Larry Gibbons
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Thirty-nine Different Pieces of I.D.

23/4/2014

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We still don’t have the Middle River figured out. However, last week’s warmer temperatures and heavy rain gave us a pretty good idea something was coming down.

But how would the river react?  Well, first it went into a temper. That’s a constant. It always throws a fit. But this time it spread out more. Sent a massively wide flow of water at us. Which roared by our little mobile home like a Panzer Division. One group heading for the Cabot Trail bridge. The other section veering to the left. Pouring over, not only our walking trail, but an area many times wider than our hiking path. 
Middle River Flood
Middle River Flooding our Land...Again!
However, the snow wall kept the river away from our home. This barrier was created by the winter rains, which later froze when the temperatures dipped. Which turned the snow banks into an icy hard dam, so the water couldn’t get onto our property, at least, not in the part near our home.

Thank you, winter rain.                        

                                                                                 ***

Did you know, and really, how would you, that I’ve climbed or partially climbed two mountains since I submitted my last blog entry? And, if I’d sent it out one day later, I would’ve been able to brag that I’d climbed three.
snowshoesnowshoes
You see, a few weeks ago, I bought a pair of snowshoes in North Sydney. The first time I put them on, I thought, “Where have you been all my life?”

For years I’ve been trying to cross country ski into the back country. The problem is I’m not a very good ski turner. So, I have a great deal of difficulty negotiating corners and steep hills and when I’m skiing in the woods, with its constant twists, declines, ascents and turns, it’s rough going. My life and limbs are in constant danger.

Then I bought the snowshoes and now the snow world is my oyster. Let the band play!

A great feature of snowshoeing is that it’s hard to get lost. Because all I have to do is follow my snowshoe tracks back to where I began. When I’m hiking at any of the non-snowy times of the year, it’s easy to get lost. Because I can’t see my tracks unless I stay on a well-marked trail. In the highlands, there are many old trails, but they are overgrown. Sometimes it is almost impossible to figure out if I’m still on a trail or wandering off into cyber wild. That’s why I carry bright green trail marker tape.

Snowshoeing also forces me to use different muscles. So, if you haven’t done it before, taking it easy is a good thing. Especially if you’re getting long in the molars.


                                                                                  ***
Moose droppingsMoose Droppings
Yesterday, which was a beautiful sunny day, I climbed Eighty Degree Mountain. I gave it this name because it is very steep. Parts of the climb are well beyond an easy climbing angle.

I was up there by myself and during my snowshoe cruise I saw super large moose tracks along with mega large doo-doo piles.

And I was alone. Which made me think the number of members in my hiking party was going to make it terribly easy for said moose to make a decision about whom he or she was going to charge.

And don’t think I wasn’t a little bit aware of other possibilities. It’s spring. Even though the snow is still up to my chest and beyond in places. And, because it’s spring, the bears are probably out scouting around. Hankering for a little nourishment, other than what they’re able to suck from their paws. Apparently that’s what they do during their long hibernation. Suck toes. I don’t want my toes tasted.

Eastern CoyotePictureEastern Coyote
Also, the Eastern coyotes found here in Cape Breton are almost twice the size of the common coyotes found in Ontario. They are believed to be a cross between wolves and coyotes. I would think they’re a bit famished, as it’s been a very long and heavy winter.

However, I don’t think too hard about these things. If you love doing something enough, you will do it in spite of the fear.


                            “---I wasn’t going to tell you and I mustn’t.
                            The best way is to come up hill with me
                            And have our fire and laugh and be afraid.”

                                                             Robert Frost’s Bonfire

                                                                              ***
I named another small mountain, ‘Fallen Spruce Mountain’. There is a fallen spruce on the way to the top. It’s the tree I sit on. From it I can see a considerable distance, and it’s on this tree where I write in my journal, or read something from my Robert Frost book, or the hard copy of my New Testament. Which I think I rescued from a city dumpster. Something about the words, ‘from a city dumpster’ gives me a poetic nudge. I’ll have to think about it some more.

It was on this tree that I thought about a Robert Frost poem I have been in the process of memorizing. It’s called, ‘The Vantage Point’. I recited a bit to myself as I looked out over the highlands, the fields and the few houses dotted here and there.

                                       “If tired of trees I seek again mankind,
                                       Well I know where to hie me-in the dawn,
                                        To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
                                        There amid lolling juniper reclined,
                                        Myself unseen, I see in white defined
                                        Far off the homes of men, and farther still,
                                        The graves of men on an opposing hill-----”

                                                                           ***

Blue Toe Mountain has that name because I got two bruised toes after hiking up and down its bulk. I was wearing a new pair of hiking boots.

“Do they fit you okay, sir?” the sales clerk had asked.

I’d said, after I stomped around the flat store floor, that I thought they fit perfectly.

On flat land. On flat land, they fit perfectly. However, when walking down the side of the mountain, they didn’t fit perfectly. They fit snugly. They fit tightly and painfully, because the decline forced my toes into the front of the boots. Which, after a few miles of descent, caused those toes to be very sore. Later on, the nails of my big toes turned blue and one is still an ugly colour.             
                                                             

Wild Honey
  As I mentioned in blog sixteen, I am not a book reviewer. However, I think I can be a book talk-abouter. So I want to mention another poetry book that I enjoyed recently. The book is called, ‘Wild Honey’ and its author is Aaron Schneider. The book was published by Breton Books. Aaron Schneider lives in Cape Breton.

I savoured his poems. They are elemental. Connected to the earth, sky and sea.

“Life at Sea” is one poem in his book which reminded me of our experience this winter, as our little green mobile home was battered by the winter storms.

               “Today we are again at sea
              the house sails
              into the white storm
              stoves blazing. Trees
              bend like stripped masts
              and the white earth rolls.”


                                                                                                      ***


squirrelScavenging squirrel
I have always liked the smell of firewood. Any wood, for that matter. But the last few loads of wood I have taken into the house have had a peculiar smell. Like Pine-Sol mixed with piss. And the sad reason for this odour is that I am now dismantling the actual condo living space of the poor squirrel.

Now, I have to say that I gave him every chance to vacate before I threatened to send in the sheriff. I purposely bought him time by taking wood from the far side of the pile instead of directly over or near his nest. 

And I’d loudly bang the door before I entered the shed. I’d shout, “You’re going to have to move because I’ll have to be dismantling your house soon. You have to be out before this happens. Because I don’t want you jumping out while I’m grabbing a piece of fourteen-inch firewood and scaring the crap out of me. Sue doesn’t need the extra laundry work.”


The poor squirrel did vacate. I think his present address is 216 Slab Wood Pile. Located next to the woodshed. Good for him. I’m glad he’s resilient and street smart enough to be able to start a new life, while the cold winter winds were still blowing.

Do you think he will be able to find, out of the thirty-nine pieces of ID allowed, one that will prove where he lives and one with a picture of his furry mug? Because he’ll need it to be able to vote for the naughty nuts he wants in office.

This squirrel still gives me the occasional lip. Even though I allow him to hang around in the woodshed when it’s not in use.

Like last week. Nuttsie said, “It’s so damn cold. How can you be so heartless?”

“Because it’s cold. That’s why we need the wood. That’s why we put it there.” My logic, as usual, was rock solid.


RavenPeeping Tom
He wouldn’t let up. Danced his little squirrely jig, so I said, “Next year, I promise we’ll buy three-and-a-half full cords. That should give you an uninterrupted living space all winter.”

This whole conversation was watched and listened in on by the draining-sink-voiced raven. Who probably knows everything we do. I don’t want to think too hard about that.

I think I’ll call him, "Peeping Tom".

Cape Breton Mountains
View from 80-Degree Mountain
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Shack-Wacky Hype

24/2/2014

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Picture
A few days ago, I was snow blowing the long path to the tool shed, where I’ve been storing ?????.  I’d started clearing out the snow before the sun had even rubbed the sleepy dust out of its corona, so it was dark, and I was thankful for the headlamp on ????. You see, the weather person had called for rain. Which meant that when the temperature dropped, the rain-gorged snow would become as hard as a stale all-bran muffin.

You may notice the question marks in parts of this blog. That’s because I’m curious to see if you readers have been paying attention to my fourteen blogs. Feel free to leave a comment with the names represented by the question marks! I also think I’m doing this weird question mark thing because I’m feeling frisky. Because I’ve managed to compose fourteen blogs, this being my fifteenth. High five! Fourteen, about to become fifteen!!
Picture
So ???? was shining his light forth into the darkness, while the wind whipped snow back into my face, because it couldn’t figure out where the heck it was going. As ???? blew the snow into the air, more snow filled in the path behind me, and as I inhaled the sweet scent of snow blower fumes and mouse pee, I asked myself, “Is this hell or heaven? Did we make the right move when we up and left ???? to settle in the Cape Breton highlands? Where there are only two kinds of flies, black flies and snow flies? A place, where even when the day is sunny and bright and not a cloud hovers over my head, the snow gently falls from the sky, albeit at an angle, and alights upon my just cleared patch of home turf.” And I thought if I listened carefully, shut the snow blower off for a few friggen seconds, I might even hear the mountain winds blowing through the bare trees. And if I was really, really quiet, I might hear those tall, rounded, tree-covered mountains tee-heeing and having a great old time. For much of our snow is booted our way from the other side of those mountains.

In summary, and after a bit of time to think it over, I’ve decided that it’s not heaven but a hell of a lot of work. I’m reminded of the last verse of Cape Breton poet Aaron Schneider’s poem, “Life at Sea":


“We’ll stay with the storm,
run before it stoking
and steaming, while each day asks
what tied us to this frozen helm
horizon a great white wave?”
FYI, the snow blower is in the shop for repairs and I have to drive through a snowstorm to find out what the doctor has to say.
ski trails and mountains
Skiing on Snowy Ski Trails Beats Snow Blowing!
As I said, this is my fifteenth blog. Fifteen. Not a big deal for some bloggers, who seem to zip one off every day or two. When I first started writing this blog, I was given some advice. These are the two suggestions I remember. 

One fella said, “You have to watch that you don’t write yourself out.”  His fear being, I think, that writers could put so much of their writing energy and content into the blog, that they wouldn’t have much left for their other creative endeavours. His advice put a bit of a scare into me.

The second piece of advice sounded more daunting. It was that I should put the blog out fairly often. Once a week at least. So I could continually be in my readers’ faces, waving some new Larry tidbit.

Picture
Holy crap, Batman. I’m not even on facebook. I can see the value of facebook, but I’m not comfortable with it.

My emails are person specific. One email per person. All personally tailored, with a bit of gossip for this guy and gossip about the first guy to the second guy; each email hand-made with person-specific snoop and chatter. Very few of my emails are generic, mass produced or consumer friendly. So, as you can see, I wasn’t prepared to pump generic tidbits into the blogosphere.


I also worried that if I became too prolific, I might be disrespecting, neutering and trivializing my emotions, ideas and teeny bits of wisdom, by semi-obliviously tossing them into the mass ocean of talk, words and images. Which scream, blare, humour, whisper or sing from anything that has a screen or a speaker. Besides, I don’t think I have an unlimited amount of ideas, news and knowledge to feed into this hungry sea which often seems to have the memory of a goldfish.

Also, I have read in more than one book about writing, that you can talk a story away. Not run out of the ideas or feelings required to write in a blog, but yap away the creative power needed to write something complex and powerful.

For example: I enter a shop. I see a small, older woman in a tiny, cluttered room. She’s selling second-hand books and clay figurines made by her husband. The store is empty. She’s waiting for customers, sitting behind an old cash register and drinking coffee out of a small white styrofoam cup. It’s not hard to tell that her business isn’t doing well. The room looks shabby and dusty and she looks shabby and dusty, but also sad, lonely as hell and a little bit desperate. I can feel her melancholy. I also sense a story bubbling up in my mind. It begins to simmer. Empathy for her plight is stirring it up.

And I know that my muse, who lives under our trailer, can feel it too. Which means he’s probably working on the story while I’m doing whatever. Like when I’m frying eggs and boiling water or clearing snow off our laneway. I think I’ll write a blog about snow clearing some day. Ha!

So, let’s say I meet this woman, and then a little while later, I get together with some friends at a local pub, and while quaffing down a beer I tell them about this lonely woman I saw at this shop. I discuss a possible story. Leak out a few plot ideas. Blah, blah, blah. My friends might offer their opinions and the story becomes muddied, mutated and mangled before I have time to sit in my writing room and keyboard it out.

The next day or so, when I sit down to write this story, guess what? The story has been partially gutted. My emotions,  which were fresh and eager to be penned, have fizzled like a wet firecracker. Damn! 

I’m not saying the story has vanished. It might still be there, but the fire may have been partially talked away. And as I said in my last blog, a large part of fiction writing, at least for me, comes from the gut. It’s not really a rational process. 

Maybe it’s because when you leak out or pour out a story idea you partially encapsulate it or frame it. Nothing my creative muse hates more than a framed idea. Gutless, and when I invite my muse up to my writing/Black and Decker drill and saw/Sue’s files/our vacuum cleaner storage unit/office, to join in the writing project, well, he’s ticked off. 

“Hey dude, you’ve already blabbed that story out. So what do you want me to do? Warm it up and send it out as second-hand crap? Go pencil yourself.” 
Larry's Office
My Office
Anyway, as you may know, I spend a lot of my time in a little trailer in the forest. Trying my best to be hip with the hype and not go shack-wacky. Maybe I should say, worrying about getting with the program, but not often actually doing it. And I don’t really want to end up doing what Salinger did. He wrote his last works and then hid them away. I guess writing them was enough for him. Where was his marketing savvy? What was wrong with him?

Sidney Cox once wrote, “Do not try to write a poem until you want to.”

Diamond in the roughDiamond in the Rough
So, maybe writing too many self-promotional words in order to get my writing out there, or talking too much about what I want to create, can mute my desire to write.

I know that as with everything in life, when you create, you’re walking a fine line. Because the diamond in the rough is super hard and yet as fragile as a spider’s web. Choosing not to run as quickly as the hare might fail to get a writer so much into the world’s  hungry, obsessive gaze, but it might also be a way to save his or her writing self by keeping the flames hot.


Yeats wrote:  “But when I shut my door and light the candle, I invite a marmorean Muse, an art where no thought or emotion has come to mind because another man has thought or felt something different, for now there must be no reaction, action only, and the world must move my heart but to the heart’s discovery of itself, and I begin to dream of eyelids that do not quiver before the bayonet.”
Lake Ainslie
Snow-covered Lake Ainslie
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Living our story

20/12/2013

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What a whack of snow we’ve been getting! I haven’t been able to park my snow blower since last Thursday. Today is Thursday, which makes it over a week and I will have to use it again today. Even though I was out in the blizzard last night freezing my organs off.
snow blower
Break Time for Snow Blower
We know we’re living in an out-of-the-way place when the weather forecasters tell us that a big storm is coming and that we’re now experiencing the quiet before the storm. What friggen quiet? Is there such as thing as a storm in a storm?

You see, Cape Breton is stuffed full of micro-climates and these days my muscles are threatening to bring out the guillotine and start chop-chop-chopping off the cloudy-headed mini weather pattern’s barometers unless they cease and desist.

A couple of weeks ago we were hit with hurricane force winds and rain. So the snow left over from a previous storm began melting away and pouring its juices into the river. The winds and the flood waters took at least another six trees down. Two fallen trees also blocked our lane. Out came the chain saw.
Test question: what’s one of the main differences between a maple tree and a spruce tree? Answer: the maple tree is a deciduous tree and the spruce tree is a coniferous tree. Deciduous trees are hardwood. Coniferous trees are softwood.

See, I know the answer. So why didn’t I think about this piece of info when the chain saw was cutting and zooming merrily through the spruce tree? Why didn’t I recognize that a maple tree is a different kettle of corn? Because it is “harder”. So why did I stupidly not bother to make an undercut beneath the incision I’d inflicted on the top of said maple trunk? Which led to the maple tree putting a death grip on my chain saw’s guide bar and chain. My excuse is that I was in a post-flood-plus mice-piss-in-snow-blower-foul mood. Anyway, I used an axe to get the tree to let go while I tried to shout over the river’s incessant babbling, “Let go, you basket!”

freeing chain saw with axe
Praying for help...
The next day, I was in a small engine shop, where I had the nice mechanic put a brand new guide bar on my chain saw. And after I paid him and was heading for the door, so I could get home and wreck another piece of equipment, I heard the mechanic say, and I quote: “There’s another one here with your name on it.” Good to know. Har, har, har.

We live in a forty-five foot trailer. It falls a tad short of being a palace. Yet when I got up one morning, (as I usually do, thank goodness), and peered out of our bedroom window, I witnessed a beautiful sunny day. I then hitch-hiked to the front of the trailer, where our living room resides, put some wood into the wood stove, started the fire and when I turned around to look out the living room window, guess what? It was pooping snow. I kid you not.

car buried in snow
Abominable Snow Woman
However, there are positives. For one, I don’t need to go to a gym to keep fit. Here’s another negative turned into a positive. Our road is one of the last roads to be ploughed. Do you know what that means, aside from our being trapped? It means it’s a perfect surface for me to ski on. Up to the mountains, through a gorgeous grove of snow-laden birch, spruce and fir. Until the snow plough arrives.

A few weeks ago we were in the city, where we were enjoying its attractions. Pubs, taxis, libraries, movies, stores, malls, people, cars, more people and cars and noise and restaurants and buses and noise and smoke and fumes and a part of me was loving all the stimulation and conveniences. But the other part of me soon began to give me the elbow and clear its throat and nudge, nudge and it didn’t take me long to get the message. I was missing the quiet, the fresh air, the quiet, the animal sounds, the cawing, my snow blower farting its way down our long lane, the quiet, no exhaust fumes and nights with bona fide darkness. Where we can really see the stars when the clouds aren’t dragging their asses across the firmament.


I have a theory. Like most of my theories, it’s probably rife with error but here it is. I think that people become slightly neurotic when they are in an environment of constant stimulation. Maybe their brains close up a bit so they won’t become overwhelmed by the excitement and the constant exposure to others.

David Thoreau wrote: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

art in natureNature's Art
I’d also like to throw this quote out, seeing I’m in a quoting mood: ”Ah,” exclaimed the old man, “such is the strange philosophy of the white man! He hews down the forest that has stood for centuries in its pride and grandeur, tears up the bosom of Mother Earth, and causes the silvery watercourses to waste and vanish away. He ruthlessly disfigures God’s own pictures and monuments, and then daubs a flat surface with many colours, and praises his work as a masterpiece.”

Who needs wilderness nowadays?  Don’t we have the virtual world? Don’t we have poorhouses?

Couldn’t resist.


Here comes another quote, except this time it’s a writing quote by Sydney Cox, taken from his wonderful book titled, “Indirections for Those Who Want to Write”.

 “When you tell a story or write a poem, it is from your point of view that you select, reject, arrange, make form. The thing you write about must interest you wholly, must seem so vital that you accept no current or approved view of any item of it, but look at every constituent from your point of view...”

And maybe that’s what we’re doing. We’re living life from our point of view. Creating, just like somebody created a Walmart or a Costco. Creating something different is what makes a life or a story or a poem vital. Our story.

Hang on, one more quote from Sydney Cox: ”You can hardly fail to notice that the writers who most delight and challenge you do not look at anything from quite the angle that any of the broad terms designate.”

A brief mention of my friend and bicycle, Buddy Lee. He is miffed. Ticked off. Because he was evicted from his wood shed apartment and put into the tool shed. Which is not convenient because it’s way back at the corner of our yard. And he is sharing his living space with the bad, destructo mice who maliciously attacked Grinder, who is now living in Buddy Lee’s old bachelor pad. I just didn’t have room for both, and I specifically told my bike that he would not enjoy living with Grinder. Not unless he likes mice pee perfume.


Next blog I might try to explore why I like to give names to such critters as my snow blower and bicycle. Have I mentioned that my truck’s name is Basque?

Have a great week.
truck named Basque
My Truck Named Basque
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