A NEED TO GET OUT AND EXPLORE

This has been a strange and complicated year, and as an historian I do pay attention to the peaks and valleys of our rolling days here at Birch Hollow. The year began with the death of my father Ed after a short illness, and carried on with a plethora of unanticipated situations from pressing home repairs to the demands of several family business. We were hired to sell-off a monstrous collection of historic paper and photographs, for a longtime cottager and family, and it took us months to get a handle on the volume. The summer was spent dealing with our own massive collection of antiques and collectibles that simply had to be down-sized by at least half. So we had a wild summer of yard sales. I have never before moved so much stuff back and forth.....and frankly, had not realized how much heavy old stuff I actually owned.....and what it would do to the body, having to shift it constantly from yard sale to storage four times. Of course the good news is, we sold exactly what we needed to, in order to make room for the ongoing comfortable habitation of Birch Hollow. As for the old body.....well, it’s taken several months to repair the muscle and joint damage rung up by hauling old cupboards, sideboards, buffets and tables from here to there and back.

With our two boys in the music trade, and working as sound technicians here in Muskoka, for a number of entertainment venues, I’ve been kept busy as their roadie, spending a lot of time hauling stuff from gig to gig. I love it. It’s wonderful to be a part of your kids’ lives and business at a time when most of us, around our age, are dealing with empty nest syndrome. While it gets a little crazy at times keeping up with all the current events, it’s strangely calming to work on things out of the ordinary. For example, I was blogging like a maniac here in Gravenhurst, during the two month blitz of the municipal election campaign. I’m a civic activist who is tired of ever-numbing tax burdens and utility costs......and the general but consistent misspending of the folks we expect to be somewhat frugal and investment savvy with our tax money. I had one of three candidates, I supported, win the election which was okay but I’m pretty sure the other successful candidates couldn’t have cared-less about my firebrand editorials. So after the election I decided to settle down a tad, and return to a more gentle pursuit. So to keep the bean counters happy around here, I blitzed my business on-line and it was a really good month for sales. As for writing, well, I seem to have been unfairly compromised by making money and following my boys around the entertainment circuit.

Bosko, our crazy dog, and I have spent a lot more time, this past week, wandering in the woodlot, thinking about Walden Pond and Thoreau’s vigil on its shore, and how this Bogland across from our homestead, reminds me of his literary meanderings of once. It is so beautiful here to look out, on a blustery day, and see the golden grasses moving so gracefully in the air currents.....weaving together down low, and then being liberated in a wave when the gusts abate. In this now frigid November air, I’m always pulling up my collar to block out the cutting edge of winter on the march. I would love to find a place to sit out here and make notes through the transitions of the day, as light and shadow change hour to hour. But these old gnarled hands and damaged joints are already aching and I have only just sat down here at this old keyboard.

Suffice to say, it has been a grand respite to a busy year, to now be able to wander here without any strict protocol tethering me to a specific task at home......at least for this moment and a few hours down the road. So I will make the most of it, and watch the winter wind cloak this haunted hollow on earth, with a sculpted mantle that will be of a blinding white until contrasts prevail when overcast.

I shall return to the keyboard again soon, full of vim and vinegar, to represent this enchanted ballywick in Muskoka, in its most enthralling season of the year.

NOVEMBER ATTRACTS THE WRITER ME BECAUSE OF THE STORM

Today the gusts of wind and near-freezing rain make it seem a chilling, nasty experience. Standing out here on this little embankment, above the Bog, affords me an enchanted panorama of the season in transition.....not quite winter but us oldtimers know it’s manifesting beyond this haunted place, and will soon dust over the hollow with fresh snow and drifts across the adjacent pinery. While it is a lonely place in appearance at this moment, veiled in part by a hovering mist, the barren qualities and the rain storm make this study quite compelling for the writer.....who indoors might simply huddle, with resignation, to hearthside, on such blustery mornings as this. Yet there is something spectacular unfolding here, and I can only see this as a storied place, with so much mystery, wisdom and life to bestow the watcher in the woods.

I can arrive here, at this same place, and bask on sunny noon-hours, sheltered from the wind by this enclave of brush and evergreen. Yet despite the rainfall, heavy at times, and the wind which is gusting now off the bay below, I could write for most of this day, comfortable in the embrace of weather that is profound and interesting......half expecting any moment to watch as some ghost of a former traveller, wanders along this same pathway down to the Bog....or that I will see some phantom creature ambling across the hollow, veiled in part by this ever-shifting low-level fog. I will see deer on the trail directly across from this embankment, and possibly a black bear if conditions prevail, and there are so many squirrels and birds overhead, as to make this a most dynamic place even in this low light, and chill of air and rain. I must bring the collar of my sweater up to keep the cold air from penetrating my soul.

I never have a writer’s conundrum in an environs like this. While on a sunny day I might rest upon a fallen tree, investigate tracks or observe the wildlife before heading back home, on powerful, unpredictable days like this, I am attached here, much as if I have actually taken root. I am compelled to be here to witness this transition of the seasons. I am rewarded, in kind. I have much to write about!

ELECTION FEVER WENT COLD - I WANTED TO GET INVOLVED BUT.........

For the past several months I’ve been blogging like a man possessed, on my Gravenhurst site, regarding the recent Municipal Election. I communicated with a number of council hopefuls who apparently liked the cut of my jib, early on, and could relate to some of the critiques I was offering up almost daily. I find that once the successful candidates are sworn-in to office, later in the fall season, getting points across requires an appointment or an application to council proper as a delegation. So I took my opportunity to express some concerns about my hometown, and offer some insight about ratepayer chagrin and forays by these same ratepayers in the future.......and the preventative measures to meet deadlocks before they mire down in conflict and dysfunction. Did it do any good? Geez I don’t know. But what I do know is, I’m the same now as I was when writing those September and October blogs, and I wasn’t wrong then and I’m not now......that the citizens here are not going to put up with shortfalls in leadership, and drunken sailor spending as we have in the past. While it may seem a tad dictatorial for a pundit like me to be telling councillors how to behave, and what to act upon, and what to unburden themselves, being apathetic to most council business four years ago, nearly cost us a beautiful wetland in our neighborhood......that council decided to sell off as surplus land in order to put that money somewhere else......like purchasing a property for a new town hall. It was the fight of our lives here because losing the wetland oasis, here in the urban area, would have drastically changed the water-filtering the bog provides, before town run-off hits the waters of Muskoka Bay, Lake Muskoka. We lost an entire summer fighting this but alas, it paid off, and I will be walking through the Bog as soon as I finish up this entry.

I have neglected my other blog sites this year for a number of reasons, and this time, it was all about politics. I hate politics. I despise having to deal with mantra of elected officials who tote the party line, with each carefully measured response to all questions. But I also know what it costs when you drop your guard, and so this time, I had a chance to share my concerns and chagrin about previous governments, on a site that was getting quite a bit of action.....which is always pleasing to a long-in-the-tooth writer, who is best known for historical features, not community activism.

I’m taking a break from all the political commentary of the past two months. I’d love to pull the canoe down from its mount, and paddle off toward the horizon, like Tom Thomson traversed the hinterland lakes and rivers in quest of interesting vistas and inspiring landscapes. You can check out some of the Gravenhurst blogs from the past two months if you like. I will return soon.

Hopefully without municipal politics muddying up the water of a traverse I might soon take.