NEGOTIATIONS UNDERWAY FOR A NEW MUSKOKA BLOG COLLABORATION - WHAT SHALL IT BE CALLED? MUSKOKA GOTHIC? THE MUSKOKA LIAR'S CLUB? TWO WILD AND CRAZY GUYS?

I've suggested a writing collaboration with family friend and local author, Van Newell, the resident king of Bodenville…..a fictional, "all-kinds-of-stuff-going-on-there" bailiwick near the actual hamlet of Uffington, in the near east climes of Muskoka…..a short motor coach ramble from the main street of Bracebridge. Van and his family are modern day homesteaders, and he has written of his adventures in both a weekly column in the local press, and authored two successful books dealing with Bodenville, and the life of home-made soap, free of the entanglements of hydro, sewers, and hot tubs…..and hot water requires more than turning on a faucet. I have long considered myself the kind of stock that could do the same kind of back-to-nature thing. I am after all, of that United Empire Loyalist stock, of the fighting Irish and English, that settled this country when it all looked like Bodenville. I've always felt I was one decision, and only one, from taking to the woods, as Thoreau took to his cabin on Walden Pond. You know what, it's funny how the reluctance to make that particular decision….that one lowly decision, can keep one in the luxury I so deserve. And that's not to mention the fail-safe here, that should I get drunk by chance, and load up the car to join Van on the homestead, Suzanne would rescue me from what could only turn out to be grievous injury to body and mind. Not that going to Bodenville is a bad thing, just an adventure I'd never get used to as a lifestyle.

Van is a good writer, and an interesting story spinner, and I've felt for years like we should get together…..not as homesteaders, but as authors, and put together a series of blogs about our lives in Muskoka for all of these years. Van and are both graduates of York University, in Toronto, (at around the same time of the late 1970's), and we both got jobs at Black Creek Pioneer Village after graduating. I never showed up on my first day of work because I found out what "water-toting" meant at an historic site…..and how many hours it would involve with a yoke and two pails. I'm not too sure how it worked out for Van but maybe he'll write about it, if I can convince him to team-up for a new blog series this winter. Parallels, other than we both live now in Muskoka, include my two boys, Andrew and Robert, playing in his band, The Bodenville Flyers….a folksy little band that has been playing around the region for a decade or more. My lads are the newbies with the group. The band often practices at their main street music shop here in Gravenhurst, and the Flyers play in all our fundraisers…..the ones we put on for the Salvation Army Food Bank.

Negotiations are ongoing, and I plan to bait him with a really catchy title, as the headline suggests. I'd even be open to one of his own titles, just to seal the deal. We've got a lot of things to say….to write…..arguments to make, fun to bestow, and readers to win over. We both love our region, and are proud to call Muskoka home. We don't agree on too much, and we like to square-off occasionally when pissing into the wind seems the appropriate action to a week of unrelated frustrations. We are most often "point and counter-point" people, and we think diversity of opinion is good for mankind, as long as it doesn't erupt in war. As for any religious battle that might break out…..I don't think we need to worry too much about a holy war.

While everybody and their brother's uncle is defining what it's like to be Muskokan, these days, some being sickly sweet about it….or lacking of sensibility entirely, Van and I have a fair bit of experience in the field of opinionation……especially about our home region. Van the homesteader, me the historian. Van the clever story teller, and soothsayer, Ted, the half-political animal, who likes to stir up controversy, cause it feels so good, could collaborate on a real dandy if it ever becomes fact.

Like I noted earlier, negotiations are underway. He's undoubtedly holding out for more money. I told him there isn't any. He doesn't believe me. I explained to him that all he could expect as payment, for regular contributions, was a hug of heartfelt friendship, and some apple crisp Suzanne bakes regularly. I'm hopeful that will swing the deal.

THE WOODLANDS, MUSKOKA, AND THE GREAT ESCAPE

It is not a frivolous romantic notion, to think of this mist-laden woodland, as a healing place. When I walk this soft pathway to the interior, here at Birch Hollow, it's as if the land buffers around me, as if to offer the most basic shelter for the anxious soul…..the pensive heart. That despite what the world offers in harsh daily news, here it is irrelevant for these quiet, gentle moments of contemplation. As if nothing is more important, at that precise moment, than celebrating the strange, pervasive kindred spirit, pulling us toward an understanding of life and death…..the seasons, the realities of late autumn, these falling leaves all around me, and the horizon winter, soon to hit with gale-force upon this lakeland forest. What I watched this morning, on the television news, is no more than the final burst of electronic light, when the set is shut-off, and your eyes still show the light intensity, with blotches of shadow that seem so contradictory to what had just occurred. It is brightest before the end. It is the nature of the body and the environs that proves more commanding than electronic intrusions. This woodland trail is well packed down from my footfall over these many years. So many ventures when the monitor screen seemed overpowering, and illogical to the creative process. It has all regained sensibility and proportion, when after only a few steps, and a pause or two to enjoy the view, that the realization seeps back into the soul, this is, despite its realities of life and death, a healing place for the kindred spirit. A respite from the rigors of news-watching and a reality obsession, I acquired from my years as a reporter. I have that fear and trembling of knowing things I honestly wish I didn't, because of being solution driven……..knowing there's so much, one can only watch in transition, the carnage in its wake, simply unavoidable even to the keenest, unflinching mortal. As I worry about altering a life here, by destroying habitat while I walk, it is all part of the etching of time, as evolution, changing nature by necessity of survival.

Nature has its brutal side. But it is this gentle side, I witness on these daily walks, that appeals to the weary soul; this salvation-seeking watcher-in-the-woods, who would rather encamp here amidst this natural evolution, where like the fallen leaf, I will be part of the soil that feeds, in perpetuity, the welfare of these guardian pines, venerable maples, and leaning birches……and all the myriad creatures interacting beneath my gaze.

I willingly surrender to the Muskoka woodlands this morning. They are alluring and haunted. There is the roar of a new wind, rising in bursts over the bay below, and the intrusive, yet comforting sound of old leaves, gently hitting the forest floor. Their wafting, spiraling decline back to earth, isn't unsettling, or depressing, as the watcher celebrated the change of seasons since childhood…….cherishing the arrival of winter and its boundless opportunities. There is a calmness in this death of the season. This harbinger of change, is hued golden by nostalgia, and harkened to attention by the romantic heart, recalling the sojourns of the early autumn, and the August vigils on the point above The Bog, to watch the late summer rain, advance the harvest. The reminiscences of the spring regeneration I felt in my heart, as renewal and rebirth of expectation. As I fondly recall the visit of yesterday morning, I equally celebrate the discoveries of this morning, and the expectations yet, of tomorrow and the day after. It is as poetic as any justice administered. I'm not asked for my permission, to herald these changes. I am but mortal, and as much a part of this vista of nature, as every leaf that began its tenure as a tight green bud on a barren branch. As I have walked this pathway toward The Bog each day, this year, I feel myself, as one of these still-clinging leaves, awaiting the right moment to be relieved of my hold onto existence, and life, to be rewarded with this magical fall to earth where I shall fertilize the roots of all the trees and ferns, wildflowers and weeds, that thrive here in the spring……nurturing life while being a part of it…..shading what ground, and life forms, that require shading to survive.

What great enterprise this nature affords our grand and intricate existence, and our part in the intriguing cycle of life.

I might enter this path with a profound sadness, about the disasters on the planet. Yet I have never once, lasted in this sanctuary more than a few moments, before I am pleasantly, and so subtly removed to its kindly spirit, where one loses fear of the inevitable, and settles to the intricate evolution of life through its stages. There can be no sadness in this enlightenment, of our time of life, our long or short stay within this mortal coil, and what we must learn of the seasons that etch upon, soul to soul, with the alluring revelation, that it is, despite its fiercest demands, a glorious existence of adventure and discovery. As if standing by my own childhood, and teenage-hood, adult and mid-life, and feeling quite contented, all has been celebrated despite the perception, and realities, it hasn't been, by mortal estimation, a perfect or even near-perfect story of acquired maturity.

There is a wafting, patch-work mist, passing over the lowland, at this moment, and a silvery drizzle quietly coating the hinterland. There are few sounds here today, except the occasional rub of a leaf hitting off the evergreens, and then settling upon the soggy, colored ground. I listen for the sound of any footfall, or stirring of the bushes, anticipating, as I always do, that I'm not alone in these haunted woods. On occasion, a neighbor might decide to walk their dog a short distance down this path, or a child might wander close, to pick-up some of these red and yellow leaves for a school project. I have already seen deer tracks impressed down into the mud, and there's evidence a bear has been digging at a bug-infested log some time earlier. Despite the fact this is a quiet place now, it is always an active acreage with wildlife, and the general life and times of all forests through time. Yet despite what I perceive as a busy place, it is, in human terms, an important solitude from the intrusive, hammering of human environs; be that of home and town, and travel between the stations of the day, the hour, the moment, from heartbeat to heartbeat, the raw, savage pursuit of normal existence. Pay cheque to pay cheque. The dwellers of the modern world. It is little wonder this pathway into solitude, is so well travelled and packed down. I could not survive this mortal pursuit, without the partnership with this wild place……the forgiving, nonjudgmental woodlands, that allow the voyeur to freely explore the universe, without having to leave the earth.

I will soon arrive home, to jot down notes, about the discovery of this morning, in the haunted place, The Bog. What haunts me most, is the reality we all nearly lost this healing place, when our hometown decided there was more to be gained by developing the acreage for housing, and infilling the lowlands to facilitate new buildings, and parking lots where the bullrushes today, are painted silver with rain, and blow back and forth in the wind, as a poem line by line. There is always that persistent fear, a bulldozer and chainsaw might come down this same path, where I wander and ponder life and times, and strip this enchanted place to its bare bones…….in pursuit of that mortal folly, believing man to be superior to its maker.

To my last hike down this trail, I will never abandon this tiny urban oasis, or the creatures that habitat beneath the outstretched evergreens and occupy the earth, below the blanket of leaves from the centuries. Protecting nature, protects ourselves.

Having sat here now for a few moments, to warm myself from the chill outdoors, and having an old dog resting against my feet, a cat having jumped onto my lap, I can hear the rattle of that new wind, hitting the hillside of The Bog, bringing with it that profound sense of impending transition, as winter unfurls its intent of occupation. As unsettling as it may be, to part with a cherished season, I feel the excitement of change, none the less, that with one season's decline, an enchanted re-generation of an old friend is about to manifest……..a friend of this writer…….the winter of my life.

WHAT A COINKIE DINKIE -

I FINALLY GET CLOSURE TO AN EDITOR'S GIG CUT SHORT-

When I strolled up Dominion Street, in Bracebridge, on the day I became editor…..of the oldest newspaper in town, (early 1980's) I remember pausing to look up at the iron letters on the front of The Herald-Gazette office, and thinking out loud….this is the best day of my life!

Even as a snotty nosed, dirty-faced kid, running around this old town, I had looked upon that newspaper office, one block from the main drag, and thought it was my destiny to one day take the helm as editor. I was a writer in residence up on Alice Street, even in public school, when I began writing adventure stories to impress the creative writing component of public school english. I then moved on to a spirited writing residency in the former brick house, built by Dr. Peter McGibbon, earlier in the century. It was a particularly haunted abode, in a good way, and it was a hugely prolific period in my budding career. I was inspired by everything. They were all challenges to cherish. I couldn't wait to finish one project before launching a second and third.

I seemed to always be writing or planning out a script or war-themed story, although my first public piece was a short play about the curious, risque interactions of teenage friends on the brink of new and exciting discoveries. Well it got some laughs, and I made a few of my girlfriends blush, but it established me, amongst my associates, as a writer wannabe. So much in fact, that one of the main characters, and my best friend at the time, swiped the manuscript and refused to return it……believing that if I did become a well known writer-kind, this would be a valuable first edition…..

So when I strolled up to that Dominion Street newspaper office, on that spot of urban landscape since the late 1800's, I was too over-whelmed frankly, to know how to express myself about the promotion……so I drank like a writer and lived the life of a newsy…….like our hero, columnist Paul Rimstead, of the newly launched Toronto Sun. Rimmer was a local lad, who had the same trials and tribulations at the local high school, as we (the other writers on staff) had endured, but had still gone on to the fame and glory as a key player in the Canadian daily press. Rimstead led the way for many young, full of ambition reporters. I drank to my success. And I wrote morning, noon and night. With a few beers to keep me awake.

I arrived at Muskoka Publications in the winter of 1979, working first as a reporter for the Muskoka Lakes-Georgian Bay Beacon. I did fill-in work for The Herald-Gazette when there was a manpower shortage, and I managed to sneak a few news photographs and some shared articles into the bigger newspaper of our small network, and one fire scene flick that I was enormously proud. I had to spend the whole night at a structure fire to get the shot, but I can't explain the pure joy of seeing that action photograph, on the front page, in that week's edition.

I worked hard to earn a name for myself in the writing business generally, and it wasn't long before the publisher decided I deserved a step-up in the organization. When I was offered a chance to join The Herald-Gazette full time, as news editor, and then editor after a year's experience, the rush was long and tingling. It was most of what I had wanted as a young lad, returning home after his stint at university. The only thing missing in my life was a partner, some kids, a dog and cat, and well, a small, tidy little house to raise our family. Before the end of the 1980's I had it all. We were broke but happy with our professions……a writer and a teacher (Suzanne). We had two wonderful boys, Andrew first, and then wee Robert. A dog named Alf and two cats…..one was Fester and the other Animal. It was a happy beginning. Contenting and exciting at the same time.

Then we bought a newer house, and then flipped it, for a mover-upper in the Town of Gravenhurst. It was all coming together. And I never once entered the building on Dominion Street, that I didn't look up at those beautiful metal letters, adorning the white stucco, of the place I loved to work.

Well, you know what they say. It wasn't about my ability to write, or my willingness to work long, hard and suffer the low pay I was being offered. I always wrote more than we needed for each edition, and our paper, because of a great staff of reporters, made The Herald-Gazette a keen competitor in a tough market. After working as a feature editor for our sister publication, The Muskoka Sun, as well as The Muskoka Advance, and The Herald-Gazette, from my home office……where I was able to look after Andrew in those early years of adjustment to new family responsibilities, absence from the day to day operation of the paper, put me at a serious disadvantage to compete with those who wanted my job. After several years of working from a home office, the in-office competition was too severe to keep me in the top position I had enjoyed during those halcyon days.

I rejected the down-grade imposed by the new owner, and could not stomach the reduced hours and diminished opportunities. I left the best job I'd ever had……and I did have many regrets. It had been a dream job…..but you know what happens to dreams?

I've been bitter about this for many years. The Herald-Gazette ceased publication about a decade later, and the name was removed forever from local publishing. What a terrible reality that was for a long-in-the-tooth dreamer like me. I had always thought there might be a day I would make a come-back………you know, be invited back into the newsroom, to re-invent the glory years of what we (reporters) used to call…..with affection, "The Hurly Gazelle."

It never happened. My aspirations died with the closure. And I've never been back in that neighborhood of Dominion Street, that I haven't glanced upon that building, with great longing, looking for the letters that once graced its old facade……and reminded me I was in the right place. I was hungover a lot in those days, so it was nice to have those letters to situate me, when the buildings all had the same texture of blur.

This week, at a local second hand shop, I found a box containing some old, rusted metal letters. I was intrigued. Specially the simple note on the side of the box that read, "Metal letters from Dominion Street - The Herald-Gazette." When I met Suzanne, holding the box, with the bottom falling through, she said it was as if "a Christmas morning……seeing a child with the best gift ever."

I now own, as a matter of so much irony, the actual letters of my newspaper's name, that I glanced happily upon, for all those years. It cost me $15 for the box. They are now stretched on the side of my driveway, for guests to read. I plan on getting a nice bit of pine to fasten them eventually. They remind me of some great days, and wonderful folks I worked with……some who have passed away since my days as editor.

Maybe they, as individual letters, are a strange form of closure. But when it is spelled out, "The Herald-Gazette," it makes it all so different, and I feel connected again, to a front line news job I had always wanted. I will never forgive those who treated me badly in those years, but this is the kind of trophy that makes a good stab at restoration of good thoughts, about good times…..despite the cruel realities we encounter through our respective lives.

I never stopped writing despite my disassociation with the newspaper. I suppose that really bothered some of my adversaries. And that's always been a sweet fancy of mine, that they couldn't dictate a writer's passion, by simply cutting the payroll……and one of the most eager and respectful editors they ever had.

I will think of those days again, when I look at these familiar letters that meant so much, for so long, and apparently……still entice me to write, and write, and write.

Whoever dumped those letters, along my hunting and gathering pathway…….thank you so much. I have a feeling the irony has a lot more twists and turns yet to come.