Walden, we have you surrounded!

So, it seems we did this.

The site of the ironically famous cabin is situated somewhere generally behind Selena, on the other side of the lake.

Almost-obelisks mark outline the original cabin and woodshed locations.

If by some sad circumstance you are not familiar with Walden, by Henry D. Thoreau, know that it is an intensely introspective book of social criticism, and nature appreciation, written by a dude who decided to try an experiment in living as simply as possible, in the mid-1800s. Thus he went into the woods (the book is, in fact, alternately titled Life in the Woods), near a small lake, not terribly far from Boston, and built himself as basic a little structure as he thought would suit his personal needs, and attempted to just live (and write) as worry-free as possible for some years. He wasn't a complete hermit: he was near enough a town to walk there and get supplies when needed, but he did try to be as self-sufficient and frugal as he deemed reasonably possible. The idea was not to be a ascetic and isolated, but rather relatively independent and reflectively consistent.

So it is somewhat ironic that this once-secluded pond, site of Thoreau's reflective solitude and simple life, is now a place of pilgrimage for many, with sizeable parking lots, and many carefully controlled, fenced, narrow pathways. There is a gift shop/bookstore.

But we can't be too critical. We too parked. We too trampled through the lovely corrals. We too were curious and just wanted to be able to say, feeling some sort of transcendental emotional connection, we walked near where this book was birthed. We were not, however, among those who felt the need to leave an inscribed stone (there is quite a pile of them near the original cabin site), but we understood the sentiment, no matter how ironic the act might seem to be.

The man himself, looked a bit perplexed over the whole thing. So I comforted him with my apple. But he continued to seem perplexed by it also. Disoriented. So, as he seemed not ever to be going to eat it, I took it back. I munched it while walking his trails.

I left the core, as my offering, to simply nourish the woods.

(Here are all our pictures of our trip to New Hampshire---where Selena presented a paper at the North East Popular Culture Association conference---and Boston, by the way.)

Eastward Day 4: St. George and North of Utopia

The closest town to our lighthouse with an actual grocery store is St. George, New Brunswick, about fifteen winding kilometres away. We noticed on a map or brochure that there was supposedly a marsh trail there, so we decided to go check it out.

We had been through St. George so many times by this point, and had not noticed any trails or significant marshland -- besides the bit of pond and swamp beside the grocery store. After some confusion we did discover there was a trail that skirted behind the curling arena (also beside the grocery store), along the small marsh there, and then along the river which goes through the town. The trail, unexpectedly eventually turned north and went under the highway... and, lo and behold, on the opposite side of the highway from the town, there was a lot of marshland, and the trail extended through it.

Somewhere around the middle of the marsh, there was a slightly elevated observation deck.

So, there wasn't really all that much to see. But it was a nice walk. And there was this heron up in an old pine tree. A bit unusual.

Selena heard there was a beach on Lake Utopia. Lake Utopia is a pretty big lake, a bit north of St George. There is a town optimistically called Utopia on it's south-eastern side. Utopia the town isn't much more than a crossroads which hopefully had seen better days.

The lake is lovely, surrounded by hills (which were shrouded in fog). We finally found the little beach, and puttered around at it for a little while. We watched the clams racing through the sand in the shallow water. So fast! Their movement was actually perceptible! And their trails, epic.

So it was a fairly slow, relatively local, day of wandering and investigation.

The evening found us, as usual, snug in the tiny lighthouse keeper's cottage, playing the beloved traditional game of tile rummy.

The full set of pictures is linked here. Good night.

Grindstone Marsh

I'd ridden my bike down the twisty narrow Spring Gardens Road (crossing the bridge at the bottom) through this valley before, and noted there was a trail nearby that looked interesting. Today, we went back for a look.

It turns out there is a rather nice boardwalk through a marsh. An interesting thing about this boardwalk was that it only has railing on one side.

Though as you can see, the kids didn't necessarily stay on the boards. The water was very low, and the reed beds were dry. Adventure compelled them to investigate a giant turtle shell-like lump of land a that rises out of the middle of the marsh, that would not normally be accessible. Mommy tried to tell them it was like Morla, the ancient turtle who is mistaken for a mountain in The Never Ending Story. The kids however insisted that if anything it must be the Pokémon Torterra. Kids these days.

They were extremely excited to have battled their way onto the back of whatever it was. It's good to see them excited about exploring outdoors, even if strictly speaking the conservation authorities probably would rather people stay on the very nice boardwalk. The opportunity had to be taken.

Valkyrie made some new friends. 

At a lookout platform there was this solar powered bird call player. We did see a lot of the birds who's calls were available to listen to here, so it was interesting to have them identified. We saw chickadees, cardinals, red-wing blackbirds, bluejays, downy woodpecker, crows, blue heron, swans, mallards, canada geese, and a few different sorts of less easy to identify brown birds.

And Istra and Emeth both climbed some mighty interesting mountains to an upper pathway. (After climbing up at several points they did not look the likes of climbing back down, and would run back along the path to where the lower path forked... while we would just have to stand around and wait.)

All photos here. And the map (with a few of the pics on it).

The Conquest of Montréal (and Flight Therefrom)

So we have been in Montreal. And apparently we don't have all that much to say about it?

Selena was sequestered nearly all the time on the 12th floor of one of Concordia University's several downtown buildings, where the anthropology & sociology department conference was being conducted. We had originally thought to take advantage of the opportunity of the conference to have a bit of time ourselves to enjoy in Montreal, but it didn't end up working out that way. We had to get up very early and race to Montreal the very morning the conference started, and then, as things turned out, we would have to race back home immediately as soon as the conference ended — collecting the kids from Gramma's (and grabbing a shortened night's sleep) on the way.

We decided to take the car to increase our mobile flexibility for the bit of time we'd have for ourselves in Québec — but the way things turned out, the car's main effect was in causing much stress in trying to find cheap/free parking, and then worrying about it, and having to move the thing too frequently. Though it did allow us to at least make a few stops on our way out of the city.

Specifically, we made a holy pilgrimage to La Banquise — a 24 hour diner that specializes in what is reputed by many to be the best poutine in the city. We had to settle for take-out. Because there is utterly no parking anywhere (it was hard enough even just trying to find a place to stop)! And also, anyhow, we had to run. But where we ran, in this case, was up Mount Royal (which you can see in the background in the picture above, with La Banquise being the yellow/orange building to the left). We pulled the car off at a lookout point, with a broad view of the city to the north, and while being rendered practially delirious from the dense atmosphere of freshly baked Montréal bagels covered in toasted seseme seeds all around us in the car, we partook of the amazing gooey goodness (though a bit soggy from being in a closed container) of the real Québec poutine.

Why the insanely fresh-baked bagel environment? Because after grabbing the poutine take-out, and filling the car with that mouth-wateringly maddening aroma, we swung by St-Viateur Bagel Café to pick up some fresh Montréal bagels to thank our dog-sitting friends with, back in Hamilton. And, wow, those bagels with loads of wood-fire toasted sesame seeds are not messing around! They will pwn you, and everything within at least a car-interior radius.

With these things in mind, it seems hardly significant to mention that all of this was happening during a surprising near-blizzard that enveloped the city; and that it was not at all certain the car was not going to slide right off the side of Mount Royal when we attempted to climb and stop there, slush and ice by now covering everything. The other cars crazy enough to have been there certainly can not have been said to been safe from us, nor us from them. On the mountain especially, friction had largely become a fiction. Mere trifling details. We were on our way out of the city after days in which we hadn't had time to do much together, so we had to do this!

(Let us take a moment to thankfully appreciate the wonder of emergency breaks.)

Other than the drama of leaving, the weather was quite nice (sunny), even if chilly. Besides my main job as auto valet, I did manage one day to overdo (my knees insist) a walking tour of the city on my own. My GPS tells me I traversed around 17 km (I was surprised later to discover). All that and I hadn't even brought any water with me, and barely paused to unwrap a protein bar I had in my pocket, as I wandered through La Fontaine Park, knowing I was heading towards (and inevitably up) Mount Royal.

Pretty much the only real pause in my walk, if one can even call it that, was the hour I spent shuffling around inside Notre Dame Basilica, observing the stained glass panels and all the ornate filigree. It is a remarkable space. It is in fact the space of it which I was thinking makes it so remarkable. Whatever one thinks of religion, or Catholicism in particular, what an amazing thing that people have thought something so important to construct this vast hollow space to honour it. Oh, an yes, they have covered the walls with innumerable bits of art, carved wood, coloured glass, decorated pillars — but this is literally (as well as figuratively) window dressing. It is the space that makes it awe inspiring, the beautiful vaulted ceiling so amazingly high above, and the lovely walls so perceptibly far away.

What other cultural artefacts do we have that compare? Some particular art galleries and museums (at least in Europe) come close perhaps. But they are also filled up with things. This space is gloriously mostly empty, which gives one room to fill it up with their own thoughts and feelings and communion with Everything.

And then, besides the obvious main attraction of the vast cathedral, I discovered there is an even more fantastic (artistically) chapel in the back...

Here is a map (with some pictures attached) of my walking route. Here are all the pictures from our trip. (Seeming mostly of street/public sculptures I passed.)

The conference went well for Selena. She found it interesting to be exposed to non-literature research, and see how it fit with her own academic endevours. Her (heavily abridged) paper, which was the last presentation of the conference, turned out to be thematically an excellent wrap-up of the whole thing. It talked about the role of science fiction literature in exploring and extrapolating current bio-political, sociological, and environmental themes. It opened their eyes!

Cultural experience, for kids and dogs

It's been a while, but we finally got ourselves out to show some solidarity with some of the people who are concerned enough about the oligarchic manoeuvres of our dear government (bill C-51, in this case) to gather on the damp and chilly public streets together...

All of us watch demonstrations against government overreach in other countries, and tend to cheer on the participants. Yet when it comes to our own country we tend just to grumble a bit amongst ourselves, and go on with our days. Many times our own protesters are viewed with suspicion, or even denigration. Elsewhere they are interesting, brave, concerned citizens with probably legitimate concerns. Here protesters are often viewed as sketchy people, some with so-called "special interests", or just people with nothing better to do. But are we really so different?

Even with this bill, which it seems almost everyone is suspicious of the politics of (and suspicious of the way it's being rammed through parliament), still hardly anyone does much.

The Hamilton gathering was quite a bit smaller than what we have been used to in Toronto. And in fact Toronto today had a vastly  larger gathering. But something is better than nothing.

Another thing we noticed that was very different from Toronto demonstrations, was the complete lack of visible police presence. At Toronto protests, no matter how benign, there tend to be loads of police around. Here today we didn't notice any... until on our way home...

On our way home we discovered a lane of the road blocked off on John Street, and the Jolley Cut access. And there were loads of police all along this this route, directing traffic at intersections, and generally securing the lane. It turns out there was some sort of marathon or charity run going on. I've searched everywhere I can think of (newspaper, Hamiton web sites, etc) to try and find out what the event was, but have come up blank! Which is weird, because apparently every cop in the city was occupied taking care of it -- so much so that they just let us silly subversives run wild through the streets!

As you can see above, at least we saw one friend we recognized.

To be honest, we're also lazy and busy, and have to overcome great resistance from the kids who just want to stay home and play Minecraft all the time, and so we almost didn't get out and down the mountain. It was the idea of combining the demonstration event with, afterwards, a walk on the waterfront, and indulging in a burrito downtown, that may have pushed us over the edge and out.

Ironically we ended up nixing the waterfront walk because we were tired and the kids were still moaning to go home and snuggle with the warm and cuddly computers after our march around Jackson Square. Nor did we end up with our bonus burritos, because we just couldn't figure out how to find a place to stop near enough the burrito place on the crazy downtown streets without too many complications and additional stresses.

Anyhow, Valkyrie made a new friend. And we had some fun and are glad we were able to get our bodies down there, despite everything. And that is the story of the momentous events of today, and a few of the thoughts surrounding. And tomorrow we hit the road...

A few more photos here.