Muskoka Blog-site
I have been consumed, this long-long-long winter season, by the work of American writer/ philosopher, Henry David Thoreau, and I've spent many hours by this cedar-fueled, crackling hearth, reading about his stay at the humble cabin he built at Walden Pond. I agree with most of his reasoning for retreating from the often mindless hustle and complicated economy of his modern world, which was pioneer by all standard...but I've always pondered why he left after only a modest stay in paradise. My downfall would surely be the outright refusal to abandon what offered me enlightenment and such natural joy. No, I couldn't leave voluntarily. Unless I was real hungry.
My son and I trundled through The Bog, across from our home at Birch Hollow earlier today, taking some more photographs to include with this "Muskoka Blog," and there are times when I can visualize Thoreau himself wandering this spring rejuvenated landscape, getting some soulful inspiration watching frost melt free of the myriad new buds glistening on a trillion little branches reaching hardily toward the sunlight.....and the frothing little creeks that criss cross in black veins across the hollow. I can find numerous places where one might find a Thoreauesque cabin, such as upon the level shelf overlooking the main basin of this Bogland, where he most assuredly would have been afforded a decent view, for all seasons, of the comings and goings, the evolution, and adaptations of this wild place so close to the hubbub of daily activity in our small community. Thoreau wasn't particularly isolated in his cabin at Walden, and it is said his family made sure he was kept in fresh baking and supplies, such that he wouldn't die of starvation.....and only be mildly affected by loneliness.
What draws me to Thoreau is the same characterisitic that attracts me to the work of Canadian artists like Tom Thomson and the legendary Group of Seven. I know I'm missing the profound and important messages of natural life that I might pick up by osmosis, living in a cabin like Thoreau's, and I'm pretty sure I would find a myriad sparks of inspiration, canoeing an Algonquin waterway, as did Tom Thomson on his painting expeditions into the deep and storied lakeland once long ago.
As a career writer, it is my one lingering dissatisifaction with my own work. Staying connected with the wilderness, and learning from it, and being nurtured by what occurs naturally..... not artificially which is the polluted and intoxicating reality of a majority of functions in my so called civilized world.
I want to re-connect with the hinterland. It's the commencement of my life's last significant mission. As a long time writer and researcher, historian and author, I simply can't leave this mortal coil without a much clearer knowledge, about the lifeline modern civilization has abandoned....and wishes to find again.....and if we are to save the planet, and ourselves, we'd better find it soon. I think Thoreau gave us the reason to quest for a better, more natural existence.....a simpler plan, a lesser expectation of mortality to be a greater player in the natural order than intended.......just a respectable, considerate, conscience componet in the cycle of life. Nothing more, nothing less. Our zeal for progress has in so many ways enhanced our lives, and in so many others, been a history of civilizations self-strangulation.
Join me for adventures in the hinterland, with influences of mentors, Thoreau and Tom Thomson, two sources of inspiration who have never let me down.