“When the wind works against us in the dark,
                                    And pelts with snow
                                    The lower chamber window on the east,
                                    And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
                                    The beast,
                                    ‘Come out! Come out!’-
                                     It costs no inward struggle not to go,
                                     Ah, no!
                                     I count our strength,
                                     Two and a child,
                                     Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
                                     How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,-
                                     How drifts are piled,
                                     Dooryard and road ungraded,
                                     Till even the comforting barn grows far away,
                                     And my heart owns a doubt
                                     Whether 'tis in us to arise with day
                                     And save ourselves unaided.”

                                                                                                      Robert Frost, Storm Fear

I’ve spent years hiking, mostly by myself. Because I love being alone in the forest. Sitting on a rock, a log, or any piece of natural furniture is more comfortable for me than reclining on expensive furniture in places where I have to be careful about what I say, how I say it, or what I might knock over or spill. However, some couches are more pleasant than others as butt resters.

And lately, the folks up here have decided, and have spread the word around, that I’m a trail guide. Even though I’m not as familiar with this area as I could be. And I’ve met some interesting people on the rugged Cape Breton trails.

Also, I’ve never stopped being amazed at how helpful and friendly the folks up here are. They accept us for who we are and last Sunday we even received an email from a fella who said that Cape Breton was a better place because Sue and I had made it our home. Well, that nearly knocked my socks off. Both of them.

As many of you know, Sue struggles with some chronic diseases, one of which can impede her ability to walk far. But, she gave it the old college try and actually joined our group on a hike to the Uisgeban Falls. It’s a magical place and she didn’t think she would be able to make it all the way. But she did and that’s a feather in her emotional cap. The big surprise was that her post-hike pain was no different than it was before she hiked the trail.  I’m sure many of you are happy to hear that.

Which  brings me to the mentioning of a new book that was recently published: the second edition of  “Guide to Cape Breton Highlands National Park”. The author is Clarence Barrett, a retired Highland Park warden. His first edition was very popular. To write this updated edition, he once again hiked all 26 official park trails and then rewrote his descriptions.

If you’re travelling to Cape Breton this is certainly a book to add to your library. Here’s a link to Parks Canada’s information about the book: http://www.capebretonpost.com/News/Local/2014-08-24/article-3845394/New-park-guide-edition-being-launched-this-week/1

 I got a new computer for my birthday. Happy birthday to me… and that’s one of the reasons that this blog is late. Excuses, excuses, excuses. But, I have been tearing my ^*%&^%$ hair out trying to get up to speed so I can just plain sit down on my asteroid and write this blog and other things that I tap out on a computer keyboard.

However, I do try to get a blog out every two weeks or so. I know folks who have a blog out almost every day. Which I’ve heard is an excellent way to keep your readership up. It might also be an excellent way to empty your idea coffers, or at least mine.

One thing I try to do is respond to comments made on my blog. If you don’t get one from me then it’s because my comments didn’t get through or my website machine wouldn’t let me. You see, I’m relatively new to the blog world and sometimes I try to respond but I can’t get it to work. I think it’s because I don’t have all the blog ins and outs down pat. So, I apologize now for any comments I haven’t been able to respond to. I tried. Really.

Oh, and if you write a response please make sure you add your email address if you think I don’t have it. It’s supposed to come to me through the website, but doesn’t always seem to make it.

Anyway, back to the new computer. Cripes, I got so used to my old Mac. It’s twenty years plus old. It’s been everywhere, man. Had lots of sticky fingers tapping and thunking on its keyboard. Had plenty of little kids playing computer games on it and it has been dropped once or twice.

Oh woe is me, though. It’s not easy trying to master this new computer and I will give you an example.

I am, if you haven’t already suspected, a person who uses more of the creative side of my brain than my not creative side. Surprise, surprise.

Now as you might have read in an earlier blog, I bought myself a new camera. Only a little over a month ago, I think. It’s digital with all the funny-pictures-on the-screen stuff and with  knobs,  buttons or cranks spotted all over its smooth, black body.

And I have, as mentioned earlier, become known as a trail guide. So this means that I get to guide hikers into the forest. And, during the hike, I take pictures so that the fella who runs the recreational activities in Victoria County, (that’s the county I live in), gets to see pictures of the hikers and the beautiful places we walk in. He often posts them or pins them to his ‘wall of shame’.

So, I go home after a hike and hook my camera up to my new computer. Sue used to do this but now this technologic fledgling, who is me, has jumped off the tree and has ever since been wildly flapping his wings, bouncing off pixels and leafy start buttons and repeatedly crash-landing into digital bushes. Over and over again.

(*&^@%#$%&!!!! I mean, Sue used to be able to take my articles from my twenty-something-year-old computer and put them into her computer and her computer would translate the ones and zeros into an understandable language and then send it out over the internet or print it out for me. Now her computer looks at my new computer’s efforts, shrugs its shoulders and spits out these nasty, impossible to understand, bits and pieces of bits.

Yesterday Sue, whose computer acumen and expertise I trust, looked at one of my attempts and its pathetic appearance on her computer screen and said, “This is scary.”

Does one have to be a mind reader to understand some of the computer jargon?

I’ll give you a specific example.

To get the pics to my computer I have to hook my new K50 camera up to Mac. I use a thin black cord called a USB cable. The next thing I do is turn on my camera. Why do I turn on my camera now instead of before? I don’t know. Because it’s says in the Bible somewhere?

Then there’s a little box that pops up on my computer which I have to click on to IMPORT my photos. I was told this was the button I had to click on using my mouse. And that’s another story. The mouse, that is.

The pix are then supposed to slide along the inside of the cord and pour into some empty picture station where a tiny zit gets them to line up and stand at attention in order of entry .

This IMPORT box did not make sense to me.  So I asked Sue where the EXPORT box was.

You must use your imagination to see a vision of the expression on Sue’s face when I asked this question. But come on. I took economics in high school.  I was taught that if you live in Canada and you ship products to other countries you are exporting them. If you are receiving products from other countries then you are importing them. Do you understand?

You see, my photographs are coming from my camera. My camera was here first. I figured that I was therefore from the Camera Country. Oh Camerada, we stand on guard for thee, and I was sending out pictures to the strange place called MacBook Pro. So therefore, am I not exporting pictures?

So, how the hell am I supposed to know which place is my country and which place is not my country? How can I sort out import and export if I don’t know this? For poop sake, I’m dyslexic and this doesn’t even begin to make sense to me.

Oh god, I have so much to learn about the camera, let alone the computer. Have you noticed a change in mood in this blog? A little more hesitation in the sentence structure? Words that don’t sound so appropriate?

Where the hell is the thesaurus in this new computer? Maybe it dropped out when I took Mac out of the box. I mean when I buy a hammer, I don’t want to have to spend a long time learning how to use it before I can bang nails into wood. I just want to bang nails into wood.

Then there is my stacked-to-the-throat-with-new-gizmos camera. I’ll tell you how much I have to learn about this wonderful toy.

A friend from Australia was visiting. She has a good quality tiny camera. A quick shot thing which you can carry in your pocket like a pet Chihuahua.  Anyway, we were talking about our individual cameras. I think we got to talking about the flash. This is where I pulled out the manual for my camera.  It’s thick.

She asked me, “How many different languages is your manual written in?”

I said, “One *&^% LANGUAGE. English.”

 It’s a friggen Stephen King novel full of Cujo mumbo jumbo. Like import, export, four way controller, JPEG, RAW, Button Customization.

I have been told that I should take up writing manuals for people like me. Ha.

         Let’s stop and think; Let’s know and feel

         That things like these are truly real,

         Yes, think how very rich are we

          When all the best of things are free.


                                                                John Martin, “These Things Are Free”

I do think the virtual world is amazing, but sometimes I think it’s too enchanting and addictive. For example, there have been many times when I’ve been sitting outside on the patio of a local coffee shop. I’ve sat and watched the tourists and the locals bustling about or sitting at the little metal tables, drinking their drinks and eating their treats. Many of them, and I mean many of them, (sometimes even including me),  are staring at their little prissy machines. Using their fingers to punch or rub commands into the magical virtual world that is hypnotizing so many of us.

Sometimes I’ve seen young couples at tables under romantic lighting, texting.  And I’m sure they’re sometimes texting to each other. Whatever happened to the touching of hands? Leaning over for a little kiss? Rubbing your footsie up your lover’s leg? Now it’s being done with pixels.

“Oh honey, ooxx.”

“Yes, baby, XXXXXOO.”

“More, more.”

“XOXOXOXOXOXOIIIIIooooxx”

And while  this human interaction in all its forms are going on, I’ve watched the crows, sitting on the power lines above the street, or on the post office roof or the steeple on the church, cawing their asses off. I can tell there’s some form of drama going on up nearer the sky.

They’re making different sounds or are buzzing each other and generally making a racket. I then take a look around at the flocks of pristine viewers and non-pristine viewers and nary a one is paying any attention. Not one. All caught up in their people or virtual world. Maybe some are even looking at the crows through their virtuals or are gazing at pixel crows on Google.

Which makes me think.  Gets me wondering what would happen if this natural world, to which we don’t pay much attention, just vanished?  How lonely this world would be if everyone was totally focused on the virtual world and on the human world and paid no mind to the real time world of wild others.

And what would happen if it got to the point where everybody was almost exclusively hooked up? Got to the point where we would all, for example, be checking the weather on our machines or on something imbedded inside our eye balls. Swirling our fingers down the little doo-dad screens, or poking ourselves in the eyeballs to find out whether we are going to get snow today, while outside our window there is a hell of a snow storm dumping all over our yards.

Just wondering.

“What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone,  men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth.”

                                                                                                                                      Chief Seattle

I’m back and hoping that you’ve all had a great last few weeks and are getting pumped up for the fall. Which you know as well as I do, is the precursor to winter.

I’ve just finished reading a wonderful poetry book written by David Woods. He’s a black author and the book is titled “Native Song”. This was his first collection of poetry.   It is an intense and passionate collection  that reveals his determined and unrelenting fervour to right the wrongs that were done to the Blacks.

David Woods has also written plays and is an accomplished artist. Here are a few samples of his poems.


“It is never good to agree
to hands choking you to death.”

        David Woods, ARTIFACT (For Rose)

“Each fragment lying outside
The structure of love
Turns to monster in the late night,

Each society that discards people
Sharpens hands for killing.”

      David Woods, MACHUKIO (The Terror)

***

A few months ago I was asked to be one of the judges for a writing competition. And whew, the more I thought about this judging task, the more serious I felt about the whole venture. Me, having the audacity to tell people that their stories are better or worse than somebody else's!

You see, I’ve submitted a few short stories to a competition or two. And, I’m proud to say, I’ve never won any. Yeah, blow the horns and bang the drums.

However, I’ve come close. One story got an honourable mention and one made it to the long list on a CBC short story competition.

The thing is, I labour over the stories I submit. Rewrite and rewrite. Change the plot. Discard the plot. Start a new story. Totally change that plot. Get out my notes and check the story against lists of short story musts and maybes. On and on and on and then one day I mail the story out. Usually on the deadline day.

Once it’s in the mailbox I try to forget about it. Put it out of my mind, but still, there’s always a tiny flitting bug memory that buzzes around in the back of my consciousness. Which periodically bites me on the brain stem and makes me think, “I wonder how I’ll do in the competition?”  “When will I hear from those short story writing gods?”

I also wonder who is judging my story. Is the judge a woman or a man? How old is the judge? Are they watching television and eating a peanut butter sandwich while they are reading my precious baby? Are they drinking? Oh god, no. While they were looking at my story? My story!!

Is he or she in a bad mood? What kind of life philosophy do they have? Will my story yank their chain the wrong way? Are they sophisticated, snobby readers?

So, when I was reading the stories that I was supposed to judge, I kept all those thoughts in my head. I really, really tried to read the stories carefully. And I didn’t eat anything while I was carefully reading them. Although, I did drink a cup of hot tea.  And I only had quiet music on while I sat in my office with my door shut as tight as a honey jar.

Not only that, but Sue also had a read of the stories and made her own notes. Oh yes, we made notes, but I didn’t read her notes until I finished reading the stories. I didn’t want to be pre-prejudiced. (Is that a word?) Neither did she read mine.

She was as serious about the job as I was and then afterwards we sat over a cup of tea and talked about the stories and argued a bit and then came to a conclusion.

Of course, it was a subjective exercise and in the overall picture that is probably a good thing. Because writing and art are subjective by nature. As are so many of the dictates we are exposed to which tell us how to behave or not to behave, eat or talk. Much subjectivity must rule if our lives are to expand, and if we and our race are to venture out into the creative unknowns.

Writing Tips I've Gleaned over the Years

Here are a few points to remember if you are writing a short story for a contest.

1: Begin with a bang.

2: Try to introduce an element of uncertainty or suspense at the beginning.

3: Make your characters alive and real.

4: Make your story different.

5: If you have no length restrictions then try to keep your story reasonably short. Say between 1,500 and 3,000 words.

6: Have an ending that is positive, meaning one with a different turn to it. It doesn’t have to be a happy ending. It can be sad, but it should say something important.

7: Make sure you have one clear central theme or plot running through the story.

8: Try for a story that goes against the grain. Don’t always stick to the politically correct issues of the day.

9: Follow the contest rules.

10: Watch out for errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.  No matter how many times you reread your work, you will miss some errors. Most writers ask at least one other person to proofread their stories.

I’m going to try to tie a thin thread between our time at the cottage and my thoughts on subjectivity, rules, freedom and creativity. Here goes.

We recently spent a week at a cottage. It was a large cottage. It had to be because ten of us were going to be rattling around inside its walls. And it was a beautiful cottage. Alas, it did have some problems.

For example, the well went dry. Which meant the toilets didn’t work for a time. Therefore a gigantic truck had to squeeze down the cottage road and pump thirty thousand litres of water into the parched well.

However, we still didn’t have the downstairs toilet or washing machine operating because there was a pain-in-the-ass leak down there. So the plumber had to shut the water off to the downstairs washroom until it was fixed.

This problem affected the family members who had to sleep in the basement or, to use a more genteel label, the downstairs. The downstairs was damp and probably not so comfortable for those family members and some nights the pump was running almost continuously.

There were other problems too. One family had a sick cat which had to go to the hospital and another family had a child who was bitten by a tick and she had to go to the hospital.

So you might think that I would think the week at the cottage was near to being a disaster. But in my mind it wasn’t even close. And it also proved that having lived a life that was a bit or a lot off the grid can be an advantage.

You see, even though there wasn’t plumbing for a day, there was an outhouse. And that’s what I used anyway. Even before the plumbing went up shit creek. Because I was used to using a shit-house or, if you want to be more genteel about describing it, a privy.

I remember when Sue and I moved to our trailer with the indoor toilet that we missed the outhouse. Missed sitting inside, with the door open, looking at the ants, listening to the wind, watching the clouds, smelling the flowers, feeling the snowflakes tickle our face, listening to the ice on the lake speak. Those kinds of natural earth- bound events.

So, when the two dumpers shut down, it was no big deal for us. And when the plastic toilet bowl pail in the outhouse was full, again there was no big problem. Sue and I simply went outside and dumped it in the designated place so the various family members would have a tidy place to attend to their personal needs and requirements. And she and her daughter hauled buckets of water from the ocean for washing purposes.

The privy had a Dutch door so we could sit in there, secure from onlookers, while admiring the ocean and watching the blue heron who spent time on the beach.

What were the other positives? The beautiful ocean. The trip to PEI. The chance for the family to better understand each other and to spend undistracted time together. Time to read and drink beer or wine or rum and coke or ginger ale or cola, etc. And the weather was good for the most part, so we all played in various ways outside. The meals created by Sue’s son and son-in-law were wonderful. We got to meet an interesting fella who helped us all realize that the world doesn’t whirl the same way for everyone. Or maybe I should say, revealed to us that the sun shines on everybody. Subjectivity. Subjectivity.

I found a hiking trail; we played games with each other; I met up with a dog named “Luka” who was kind enough to jump up on me and show me his teeth.

My new camera captured some beautiful pictures; I kayaked for the first and second time. Oh, I could go on and I’m sure that everybody else has lots of good memories too.

Of course, we all went into the cottage with a bunch of expectations. And, the cottage was reasonably expensive, so of course we wanted everything to work out. But instead there were the problems. Things broke, didn’t work the way we wanted them to and it rained one day, just like life. Lots and lots of things happen in life. And, in my mind, it’s the things in life that surprise us and disrupt our plans, or don’t follow the rules as laid down by those who have the power to lay them down, that play a large part in what moves the human world forward in a creative Wabi Sabi way. (Wabi Sabi is the Japanese art of appreciating the beauty in the naturally imperfect world.)

By the way, I painted our trailer a different shade of green. We like it better.

One interesting thing, though. If you look at the picture it looks like one section had one less coat of paint applied to it. However, it didn’t. They all received the same amount. Maybe it was the rain that caused one section to look more faded. Maybe I mixed one batch better than another. Who knows, but DOESN'T IT LOOK CREATIVE?

             “For every evil under the sun
              There is a remedy, or there’s none;
           If there is one, try and find it;
           If there is none, never mind it.”
                                                   A Proverb


            “The woods were dark, and the night was black,
            And only an owl could see the track;
            But the cheery driver made his way
            Through the great pine woods as if it were day.

            I asked him, ‘How do you manage to see?
            The road and the forest are one to me.’
            ‘To me as well,’ he replied, ‘And I
            Can only drive by the path in the sky.’

                                                  Amos R. Wells, The Path in the Sky

NEWS FLASH ONE: I have a new camera. A Pentax K50. So soon, many of the website pictures you will view in the comfort of your home, will have been taken by my brand new Pentax K50.

NEWS FLASH TWO: We had another bat find her way into the trailer. A brown coloured bat.

We were watching a movie called “Marion Bridge”. We were watching this movie because it was filmed in Cape Breton.

“Oh look, I recognize that building.” That kind of thing.

Suddenly, we beheld a shadow pass in front of us. It is always startling to suddenly behold a shadow passing in front of you. Especially when you are tucked away in your living room, feeling safe from the night’s darkness, which you know is outside licking at your windows. It’s like being in the Stephen King movie, “Salem’s Lot”. And bats do look like tiny Count Draculas and they have some very scary looking teeth.

The bat disappeared somewhere in the vastness of our trailer. We couldn’t find her. No matter where we looked. So we went to bed, after shutting the bedroom door, and putting a towel under the door so the bat couldn’t get into the bedroom.

At two am I was awakened by the sound of silky wings cutting through the air. My first thought was it was gentle snoring but I discounted that idea. So I grabbed my little flashlight and scattered the darkness. And there she was. Flying around our bedroom. Trying to escape. We’d locked her in.

She landed on our window screen. I shut the window, trapping her between the window and the screen. She frantically tried to escape, making us feel sorry for her as she used her small feet and wings to search for a small opening to squeeze through. We could hear her wings and feet tapping on the glass.

So, rather than leave her there until morning, when we might have been more rested and more able to deal with the bat, we dealt with the problem right then and there. We went outside into the drizzle. At two a.m. I climbed a ladder and removed the screen. Which allowed the poor little bat to fly free into the night sky.

We also taped the cracks around the oil furnace grates. Again.

“I have been acquainted with the night.
      I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
           I have outwalked the furthest city light.”                            

                                                        Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night

Do insects have memories? Good memories? Are they charitable? Empathetic? Do they give others the benefit of the doubt? Are they sometimes more charitable than we are? If so, is it because they don’t have any over-riding ideology which might make them, say for example, sting us? I don’t know.

Why do I ask?  Well, you see, it’s like this. Last week I decided to begin a little building project. Any building project I initiate usually leads to some kind of problem. In this case I wanted to build a bookshelf. We needed another one because we have a trailer full of books.

I began by setting up the two little metal horses. Got out my battery-operated Black and Decker tools, a level, a tape measure, a pencil and etc. I then grabbed a six-foot length of pine and cut the wood to the required length. You should note that what I mean by required length is defined as the length I think is needed. Not necessarily what is required.

So what could I do that would make things go the way they usually go when I begin a building project? I know my limitations. Oh yes I do.

Well, I could lose a tool for a time, or forever. Check.

I could cut a piece of wood and find out it wouldn’t fit. Check.

I could put in the shelf holders and find out they aren’t level because of inaccurate measurements. Check.

Hold on. Here comes the hook to this whole story.

I could carry a long piece of pine wood out of the woodshed and inadvertently knock the top off a hornet’s nest. Check.

The hornets rushed out. Yes, they did. Luckily it was a small nest so there weren’t that many in there. I think it was still under construction.

Anyway, the hornets buzzed around me while I was cutting the said pine board. That’s how I noticed them. Because they were buzzing around my head while I was cutting the wood. The hornets were pointing out the damage I’d done to their decapitated prefab. But they didn’t sting me.

I packed up the horses and the tools and the wood and moved closer to our two-bedroom complex. Where I finished sawing what I planned to saw for the day. I then put the equipment away. Because I planned to work on it some more another day. It was very hot.

Well, another day blossomed forth. It’s amazing how this happens. I went outside, keeping close to the trailer. I turned on the saw and began cutting a board. Suddenly, I was assaulted by an in-my-face hornet. He was giving me a great one-two-three look over. Really close to my face. I turned the saw off and fled into the house.

Where I asked Sue the same deep, probing questions that I asked at the beginning of this story.

Do insects have memories? Are they empathetic to my wants and needs? Was he curious? Was he worried that I might be planning to come back and nick off another one of their additions?  Did he remember the bad things that happened when he heard the sound of my Black and Decker? Did it give him an anxiety attack?

Another question hit me too. How far down the food chain is the hornet and how far up or down the food chain are we? Are we as high as we think we are?

What about raccoons? Our coon story goes like this.

We have many birds at our two seed feeders, our one suet feeder and our one hummingbird feeder. We have blackbirds, red-wing blackbirds, chickadees, evening grosbeaks, starlings, juncos, purple finches, blue jays, crows, ravens, pine siskins, hummingbirds and others we haven’t identified.

So I have this big, metal garbage pail by the feeders. With the top bungee-corded on. Because of the raccoons, of course.

In the morning, I often found the big metal garbage pail down by the riverside. Not waiting for the glory land to descend, I can tell you that. But luckily the top always stayed on.

However, one morning, I found the pail in the bushes with the top off and what was left of the seeds spilled onto the ground. Oh my, but those raccoon consumers must have had a party. (The word ‘consumers’ having a different meaning from the label the economists give us in their make-believe world.)

So, I moved the garbage pail to the side porch. We used two bungee cords to tie the pail to the porch and one to seal down the top. That night we heard a terrible racket as the coons tried to complete their new work order.

Next morning’s report: A metal garbage pail seen lying under the main deck. Two bungee cords seen to be tied to the side porch. The top wrestled part way off the garbage pail with the bungee cord still attached. Seeds spilled and eaten.

I’d fix that! Yes, siree. I put the seed pail in the woodshed with Grinder, my tools, the firewood, empties and etc. Then I shut the door. That would teach them.

Raccoon Work Order for following night: Go unto the deck and tear open the garbage, recycling, and compost pails. Which created a terrible racket around midnight. So I got up and got outside just in time to see a coon trying to roll the pail down the steps.

I shouted and he bolted. Stopped fifteen feet from the deck. Watched me return the pail to its place. When my task was completed I looked to my right and saw the coon staring at me through the deck’s railings. I felt like a zoo creature being stared at. The coon had the whole dark world to himself. I had my porch and the porch illumination.

                                                            “The world has room to make a bear feel free;
                                               The universe seems cramped to you and me.”

                                                                                       Robert Frost, "The Bear"

I stamped my foot. I shouted. He ran towards the river and stopped. I heaved a metal pail at him. He ducked. He backed up. He stopped. So, I shouted at him, “Stay away from here! Stop doing this or I’m going to have to do something which might hurt you! Go on! Get out of here!”

I was quite aggressive, assertive and rude. Then I went inside. Walked into the living room and looked out one of our new windows. Watched the raccoon walk across the lawn. Away from the trailer. He had his head down and looked depressed. To tell you the truth, his walk and posture made me think I had hurt his feelings.

And I felt sorry for him. Felt empathy. Wondered if I should run out onto the porch and shout. “Oh, I’m sorry. Please don’t go away mad. I promise I’ll try to be nicer.” That sort of thing.

Did the raccoon understand my language and the tone it was said in? Some Indigenous people believe that animals can understand our words.

I will tell you this. The coons haven’t touched our garbage pails since I gave that one coon the what-for lecture. However, two mornings later, our flower garden was dug up. Was it done out of vengeance? And even though we are now laying down moth balls and moth balls in packets and sprinkling cayenne pepper around the flowers, the coons are still coming back. If only to knock over a flower pot or to poop near the deck.

We’ve been told to piss around our flowers. I feel more like saying, “Piss on them all”.

We returned from grocery shopping a few days ago. I looked at our little six-foot gazebo and what did my little eyes spy? They spied a young evening grosbeak inside our gazebo. Trapped inside. He’d flown in through a small opening in the door and couldn’t find his way out. He was crashing into one meshy wall and then another as he tried to find the exit.

I put down my groceries. Fortunately, this story has a happy ending.

Yes, we go from one story to another. Because nature fills our lives with a kind of reverse cosmopolitan life-style. And it does make us wonder as the needs of THE CONSUMERS encroach ever more.

                                           “I heard his voice ascending the hill
                                    and at last his low whine as he came
                                    floor by empty floor to the room
                                    where I sat
                                     in my narrow bed looking west, waiting   
                                    I heard him snuffle at the door and       
                                    I watched
                                    as he trotted across the floor
                                  
                                    He laid his long gray muzzle
                                    on the spare white spread
                                    and his eyes burned yellow
                                    his small dotted eyebrows quivered

                                    Yes, I said.
                                    I know what they have done."

                                                 Mary TallMountain, "The Last Wolf"

And last week, I watched as young grosbeaks crash-landed on the feeders, almost landed on the feeders, made wide curves and missed the feeders and fell off the feeders. And what I particularly noticed was there were no adults at the feeders.

Was this a Bird Feeder 01 course? Was it?

Where are we actually located on the food chain?

What would happen if we gave the crows two hands?

PS: Middle River is very quiet, subdued and small at the moment. The heat and lack of rain must be getting to her.

Our river plays a good game of poker. We do not let her worried countenance, her I-have-no-hand expression trick us. We know she has something up her sleeve.

“It is springtime. The zen master and his pupil work in the garden. There, a flock of birds in the sky!
The pupil says to the master, ”Now it will turn warm, the birds are coming back.”
The master answers:”The birds have been here from the beginning.”

Mondo Zen

I think my blogs are evolving into a novel, or a book of some sort. A story about how two ‘nearly young people’ live in the forest. In a trailer on a flood plain.

The book’s main plot dealing with one big question. When will the friggen river burst its banks? The book ending with the river’s final onslaught. Where she washes these two overly optimistic protagonists, down to the wide open sea? Where the squid live and love and the trailer people row like hell? See: Oceantrip.com.

You see, the Middle River holds our mortgage and some day she might arrive at our door, dripping wet and with a plan. She’ll enter our place, without a please or a thank-you. Turn our legal mortgage documents into lumps of soggy pulp, drywall and chipboard. Row, row, row your trailer. In 4/4 time.

I think we both have gamblers’ blood in us. “You’ve got to know when to hold them and you’ve got to know when to show them”... or something like that. Accurate or not, we’re playing poker with the river. And I don’t even know how to play poker. Not even strip poker, having had to resort to strip euchre and strip crazy eights at certain times in my life.

But why do people gamble? One reason is they like the thrill. And it’s hardly ever boring around here. And both of us hate boredom.

We have a tool shed at the back of the lot. Huddled in the corner. A fair-sized one and a good place to store our surplus stuff.

An old fella down the road told us that the tool shed used to be in the front part of our property. Ha! Our property. Did I just make a funny?

Anyway, in the great rainstorm of 2010, the rains did fall and the waters did flow and the road became impassible and our lot became a river. The said tool shed floated free of its place, and migrated to the other end of the property.

Sue and I took up the river’s poker challenge, looked at our cards and said to the river, “We’ll raise you one.”

So we had a new shed built in the same place the old tool shed had been located. We also had skirting put around the trailer. So there! But we were careful. We told them to stake the shed down.

Then one night, not long after these jobs were completed, it began to rain and the rain continued and continued until the river burst her banks. And the waters got close to our trailer. And in the morning, when we awakened after a sleepless night of listening to the river gnawing on our scant lawn, we found all kinds of rocks, stones, branches and other debris laid out on our table. Close to a royal flush.

We were also excited to find a beautiful skeleton of a tree. Its bark fully stripped away. It looked like it could make a shiny sculpture for our property, like a totem pole.

So we said to our river. “We’ll up the ante and enjoy the fact that you put this beautiful tree on our property to use as a sculpture of some sort. Thank you.”

After a week of being left alone by the river, we put up a wee gazebo. A little six-by-six closet that popped right out of the bag. Like popcorn heated up in a micro-wave. We set it up within a few feet of the river.

“Up yours, river.” Of course we didn’t put up the gazebo to antagonize the river, but to stop the mosquitoes and black flies from bothering us.

Because there’s nothing a black fly likes better than running water. And this water never stops running. It’s in superb shape.

Then one sunny day I was sitting in the little gazebo closet. Reading a book and drinking a diet drink. The gazebo all zippered up.

At one point I stopped reading and studied the mesh wall. Watched a tiny black fly land, then struggle with its own Rubik’s Cube. Which was, in his case, the gazebo’s mesh. I observed the wee insect twist his head this way and that way until he had it at just the right angle. And then, victory! Black Fly Houdini pushed himself through the hole and was free as a bird. Inside my protected place, and I’m sure I heard a whole host of rivulets snickering and chuckling.

So we ordered in our fix-it guy and we purposely installed, “in your face, river”, a brand new expensive front door and screen door.

And the river, within hours, laid a host of mosquitoes down on our card table and just for a laugh sent us, a few days later, Hurricane Arthur.  The winds did blow and the rains did pour down but nothing much really happened here.

Ha!  We raise you two. We’re talking of a pitched roof on our little mobile home. And a new stove. How much would that raise the ante?

However, you can tell we’re attached to the place and the river. The birds, the trees, the plants, the animals, the mountains, the people, the scents, the sounds and the seclusion.

It’s a yin-yang thing. Not only is the river a threat, she also offers us solace and is as powerful as any therapist in any office in any city, town or village. A therapist who offers us therapy twenty-four seven. Her office just outside our window.

“Oh Dr. River, I just can’t get myself up in the morning. I drag myself to my coffee cup. I drag myself to my job. Everything is so organized. I need a challenge.”

“I’ll give you a zest for life. I’ll put some adrenalin into your veins.”

She slaps down a flood.

But she teaches us more than that. As we watch the river flow by we realize the water comes from somewhere and the water goes somewhere. In a continuous cycle of rain and evaporation. Patiently flowing by with a no-sweat attitude.

“What! Would you wish that there be no dried trees in the woods and no dead branches on a tree growing old?”

                                  A seventy-year-old Huron

   Like everything in life, we all pass through a complete life cycle. We are born. We die and our bodies become something else. Maybe, when you slap that mosquito, you’ve just sent Julius Caesar back into the after-life. Et tu Brutus?

“Am not I
 A fly like thee?
 Or art not thou
 A man like me?”

          William  Blake


“When the finite enters in the Infinite, it becomes the Infinite, all at once. When a tiny drop enters into the ocean, we cannot trace the drop. It becomes the mighty ocean.”

                                      Sri Chinmoy 


The river has other lessons. Its eternal flowing into the ocean teaches us not to believe in the nonsensical logic that our society swallows hook, line and news clip. That not accepting the worldly wisdom would reduce the chaos in our cities, temper our crazed belief in unlimited growth, and slow down our lemming-like intrinsic disrespect for our environment. Teach us that we are not in control. Never were and never will be. That’s just one of our myths that will be told by a future ancient.

And our river is music. The music that comes from the stars. The music that is us. Our river dances and sings and growls and calls our bluff. Our river plays a mean game of poker.

“See how I’m sitting
Like a punt pulled up on land.
Here I am happy.”

          Tomas Transtromer

For the first order of business, I’d like to mention that I’m buying a new camera. Why? Because my present camera is refusing to work.

There have been lots of other times when it went on strike. I’ve never given up on it and I’ve always gone to the trouble and expense of getting the scalawag repaired. But this time, nope, it’s over. I’ve had it up to my tonsils with its toxic, superior attitude.

You see, it’s not so much that it won’t work but that it goes all stubborn. Which is after I ask it to snap a picture of moi.  

The final straw was last week. I was at my beautiful meditation place located at our babbling river’s side in the Middle River Wilderness area. Where magnificent mountains stand tall and the forest huddles up close and intimate like a big protective, green blankie.

I wanted to take a picture of myself in this gorgeous setting. So, I set my camera on top of a fallen log, put the camera on timer, then ran like hell to get in position. When I was in the right spot, I stood in front of the camera’s blinking eye with a big “say-cheese” smile on my face while I waited for the camera’s shutter to say, “click”. Which it did. Like it was supposed to. And I did get one picture of me. 

But later, it snapped a few shutter clicks and then it stopped working. Three times it’s done this, and yes, I’ve always taken it personally. Maybe I’m one of those writers with a big ego, but as before, I took it personally and this time I was ready to say, “Good-bye, old camera. Hello, new camera”.    
 
Maybe, when I get the new camera, I’ll take some pictures of places and things we pass when Buddy Lee and I are on one of our cycling trips. Buddy Lee never lets me down. Good boy. Pat, pat.

Last Sunday, Sue and I had a night in hell. Oh lordy, lordy. Hell.

You see, we had workers come to our trailer to install new doors. They got the front door almost done except it’s missing a suitable knob. At the moment it has an unsuitable knob. Who knew that doors that cost a lot of money don’t come with their own knobs? So we had the old doorknob put in the new door and we sealed it with tape to stop the outdoors from getting in and the indoors from getting out. 

Anyway, the workers arrived on a cloudy Sunday afternoon. Two men and a woman. They were also going to put up a new gutter and replace a piece of floor board in the kitchen. It got soft after we had a leaky pipe. We had placed a chunk of plywood over the soft place, as it’s right in front of the sink. Sue put some nice wallpaper or whatever you call it over the board. Which covered up my red coloured smiley face, but hey, I think her design idea was better.

So the workers came with their tools and enthusiasm and began work on the front door. The sun came out and the wind, which had been blowing fairly briskly, settled down to a whimper. What with the sun warming things up and the wind dying down, the area became a vacation getaway for mosquitoes and black flies.

The door installers worked on our door from about two pm to about seven pm. Once the door was in they replaced the floor board and then headed home. These hard, steady, capable and careful workers will return later to replace the screen door and the gutter.

You may wonder why it took so long. Well, one reason was that the guy who sold us the door didn’t read the instructions very carefully. The instructions that the tradesman gave us to show to him. Another reason is that Sue and I don’t have a sweet clue about doors and so while it said the door should be 36 inches wide there were some extra bits in the description that would not have gotten us a 36 inch door but a smaller one. But that was okay because it meant they had to make the door space larger which meant that they had to remove all the dry rot they found there. Which was there because we didn’t have a proper gutter in the first place. See a pattern forming?

Anyway, when they were finished, they left us with words similar to ones we’ve heard from so many workers who come to our trailer. Discouraging words too often heard. You have dry rot. Your roof will leak in a few years if you don’t do something. Copper piping can give you all kinds of trouble. Do you have a boat in case of floods? Who picked the pink paint for the kitchen? Those sorts of things.

The workers, bless their hearts, left us with a new door and a new floor board and about one zillion #$%^&*()   mosquitoes. Because the door had been open so long, no matter how many we struck down, flattened or killed in mid-air, they just kept dive-bombing us until the sun was high in the sky. Not the sun we said good-night to but the sun that came the next morning. I’m assuming it is the same sun that left us on Sunday evening, but who knows, after the night we had?

I hate mosquitoes anyway. I tried to sleep, but I kept hearing the irritating whine of mosquitoes or feeling the prick of their probing proboscis. So I jumped out of bed with hate in my heart and went into the living room. I wore shorts. This was my bait. I turned on the television, snapped on the lamp and with fly swatter in hand began to slaughter the buggers. I battled as ferociously as any warrior would be expected to. However, they never stopped. There were dead mosquitoes everywhere. On my legs, my tee shirt, the couch, the floor and the walls and ceiling. Blood and squashed mosquito meat.

The only consolation is that I learned on the TV that God has a financial plan for me, where to buy books about the End Times, how to cube up cucumbers, why this pope is the End Time Pope and I watched a woman have a talk about sex with five gay fellas and gathered lots of other info I will need to know as I head towards my eternal resting place.

Finally, I had to retreat. I knew I couldn’t sleep so I went to my office. I stood in the middle of my tiny office and looked at my computer, my CD player, my lamp, my candle, my pens and pencils, my stapler and all the other objects that are part of my writing world.

Then I drew a line on the floor with my big toe and said, “All of you who are willing to stay and fight, cross this line. If you don’t cross my toe line I won’t hold it against you.”

They all crossed the line. Right down to the tiniest pencil stub. I’m proud of them all.   We hung in tough until after two am when finally it was just too much, so we surrendered the office and I retreated to my bed.

What to do? What to do? I could hear the whining sounds coming from everywhere. Well, what I did do, was first of all dig around in the closet and drag out my hiking knapsack. Inside the knapsack is a bug mesh I sometimes wear when I’m hiking. I slipped it on, lay me down to sleep and didn’t. But instead listened, bug-eyed, to the incoming hordes. The mesh was holding them back, but it got so stuffy. I could hardly breathe with the screening in front of my nose. So, I got up again, and found a bottle of Vicks. I stuffed the Vicks up my nose. Which gave me the cool self-hypnotic sensation that I was breathing freely. Even though another part of me knew I wasn’t.

Well, would the buggers give up? Crap no. They just kept up the irritating hum thing they do. So, I removed the mesh, got up once more and tamped tissue down into both my ears so I couldn’t hear the buggers very well.

Alas, after a terrible night, we arose from our bed around eight-thirty am. I think I got a few hours of sleep. I was surprised that Sue had slept better than I had until she told me she’d taken a sleeping pill. But that had presented problems of its own. Mainly that it had presented many more dining opportunities for the little critters.

The first thing I did when I got out of bed was take a shower. Well not the first thing. The first thing was to check the mouse traps. I tossed one dead mouse out for the waiting crows to breakfast on. Then I showered while Sue began the fun job of cleaning the blood and dead bodies from the walls. It was carnage. Absolute carnage.

Later that day we went to the hardware store and bought a large can of bug killer. We returned, doused the trailer with spray and then left for a few hours.

That day we both discovered the same thing. We had red marks all over our feet. Sue’s left foot and my right foot. Which meant that I had slept with my right leg outside the blankets and Sue had hung her left leg outside the blankets. Which had presented the little vampires with the opportunity to sup freely. I like to think of it as their very last supper.

Anyway, we have new doors, and we recently bought new knobs. Last year we put a bunch of new windows in our living room. Which means, according to the various tradesfolk who periodically have to visit our trailer, that we will, sometime in the next few years, have five windows and two new doors standing proudly in a pile of wood and metal trailer rubble.

Amen and so be it.

(Note: Apologies for the dearth of pictures on this post, but Weebly won't let us upload images this week for some reason. )

“When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

     Alfred, Lord Tennyson