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.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO MY FRIENDS

It has been both an inspiring and difficult year, as life makes no apology, and yet it has been a curious and strange adventure down so many previously unexplored avenues. The death of my father Ed just over a year ago, an illness that worsened over the Christmas period, made it a particularly difficult time for everyone.......and it was impossible to put business on a back burner regardless of the situation. With recessionary times, our boys, who run a music business in Gravenhurst, could ill afford much time off because of commitments and necessity.....all by the way known by their grandfather, who although gravely ill, told them to stick with their workplace, and that he’d be okay. Well, he wasn’t okay but we knew what he meant.

Ed had lived into his eighties and having enjoyed a rigorous life, having been a member of the famed North Atlantic Squadron, in the Second World War, he was ready to meet up with his wife Merle, who had passed several years earlier. Settling the estate was a much shorter process than it had been for my wife’s father Norman, of Windermere, (Lake Rosseau), who had been a wooden boat restorer for most of his life, and had a massive collection of tools and cottage relics to deal with for most of a year. Ed and Merle kept a modest household, so settling it was fairly simple. It doesn’t mean we didn’t have tearful moments but our recovery began much sooner, as we were able to deal with the new reality while sitting comfortably at home. With Norman’s estate we were working non-stop until every last piece was allocated, and in that case, auctioned off, as had been his request.

But still we arrive at this point, having had a pretty balanced year with many triumphs mixed into the other less contenting events. We are looking forward to a passive, comfortable Christmas season, which will follow an event we, as a family, are promoting at the Gravenhurst Opera House, on December 18th, as a musical variety show to fundraise for the Salvation Army Food Bank, presently in great need of donations. It takes months for our boys, Andrew and Robert to organize, with their many talented musician friends, but it stretches into the family, as my wife and I become event roadies. After this project we are exhausted but pleased to be able to turn over a nice donation to kind people.....who are helping the less fortunate amongst us, twelve months each year.

Our family wishes to extend a hearty Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, to all who occasionally or inadvertently join this blog. It means a lot to us, to have such good friends.

Bless you all.

CHRISTMAS SEASON THE WAY IT SHOULD BE

I used to count myself amongst the Christmas season-weary, getting to the eve of December 24th feeling as if life had been almost fully extracted from my body. If it hadn’t been for a strong soul, I might have succumbed. Christmas Day was always difficult because it demanded social protocols and good neighborliness, at a time when all I wanted to do was nod-off at hearthside, with the crackling cedar logs lulling me to a numbing salvation from the present rigors of unspecified, often reckless festivities.

We are very much different as a family these days, and there is a lot of business going on right up to the final moments of Christmas Eve. But we are kinder to one another, and insist on creature comforts at the end of the day, versus a pile of presents burdening the air space below the tree limbs. With our boys long past the Christmas buzz, associated with the belief in magical chimney entrances, and naughty-or-nice lists being kept by any one but us, the season has become as quiet and gentle as I have long desired. The hustle and bustle of business, as a norm these days, is quite different than four folks running amuck looking for Christmas presents that will amaze the recipient. We reward ourselves now with good food and beverage, and the comfort of being together to celebrate the good cheer of the rolling year.

It’s why I spend so much time looking out this window here at Birch Hollow, watching out over The Bog, as it fills-in with snow, and looks so beautiful in the bright sunlight. I realize how much time I’ve wasted pursuing those straight furrows that David Grayson recognized as all-consuming, in his book “Adventures in Contentment.” He realized, one day, after having taken so much pride in these perfect rows, that he had at the same time, ignored the precious realities of each day, and the grand countryside he had traded for his former city life. He had, you see, escaped the city stresses, for the passive embrace of the country, yet he hadn’t lost his urban habits. He seldom looked up to see his wonderland unfolding, pasture upon pasture, hillside against hillside.....that blue sky that touches universality!

I spent most of my life like David Grayson because I thought it was the way one had to proceed in order to be successful.

I haven’t create a straight furrow in the last decade, and I’m pleased to say it has allowed me so much more time for appreciation of all that dwells contented in the realm of imperfection.

DON’T WISH AWAY TIME - LOOK OUT AT THIS VISTA AND MARVEL........

IT’S A CANADIAN WINTER AND LOOKING A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS

When my father suffered a stroke last December, passing away in mid-January of complications, I don’t know what I would have done without the ease and solitude of this forest sanctuary across from Birch Hollow. Day or night, by sun or moonlight, deeply covered in snow or lightly dusted, being on this winding, albeit short path, was both tranquil and inspirational. Even on the coldest night, I could hear the tiny cataracts frothing at a myriad of locations across this frozen bogland. It was to me, the reality that life goes on, as the flow of water from the earth to the basins, and onto the lakes and oceans of the world. There is no stopping change in life, and it was over the course of three months or so that the mourning ceased, and trust in the cycle of existence carried on......just as the seasons and this trickle of water beneath the thin crystal of ice that has formed over-night.

I can sit at a keyboard for hours on end, pounding out copy for one project or another, and feel confident at the conclusion that my head will explode at any moment. It’s at this point, the oldtimer “me” leashes our dog Bosko, for a trip into these light and shadow-contrasted, snowy, restorative December woods. Each month has a different patina, just as the seasons, but not as profoundly imprinted. The changes are more subtle and possibly literary because it’s what this writer notices moreso, than say the other twenty or thirty folks who tramp down this path each day for an outing. There’s a Christmas glow about the landscape now, a peace and solitude that I know is implanted by the voyeur. It wasn’t appointed this way by nature to appease the Martha Stewarts out there, looking for a beautiful, sentimental scene. None the less, there is a poetic reality here, and one must be forgiven for being reminiscent and thoughtful about Christmases past. It’s quite natural to feel this way if you adore this celebrated season of peace and good will.

I must soon trundle back home for the good graces of a fire in the hearth. But this respite has served me well again, and I have so much more to write about.

AN INSPIRING VANTAGE POINT AT CHRISTMAS TIME

Today the wind howls over the landscape, wheezing through the evergreens around The Hollow, and huge clouds of snow have been exploded from the heavily burdened, overhanging boughs. The wind-driven snow is hurtful to the exposed face, and to stand out in the open here at The Bog, invites frostbite to the extremities of nose and brow. Yet when I’m able to find a sheltered spot, between evergreens on the embankment, like looking through a window, all seems relatively scenic and non-threatening. When the wind changes however, the sting of ice and air makes one cower a wee bit beneath cloak and scarf.

Throughout the Christmas season I escape here, down this narrow, awkwardly tramped path, like Robert Frost’s famous poem, about stopping by the woods on a snowy evening, and finding solace in the heart of nature. From childhood I have been stopping in Robert Frost’s poetic forest. It was the poem that saved me at school. It was printed in our textbook with accompanying art work, and when I wasn’t looking longingly out the window, and planning my escape, I was finding items that made me feel the outside sensation of life.....despite being trapped by lecture and chalk-board protocol. It’s how I came to adore art-work by the Canadian Group of Seven artists, and why I found verses from the great bards so liberating. I still think of Robert Frost every time I visit this place in the winter months. I think he would have found something more to write about, if like my own solitary vigil, he stood here in this pleasant, protective alcove of pine and cedar to watch this manifestation of snow and wind.

As a young writer I used to disappear into the winterscape frequently by ski and snowshoe, and it was the source of inspiration garnered for so many short stories and feature projects for the local press. I adored solitude, as I do now.

During the Christmas season, when the pace of the days gets a little hectic, my wife always knows where to find me.....with dog Bosko, celebrating the season in my own quiet way. Looking out onto this beautiful place right now, it isn’t hard to be filled with the merriment for the season, and a passion for experience. Merry Christmas.

DECEMBER’S REMINDER TO THE WRITER TO BE THANKFUL, NOT GREEDY

In my halcyon days of authordom, I could spend the better part of a day working at my craft......then, stretch, contemplate something or other.... do push-ups, run five kilometres, drink a half pint of Scotch and then relax beneath the haloof my pipe smoke. If I tried even half that today, I’d be hunched over and in great pain for the next two weeks or more. While it’s not entirely an occupationally inspired condition, as I can blame an active sporting life for many other bodily injuries, over the decades, my posture at the keyboard has been a serious strain on neck and back that’s for sure. If I’d followed the advice of my typing teachers, and paid more attention to good posture, maybe, just maybe I could still work at the keyboard for a couple of hours, and not feel the need for physiotherapy.

The problem with writing as it applies to this scribe, in particular, is that I have always been a passionate writer. How so? My wife has long reminded me how my feelings for a writing project can be determined by looking at, for example, my rough work. When I first started complaining about neck and wrist problems, she said, “Come here; I want to show you something.” She showed me the writing pad I had been working on just that afternoon. Just as a sidebar note, I started writing my copy again after I had killed some of the best typewriters ever made, and found it almost impossible to get replacement ribbons. At that point I had already killed two word processors in one year. NO idea why? I just did! So I took up handwriting again to submit my editorial copy, and imprinted with a pen what I had done with typewriter keys since I began writing in the mid 1970's.

Looking over Suzanne’s shoulder, down onto the notepad, she was pointing to the imprint my pen was making on the other pages below the one I had been working on. “So?” I answered. “What does that prove?” “Well,” she said, flipping through the other pages below, “Look at how far your pen has imprinted down into the pad.” Sure enough, I had gone through about five pages where you could actually read the imprints when held to the light. “You’re pressing down so hard you’re gouging into the paper below,” she pointed out, even faintly to the sixth and seventh blank pages. I couldn’t believe it. “And that’s not all,” she said, pushing the pad across the table. “Look at this?” “Suzanne was pointing at the table top. There it was. My writing imprints onto the wood of the table-top. It didn’t happen that day, and had obviously occurred on an occasion when I only had a few pieces of paper below the one I was working on.....but the evidence was clear that I had been writing, and pressing down so hard that I left a deeply ingrained word trail. I was stunned to see this evidence. No wonder my arms and shoulders hurt for hours after a writing jag.

When I began writing on a typewriter, even the portable I had for university, it required a heavy touch.....and I always adjusted the lever on the side to allow for this......because I liked the feel of resistance, I suppose, when making a point. In the newsroom of the old Herald-Gazette, in Bracebridge, we had massive old Underwoods and when those things sang.....they sang beautifully, and when there was a full newsroom of reporters working to deadline, it was as if I was sitting in the office of the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail or the New York Times. And we all knew the cadence, and what our contribution was to the daily din. As we were passionate about our work and loved to write generally, our enthusiasm for our craft did indeed transfer from emotion to physical typing. To this day if I’m particularly moved by a topic, or angry about some local news item, my family will often note “Dad’s working up an editorial again!” My editorials have always been a tad more aggressive than general column work.

The point is, I suppose, I’ve been physically harming myself for decades, doing the work I adore. When Suzanne suggests to me that a computer keyboard doesn’t require the imprint of hammer to anvil, I chortle to myself, because after all these years, I just can’t turn it off no matter how aware I am of the over-zealous method of composition. My son even recorded me once from several rooms away, so I could hear the thwacking of innocent keys myself......seeing as up close and personal, I couldn’t hear my own abuses. Fact is, when I truly think about it, I have always known my typing was as aggressive as my writing.....I don’t have many vices other than this......I don’t smoke, don’t drink any more, and I’ve given up hockey goalkeeping. So I feel that this audible pounding of the keys is a true-to-life characteristic of the writer who lives at Birch Hollow, above The Bog. As for personal injury, yeah, that bothers me a tad as well. But when I make a conscious attempt to stop the bone-jarring imprints, I might as well drain off the pent-up anticipation......because creativity is my most reliable outlet.....versus the spontaneous combustion I’m sure would happen, if and when I cease being able to compose these tomes.

So when I get aches and pains.....I remind myself about the joy of suffering for one’s craft!

If you’re a writer......I shouldn’t be your mentor. Have a good December. I’m going for a walk over to The Bog with Bosko the dog.....hopefully I’ll find something more to write about before lunch!

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.

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD UNFOLDS

It’s admittedly hard for a newshound like me, to go from my media obsession, to this forest path that winds in light and shadow out onto The Bog. You step outside this door, at Birch Hollow, and you are immediately consumed by azure sky and painted hardwoods to the horizon. It is still so pleasantly warm and refreshing, cleansing away the memories of so many humid days of the past summer. Once I get out here for a few minutes, I must admit feeling better about the world and its resilience. Even though I’ve just finished watching news flashes about sludge spills, bombs exploding, outbreaks of fierce fighting, incidents of random shooting, and oh so much more. I’m so happy that my old dog Bosko likes to go on frequent walks, along this forest path. He gives me a little nudge, at knee level, when she senses I’m tensing up with all this breaking, unfortunate and frequently horrible news. It’s true that I don’t know when to pull myself away from news transmissions, because I’ve been a reporter in fact and spirit most of my life. It is an old habit. I insist on being informed, and when I don’t know the answer to something that has been perplexing me, well, I have to dig for myself. Whether the dog knows when I’m tense or not, is more likely faulty logic on my part, although arguably, her nudges more often than not, occur when I’m sitting on the edge of my chair, watching some unfolding news item. It’s then that I arrive at a decision to vacate the armchair and take to the woodlands, and I’m never disappointed whether it is raining out or snowing. I’m poet Robert Frost, for those moments, stopping by a woods on a snowy evening. There’s no shortage of inspiration walking this short but interesting path to nowhere in particular.

Out here nature is supreme. I am just a sightseer. My dog, a sniffer. It’s her turn to sleuth out the truth about whether a deer has recently passed our path, or if a squirrel has scurried along here this morning. I don’t make mental notes because one impression covers the whole scene unfolding. Awe. I am always in awe of this Muskoka hinterland. It doesn’t matter how bedraggled I get in a work week, retreating here several times each day, is a respite I can’t do without.

I feel abundantly sorry for those folks, who have no use for places like this.....who would see new houses and condominium possibilities if they walked this same path. There are those who would rather sacrifice nature for profit, than to take profit as I have these many years, in a trade of goodwill between myself and nature. I think of myself rich with inspiration, and calmed by immersion in these enchanted woods. I believe it is from a portal like this that so many human problems could be resolved......sitting out here on the edge of this basin, and watching out as autumn paints her landscape, and later the northern lights will dazzle through the October sky. There are spirits here.....good spirits. They are the spirits of land and air, water and trees, rock and muck, life and death.....of which the voyeur is as much the patina as the needles of the evergreen, the declining brown canopy of ferns, the sound of a tiny cataract off in the distance, and the moan of autumn wind in the barren branches of leaning birches. The poet disappears into the poem willingly, just as the approaching nightfall will haunt this place with pale moonlight, but we shall not be fearful of what lurks within. We are led by the hand toward insight and illumination, even at the darkest peak of night. We can see clearly where we have come from, and where we must yet travel on our journey.

When I arrive back at my Birch Hollow, Bosko takes a few moments to gnaw at a flea, or snap at an annoying fly buzzing about its nose. I pause to look out over this paradise on earth, and thank God we were able to save it, when the developers and our town council, thought recently, it would put so much more profit on the books, as a subdivision, than sitting idle as a wetland. Most had never heard of Robert Frost, and the only reason they’d ever stop by a woods on a snowy evening, was when their SUV’s got stuck in a drift.

What a tragedy it would have been if a developer’s idea of progress and brimming-over coffers, had continued to allure the weak-willed into selling-off this green space. I guess in fact, our early challenge to this project, was the result of my newshound habits, that gave us here a quick start on an uphill battle. For once being tense was quite justified. I’m waiting for round two because as history has prevailed upon us before, even crappy ideas survive the rigors of time.

THE ELECTION THAT WILL MAKE OR BREAK MUSKOKA

I’m a small time, low budget prognosticator, who has a great and enduring fear that this municipal election will either be in Muskoka’s best interest, or its great undoing.

The problem is, that despite the many visions in the confluence of public opinion, sought out recently in a survey to make Muskoka a better place to live and work, the problem of expansion and progress tends to always get lumped together with quality of life issues.....which I have always insisted on separating for argument’s sake. There are those who tell me that my life will be so much better when there is yet another commercial node to assist my shopping needs, or that a residential development on a wetland will make ours a better and more vibrant neighborhood. Quality of life is an ambiguous sort of thing because we all have differing concepts on what makes a residency in a neighborhood, town or region, a wonderful, well rounded experience. Well, we can’t have it all, I suppose.

Muskoka is in the direct path of Toronto, Barrie and Orillia expansionary forces. And while the recession has cooled the sprawl a wee bit, you can bet that once the economic stormfront shifts, we’ll be back into that developmental tizzy, as to whether to accept the good fortune for the cash it will supposedly produce, or adopt a more protectionist approach to protect our number one industry......tourism. As we have found out by public opinion, tourists aren’t exactly thrilled about leaving urbanity for a vacation in the hinterland, only to find more urban sprawl into the beautiful countryside. The permanent population at this time is not enough to keep these many large scale businesses booming. We may just be a tad over-retailed. But when the next strip mall project comes to the table for a re-zoning, will we be able to say, you know what? We’re good, for now.

This is a crisis period. We not approaching it. We’re in the middle of it. The urbanization of cottage country, as the urban commentators love to label us. We may not be able to pull out of the trend to stuff the landscape with more subdivisions and commercial nodes. It’s something we should be asking our municipal candidates about because it is indeed a slippery slope we’re clinging to, and the downward stress is continually strengthening. We are the beneficiaries of Toronto’s economy and we are the victims of its prosperity at the same time. The next ten years of business between our regions will set the stage for many generations of residents to come. The distance between us and the “urban” them, is decreasing. It will soon affect daily living more than we presently know. While it’s not a good think to mire down in fear of this, it is proactive to be ready to forcefully slot change into a workable, beneficial zone.....because we anticipated correctly that we were in the way of Toronto’s ambitions.

If you don’t think this is true, then begin looking at the companies behind all the major developments in Muskoka in the past five years, and whether they were initiated, completed or financed by local interests only. Truth is, we are being urbanized by outside interests, not simply, as in the old days, local businesses re-investing in expansion.....local entrepreneurs shaping their hometowns from the inside out......for groups of local investors to build-out their communities. Outside investors are shaping our region more than ever before. It’s the free enterprise, democratic way! It could also be our death knell as a hinterland tourist attraction.

Don’t give this election a miss because you think your vote won’t count. Make a fuss, make a statement, join the debate but make sure they know you’re out there, watching their every move.

NOTE TO READERS

After decades, I mean decades of collecting stuff of all kinds, weights and sizes, and giving every appearance of being in line for a stint on “America’s Legendary Hoarders,” this was the summer season of dispersal. It was the time at Birch Hollow when a proper accounting was necessary. It was the time that we realized there was a house somewhere in the mix of old stuff that simply couldn’t be ignored any longer. By golly, we had some upgrades to do on the old Ponderosa.

It began in June with the removal of an old deck, which I determined had to be dismantled following my unceremonious fall through the rotten boards. Suzanne had been asking me to fix it up for several years, but I always seemed to be able to replace a few boards, and cover over trouble areas, that was.....until there were more patches than original boards. From this debacle, the installation of patio stones, and new concrete step up to the back door, and the creation of five major flower garden plots......to show my shame at not doing the repair work sooner.....the work just seemed to go from “lots to lots more.” All summer long we have been working at reducing the burdens on the homestead, and restoring what keeps us all dry and comfortable. And we have had numerous sales to unload the surplus items that grew into the thousands over the past twenty years.

I’m not a very good handyman but Suzanne is more than competent to make up for my shortfalls. We’ve actually worked as a team to fix up the old digs and I’m happy to say the autumn season looks better than we anticipated a few weeks ago, when askew piles of books and paintings only left us a few feet of pathway from room to room. We actually spent most of our time beneath a camping canopy, and occupying a tent in the backyard when the clean-up got too extreme.

So I had no choice but to abandon writing for a short period, to get this place back in shape. After a day’s work in the wicked humidity, sitting at the computer for even ten minutes was too much on this old body. I hope to get back to the weekly journal entries soon. Thanks for sticking with this blog-site.

THE BOX THE HISTORIAN BUILDS - TO FRAME THE WAY IT WAS -
I’M CLAUSTROPHOBIC AND THIS BOTHERS ME
I have for long and long referred to myself as an historian. My wife has, on numerous occasions of agitation, also referred to me as "The Historian I married," and at various social / cultural functions I have been properly introduced as such. I have a few credits that pretty much prove this claim whether my contemporaries wish to acknowledge this or not. I don’t, as a rule, hang around with other historians simply because, well....... I have very little in common these days with those who are obsessed by historical record. While I do possess considerable respect for these diligent fact finders and re-creators, I find their work a black and white enterprise, that while necessary and important in a thousand different ways, always makes me feel, in company of their cache of information, as if I’ve been unceremoniously stuffed into a tightly fastened, airless box, that inspires a near suffocation.
While it may seem outrageous for anyone who calls himself an historian, to feel overwhelmed by fact and figures, my real problem is that these same hunter-gatherers, in their unbridled zeal to paint in the details of our existence and accomplishment as a civilization, always, at the regional level, make a tight, durable, practical weave of former living, breathing, feeling, caring souls, into a variety of well meaning tomes, that leave me feeling unhappily restricted as if all similarly framed history is indeed entombed in print.
I have long persisted in a more socially relevant history, and while I can’t write personal biographies of everyone I’ve know in my life, what has been imprinted has always stood me in good stead. When you read conventional, general community histories, which have a necessary place in the local reference collection of the library, most are dry as can be expected, because they are vehicles of information not really intended for entertainment but as a research cornerstone, on which to add more discovered fact as the years march on.
What you get is an assessment of characterless townsfolk from the earliest settlers onward. What I have long pursued is knowledge of these interesting citizens, their quirks, ambitions, good qualities and questionable conduct, their benevolence and their miscues in life and times. We’ve had many interesting locals since the first axe was propelled into a tall pine here in Muskoka. We’ve had murderers amongst us, bank robbers, embezzlers, petty thieves and masterminds of good projects and bad. We’ve had our share of manipulators, speculators, good cops, bad cops, smart bankers and dumb, and some fine God-fearing folks who built pioneer churches and associations that helped the less fortunate. Like all communities in this global civilization, the color of history is not always given the attention it deserves and for very good reason. We still believe in this enlightened period of history, that we shouldn’t always tell it the way it was.....because some of the details weren’t very nice......outcomes of events weren’t always positive, and sometimes the biggest news of the week was something terribly adverse, yet the emotion connected is often purposely neglected, avoided, side-stepped, or at least minimized, despite the fact it may have had a huge emotional impact on the community. It is censorship and there are plenty of examples where history is sidestepped because it is viewed as being divisive, too personal, or "something we’d all rather forget." Are you likely to read, other than by my pen, that a former bouncer at the Albion Hotel, in Bracebridge, was found executed in his trailer at Skeleton Lake, while reading my column in that week’s copy of The Herald-Gazette. I’ve seen the crime scene photos. So you’re asking, did we have such a drinking problem that we needed a bouncer at the local hotel?
Us neighborhood kids used to sit by the train station, on hot summer nights, and watch bouncers dump patrons onto the tarmac frequently. We watched as angry spouses came to their mate’s chagrin, and offer to box the bouncer, or the police constables, and this folks was witnessed fact. It wasn’t a perfect town and you’d need a pretty big frame of local history, to include the human stuff......that made us a community.....not just the brick and mortar, the span of bridge over a cataract, the steamboat era, but the appreciation of the genuine characters who were the color, the guts of history, the good, bad and yes, the ugly.
I started my history gathering jag as a watchful kid, who wanted to know what his community was all about. When I go to write a piece now, I can’t write it any other way, than by including the realities, whether we want to have them re-introduced today or not, because the fact remains, history can’t be re-written, but it can be revealed, appreciated and understood in context of all lives lived.
I have no plan to become a builder of boxes and to frame history is irrelevant, as it has its own boundless realm of occupation, in our minds, and truth is, the spirit-kind have earned their freedom from explanation anyway.
"Live and let live, I hear some folks say," was a comment made by a Civil War soldier to a Billy Yank, who was holding him as a war prisoner. So let history live,....... and that means acknowledging it all, not just the highlights.....because otherwise, history hasn’t been served at all! When we get cut, we bleed, we heal, or we die. The soul? Does it look back to where it has dwelled? Does it care? I care. And that is what I see as my role, as historian, and there’s nothing black and white about it.

REGARDLESS OF POLITICS, CONTROVERSY, AND MONEY, MY HOME IS MUSKOKA
It’s pretty rough these days having our home region profiled so adversely in the national press, as if we all had a part begging for money from the federal government, to make our region evermore worthy of hosting international celebrity. We’ve been hosting celebrities for a long time and our international reputation goes back to the first visitors, seeking out the region for what it didn’t have in the way of urban contamination. In the mid 1800's sportsman were finding Muskoka an abundant and beautiful place, despite the dangers of all wild places.
As a regional historian I find this most recent foray into international relations, and political hosting, about as wild around here as you can get. Our beautiful little, largely unassuming but inspiring region, has been turned into the rest of the world.....at a time when we thought we had successfully removed ourselves from this crazy old urban conundrum that sent those same sportsman scrambling for serenity-now in the 1850's onward. It’s a pretty different and armed region now, and despite or on the other hand, because of the efforts of facade builders, there’s a disturbing image cast down on an otherwise unremarkable but successful advance of history. This is a period not soon forgotten but an event wished over.....such that we might again return to the paradise hinterland we enjoy without such bold, unflattering intrusion.
I hope we will be considered good hosts at the end of it all, at the very least, as we have always been kindly folk throughout our history. And no matter how the media from afar opts to portray us as leaches and opportunists, the majority of us non-political types, made no fuss to get the event, and still make no complaint about it, despite having to live with a rather wicked burden of unwanted, undesired attention, in this nasty transition of a wonderful place to visit......into just any place on earth.
I am looking forward to a much more relaxed and familiar July in this beautiful region we call our home.

WHEN BUSINESS CALLS - EVEN WHEN THE THOREAUESQUE BECKONS....

I must offer an apology for my lethargy as of late. It has been very much the case that business has come before pleasure. And while it is true that I garner great joy working in the antique profession, nothing can trump my forays in writing at Birch Hollow. But as the accountant in this household is currently of the opinion we should balance the books, it was necessary for awhile to put other, more enjoyable pursuits aside.
We have had the privilege of selling off a considerable quantity of interesting Canadiana, antiquarian books, old paper and some wonderful advertising nostalgia. Now we are close to completion and we can honestly say that the past six weeks have been exciting and well worth experiencing. There just hasn’t been much time for anything else, and seeing as I have for long and long subscribed to the philosophy of dear old Mr. Fezziwig’s (Dickens, A Christmas Carol) belief, that "money isn’t everything," I do intend to happily return to my cherished blog sites, of which there are numerous, and pen copiously once again. As a poor writer I shall continue following this life-long path.
Today the forest canopy is filling in, and the lilac buds are growing ever more significant, ready soon to burst into bloom. The ferns are poking their heads up through the soil and our patch of trilliums has almost doubled from years past. There are a few blackflies but not so bad.
Once again, my apologies for this rather unanticipated but profitable hiatus.

PEACE AT BASS ROCK
Shortly after I arrived in Bracebridge, back in the mid 1960's, I was looking for those inspirational places to hole-up when times got tough. Even as a kid I was enthralled by long walks in the Muskoka woods, and lengthy vigils by lake or riverside, to calm the restless beast within. I was a kid on the prowl. I was an adventurer. When I had a day free of my fetters, the school in particular, I was off and roaming not long after daybreak. I didn’t waste time and I didn’t consider it wasteful in any way, to find myself in a comfortable portal, looking out over my new hometown, or the nature that cradled it in pine forests and rock-exposed hillsides. I was as much, living in one of the Group of Seven art panels that I used to drool over in the school textbooks.
I found Bass Rock, on the Muskoka River, a wonderful place to hide-out from mother’s Saturday list of chores, and the perfect retreat when I was in trouble for actions and subsequent reactions, brewing within the neighborhood. I was a bad little bugger and believe me, I was often in need of a cooling-off area. They were self imposed "time-outs," you might say, to borrow from today’s parenting jargon. I returned home many times in the low-light, to avoid my pursuers young and old. My favorite hide-out was just below the Bass Rock rapids, where the wonderfully smooth rock shore, comforted the travel-weary "Tom Sawyer" types. There were trees to hide behind and shadows to disappear into, should some of my contemporaries give up my sanctuary to adversaries. What began as a kid’s relationship with a really good retreat, from the alleged misdemeanors of the day, became a place where I came to dream and compose. It was quite common to find me there at almost any time of the day or night, staring out over that sparkling Muskoka water, reflecting mindfully on the magic of the starscape, at night, or brilliant sun on hot summer afternoons. It was a wild place in the early spring, as the force of the current pounded water through its narrows. A romantic place to bring a young lady, to impose some poetry and grandiose expectations. In the moonlight it was magnificent, and its universality made its way into my landscape writing for decades.
I can remember coming to its shores when I was bursting in love and arriving in its comforting embrace after being dumped and feeling lost in life. I’ve sat on these rocks in quiet contemplation, in moods of desperation, anxiety churning my stomach, and then arrived here on so many other occasions, joyful and contented, having made copious notes about this healing place in the heartland. I’ve sat on the trunk of that fallen tree, and talked with the love of my life about marriage and family. I’ve sought this place out when at a loss for inspiration, and have been fulfilled generously by experience celebrated here. It is the one identifiable place that has inspired more stories than even this portal at Gravenhurst’s Birch Hollow. I’ve written hundreds of outdoor essays, over the past 35 years spent exploring Muskoka, that I can trace back to some lonely but thought-provoking hiatus upon its smooth and mossy contoured rocks. I’m so glad I found this place as a child.....and as it shielded and nurtured me then, it has inspired and comforted me ever since.
It is with some irony that my mother and father, who decided to move their young family to Muskoka in 1966, decided to make their last abode.... a residence on the bay of Bass Rock. As we were closing up their apartment recently, after the death of my father Ed, his wife having died a year and a half earlier, I stood for a few moments on the bank of the Muskoka River, watching as the currented, silver water, gurgled-up against the ice-clad shore,..... enthralled, as a child in heart again, to witness the pinery enclosure being brushed everso lightly by the January wind, as if by an artist’s brush.......a caress just enough to release the snow from the burdened boughs, in a crystalline spray down over the water. My parents loved this place....... because of the river’s gentle and soothing flow, the picturesque qualities of these giant pines and Muskoka rock. Even in death’s shadow, this sanctuary was the heaven on earth I had always thought, and it softened the heartache of loss, as it had always done as a companion. It was still the healing place.

A Writer In Residence - A Watcher in My Neighborhood
A lot of readers, over the past 20 years, have asked me why I write so many retrospectives about my youth in Bracebridge. Do I have unresolved issues? An inner turmoil about things that didn’t work out? Didn’t go my way? Relationships that went sour? Is writing about these alleged good old days a sign of the opposite holding true? Instead of the good old days, were they awful? Confining? Frustrating? Or are my readers unnecessarily hung-up on the reality I did, in fact, love my childhood days growing up on Hunt’s Hill’s Alice Street? Heck, I’ve asked myself those same questions, and can’t really say what precisely compels me to think fondly upon days that were full of hardship, arse-kickings from my adversaries, and many, many disappointments. But then there were the moments that I didn’t want to end because they were all fountains of inspiration, and I drank of them freely. My childhood days weren’t so much different than yours. If there was any difference, it was in the reality that I began my jag as a writer / reporter long before I actually put pen to paper.
I won’t deny that there are some unresolved issues. Just a few. First of all, I remember being unsettled about being a kid. I was impatient. I wished away time, which by the way is one correction I’ve made in my life from those days. I wanted to move from the neighborhood because I felt that, to be successful, one absolutely required an escalation beyond the same place you knew as a child. I only ever gave my neighborhood credit as "a half-decent place," compared to all the places my parents might have selected to call home, including Burlington, the town we left in the winter of 1966. It wasn’t until I started my own writing retrospectives, in the early 1990's for the local press, that I amazed myself about a truth not recognized previously. If I was trying to identify where and when I started to experiment as a writer, it was in a small, third floor bedroom in the former Weber apartments, a plain brick building, amidst the blue collar abodes of east Alice Street.
The Hunt’s Hill area of Bracebridge, and Alice Street in particular, were like many small town neighborhoods in North America. It wasn’t pretentious. No one had a fountain on their lawn, except if a water line burst in mid January. Most folks had one car but not two. The homes were older, small, modest, and practical in most cases. It was a mix of old residents and younger, especially as the apartment catered to those of lesser economy, of which we fit right in, and a goodly majority were workers not business owners, although there were exceptions of course. We all kind of mixed at the local corner stores, Blacks Variety, and Bamfords, at opposite corners, and there were all kinds of casual gatherings out front, on hot summer evenings, when nobody was adverse to a slower pace and a cold pop, while sitting on the front stoop watching the world go by. My roost at the store began on Saturday mornings, and could stretch to noon and beyond, when us local lads cashed in our collected pop bottles from a week’s scavenging, plus any allowance money we could pull from the family coffers. The Hunt’s Hill chums would sit on the porch of Black’s Variety (later Lil & Cec’s) and savor the sugar-rush of cent candy, nearly choke ourselves to death, on the candy powder you had to suck through a licorice straw....ah, the black balls....how the dentists of town scolded us for eating those damnation candies. Geez for a buck even in 1967, you could get enough candy to last most of the day.
In Burlington, in order to acquire my cent candy, I had to hike quite a few more blocks uptown on Brant Street (Walmsley’s Variety), than was the case with our convenient shop situation in Bracebridge, where a short, fast hike would get you to the frozen treats, in just over a minute from place of departure. I wasn’t allowed the same liberties growing up in Burlington, that’s for sure.
I wasn’t the typical kid at school, the ordinary kid hustling the neighborhood for adventures and opportunity, and I wasn’t the kid to take for granted. I was aware of my surroundings and the people who made it interesting. While I didn’t write all these experiences down, I did make copious mental notes for a number of reasons. I was born with a reporter’s keen interest in stuff. What some would have ignored, I studied with unflinching curiosity. We had neighborhood folks who drank lots, and frequently, and partied until sunrise. I saw enough to satisfy my young curiosity. When I hung out at the train station, I watched bouncers at the adjacent hotel toss drunken patrons out on their ears, and I watched the hilarious episodes when the same beer swillers tried to get back in...not once, but sometimes for the rest of the afternoon or evening, always meeting with the same unceremonious exit.
I watched funerals for some of my chums, victims of misadventures and sudden illness, and I questioned life and these human frailties. I watched neighbors cope with tragedy, and I saw how it effected all of us partners in that ballywick of Alice Street. I observed wakes in one residence and a wedding party in another. I heard the skirl of bagpipes at one fete, and saw fisticuffs break out in another. I saw kids fall hard from trees, and I watched young lovers groping each other in the undercover of Bamford’s woods....that was, well, a view particularly unobstructed from a higher elevation.....such as my third floor window looking down through the shrubbery.
It wasn’t extraordinary at all. But I didn’t know the bounds of extraordinary. So when I began my half-interest effort to record this place for posterity, I did so initially, because it seemed this was all pretty amazing, movie-theme activity. Fodder for the writer who might eventually compile it all into a novel.....a sort of "Our Town," good and bad, happy and sad collection of intimate stories. But I wasn’t the novelist to do it, just an historian in training.
For me, this old street was the place where I decided to become a writer-kind. It was, to me, a nurturing, gentle place overall, where expectations weren’t above what could and should be accomplished by its citizenry. We didn’t want great honking swimming pools, the result of untold business successes. We didn’t need great luxury, extravagances, saunas, and gazebos. We pretty much, in those days, needed each other. The ladies in the houses down the street, needed to catch me stealing hot pies cooling in their respective kitchen windows. They needed the exercise running after me, and my mates, following yet another incident of "Nicky, Nicky Nine Doors," (not that I know the origin of this door knocking caper) and yet another opportunity of phoning my mother Merle, to relate the latest episode in my early years biography. I’d hear Merle exclaim on the phone, "Teddy did what? When I get my hands on him!" I was on the run a lot in those days from both friends and enemies.
I kept a lot of the neighbor folk on high alert, watching for me hustling through their backyards. If there were ripe tomatoes missing off the vine, they were either on the ground, where they had honestly fallen, or were in my hands, about to being flung at anybody, or any house I had previously targeted. Was I a bad kid? By standards at Bracebridge Public School, I was a tenth of the rapscallion of most. In my own mind I was a wild kid but on the grand scale, not so much. For those who knew me best, I was a pacifist. An uncompromising lover of life not a fighter. I’d surely put up my dukes but I never did so without knowledge of a sensible exist strategy, that was based more on a cunning argument than outright flight. I was mouthy above all else, just as today, and it got me into most of the dust-ups of the 1960's, when I was adjusting to rural life and times and a much tougher school than I was familiar with.
What separates me a wee bit from the rest of the old Hunts Hill gang, is that I’m doing much of the same things today as I did then, almost forty years ago. I’m still scavenging, collecting stuff, treasures from all over the place, (as an antique dealer), and I’m still observing from my front window (now my Gravenhurst abode), with the idea of writing soon again, about what I’ve witnessed out on The Bog, our neighborhood wetland. Back then I didn’t have a lot of friends, (the big mouth didn’t help) and I did spend quite a lot of time alone, wandering for much of that through the sand pits and woodlands that were in close proximity. Nature was always a good friend as it is now, and it would be pretty hard to confuse this after reading only a few blogs and websites I’ve penned recently.
The point is, I was living as a watcher in the woods, a watcher from many portals in our neighborhood, our town, because it was important to me then as it is now. I just wasn’t always aware just how much time I had dedicated, to memorizing the details of a place, I found so accommodating and enjoyable. It wasn’t that I didn’t need friends but truthfully, there were times when being alone wasn’t a great disadvantage. Maybe writing was a coping mechanism but it was an outlet I celebrated.
I remember much later in my teens, penning a short, humorous (at least I thought it was) play, with the characters being borrowed at the expense of friends. And I let them in on the connections, who they represented in the play, and after the laughs died down, at an informal reading (in one of the lead character’s recreation rooms), a few of the sections I thought to be hilarious, were the lines considered quite scandalous and outrageous. I never got the single manuscript back, and relations were cool for some years to come. I guess it wasn’t appropriate to have paired a few of them together against their respective wills, and when I suggested several of them later " made love," well, that destined the paperwork to disappear for eternity. Frankly, when I suggested the love making thing, I wasn’t really thinking of it in a pornographic sense but it may have been taken that way. I’ve been told it still exists after all these years, and may pop up one day when my ship comes in, and I get the long over-due Pulitzer. Then I’ll no doubt have to contend with this dog-eared play coming back to share the lime-light.
What made me different from that old gang of mine, was that they were moving forward while I was contenting myself being the last to leave a party, and in some cases having to be physically removed. When I have written about a wish to take up temporary residence in that apartment residence once more, to write and re-live those days, it’s not out of any great sadness or to overcome any great burden of days past. It’s more of a celebration of sorts, being able to relax with history instead of pursuing it for definition. I enjoyed being an observer. While admittedly I was impatient to move on in career and accomplishment, there was always a reluctance to discount experience as it related to capability. If I was a writer of any merit, it was necessary to have this grounding of experience to draw from, and I had a provenance that was full to overflowing. When I began writing about my Alice Street days, some folks who knew me from those days, assumed it was based on some kind of regret. The only regret was that I hadn’t put pen to paper sooner. I could have written columns about my youth in that neighborhood in perpetuity, as if they were freshly experienced. No, they weren’t being written with a tear in my eye, or sadness in my heart. They were being written because, like an artist works a panel with paint, these were my examples, warnings, sage advisories, to anyone who was interested, that we miss too much that is important in our lives, because like the billiard player, we play too many shots ahead of what is real and actual, set down in front of us, beside us, behind, surrounding us.
If there was any one message I had, inadvertently or intentional, with these column recollections, it was that we should all be taught, as my mother Merle etched upon me in so many ways......that you should pay attention to the glorious day at hand, and never, never wish away time......because there is always someone wishing they had more time, and none is left. Merle was a country philosopher but I know now she wasn’t wrong, and her wisdom has been appreciated.
I look at my own sons today and truly wonder if they have followed this same advice......because Grandma Merle surely extended it to the next generation, as she babysat them in her Bracebridge apartment. I ponder if they have been watching closely, how life has turned, with responsibility, and made them old, maybe before their time. It’s not an issue of age that concerns me, because time stops for no one, but rather my concern that they choose to live their days being insightful, aware, appreciative, educated and contented, as I have been over a lifetime.
I sometimes drive by the old apartment, and stop for a moment, and it is very much the case that I will feel the eyes of the watcher, staring down from that third floor window, onto what in his interpretation, is the will of the future. I am as much a vision of the future as he is a vision of the past. We meet in spiritual vibe somewhere in between, where there is at the very least, a subtle peace of mind.......that this was a positive start to a writer’s life, and still a source after all these years, for stories about the amalgamated truths and derailments of hard times, sad moments, determination and resolve, celebrations, get-togethers, new deals and better ones, handshakes and backslaps all the live long day.....and these were my neighbors.....good souls, old souls, friends to the end.
Maybe you were a watcher. A writer in waiting. Waiting patiently for the right opportunity to pen some memoirs. For your family, maybe it’s time to put memory to paper, and capture the essence of your own hometown in the years you knew it most profoundly. You don’t have to be an historian, just a story teller.....and there are no rules to fence you in.....like the ones I had to hurdle, pie and tomatoes in hand to escape my pursuers!
When I queried often this winter, about the meaning of life, following the death of my father,
(when I angrily questioned a lot of heaven and earth situations), I would find myself hanging over this keyboard for comfort, writing as a gentle means of transference. And low and behold, it was as if I had unlocked the holy grail, because for once, I understood that "experience" is of a far greater consequence, to a hungry, questing soul, than any merit characteristic of self imposed ignorance, avoidance or indifference, of which at some time or other, we are all guilty. The continuous line throughout my life, of being a "watcher" and interpreter, was as much a gift as the art of writing itself.....a conduit I have made use of many times when experience burdened down and grated most ungraciously. I have never once regretted the inherent burdens of authordom, as they have never been greater, or more daunting, than the experience I am writing about. The acceptance of circumstance, however painful, has always been my liberation. This keyboard has seen the voltage of rage, the gentleness of resolve, and the joy of discovery.
I think it’s necessary, now and again, to revisit the old places of our lives, not just to make the cliched "peace,"or satisfy a sentimental urge, but rather, to look upon one’s foundation to see if all the blocks are still in place after all the wear and tear of a long life. There’s something about a faulty foundation that haunts us with a precarious lean, and it’s altogether possible to make a repair.
When an old kindly neighbor of ours, a man I knew as one of the heaviest drinker’s of his clan, said to me one day several years ago, in a booze-influenced constitutional that, "Currie, you were a little bastard as a kid, you know," I nearly peed my pants laughing. "When something happened around here, your name always came up first, but there’s only one thing that ever saved your ass," What’s that, I asked my chortling bar-mate. "We liked to drink more than chase you." With that he laughed like a lumberjack, starting coughing, and had to excuse himself to the bathroom.
What a resume I had compiled.