Algonquin Camping Trip

I took this past Friday off and packed up my newest camping equipment along with an eager beagle and drove off after waking up at 5:30. After driving about 380 km, after picking up a fishing license in Barrie and the last bits and pieces at a Sobey's grocery store and Canadian Tire, I was on my way. I rented a solo canoe which was incredibly light -lighter than the 2 man job I carried for about 4 km last September - this one would have been a breeze. Made of Kevlar, so it likely would have been a little bullet proof, if the chipmunks got a little out of hand. I plopped Monty into the canoe, who squeaked as much as he could to protest his watery imprisonment, and padddled on down the river, out into the lake, and made a beeline for a set of islands on the opposite end of the lake - about 45 minutes away by one-stroke engine (ha, I made that joke up just now).



When I made camp, I sat for a moment in my folding chair and thought about what to do. I cooked up some curried-rice and grilled a steak over the fire, and shared the steak with Monty who was very helpful in reminding me that I had some left on my plate whenever I looked away from him.




Then it was 1:00 PM and I listened to the CBC on my Grundig shortwave/fm/am wind-up radio powered by AA batteries - why wind it up when it can use batteries instead? I read my book for a while in my chair, gathered fire wood, discussed chipmunks with Monty, and hours passed, and I got hungry again.


Since I had left my new fishing rod at home for some reason or another, I figured catching a fish was out of the question. But then I remembered Ray Mears saying a rule of bushcraft is to make the tool that you need. So I got some kitchen cotton string, a dead pine sapling, trimmed it, tied a 15 foot length string to the end, a hook and fake wriggly salamander lure to the end and threw it in the water.


That is, I threw it, instead of casting, because it all bundled up and landed by my foot. So I tried again, with a long, graceful swooping movement, and the salamander dipped under the surface and vanished about 12 feet away and 4 feet down, over the edge of a dark rock in the lake.


I looked carefully at the rod I'd crafted with my hatchet and shifted my feet and all of a sudden felt an insistent, almost anxious tugging on the string. I yanked the rod, and pulled up a 4 foot, 120 lb bass (see image below, some numbers have been exaggerated).




After cleaning it, I threw it in a firepan with olive oil, salt and pepper, and cooked it up over the fire. Beer and pan-fried fish - perfect. Monty had some too, after reminding me that I had some left over.




He settled down on a blanket with his stuffed toy (important for comfort) and all the while kept an eye on the chipmunk territory in the woods, taking off after them every so often with a smile on his face.




I wandered the edge of the island where I was from time to time, and found thick growths of soft lichen on the granite, and was followed by my trusty canine companion. He kept watch over the island - climbing like a mountain goat up the steep cliff around the camp site.



The first thing I noticed about the camping spot as I pulled in with the canoe were the blueberry bushes, small, but covered with blueberries.


I picked a few for snacks and on Saturday morning made blueberry pancakes. Very good. Scrambled eggs and tea accompanied the pancakes. Nothing better for breakfast.




The early morning sun warmed up the island - weather was perfect, warm in the day, cool in the evening.



Monty had a great time, and snoozed when he could, but also kept a close eye on the chipmunks as much as he could.




One evening I made a lantern out of pine pitch, a branch and some spruce roots. It burned for several minutes in the blackness, and illuminated the site clearly.


When I returned, Spring told me that she'd be up to going camping the next time I went - so we'll all be going up in August some time!

Check out the rest!

His fare was away in a blur of lights.

Earlier this evening I witnessed a horrible sight - I stepped out of my car which I'd just parked, heard a 'thwack', looked up and the woman who'd been standing on the corner as I pulled into the parking lot was laying in the road with blood pouring out of her swollen face and her immobile body twisted and crumpled on the streetcar track and road looking quite horribly dead. I was sure she was dead. A moment later a streetcar driver ran out and holding his arms up above his head yelled 'NO - OH FUUUCK!!! NOOOO!!!' and ran back to the streetcar. I thought it was a suicide - that was my very first thought. I think he'd thought he'd killed her.

I started over to her, along with a couple other people. I told a woman to support the unconscious but squirming victim's head with a brown Danier bag she was carrying - she hesitated. I reminded her it was plastic and could be cleaned off. She agreed with me quite seriously, quite thoughtfully. Then I pulled out my cell to call 911 and saw a guy with a cellphone. I asked him if he was calling 911 and he said yes. I told him to tell me if he'd gotten through. He ignored me and stared at the sky. A woman told me she was calling and would tell me once she'd gotten through.

Cars decided to try to drive past us. I raised my hand - directing traffic - and caught the eye of the idiot man with his idiot wife trying to drive past and refused him passage. He argued in mime. I, in mime, threatened holy grevious injury on him if he proceeded. He backed down - his wife looked scared of me.

It is difficult to remember the order of everything. Like a dream.

It looked like brains out of her nose - but it was just blood matting her hair, stuck to her face. And then she came to, she fought, she resisted and then the ambulance was there and she fought the ambulance attendants who looked huge like wrestlers and she was kicking her legs and groaning without a face that made sense. It was swollen and she looked pissed off and drunk and wasted yelling and agonized.

Observe: Cervical collar, a hard board and an ambulance and a shocked bystander beside me and a pool of blood on the asphalt and a shoe on the tracks. The tough policeman - radio calls, departing ambulance, sirens.

Then I saw the cabbie across the road just stopped - motionless, uncertain, sad, not believing, staring in stony confusion. His fare was away in a blur of lights and medical equipment. He drifted away after a while. He's thinking of the incident. The accident. So am I. So is the streetcar driver. So are the other witnesses.

Bushcraft, Root Cordage, Headlamps

I've been focusing a lot since I got several books on bushcraft for my birthday on both the psychology of survival and on skills to use found materials to make outdoors living more easy.


At the beach today, I pulled up a length of willow root, stripped off the root bark and produced a strong piece of cordage. I lashed it to a hook I carved from washed up wood, and tied it to a long piece of willow bough, carving small niches in the pieces. I then used it to lead my distractable beagle back to my car - I had left the leash there trusting he would pay attention to my commanding voice. By the time we'd finished our walk, he was interested only in the input provided by his olfactory senses. Tied up using natural resources, he hardly complained.

For my birthday I got a headlamp for camping. I wanted one because camping presents certain lighting challenges. The sun goes down earlier than our incandescent-trained brains would like, and putting a naptha or propane powered lantern in a tent at dusk just won't do. Positioning a flashlight over one's shoulder to illuminate a book is an awkward job, and candle-lanterns don't give off enough light. But my new little toy will do it just fine - strap it to your head and light pours from it in a triumphant blaze of heavenly glory. In green LED, white LED or yellow halogenly happiness. Plus, as my concierge likes to repeat, it helps me find the tree at night.

A Poorly Written Essay on The Meaning of Life.

I think I know the meaning of life. First of all, let me cover how it is that we got here. Either there is a grand plan such that elegant biology was enjoined to place us on earth, or a massive set of accidental chemical reactions culminating in me typing this post. I believe the latter is what happened. Note of course what I believe doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but just within the small scheme of things.

Now - it might be that we are meant to aggregate objects and wealth. Or that we are meant to aggregate power and strength - stability. Or perhaps we are meant to learn how to give up worldly things so that we can concentrate on the fine arts. Perhaps we are here to reflect beauty or engage in loving caring. I just don't figure. But what ever reason I come up with as to what the meaning of life is, I may be wrong, 'cause I just don't have the facts, or aren't in the club or receive the heavenly newsletter from the big guy.

So maybe I'll move into the more manageable. What would make me happiest, or most content to believe is the meaning of life? Yes, that's more - graspable, tangible, expressible. Easy, but ungraspable - 'to love others'. Cynical, but Nietzschean: to attain power, mastery over challenges and perhaps others. Camus-ish: to roll a large stone up a hill and then to roll it back up the other side once it plunges over. That we must assume Sisyphus is happy. Perhaps we must choose to believe that Sisyphus is happy - this might be blindingly obvious to a 1st year philosophy major, but I never took philosophy so apologies if I’m sounding basic.

Maybe... maybe the meaning of life is what we choose to believe it is, and that the choosing or faith or active construction of the idea is enough to imbue us with a sense which then I guess keeps us going. Like a child mastering his environment. I think maybe the meaning of life therefore is to find contentment somehow in the busy winds of life and to spread that contentment around because it seems kinda of nice to share. Which really isn't testable I think. But it feels kinda good.

Okay. I know. The meaning of life is that we live so that we can muddy through it all and take care of people and yourself and then watch it all go by without attachment. I like that Siddhartha river analogy – okay so I think I don’t know the meaning of life, but I’d like to think it is to watch stuff go by without being too affected either happily or sadly, excitedly or distressingly – and just kind of be part of the world without worrying.

Well. I’m not good at articulating this, and thinking too much about it all kind of worries me, so maybe I'll just stop writing and solicit your thoughts via the comments below but first include a snippet from Siddhartha:

An Excerpt from Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

… Let's listen, you'll hear more.

They listened. Softly sounded the river, singing in many voices. Siddhartha looked into the water, and images appeared to him in the moving water: his father appeared, lonely, mourning for his son; he himself appeared, lonely, he also being tied with the bondage of yearning to his distant son; his son appeared, lonely as well, the boy, greedily rushing along the burning course of his young wishes, each one heading for his goal, each one obsessed by the goal, each one suffering. The river sang with a voice of suffering, longingly it sang, longingly, it flowed towards its goal, lamentingly its voice sang.

“Do you hear?” Vasudeva's mute gaze asked. Siddhartha nodded.

“Listen better!” Vasudeva whispered.

Siddhartha made an effort to listen better. The image of his father, his own image, the image of his son merged, Kamala's image also appeared and was dispersed, and the image of Govinda, and other images, and they merged with each other, turned all into the river, headed all, being the river, for the goal, longing, desiring, suffering, and the river's voice sounded full of yearning, full of burning woe, full of unsatisfiable desire. For the goal, the river was heading, Siddhartha saw it hurrying, the river, which consisted of him and his loved ones and of all people, he had ever seen, all of these waves and waters were hurrying, suffering, towards goals, many goals, the waterfall, the lake, the rapids, the sea, and all goals were reached, and every goal was followed by a new one, and the water turned into vapour and rose to the sky, turned into rain and poured down from the sky, turned into a source, a stream, a river, headed forward once again, flowed on once again. But the longing voice had changed. It still resounded, full of suffering, searching, but other voices joined it, voices of joy and of suffering, good and bad voices, laughing and sad ones, a hundred voices, a thousand voices.

Raspberry D. Overexposure

Having been so busy at work etc... of late, I haven't really looked at my home e-mail. I had 834 junk e-mails in my folder. I checked through them to see if my filters inadvertently captured valid e-mail. I am amused at the names that spammers come up with. The image below shows the list of names, and I've circled the ones that make me giggle.

Another (Eventual) Campfire in the Woods

I learned a lesson on Saturday about firestarting.

The sunny, humid day followed a rainy foggy day and I was in a wooded valley north of Oakville. I brought my knife and firesteel - and after we hiked in a while we settled down at an old site where it looks like a party had taken place - beer cans, bags etc... laying all around. I grabbed some leaf litter and tried to spark a fire. There was not a birch tree in sight - this would have done it straigh-away. It took about 20 frustrating minutes to get a successful flame - it kept starting and quickly dying in the leaf tinder. Finally after much crouching, scraping, sparking and searching for tinder, the fire started and our campfire burned hot for about an hour before we left. Monty chased chipmunks and curiously splashed through and up the creek.


We burned the paper and tidied up the garbage for the trek out.

Lesson - bring tinder supply in a box - lint, cotton wool, compressed wood fibre and wax etc... as you never know when the weather will turn. Getting kindling is always easy, it is the tinder that is the tricky part.

Lush Gardens of Green Grass

Were I to make an entry for my blog today I'd want to make something that people will find useful, and not something that only I for unfathomed reasons could possible find interesting, so I should try to find some sort of universal theme, and inject a little bit of dry humour or even self-deprecating humour into it to give it a little umph.

Maybe I could talk about our new lawn. Yes, I think that is what I will talk about. Now I won't be able to inject much if any humour or include a universal theme (except for hope and striving towards a lawn), but hey.

Well, our balcony overlooks the Spadina Quay Music Garden, and the Island Airport, and finally of course the lake, but don't forget if you turn to your right you can see the Gardiner Expressway, well, I'm sure you wouldn't but I really was just reminding myself to mention it.

We have window boxes that last year lay in fallow due only to my lassitude and failure to be a farmer (of flowers etc...). But this year, not only have I planted copious flowing gardens in the three window boxes, I have also planted a lush, luxurious, deep, cradling and soft lawn. About 15 inches by 15 inches square. It took about 4 days for tufts to appear, and 2 weeks later the grass is not quite as high as an elephant's eye, but heck it is getting there.

I don't know what I'll do when it gets so high that it needs a good mowing. Monty can't reach up to have a pee on it either. I'd like to walk through it in bare feet, feeling the grass rustle through my toes. But I'd likely topple over the balcony walls and fall 7 stories to arrive mangled and bruised at an emergency ward.

So, without further ado, I present to you our new lawn:

Camping mistakes I have made. You shouldn't make them.

1. I used the blade of a non-lock-blade folding laguille knife to lift a cooking pot off of a fire. We'd just arrived after an arduous 19-kilometre-long (phew) portage and canoe-journey, and the light had fallen quickly, and I'd just had an 'arrival-beer'. Luckily it didn't cut my finger completely off.
   You should have used a stick to lift the pot.


2. November camping once, I set up my tent on a promontory, on a thin spit of land between lakes. I turned to get the fire going, and a gust of wind threw my tent into a solitary bush by the beach - if it hadn't have been there, my tent would have been in the lake.
   You should have tied down the tent with pegs and against a tree.
   
3. To keep a pesky racoon away from my food one evening, I placed my food containers in my tent. Then I went to bed. Then I woke up to the sound of some vicious snuffling outside of my tent. I froze in horror, stepped out of the tent, and watched a bear's dark shape race off into the woods.
   You should have used a bear-bag and tossed it up into a tree - away from the camp.
   
   
4. I didn't bring a lantern, and arrived on site an hour after dark.
   You should have brought a lantern.
   
5. I got into a who-can-toss-the-largest-rock contest with 2 very large guys. I had my very first rotator-cuff injury ever, and didn't bring pain-killers.
   You should have not thrown large rocks, and you should have brought pain-killers - injuries hurt so much more at 3 in the morning.
   
   
6. To start a stubborn fire, I tossed naptha gas in the firepit and lit it. I narrowly avoided burning my face off.
   You should have learned how to make a fire properly.
   
7. I drank a drinking-box of wine instead of packing glass - it was the environmentally right thing to do. My hangover the next morning was evil.
   You should never drink wine from a box again.

P.S. Read more camping lore from Mungo...

Hunky Dory

A week ago tonight I heard a snippet of a song on the radio and it threw me back in time, hurled me back to when things were different and I still love this album. This is one of my top twenty seven albums of all time.



Eight Line Poem Lyrics
The tactful cactus by your window
Surveys the prairie of your room
The mobile spins to its collision
Clara puts her head between her paws
They've opened shops down West side
Will all the cacti find a home
But the key to the city
Is in the sun that pins
the branches to the sky

Stars

Stars are up there
and it is dark around here
and the dog is wandering in the grass in the dark
and people walk by less
because they want to be home now
and planes intersect and approach and grow and dim in the sky past the moon
and the seat I'm in affords me a good view of feuding ducks and a lone swan
and silhouetted against the sky from my vantage point
if I crane my neck
are the buds of a tree poking out green in the twilight
and that's my sort of poem
of the evening light
earlier tonight