Mungo's Canadian Bushcraft

Friday, December 28, 2007

Of Each Other We Should Be Kind While There Is Still Time

This poem has always affected me quietly - brutal yet gentle in its own way - thought I would pass it along.

The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Philip Larkin

Wool Hats for the Outdoors - Felt and Shearling

I have asked the Holiday Fairy for a Shearling Bomber Hat as shown below, for cold weather use.

Also, I have it on good authority that the Holiday Fairy is planning on delivering a wool hat for warmer weather camping use, see below:

A good hat makes all the difference.

Happy New Year everyone!

Mungo

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Happy Holidays

Hope you had a nice Eid al-Adha and a Merry Christmas - may the New Year bring you all comfort, peace and happiness.

Cheers,

Mungo

Sunday, December 23, 2007

One Foot in Front of the Other

For the last year or so I have been reading Michael's blog. He is a copy-editor at a newspaper and writes from New Jersey.

Described as a Zen Practitioner (how do you practice Zen?), Michael is also a Brown-Belt in Karate. Michael is beginning to enter the palliative care phase with his illness. His writings are inspiring, sad, happy, calming, and raw. He puts poems on a separate blog and I thought I would share one with you all (hope that's okay, Michael):

Voices from the subconscious
A poem?
A poem? At a time like this?
Are you crazy?

Michael, thought you might enjoy this little cartoon:

Cheers,

Mungo

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Photos Taken During a Drive in the Country

This afternoon I went for a drive in the country, about 55 kilometers north, beyond Newmarket, and just below Lake Simcoe.

The major snows of last weekend have begun to melt, with temperatures wavering around freezing.

I drove onto side roads, and used my GPS device in the car to keep me away from the main roads.

I could drive for days up there, and perhaps I might plan to get in the car one Saturday morning, drive and drive and find a place to make camp one night and then make it back home on a Sunday. I'd like to do this during the winter snows, nothing like camping in the snow.

A precocious mare galloped up to me as I got out of my car to take a photo of a field, and she bobbed and dropped her head - I wasn't sure if it was an inviting gesture, or a challenging gesture, as she seemed to want to leap the fence and come straight at me.

I made conversation with her. She just blinked at me, and nodded her head.

I stopped beside a nice looking barn and took a few photos.

Fence posts and wire in the snow. This is a beautiful time of year, and if you can get past the muddy slush and the wet and ice, you'll find some amazing sights.

Cheers,

Mungo

Monday, December 17, 2007

A Lunch Time Walk in the Snow

At lunch time, a colleague and I went for a walk around the building where we work. The track is 1 mile long and since the snow storm that hit this weekend, it has not been cleared - after all, what mad person would want to make a trek in the snow?

We trudged through the snow, which piled up in big drifts - the light areas had about a foot of snow, but some drifts were much deeper. We captured these images using a camera-phone, hence the low resolution.

Some grey birds made strange electronic chirping sounds - can't figure out what they were yet. They jumped from bush to bush, poking around at the last berries of the season. Only squirrel tracks marked the path over the thick undisturbed snow trail.

A fat black squirrel sat in a willow arch over us, and seemed to wonder why someone would be out on the trail in this snow. The sight of fluffy weed heads, and talk of yurts in Algonquin Park made us think of winter camping and fires in the woods.

Even with North America's busiest highway humming away about 60 feet away from us on one leg of the walk, it was easy to forget we were in a major city and easy to imagine being way up north somewhere... Away from computers and closer to some ice-fishing and campfires. We needed to clear at least a couple of piles of snow over 10 feet high, compliments of the parking lot snowplows.

With all of the dead standing firewood looming about, and spruce trees, a good shelter was just waiting to be assembled. The birch tree with crumbling, flaking bark was waiting to supply me with tinder for a fire.

Cheers,

Mungo