathomable fancy. But if you dare to experience Muskoka’s spirited legacy, do read on…..more to come soon in this blog journal….the Nature of Muskoka.

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My Occupancy of “Seven Person’s Cottage,” on Muskoka’s Lake Joseph

My first summer working as a reporter, for a publication then known as the Muskoka Lakes-Georgian Bay Beacon, in MacTier, gave me a rather unique opportunity afforded very few in our region.
I was asked to move closer to my work area, at least for the active summer month news season, and there wasn’t a great availability of affordable rentals especially close to the lake. Getting a small cottage was my choice, budgeting for a larger rent if it facilitated an on the job, half vacation feeling. I looked at a few places and frankly wasn’t impressed by either the asking prices or the rooms without a view at all. Finally one day I got word there was a rental for me, if I was interested, that would put me on the shore of Lake Joseph, in one of the most amazing cottages in the District; May to October, for a wee rental fee. As I would find out later we needed each other….it was an abode that simply had to be occupied, and well, after a recent break-up of a relationship, I confess to having been pretty lonely. For that brief period of time I was the occupying soul, and it made me feel welcome.
I caught a wink in the story teller’s eye as this story of nirvana, on the lake, continued to spin. I agreed to meet with the owner later that day, and to inspect this so called fairy-tale estate on the lake. Well, it was an experience like no other. I would become the first reporter-historian to occupy what was known affectionately as “Seven Persons Cottage.” When the host family brought me down the path from their house to the cottage, I was half expecting to find a castle-like structure, with a spire poking from the wreath of evergreens along the shore. They described it perfectly and I imagined it as precisely as my cogs and wheels of imagination could concoct, from the information provided. The only detail I had missed in the story, that was particularly relevant, was the scale of the castle to a full grown man.
When I got my first look at Seven Person’s Cottage I was aghast. Here was this architecturally interesting little building, perfect in every detail, but somewhat smaller than I had been led to believe. Actually it was tiny. Dwarf-like. A place best suited for gnomes and their kind. While I’m not a giant, I couldn’t imagine my robust frame getting through that doorway, let alone moving around inside. If I rented this place it would undoubtedly be a chapter right out of Gulliver’s Travels; and that I should certainly expect a visit from the Liliputins. If memory serves correct about Gulliver’s captors, and it doesn’t always live up to my expectation after all these wearying miles.
While I don’t believe I ever got the precise scale of the cottage, to what the full size home would have been on a normal, run of the mill lot, everything about the place was proportional, from the small doorway to the fireplace, the living room with bow window, to the dining room with pull-out table. The furniture wasn’t tiny but none of the pieces looked out of place in the small digs. While I didn’t have to duck except when coming through the front door of the cottage, it took awhile to figure out how to relate to everything being so much smaller than, well, I was used to as accommodation. The owner had a copy of the well known book that purportedly documented the lives of Gnomes, sitting atop the built-in desk just inside the door. The wooden mantle above the fireplace was carved with gargoyles supposedly to protect the place from wise guys like me.
After sitting in the living room for awhile on normal but minimalist chairs, I realized that this place was a blessing to my creative enterprise. I could watch out over the lake and a flat area of grassed embankment, where my neighbors at the adjacent cottage played croquet. That cottage was built by the gentleman who actually thought-up and scaled down the “Seven Person’s” abode. I got to meet him later in the summer season and that was a treat. He also collected old wooden pipes, his living room at the cottage jammed with these keepsakes. Some with carved faces, others made out of the world’s most precious woods.
My first night at Seven Persons Cottage was like living within the fiction of stories like Alice in Wonderland; a tad like Pooh Cottage, a slight sensation of residing at Toad Hall, in region of Wind in the Willows. I was in Peter Pan’s Neverland with Tinkerbell. When I ignited an old oil lamp in the front window, and threw a few bits of wood in the fireplace, the orange glow on old wood, made the place seem everso enchanted; antiquated beyond its years. The flickering flames of lamp and hearth gave the shadows a more sinister appearance than the place warranted, because of all things small, it had a large, warm soul if any residence can bestow such a feeling of welcome. I sat by the window for most of that first night, looking out at the lake bathed in moonglow, and watching the gargoyles on the mantle to see, if by chance, they might animate in the midnight revel known of the fairy kind.
In the morning, the light coming through that large front window made the rich wood interior appear as if it was the rear cabin of an old schooner, and the view behind might have been of the open sea. I sat there having a coffee and feeling as if I had known this place my whole life. What I would find out in the fall of the year, is that it would be the hardest place to leave as well.
As I recall, it had three bedrooms and a loft, and during that summer I had, at times, four people housed overnight, and more for get-togethers during the day. Everyone who visited got to share this prevailing, soothing well being, despite the evil eye of watchful gargoyles. The kitchen was tiny and the fenced-in backyard included an outhouse, the only real inconvenience of the place, other than the necessity to re-kindle a fire in the hearth to keep from freezing.
I wrote poetry throughout that spring-to-fall residency as this was a poetic place. I sat at the pull-out desk in the front room, and wrote by the light of the oil lamp, and listened to the boat engines chugging by day and night. How peaceful it was to sit by the crackling cedar fire in the cabin’s hearth. I would climb onto the window seat and drink wine until midnight, and then sleep in comfort until the invigoration of morning light poured through the window. In the daytime when I wasn’t chasing fire trucks or ambulance crews to accident scenes, or covering local municipal council events, I could sit down by the miniature harbor with proportionally constructed dock, and feel truly in another world….one so much smaller and more interesting than the one I knew during work hours. I half expected “Hammy the Hamster, and Roddy the Rodent,” to pull their little runabout up to the dock, and scurry along the embankment for a friendly game of croquet, with the other miniature characters I was sure dwelled here, kindly amongst the other curious non-realities concocted by over imagination..
I never felt alone at Seven Person’s Cottage. I never once felt bored or uninspired, and it was one of the most prolific writing jags of my life. I could hardly wait to get home and saddle up to that desk to pull another all nighter of composition. More than a few times something or other woke me up, with my head down on the desk top, a half glass of wine teetering on the edge of an old book. Maybe it was a mindful gnome begging my full retreat to bedlam. I smelled of woodsmoke and wine most of that summer season, or so I’m told. If ever there was a perfect spot to commence a writing career, one that for me began seriously that year of 1979-80 in the Muskoka heartland, it was at hearthside in that little cottage named “Seven Person’s.”
If you wonder about where my zigs and zags of authordom were first seeded, it would be correct to say, I had a fantastic beginning…… and in the tradition of the way it began, at Seven Persons, it has been an enchanting adventure ever-since. I think about that cottage frequently, and wish one day to return.



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The ghosts and wee beasties of a magic Muskoka –
A glimpse beyond and below the reality we choose to accept

There are some folks here in the hinterland of Ontario, who look up at brand new balconied condominiums and utter words like, “isn’t this beautiful,” and “they’re just so enchanting.” Others look at another new urban subdivision, sprawling out toward the formerly treed horizon here in Muskoka, and suggest, “I would give anything to live here.” Well that’s true. What was given up happened to be the life-saving forest we apparently didn’t require as much as speculation housing and capitalist fortitude.
I grew up in a small town urban neighborhood called Hunt’s Hill (situated in north-east Bracebridge) that had only several postage-stamp size green-belts for us kids to hide-away. Two out of three were privately owned but no one ever ordered us off. Across from our apartment on Alice Street, was a small wooded lot abutting a mom and pop cottage rental business and corner store, owned by Fred Bamford, bless his kindly soul. The thick and thriving woodlot at the back of his property was a great source of inspiration to me over the four seasons, as a fledgling writer, taking an early stab at short story authordom, and then later a modest foray into poetry.
I couldn’t wait in the morning to climb out of bed and see what was happening in Bamford’s Woods. In the winter, after a snowstorm, it was a magnificent vista. In the spring, when the hardwoods were getting back their canopy, every day residing beside that woodland was remarkably different than the day before, and the first wildflowers of late spring, the lilacs in small clusters, inspired me to acquire oil paints and canvas in an attempt to tap my artistic skill. It was good I didn’t place all the eggs in that particular basket, as I turned out to be a rather poor painter. In the autumn, it was inspiring and yet sad to watch the canopy change so brilliantly in hue, then cascade to the ground in the first windstorm of October. No matter how it appeared back then, it was my restorative woodland, and it might as well have been ten thousand acres because that’s the way I measured its impact on my creative enterprise. The fact it wasn’t much more than an acre on one urban block never seemed to matter. What did matter was when they decided to mow down the trees to make way for an apartment complex. It marked the beginning of a change in my hometown’s way of doing things, in the name of progress, I have never come to grips with since.
My relationship with nature, and woodland places, began early in life. My sources of inspiration were many, and I studied my environs constantly seeking out the enchantments the writers of fables and tall tales had told me about, in the print of their neatly bound tomes stacked at my bedside. I was born curious and have never believed anything is exactly as it seems, and that it is our mission in life to seek answers and quest constantly, and judge accordingly the mysteries and realities of mother earth.
I have never awoken one morning in my life that I haven’t been prepared to greet either heaven or something parallel, or other. When I awake to look out at a Muskoka woodland, I know it’s the privilege of having a little heaven on earth.
I surely could one day re-awaken to a scene in the afterlife, whatever that might manifest in an immortal sense. I suppose, because of this joyful waking, either dead or alive, I’ve had that heavenly expectation push past the edges of my specific reality. I see and feel aspects of fantasy and assorted other enchantments, even sitting by the window at first light, looking down on what appears to be the tangible, physical, dimensional world as we know it by immersion. I do however, look upon this scene unfolding each morning, with unspecified but ample expectation for some heavenly, supernatural intervention. I’m seldom disappointed.
When my mother Merle used to call me “wide-eyed” and “overly imaginative,” she appreciated that “reality” for me, was always hedged by something else; some extra-sensory capability of placing actuality in the context of Alice in Wonderland, or the Wizard of Oz. I see possibilities that my contemporaries then and now could not. If I was to explain to any one of my friends that I had witnessed a wayward spirit while on a walk through the woods, a ghost in a garden, a wee fairy on a mushroom or a goblin stealing an apple off a picnic blanket, I would be considered delusional and signed up for rigorous therapy. The one true gift I possess in this mortal coil, is the ability to see and appreciate what you can only call the “fantastic.”
I have witnessed and documented more than a dozen ghostly encounters here in Muskoka, and there are another twelve or so I’ve been keeping in the wings, just in case I decide to put a book together of Muskoka’s weird and unexplained mysteries. The problem for me is that I’ve never been frightened by a single so-called paranormal experience, such that it would be pure fiction to apply any tingling, alluring, or unsettling quality to the stories. I’ve had good and positive experiences with all of my so-called spiritual experiences and strange encounters, and I couldn’t imagine doctoring one to frighten any one. I surely feel like telling folks about my own paranormal adventures but just not in a way that will bestow fear and trembling in the hearts of those I tell.
My wife Suzanne said one day that I must be like the kid in the movie who said, “I see dead people.” Problem for me is that I don’t necessarily know they’re amongst the deceased when I meet them on my travels. I have met people on country roads, in cemeteries, in building hallways, on a forest trail, and even at my door here at Birch Hollow that may have been more vapor than substance. I’ve turned around quickly to double-check on my mates when we part, to find nothing more than open space. Only moments after talking to a visitor at a cemetery, I take a glance back and find gravestones and flowers but no other traveler. I’ve met people walking on the shoulder of the road who vanished once we passed one another. I’ve spoken to folks who have just looked at me with nary a nod, and then disappeared into thin air. The fantastic side of this, is that I’ve, at the very least, been privileged to have experienced some of what is referred to as “the paranormal,” without getting beaten, eaten or pulled into the after-life by one of these strange spirited pedestrians.
As a writer my relationship with the curiosities of life and after-life have suited my interests in actuality; I write about a storm crossing a lakeland by being immersed in that scene, not interpreting someone else’s photograph or depending on some other voyeur’s description. I have never once walked through a forest, or down a cobbled lane, that I put expectation or anticipation ahead of welcome reception. I don’t anticipate what I will discover on a lakeshore trail, winding down through an autumn landscape but when it arrives with a spark of enticement, it is the true measure of fulfillment, being entitled to see the dimensions of existence in this world and beyond.
Since childhood I have kept company with the spirit-kind. When I was about five or six years of age, I remember so vividly have a dreadful infection of the lungs that kept me coughing for more than three weeks straight. I would cough so hard and long that it would make me vomit. After a particularly difficult night, only settling long enough to sleep an hour or two, I can remember waking soaking wet with a substantial fever. I was in an out of slumber as the fever raged and then crested into a slow release by early morning. During one of the longer periods unconscious, possibly as the fever broke, I had an angelic vision. I dreamt that I was in the basement of our apartment building in Burlington, Ontario, where there were washing machines and driers for tenants. I remember standing at the bottom of the stairs, on the cold grey concrete floor, looking up at the door. It was then that a brilliant white form took shape, from the door toward the top of what I assume was a table, or washing machine top. The shape hovered there for several dream seconds and when it finally settled, the image of an angel manifested with an amazing plumage of wing feathers and a misty aura making it a soft, cool image versus having any sharply defined lines or features. I knew I was in the company of a messenger not just an apparition for apparition’s sake. This was the real article as far as this five year old kid was concerned.
There was no word spoken, her to me, me to her. I just stared up in absolute awe at what was hovering in front and above the mortal witness. Her soft, kind eyes and hand beckoning mine, inspired a feeling of confidence and security I can not describe with the accuracy and emphasis that it deserves. To this moment I can re-create that state of nirvana and contentment as if she was with me now, drawing me away from the tasks and preponderances of daily existence. It was not a mortal feeling I have experienced again.It was a deep and profound sense of peace and well-being that easily trumps every other emotion….every other sensation.
Most people I relate this story to remark that I must have been on the brink of death, and that the angel was sent to harvest the soon to be released soul. I have no reason to doubt that this was the case, as I battled this respiratory distress. The visitation occurred at the peak of fever, or at least that’s what my mother tells me when I relate the “angel in the laundry-room story.” The fever dropped and it left me exhausted but obviously alive. Possibly the angel had been dispatched to let me know it wasn’t my time, and that I should fight a little harder to hang onto mortal existence. I never felt the angel was there to reap me for the rewards of heaven but rather to ease my suffering, and let me know there was a lot left to experience of worldliness.
From this spiritual encounter onward, I have never resisted or deferred supernatural experiences because frankly I believe, having been in the company of an angel afterall, there are important messages attached to each event and involvement that must be appreciated and understood. That is of course, if you really wonder about the meaning of life in the first place. Most people I know would have pinched holes into their skin trying to awaken themselves, in a similar circumstance to mine, having the uncomfortable companionship of a fully winged angel. What for me was a life enhancing, vision-expanding relationship for those few dreamy moments in childhood, led to a life of appreciation for all those aspects that defy precise definition and explanation.
My favorite author Washington Irving, wrote in the early 1800’s, about the intrusive knife blade of science, dissecting nature to its finest, smallest molecule, to reveal the source of its life and growth. While he was an information seeker, and cherished honest appraisal of life and times, he felt that the botanist was rebuking the mysteries of existence, such that no one should ever believe in the non-science of fairies and their kind, or hold stock in any tale of enchantment and mystery. He rightfully worried that expectation and fantasy had their place in the life and imagination of the modern man, and that the world would indeed be a very dull place if all the traditions and tall tales were exposed as unfounded and fraudulent.
There is no way, no science, no technology great enough to dissuade me from believing I was in the presence of an angel. How could I fear death having witnessed the preamble to heaven-sent charity. I trust that when I inhale the final breath of life, my angel shall return with outstretched hand, to lead me home in peace and all heavenly tranquility.
There’s a magic that exists in everyday life for those who seek it out. Of this potential to explore the fantastic, I will always be an adventurer.

Please check out my other blog at gravenhurstmuskoka.blogspot.com

In the Midst of a Canadian Landscape –

There is still the half round ice-trail weaving between the brown soggy clumps of wetland grasses, and the black zig-zag of run-off water gurgling and frothing in a tiny cataract to my left. I walked on the path just the other day but the warm afternoon sun has presently eroded the snow canopy down to only a trace left in the shadows of leaning old birches, the ones poet Robert Frost liked to write about…..although I confess to being somewhat bewildered what the analogy meant to real life.
I came to this hollow of the Bog a thousand times over the winter, with trusted canine companion Bosko, and watched winter sculpt down sharply upon this frozen, lonely landscape. I’ve stood here and watched the four resident deer bound over the snow drifts where today there is the busy trundling of squirrels and a couple of crows picking at something in the matted grasses. I stood here listening to the wind howling on a sub-zero, moonlit night, and watched many mornings as the sun painted this hollow from ridge to treeline, a brilliant, sparkling gold. What an amazing contrast today, when the voyeur might even bask a little, leaning back against the tall pine that catches a goodly amount of sun on days like this one, as early spring makes its stroke upon this incredible scene of life’s re-awakening..
It has been a busy winter season in the capitalist sense. We’ve all worked hard to make those necessary financial gains that allow a few moments of escape from the regimen of modern life and times. I remember one evening a few years ago now, driving to a meeting I didn’t wish to attend, and stopping on the Muskoka Beach Road in area of the Stephens Bay. I looked down at the farmhouse cradled in the January snowfield and illuminated so brilliantly in early evening moonglow. I thought about all this hustle and mean bustle to achieve one thing after another, and how great it would be to just decline going to a meeting, to sit here instead and watch the moon continue to rise, and celebrate a truly enchanting evening in the heart of Muskoka. I have always hated going to meetings and anyone who has participated in one, seated next to me, has probably been highly irritated by my unsettled, squirming, anticipatory vigor and general impatience with the clock and speaker. And I decided on that particular evening to stop going to meetings. Seriously. I’d had enough of meeting-happy citizens sucking the independence out of my life. Since then, I have only attended several and then it was only because it was in defense of a threatened public park by greedy development interests and poor political leadership. On those occasions I was too mad to think about everything else I was missing, tied to the auditorium chair.
I have a fear of being fettered by anyone, anything or any event, and I’m always cutting away commitments someone else makes for me. Don’t you hate that? Finding out you’ve been recruited by some group or an organizing committee about to change the world in their image.
My wife Suzanne used to agree to our attendance at after work functions or what I used to call the grim and grimace affairs, where small talk was coated with niceties and so were the meatballs. When I was on the job myself as a day to day editor for the local press, and party time would roll around, the only reason I could muster the stamina to go was if it was a way to scoop up a story tip, get a date, or gather up enough food and beverage to bring myself (in my appraisal of the shortfall) up to an acceptable wage. Of course the only way that was truly possible, is if I’d carried out a couple of antiques, a sofa and sideboard because I was paid horribly as a writer. Nothing new there! So standing around exchanging pleasantries wasn’t an option. I eyed the food and booze and my wife would get embarrassed by mid-evening and possibly leave me dripping of sweet and sour sauce, or heading for the open bar again and again..
I guess my actions were so loathsome that she gave up on sharing her invitations with me evermore. Suzanne attends these functions with colleagues alone and I tend to the four pets and two sons still residing here at Birch Hollow. All seems to be working in this particular case of social dysfunction. When she asked me the other day, why I don’t like going to parties or after-work socials, and whether it linked back to some terrible misadventure in youth, I did have somewhat of a breakthrough in conscience.
As a reporter for the local press, part of our job assignment was to cover every grip and grin in central and south Muskoka. The “grip and grin,” is the photo-op, when one hand of friendship (supposedly) meets another. It’s a nice image for the social pages but my publisher liked these staged shots for the front page. Every press day it was the same argument….accident or crime scene versus anniversary grip and grin. Gads, how inappropriate. I went to anniversaries, birthdays, family reunions, weddings, ribbon cuttings, service club shindigs and covered oh so many political visitations to one and all in this ballywick,… Muskoka. I would get to an anniversary at a community hall or family residence, and be cordially received then forgotten about usually until hour two, the time my feet would start to take root. Most often I’d have to watch everyone else eat and eat and eat, and when they weren’t eating they were sucking back the booze. Maybe only once in about a decade of this community minded stuff was I ever offered a piece of cake, a pop or a chair. And I’ll tell you what….that if I had so much as thought about being intrusive and asking to set up a photograph ahead of their schedule, a call would have been made to my boss demanding that I got lashes for insolence.
And truth is, many times I was hungry because there was no food in my house, as the pay didn’t afford many frills beyond covering rent and a few bottles of beer a week. Yes, the writer-kind would rather give up food than booze. So as these folks are passing around platters of turkey and roast beef, Yorkshire Puddings and great bowls of steaming spuds, beans, carrots and then there was the desert, by golly, it was the kind of emotional abuse that etches onto the soul. I was hungry. How grand and generous it would have been to offer me a plate and a place in line for the buffet. But no, I was just the photographer, the reporter who would put this event into the paper for posterity. Here’s some posterity for you…..it made me very angry over a painful decade, and yes when my wife queries why I don’t like attending functions, I could unwind a thousand tales similar, where niceties just don’t make up for years of being forced to attend fetes for the ignorant, grand balls for the arses of the social grandiose.
Toward the end of my reporting years, when I actually begged to get fired, I may have grabbed off one or more of those luscious meatballs that passed beneath my nose, and scooped up a few butter tarts when no one was looking, and although I don’t remember exactly, I may have got caught with a slab of beef in my pocket for a sandwich later on. It’s most likely these hosts “with the most” did contact my publisher and demanded satisfaction,…. which in their minds probably meant firing me and giving their anniversary coverage front page instead of being tucked into the classifieds beside “In Memoriums.” I really didn’t care if they fired me or not because I’d become a rogue-employee by those final years, and damn if I was going to attend ribbon cuttings and anniversaries without fringe benefits. If I wasn’t offered them, well, I took what food was required to get the energy to snap the photograph. I’m sure I was a spectacle. A poster boy for Reporter’s Monthly, chasing down that hot wing with a snatched glass of ale.
Suzanne doesn’t ask me to accompany her to social events in part because she fears I will resort to some insane justification ritual, to balance what I have to put up with in inane conversation, with a mitt full of shrimp and cheese for pain and suffering. I’m not quite so boorish at home but invite me into your home, and expect something edible to go missing. Heck I took a bite out of an ornamental candle once when I got bored, and at a wedding my girlfriend said I ate the bride’s bouquet. That was good news considering that later I was sick to my stomach, and got the shock of my life when I yacked up a fern and flower petals. Thought it was the autumn sunset of my life!
I sure like the freedom afforded Bosko and I here in the midst of this Canadian landscape, listening to the spring melt wash through this lowland, and the honking geese flying out over Lake Muskoka. The sky’s the limit today. No fetters for as far as the eye can see. No one planning that I should attend anything more than the dinner table and lounge chair to watch Coronation Street. Seeing as I never miss an episode of dinner or Coronation Street, Suzanne informed me that I am most definitely fettered by habit. I guess she’s right. At least they’re my bonified habits, not the habits of others I’m forced to endure.
If any one thing parallels my years as a writer, it is this feeling of shackles past, when to make a buck I had to prostitute myself as a decent reporter, going to events that were nothing more than grandstanding photo ops…..and it made me angry. I just never realized how angry until that night, staring out over this amazing Muskoka farmstead, bathed in the satin light of a winter moon, thinking about the hours yet to spend in the company of committee members and point making. I turned around after a lengthy and thoughtful vigil, and refused to spend the rest of my life restrained. As a writer of blogs, I’ve never been so liberated, and so resolved to remain this way.
Get out and celebrate the Canadian landscape this spring. That’s what Bosko and I will be doing in between these sessions where she sleeps beside and I tap musically at the keyboard in that personal harmony lost then found.

Please visit my other blog at gravenhurstmuskoka.blogspot.com