“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—-not fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.”
                                                                                                Henry Thoreau, "Walden"

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

This is blog number twenty-five and I’m still trucking along. Even though I was warned by a friend to be careful that I don’t write myself out and have nothing to contribute to my other writing tasks. Maybe that’s why I only write a blog approximately every two weeks.

However, this blog might be a little early. Maybe. Because we are going to a cottage on Antigonish Bay for a week and I might not get to do any blogging there.

Anyway, I have a little story for you. If I were going to give it a title I’d call it, ‘GETTING A NEW STOVE’. And I’ll juice up the story by adding this little tantalizer: Boy, oh boy, was Sue ever glad to be getting rid of our old stove. Which only had two working burners. Because I had removed two fuses. Because we couldn’t turn one burner off. And when we removed that burner's fuse, we found out that the other burner had suddenly decided to jump ship and be a copycat. So, out came two fuses.

I’ll start by saying we always have mice to contend with. There are lots of mouse stories, like this one from a few nights ago. That particular night I went to bed. Which I do pretty well every night except long ago when I was younger.

I opened the closet door to put away an item of clothing. I’d tell you what the item was but I don’t remember. However, on this night, I was greeted by a foul odour. A something-decomposing odour.  And this jarred my memory.

“Yes, now I remember, at some point in time, I had placed a loaded mouse trap in the closet. Because one night we had heard plenty of activity going on in there.” 
So, I rummaged through the shoes and whatnots and there was the trap and the mouse.

Yeck. I picked the trap up and carried it outside. Where I dumped the mouse. Which I knew would be a healthy breakfast for our young crow family. Then I sprayed a nice-smelling spray into the closet.

A few days later we went to North Sydney and bought a cooking stove. It was to be delivered the next day.

The next day, while we were waiting for the new stove, while I was outside painting the trailer, and Sue was preparing the old stove for removal, I heard Sue shout, “Guess what I found?”

God, I hate it when I hear Sue shout, “GUESS WHAT I FOUND?”

Guess what Sue had found? She had found, with her little eyes, a well-roasted mouse in the oven. How long had it been there? Had we, when we chowed down on the last roast chicken, actually been consuming roast chicken à la smoked mouse?

And that’s why Sue was never so glad in her whole life to get rid of a stove and the memories that went with it.

Well, I now have my new K50 Pentax camera. So, for the rest of this blog I will just post some pictures I took with the camera. I hope you’ll enjoy this pictorial journey around parts of Cape Breton.

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 

I’d like to apologize for being so late with blog number nineteen. “I’m very sorry.”

And I’m aware that blogs are supposed to pop into the invisible yappy world at least every two or three weeks. Because if they aren’t out there, the magical graph which indicates how many people have read my blog, flattens out and then I get feeling like a nobody.

My excuse for being late, by the way, is that I was in Ontario visiting my family and friends.

First thing I had to do when I began to write this blog was remember how this blog-writing thing works. Because the city makes me crazy.

But not at first. I love driving into my old city haunts, rolling down the 401 and seeing the swamp on the east side of Kingston. Love seeing my family and friends.

Love the Peach Tree Inn with the big room. Two honking big beds, a large bathroom with a gigantic mirror. Now that’s some thrill, and the room has a window which nearly fills in one wall. It overlooks a gorgeous river of cars, trucks and motorcycles. With weird and not so weird people sauntering, power walking or running along its shore.

Who is weird and who is not weird? That’s a philosophical question that often tickles my thinking organ. And when I got thinking about this while I was in Kingston, I’d take a walk into the washroom and stare into the big mirror. Weird or not weird? Weird or not weird?

Then I’d be off to the little refrigerator for a cold beer. And the room had a microwave, a desk for the laptop, a table to sit around, two big drawers, a couch; the luxury was almost too much.

While in the city we visited this store and that store. This pub and that pub. This mall and that mall. Always with the gorgeous river flowing by. Rushing onward towards who knows where. And that’s another one of those weird brain-tickling questions that is hard to answer.

Then back to the hotel and to the big bathroom mirror. Weird or not weird? Weird or not weird?

Anyway, it took a few days of hurrying here and there before my brain began to curl into itself like a tired, nearly popped out baby in the womb. And my healthy Cape Breton routine of not drinking many glasses of beer a day ceased. My regular Cape Breton exercise program flabbed up. I began to do circles every few steps. Like a rat in a concrete shoe box with mechanically placed holes punched through the top.

Signs and rules. Rules and signs. Don’t park here. Don’t stop here. Don’t do this and don’t do that. Do this and do that. Scents galore. Good and bad. Tiny areas of grassy retreats next to tall buildings sprinkled with discarded dreams.

Well, you get the picture and when I finally saw the ‘Welcome to Cape Breton’ sign on the Canso Causeway, my mind and body stretched and yawned like a cat released from a cage.

Can you imagine me living in Toronto? I did actually live in Hog Town once. For eight months. Eight long, stuffy, depressing months.

I did manage to get two hikes into the Frontenac Provincial Park, a beautiful park north of Kingston. Twenty-two lakes dot this park. One of the places I love dearly. One of the few locales that kept me sane while I lived in Ontario.

My first hike was made with a long-time friend. At one point he stopped to knock down an old branch. While he was giving it a good shaking, a small animal scurried out of a hole. Scampered up the branch and sort of glued itself to a higher place. It looked like a red squirrel and it kind of didn’t look like a red squirrel. Upon further observation we decided it was a flying squirrel. I haven’t seen too many of them.

My friend took this picture of the flying squirrel and very kindly emailed it to me.

Oh yes, I think I have to make a correction. It’s about blog number eighteen. My blogs are nothing but pure accuracy and when I make a mistake I feel obligated to correct them.

In blog eighteen I wrote that I used bright green trail tape to mark my paths. That was wrong. I used bright orange tape. At least the "bright" was correct.

One day, a sunny day it was, with the snow slowly melting and the wind not so frigid on my face, I sat in my woodshed and gazed out at the world. At our little mobile home. Smoke curling out of the chimney. I was content in the knowledge that Sue was inside, most likely performing some computer miracle. I sat and watched and listened to the river and the host of birds who were chowing down at our feeders.

I tossed out some pieces of biscuits. Bird edible. I waited for a creature to swoop down and beak up a quick snack. The food was close to where I was sitting. This, I knew, would make the creatures nervous.

However, we have a crow who hangs around. Last night I even dreamed that he was outside our bedroom window waiting for us to feed him. He’s getting to be a semi pet. I think I gave him a name but I can’t remember what it is. I can thank the city for that. Would you know if I gave the crow a name?

This crow flew towards the woodshed. Did a fly pass or two and then landed about six feet from me. He grabbed a piece of food. But surprised me by not immediately flying away. Instead he grabbed another piece and another piece. About four or five, altogether. Looking like a hungry guest at one of those places where starvation sized sandwiches are laid out on plates for the guests to daintily pick up and swallow with a glass of fluid.

He took off, carrying his booty. He flew it to his gang, the five or six crows who hang out here.

These crows seem to get along. They seldom fight or rush at each other. Hold few food fights. Instead they all eat their own food. Like a good Christian family at Sunday dinner.

I’ll close this blog with a picture of one of our neighbours. He is a collector, a long-time resident and like many of us up here, a person who has managed to stave off elimination.

May the force be with him and with you.

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. 

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.

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.

                                                                                  ***

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.

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.             
                                                             

  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.”

                                                                                                      ***

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.

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".

I, Larry A. Gibbons, also hereby declare that my snow blower is useless. Unless I can hire a team of moose to pull it through the above mentioned precipitation. Snow blowers detest ice pellets underneath their wheels. Confound them!

I’m not a person who has settled into many new places. So I don’t have the skills down pat on how to burrow into a new environment, while keeping the connections back in the last place piping hot and fresh. And, being reasonably sensitive, according to some observers, I worry about keeping the old emotional ties strong back in Ontario, while working on building new emotional bonds in Cape Breton.

One niggling worry is that my associations in Ontario are feeling the strain on the psychological threads of friendship that were nurtured over so many years.

So, hello to all my friends in Ontario, Alberta and Michigan.

C’est la vie, mes amis. May we someday enjoy a Gamay together at our favourite aunt’s place. 

Life is a koan. Don’t you think? One of the biggest koans might be the viewpoints held by non-Aboriginals versus those of the Aboriginals. Whew, a tough one, and the puzzle is quite apparent up here in Cape Breton, where different colonial cultures live side by side with the Aboriginal population.
On Saturday, I was talking to an Aboriginal friend who lives off the reserve. This offers him a different set of problems from
those who live on the reserve.

So he deals from his unique perspective with the intrinsic views of the non-Aboriginals and with those of his culture who live on the reserve. If that isn’t a rock to the noggin, problem-solving puzzle, I don’t know what is. His attempts to fit the pieces together must have his synapses firing fast enough to burn down a meth lab.

I was thinking, what if this fella was a writer? He’d have lots of emotional material to put into words. Because, as you know, I believe writers need at least some chaos and uncertainty in their lives for them to have the material to incorporate into their blood and guts creations.

However, it may be difficult to write about a crisis such as a relationship breakdown, if you are in the midst of one. But once you’ve put it behind you and are trucking on down the road, well, the pen will, at some point, be ready to burn, baby, burn.

Many writers, like myself, get discouraged. Sometimes I’ll read a short story or a novel and I’ll think, “Shit, I can’t write like that. Hell, I don’t even think like that”.

Take many of the literary magazines. So many of their stories have been diced, spliced and sautéed into an urban gruel. They’re the ones that seem to grab the publishers’ attention. Put a character in a bar, a bedroom, a downtown apartment, a subdivision, a jail or a whore house on Yonge Street and your odds of being published rise. Of course, I know this is not always true, but these thoughts do occasionally bounce around inside my skull.

And hell, we live in a forty-five-foot mini home in the forest. My main conversations are with crows, squirrels and Ben, the dog down the road. Now, I’ve seen birds and squirrels getting amorous. And I’ve seen a crow eating a dead squirrel while the squirrel’s family members run up and down the branch trying to get a look at who it was that was killed and is being devoured. We suspect the perpetrator was the black cat who creeps up to our house in the early morning and waits for breakfast by our bird feeders.

And the chatter on the street is there’s a new crow in town. What is the inner angst of this rogue crow? Why does Ben choose to poop on our laneway and not on his own? Look out, literary magazines. Here comes an award winner.

But, really, there are so many good writers out there. Urban or rural. Which leads me to a point about my marketing savvy. By the way, don’t spend too much time trying to find my marketing savvy, because I don’t have a lot. And, I don’t know if I will ever get myself worked up into a marketing frenzy. Which, I think, is a problem for many writers. Because the various forms of social media, with their unlimited potential, are so powerful that writers feel they have to be involved in it all the time. If not, they worry they are going to be left behind by a massive herd of social media-savvy key-tappers. Which must have some deleterious effects on their energy to create.

 Here’s an example of my marketing enthusiasm. When I was a kid and thought as a kid and didn’t look at myself in the mirror very often, I used to have a paper route. The newspaper would hold subscription drives. I hated the door-knocking, the persuading and the rah-rah sessions. I did, however, win a raincoat at one rally, but they had to draw twenty times and there were only about twenty-five carriers in the room. Plus it was a dry summer. Ha.

                                                                            ***

I’m also humble about my vocabulary. Which isn’t gigantic, although it’s growing. People generally use the words they heard when they were growing up. So, if you hear a lot of words when you are a child, you will most likely use them when you’re older, along with the dialect you heard.

Note, that doesn’t make a person with a larger vocabulary more intelligent, but it will open up more opportunities for them. My warning to those with a big vocabulary is to not resent having to drop your vocabulary by a thousand words so you can communicate with the likes of me. Because isn’t it the luck of the draw as to what family you have or don’t have? Just buck up and enjoy your view.

Stephen King has pointed out that a person shouldn’t wait to write until after they have acquired a greater number of words. The words will come with the writing and the reading. However, you must read.

                                                                             ***  
Finally, what amazes me about writing, is that the creative activity involved in this pen to paper thing, opens us up to universal bits and pieces. Maybe because a writer is someone who keeps an eye out for these messages and surprises. Most writers are always on the job. Therefore they recognize more clues and bits of unusual info. 

Like last week. I was travelling down Disheartened Highway 104. I was questioning my vision and my style and indulging in other downer thoughts, when I stumbled upon a Walter Whitman poem. It’s called, “Quicksand Years”. (I do this stumbling thing all the time.) Here’s the poem:

I try. Oh, how I try to be cool and not draw attention to myself. However, sometimes, because I live in the bush, (where I like being), I find myself going into the village and spraying my conversation at everyone near and far. It’s as though the words are stored up and when I get a chance to use them, I do. Then I return home and run the conversations over in my head, and holy crow! Did I say that? Did I say this? What a moron!

So, no matter how hard I try to act like cool, deep-voiced Gregory Peck, I fail, and I will give you one example of my not being cool. Only one, because I don’t like making my blog too long. (The blog regulations can be found in the blog/twitter/selfie manual.)

Last Tuesday night. Yes, let’s take last Tuesday night. I’m chewing on another weather-related decision. I have plenty of them. This time I’m asking myself, do I or don’t I drive to the hockey arena? Because it’s pounding snow out. However it’s not windy. So probably not going to be blizzardy.

Anyway, at seven pm, I decided to drive over the lonely, snow- and-ice-covered mountain road to Baddeck.

Now, as I may have mentioned, my snow blower, Grinder, was in the hospital for quite a time. However, it was recently returned with a new problem. Now the augers won’t stop turning, even when I’m not asking them to. But they do turn, which is an improvement of sorts.

I said to Sue, “I’m used to buying a second-hand piece of machinery and having it gradually accumulate a list of mechanical eccentricities, but I’m not used to buying a brand new machine and having it, almost immediately, fill out a roster sheet of problems.”

So, the lane isn’t cleared of snow and our vehicles are parked two hundred meters down at the end of our lane. That means I need a flashlight, because, when I return from my hockey game, the spruce-bordered lane will be as dark as a horse’s artistic tendencies.
Well, I drove to the arena. It was a nail-biting trip at times and I saw two separate places where it looked like a vehicle had gone off the road.

Whenever I’m in the arena, I somehow morph into becoming a hockey player. In my mind, I take on my hockey player persona. A combination of Gregory Peck and Davy Keon. He was a great centre for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

I turn on my flashlight. Poke its light around in the back of Basque’s cap so I can find my two hockey sticks. I find them, pull them out, then fetch my hockey bag from the front of my truck. I like it to ride in the cab with me. It’s a good conversationalist and the truck heater warms its contents.

I decide, rather than putting my flashlight back in the truck, which I always do, I’ll put it in my pocket. It's warmer in the arena and therefore the battery will be stronger and more energetic.

I haul my sticks and hockey bag into the cold arena and then into the warmer locker room. Because of the bad driving, only three players have arrived. It’s getting late. I plunk my equipment down. I’m pumped. I’m the man. The not-really-so-good-any-more hacker player. Ready for the game, if there is going to be a game.

As I’m standing in my straight and true hockey pose, a fellow hockey player casually says, “You have a flashlight in your pocket.”

Big deal, I think. I pull it out of my pocket, to show him it really is an authentic, two-battery flashlight. But when I take it out of my pocket, I’m surprised, and somehow not surprised, to see the flashlight shining forth in all its brilliance. My goodness, I must have looked funny, strutting around while the flashlight shone out of my pocket. Like a walking lighthouse.

Last year, one fella, who had only shown up for one game, asked me if I had stayed in Cape Breton and played hockey the whole year. When I said, “Yes, I’ve played the whole year in Baddeck,” he said, “Oh damn! I missed all the fun.”

Now, what did he mean by that? I think I know, but it’s not just me. I have a weird computer too. It’s over twenty years old. Maybe twenty-five years old and I bought it second-hand a long time ago.

Do some of you want a name for my computer? Okay, how about “Percy Macintosh”?

Percy has a word-changing feature. You know, if I want to change a name from “Tom” to “John”, I just fill in the existing name and the name I want to replace it with and hit Change-all. Then my whole manuscript has the name “Tom” changed to “John”. Can be a thousand “Toms” and they will all zap to “Johns” in a matter of seconds.

One day, not so long ago, I decided to change a character’s name from “Ken” to “Calvin”. Hundreds of Kens lurked inside my manuscript. So, I clicked on “Edit”, wrote in “Ken” and “Calvin” and hit Change- all. Voila, all my Kens were Calvins, and I was hoping it wasn’t too traumatic for Ken, and for poor Calvin, who must have felt a few pounds heavier.

Everything went well. Except, Percy is very, very efficient. Possibly too efficient. So he conscientiously changed all Kens into Calvins.

Example: She hung her tocalvin around her neck.

Example: She said to poor Bob, “Sorry Bob, but I am already spocalvin for.”

Example: Larry wasn’t a very good hockey player and ended up with a brocalvin arm.

My god, it changed every darn “ken” in every darn word.

“Oh, excuse me, Mr. Computer, I think you have a flashlight sticking out of your stupid pocket.” Hardy, har.

A few weeks ago, I was in the trailer by my lonesome. Sue was in town. I went into the bedroom to get something out of the closet. I opened the door and heard a funny chirping sound. It stopped. I hit the closet door. It chirped and squeaked. It stopped. I kicked the wall. Heard a cackling sound. I went to the other wall, near the phone, which broke down last week, gave the wall a knock and heard the tattling, crackling, dripping noise. My god, do we have squirrels or ghosts in our walls?

I walked to the living room. Listened. Nothing. I stomped on the floor. From the bedroom came the weird, playing-a-horn sound, a squeak and something like the sound of dripping water from a tap. I walked back to the bedroom and as I went to knock on the wall, a crow flew away from below the window.

It was our friendly crow, who now had decided to hold a conversation with me through the walls. This crow often follows me down the lane and along the road. As a matter of fact, this crow followed me around the first day we moved in. He must have been curious.

One afternoon, he was sitting in a spruce tree sounding off. The tree grows close to our woodshed. I went there to fetch some wood, and when I opened the door, I found a poor red squirrel, standing in the middle of the room. He was pleading with me not to evict him.

You see, the wood pile is getting smaller. So, I was literally about ready to break into his home, hidden in the last row of wood. Poor squirrel. I felt sorry for him. And maybe the crow did too, and when I went to bed, I got worrying about whether I should make another home for the squirrel to live in. It was still very cold out.

I even said to Sue, “Maybe next year we should buy three and a half cords of firewood. That way, the squirrel will have a permanent winter home. Rent-free.”

Which I know sounds rather funny to some folks, because what many folks do is pop them off for trespassing. Which makes me wonder about who was there first, but I won’t go into that.

So, see what happens when you live in the bush too long? But maybe it’s good to have shining flashlights in your pockets and peeping-tom crows, and snow blowers that don’t follow new snow blower rules and computers which are overly conscientious. Because it means there will always be wacky material to draw from. At least enough to keep this blog going.

Anyway, I like surprises, inconsistencies, wackiness and the humour that arises from these incidents.

Sydney Cox wrote in his book, Indirections for Those Who Want to Write, "Humour frisks the minute to make incompatibles unite. (We earnest people - whom atom bombs and dated obligations to salvage civilization keep on the jump and on the dot - miss that “waste of time.)"

Have any of you found yourselves being wacky without trying?