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.