COLD WINTER CALM......THE STORM IS COMING

The spiral of warm ghostly steam rises slowly from the tea-cup, and is drawn to the cold glass of my office window. As if a wayward spirit is finally moving toward the light, it is lost in the brightness of the morning. I have only just come in from a short walk down the lane, and my beard is frozen white, like a shrub against the house. It is minus 24 at present but as many days, so far this winter, it will blossom with grand sunshine for the rest of the day. The afternoon temperature will be much warmer but tonight is again expected to return to at least minus 20. It is expected this will be the last bright day for the next week. Groundhog Day is on Wednesday (two days from this writing) and it’s not likely to see its shadow on this February 2nd. A storm will soon begin its cross of the Great Lakes, and by tomorrow at this time, we should be seeing the first tumble of clouds of what some are calling, the storm of the decade. Frankly, we have been told this many times, by weather folks this winter, who seem to relish making any storm-front “breaking news” events. Most we have been warned about this year have fizzled long before hitting Muskoka. This winter has been a splendid mix of sun and flurries, with only five or six similarly cold days as this one has turned out.

Sitting at my desk, I enjoy the transitions of the day. The changes in mood from this bright daylight, to the flurries that hit the window-pane in the glow of lamplight. There is always an eagerness to meet the very next weather system heading our way. I’ve sat in this same place for many spectacular summer storms, autumn gales, January blizzards, and the torrential rains of early April. I’ve watched from here as our thin maples and evergreens are nearly doubled over by the powerful winds, and watched as the lilacs and raspberry canes, in the front garden, are violently intertwined by sustained gusts, and twisting air currents that I fear might lift this house off its blocks;........ and blow it unceremoniously onto some unsuspecting witch (stopped to fix a flat broom), somewhere on the Yellow Brick Road.

To some watchers this would seem dull entertainment none the less, as weather seems only a matter of inconvenience, to our daily mortal work and play. It is something to work around moreso than appreciate and understand. If you watched out from this portal long enough, you’d realize just how important the subtle changes are, when for example, everything outside ceases to move and an eerie silence seems to prevail indoors and out. Awaiting the first drifts of snow, from a dangerous storm-front, my resident crickets suddenly stop chirping. The cats and dog seem pensive and alert to changes about to arrive. Some times the changes out here are minute and hard to detect, certainly for someone who hasn’t spent much time interested in the natural world. There are signs, beyond the stiffness of my joints, that nature is offering a warning, in order to prepare her children for a surge of power brewing within. A stillness will commence prior to the storm, when the bird chatter at the feeder will cease, for awhile, and there’ll be no significant wind,...... and the squirrels and birds in the tree-tops here at Birch Hollow, will disappear, as signs guide them to a more sheltered place to weather the storm.

I will watch as the trees-tops on the western fringe of The Bog, begin to waver in the newly risen wind. In minutes, the quake of wind against the earth, will roar as it mounts the hillside from the lake. It will begin with a wheez through the evergreens, and then boom heavily across the open area, slamming into the vulnerable, leaning birches and venerable pines,..... and I will see, before long, the cull of many branches and weak tops, to be sent smashing into the snowscape. Soon after, the voyeur will see the cascade of snow spiraling through the woodlands, dusting down on the vivid green of the resident cedars, sculpting over the lowland and hitting hard at this humble homestead at Birch Hollow. It will be a profound hour or two of assault against the landscape, and many of my favorite old trees will be toppled. From this window I will see the spirited essence of a Muskoka storm. I will have to head out to shovel the lane, for fear of being snowed-in. It will happen here in a matter of several hours. It can be an amazing transformation, if there is a large quantity of snow associated with the front. Even this winter, there have been snowfalls that have necessitated three clearings, through the day, just to keep the driveway unplugged. It’s expected this snow storm could do the same. From this bright and cheerful calm, to the full engagement of a Muskoka storm, seems a work of fiction.....but it will prove real enough when that first roar of wind sweeps toward our retreat here, adjacent to The Bog.

Tom Thomson was a lover of storms. Those who knew the revered Canadian landscape artist, told stories of his sudden change in demeanor when a severe storm was approaching. It was as if his mood was directly proportional to the stormscape’s intensity. He studied the thick, dark tumble of clouds, as it moved over the lakeland, and then exploded suddenly with thunder and lightning,..... the wind gouging down at the water, to create a cauldron of white froth, where only moments earlier, there had been a prevailing, gentle calm.

His keen awareness of the weather, and the volatility of seasonal storms, were hallmarks of his art throughout his short career, particularly in his important collection of Algonquin studies.

I have the same interest. I look forward to the contrasts of the season, and have always felt liberated by these drastic transitions of earth and atmosphere. Now it is mid-winter, and the watcher expects a major snowstorm will arrive, twenty-four hours from now. And I will be here to witness its arrival. A short story shall recall the event, for posterity, as they have for all the seasons that have etched down, and passed my occupancy, of this cherished, humble cabin in the glorious hinterland of my Muskoka.

ANY ROOM FOR THE NOVELIST TO EMERGE? I’M SOFTENING ON FICTION

Back in the early 1980's, a writer friend and I, both working for the community press at the time, in Bracebridge, decided to put together a stage-play. Two news hounds thinking about a plan to pursue fiction, is just left of nuts. It took a lot of booze. It was at my peak of imbibing and the more whisky we consumed, the more the idea seemed golden. We might have even written a screen play, or television pilot, had we carried on in our drunken stupor. Heavens knows, we might have co-written a novel. The only reality we needed however, to figure the whole thing out, was a good re-read of what we’d penned during the previous binge. Take out the gratuitous stuff, the ridiculous story-line, and really bad word-smithing, there wasn’t a shred of workable copy to salvage. We gave up when the booze ran out. I don’t know what happened to the rough copy but it should have been burned-up, just in case it had our names attached.

Both of us have remained in the writing enterprise, to varying degrees, ever since, just not as authors of fiction. I’ll admit to having made a few attempts in the past thirty years, beyond what we started to pen from that front table at the local watering hole. Each time, I get about the same number of chapters in, sober as a judge, but can’t seem to find the inspiration to finish the book. I’ve never been very good at reading fiction, and even as an old book seller, by profession, more than 95 percent of my books for sale, are titles of non-fiction. So it’s a belief issue, that fiction is frivolous, although it’s always crossed my mind, that as a writer, it would be okay to be called a “novelist.” I’ve been called better and worse, in a career that began with poetry in the mid-1970's in my latent beatnik phase.

My first published works were poems. At York University I was taught by a number of successful poets. Truthfully, I still write poems, in an old hardcover ledger, I keep by my livingroom chair. I only write in it when everybody’s gone to bed, simply because I don’t want to explain my creative dabbling. Family couldn’t leave well enough alone, and sooner or later, they’d be quoting poetic lines, to counter-point one of my arguments, or follies, or both at once. While it might seem strange to do this, I enjoy creative writing for personal entertainment, not for career enhancement. It’s why I tread so lightly on the subject of writing short stories, or an eventual full-chapter novel. As a career anti-fiction crusader, I look pretty stupid when one or more of my kin find several sample chapters of sample fiction loose on my desk.

I have made mindful attempts to re-invent myself as a creative writer, in common step with the historian, feature writer, blogger, and columnist. So far it hasn’t worked. The other discipline kicks the novelist’s ass repeatedly. It’s not that I’m unable to write fiction but that my own history makes it a difficult conversion. I’d love to start with a clean slate, as a novelist, and live the novelist’s life. If it was that easy, I’d have converted twenty years ago when I left full-time employ of the weekly press, and I was searching for career opportunities. In those two decades I’ve written twice the volume of historical and feature material, as an independent, that I would have for a regular pay cheque working for one master. Independence and freedom from a publisher’s influence, has been the hallmark of my writing career so far. But to think that, as a novelist, I’d have to cater to the editors and publisher of popular books, with market strategies for profit-making, makes me nauseous just thinking about it. I’ve enjoyed writing for all of these years, and hope one day, my boys will appreciate some of my accomplishments......ones in authordom they don’t know about. I’ve spent many years working as a writer; owned by no one, loyal only to my own conscience. Yet as I have long advised my two sons to pursue dreams with passion, and challenge for success, I realize the contradiction is pretty striking. If I was to embrace my own advice, I’d start working on an idea right now, and let everyone here know, a novelist had emerged.....having just now escaped from the historian’s dominion.

I have one of the most beautiful and compelling backdrops, here in the Muskoka hinterland, any writer or artist could ask for........ a perpetually inspirational place to create. I can sit here, in the comfortable digs at Birch Hollow, our modest homestead, and watch out at a most enticing environs, thriving with activity from the bird feeder guests, to the half dozen squirrels and venerable old crows, dwelling in the adjacent woodland. Robert Frost and Washington Irving benefitted from such inspiring vistas.....and while I don’t have the advantage of Irving’s haunted Hudson River Valley, or Frost’s picturesque farmstead, we do share the immersion, and restorative communion with nature. Sometimes non-fiction simply can’t address the enchantment I see in this hinterland, here in South Muskoka. As hard as I try, there are descriptions I compose, that borrow from the obvious qualities and quantities of nature, yet overlap the shadowy expectation of what I think exists and interacts beyond my sight. As Washington Irving understood the botanist’s need to investigate the smallest molecules of a larger life-form, he also appreciated that despite the revelations magnification and dissection would reveal, it could never totally explain the nuances of the enchanted life. He was not deterred from believing in phantoms, wee fairies and their midnight revels, and held considerable regard for lore and legend, as part of enduring, important cultural beliefs and identity. His was in no way, a bid to abandon science for what it could explain, yet as with the heavenly music a harpist plays, it might be supposed, as much, the summonsing of angel-kind to earth. Just because science hadn’t proven the existence of angels, didn’t stop the believer from anticipation and expectation,........ regardless of the scientist’s conclusions otherwise. Irving could believe in the revelations of new science yet still not be thwarted from believing in the great worth of legend to existence..

It is this perpetual badgering I engage upon myself, whenever I get the urge to pen the opening chapters of a novel, or collection of short stories of which I most enjoy. I will get to a mid-zone of work, and the non-fiction interest, will implore the novelist to settle back into wishful thinking and nothing more. Even by this confessional, I have no such personal fortitude, at this moment, to become a novelist all of a sudden by any type of internal revolt, or staged intervention......of novelists I know gathering round me, to cast-out the historian’s bent, for more fertile thoughts and creative enterprise. Still, I’m having more fiction-friendly hiatus periods these days, as I find my column work full to overflowing, and time on my hands to pursue other interests. I think it’s fair to think of it all as a future potential, when I’m satisfied it hasn’t been at the sacrifice of my daily scribblings on-line and for assorted publications. I suppose it’s as much a fear of the unknown, and the expectation, based on early trials, that my creative foray will fail miserably. I’ve always rather worried, that a failure in any writing enterprise, might thrust me into such a funk, that composing anything thereafter would be next to impossible. It’s happened before just not the result of a turn toward fiction.

I will continue to be inspired, sitting here, looking out on such a magnificent scene, as this winter lowland, in the great woodlands of Muskoka. I will make subtle forays in creativity, and dress it up as non-fiction, at least for the immediate future. One day, I think, I will sit down here, early one morning, and experience a sort of grand re-constitution of values......commencing an unfettered, inspired season of creative liberation. Until then, the historian rules this body, and is a taskmaster, let me tell you.

ENCHANTING PLACE - BUT WHAT DOES AN ENCHANTMENT DO FOR THE SOUL IN 2011?

Since the earliest years of active settlement in the District of Muskoka, as the Historic Hudson has been for centuries more, writers and artists have celebrated the picturesque qualities of the Ontario hinterland. The Muskoka lakeland was promoted, in its earliest days of history, as a magical, enchanted fairyland, of breathtaking scenery that was health restoring for mind, soul and body. The air was clear, the water clean and the environment free of city stresses and expectations. And while we don’t have the Hudson’s author, Washington Irving, to tell us about phantom ships and the exploits of Rip Van Winkle, Iccabod Crade and the Headless Horseman, Muskoka has been portrayed as “storied,” “legendary” natural paradise, with a sparkling lakeland and haunted, beautiful forests. Landscapes so tantalizing that they inspired Group of Seven artists and Canadian poets. They found a region that had many enchantments for them, and they discovered, by lengthy association that inspiration grew generously from fertile soil. The creative mind found much to benefit from in the wilds of the newly opened district.

It’s also true that while poets and artists fed on natural splendor, for their art panels and books of poetry, homesteaders in the same hinterland, found a much harsher, less fertile environs that often killed their ambitions as well as their families.

For decades upon decades, the art community has found Muskoka an ideal place to retreat and create. I don’t think they believe in enchantments, and great mysteries the way Washington Irving did, but their work still reflects an essence of appeal and curiosity for the unknown, none the less. I still embrace the word, “enchantment,” because there isn’t a morning or moonlit night, that I don’t sense a magic in the air. A walk in the snowy woods this morning, following a light snow sometime after midnight, I couldn’t have been more enthralled to view any scenery on earth.....than what I was privileged to explore of this very enchanted place. Possibly it is a romantic, sentimental approach to looking at nature. I’m sure it is the case, I have taken similar vistas, that fascinated me as a child, I know now, and transposed them over top the scenes I see today. Maybe there is a prejudice about Muskoka’s grandeur I can’t get past. The hunch that this woodland is haunted, manifests because of all the books, and all the poets read over a life time. Yet somehow I’m content with this layering of experiences, and chapters of actual and literary adventures. As I started out in this life, as an eager watcher in the woods, I’ve remained thoroughly, happily contented to remain as such.

One of my favorite advisories from Irving, was when he suggested of his readers, that they look upon nature with perspective of all sides......not just solely on the information offered by the botanist, who has dissected and investigated species to the most minute detail of life. He offered the opinion that there is so much more to life and environment, than what fact we use to bridge our way to advancement. He was talking about the necessity of expectation and anticipation.....things about our place in the universe that can’t be explained by science alone.....at least in his time. Irving had experienced enchantment, and most biographers seem to agree, he thrived and celebrated the unknown.....but made it all familiar and approachable for his readers. You could not read much of Washington Irving’s work, especially as a young adult, and not appreciate his viewpoint on such things as enchantment and the so-called paranormal,........without sensing the depth and potential of even greater mystery while on the very next countryside amble.

Afterall, it has always been by curiosity, and implied necessity that we have looked deeper into the natural world.....to benefit and enhance our own survival. It was these enchantments that inspired investigation initially.....and whether science today recognizes the role of the fantastic and expectation in discovery.......I believe it has always been the catalyst of invention and the resource of ingenuity......because we have been always been compelled to investigate what fascinates us, and those actualities we don’t understand. It is thus not so silly, to still, on occasion, be enthralled by such natural vistas as this......a snowy woodland in a still wild place.

I am a huge supporter of the advancement of science. I am also a die-hard believer in the enchantments of every day places. Coming back from a morning stroll through these snowy woods, just now, has created quite an appetite for another walk after finishing this column. Mine isn’t a romantic or sentimental viewpoint...... of a harsh reality of nature and its etching of the earth. Watching the dramatic unfolding of floods, mudslides, earthquakes, cyclones, tornadoes, man on man conflict, and raging sickness around the world, one often finds little to feel enchanted about. Fearful yes. Nature is a brutal companion. As it was in Irving’s day. All of history’s days.

Even though Irving was a writer who explored potential and possibility from his environs, and held high regard for lore and legend, he was a realist and appreciated the power of nature to change itself, violently, without regard for mankind’s safety. I think it was this appreciation for great unyielding power and profound capability to transform the world, on which we dwell, that added to his wonderment and interest in enchantments, phantoms, heavenly bowlers, ghosts and Headless Horsemen. He was reverent of nature, not afraid of it. He knew the limited capability and life span of man, was the marker of inherent weakness of body...... but the mind was an equal natural force to be reckoned with. Irving passionately embraced the idea of exploration, and investigation, and believed in the role of the “fantastic” in life and its history.

I’m sure if he was standing with me today, on this elevation of land, above the snow-laden Bog, he would find it a very enchanted place......with its myriad trickling creeks, crystal falls, and singing wind through pine and cedar. There is a heritage patina here, as if this scene now, was a page from another time.....possibly one that the good Mr. Irving might have scribbled a note about, extolling the mysteries of life and afterlife, tied to our awe for beautiful places, and occasions when fear and trembling, in its threshold, makes us humble and grateful to have such opportunity of communion, with the nuances of all life.

I have very much enjoyed my early winter explorations in these Muskoka woodlands. There has not been an occasion yet this new year, when an hiatus from work, for a gentle stroll, hasn’t renewed and restored an interest in spending more time here at the keyboard. Like Irving, I am dedicated to my relationship with nature. Compelled to venture forth frequently, to benefit myself from its unlimited resources of inspiration. From this portal at Birch Hollow, I am fulfilled each day, by my surroundings. It is my own enchantment, that compels me to appreciate each day for what it offers, and live by the rules of expectation, and respect for the power transitional, unpredictable evolution nature can unfurl,....... harmful to even its watcher in the woods.

Take a walk in the woods. Enjoy this beautiful winter season in Ontario.

NEW YEAR WITH MANY HOPES

It is kind of a dull morning, threatening to snow but giving no appearance of getting stormy any time soon. It’s wonderful to look out over The Bog, and see the hundreds of wee birds flitting about the naked boughs of venerable old hardwoods. I’ve just restored an old bird feeder we haven’t used for several years, and I’m delighted life has returned to dine at Birch Hollow. We had to stop for awhile, and think about placement of all our feeders, due to the attraction to local deer. While I don’t begrudge deer from the occasional snack on our property, (they love to eat certain flowers and leaves which we’ve had to eliminate from our gardens as a result), the problem they represent to oncoming traffic is serious. Being on the upper end of our dead end street, we get some pretty high speeds rounding the corner, down onto the straightaway. Having the deer cross at our property back into the adjacent lowland, we call The Bog, could be dangerous to the deer and those heading home in the wee hours.....which seems to be the time of choice for our visitors including a moose this year.

I’ve been working at numerous writing projects early this winter, and I’ve spent a lot of time, in between assignments, staring out over the landscape, enjoying the view. There have been many years in my life when I went a long, long time without even thinking about this “great vista,” or “enchanted snowscape.” I’ve changed a lot over the years. I ponder a lot more now, and the pace of course, is a little lighter than when I was producing an entire summer season’s editorial copy from January to April, for The Muskoka Sun. I hate deadlines but I was bang-on for more than a decade, and even if it killed me, the copy would be delivered to the publisher at least two days before my most optimistic submission date, and a week or more ahead of the paper’s insisted time. What can I say. I’m obsessive about deadlines and my adherence to them. Till now. I’ve given myself a tad more flexibility.

I will be returning more actively to my blog-site this winter now that my modest deadlines for copy have been met and well, yes, undercut from the publisher’s expectation. Heck I’ll be dead two days before the Grim Reaper had me scheduled for pick-up. That’ll tick ‘em off, eh? I like to be prepared. I even do this when filling up with gas. Geez I always end at .98 cents instead of hitting an even amount. It’s my signature to gas bar attendants, and I love to see the puzzled look on their faces when I leave the two cents behind. It’s worth the two cents to see them ponder “how crazy is this guy.” It’s not that I’m giving them a tip or anything.....it’s just what I feel is a lucky number, and it, well, sort of works. I’m habitually ahead of expectation and it’s how I motivate myself for future projects......some that are pretty labor intensive. Even my own!

Have a safe and healthy start to a great New Year.