Not enough, not nearly enough

This adorable trailer decoration was a gift from my sister.
I absolutely love it! Thanks, Liz!

I just miss it, that's all.

I miss it and it's barely over – the sleeping bags aren't even dry yet. There are still marshmallows to be toasted, the giant kind. I don't think the big ones are quite as tasty as the regular sized marshmallows. Maybe they're like fish – the smaller ones are always tastier than the lunkers. I think that's true with humans, too, which is why I will never get eaten by a bear in the woods, not when there is flesh more tender than my own. (Come children, let's go for a walk ...)

We've been camping for years, Dave and I, but I don't think I've ever been so melancholy at the end of a camping season as I am now. Where did it go, the time? It seems like we were just packing the trailer for our first trip and now it's over.

People ask me why I go camping so much. Geez, it doesn't seem enough to me.

Not enough laughter shared around a crackling campfire, not enough spectacular scenery.

Not enough four pound bass dancing on the end of a fishing line, not nearly enough strokes of a paddle through quiet water.

It's the adventure I will miss the most, as I bide my time through the next seven months; the feeling of exploring places never been seen before, of being one with nature.

Of hearing wolves howl in the minutes before the sun rises, of unexpectedly coming across a regal moose on a bicycle trail.

I will miss the quick dance of my surprised heart when my footsteps flush out a ruffed grouse from the yellow gold of the autumnal forest.

I'll miss snuggling into my sleeping bag and falling asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow, clear from worries, slow with the honest exhaustion that only comes from a day spent entirely in the sun and wind.

This is why I camp. 

This. 

And this. 

And all of this.

Balsam Lake, May 24 weekend. Putting duct tape to good use.

Balsam Lake, May 24, campfire with the Raneys.

Kiosk, end of May fishing trip amongst the blackflies. 

Kiosk, June. My big, big bass! Worth the blackfly bites!

Algonquin Park, July holidays. Daytripping via canoe.

Algonquin Park, July.

Sam snuggles in for the night, Algonquin Park, July.

Grundy Lake Provincial Park, August.

Cedar Lake, Brent access point to Algonquin Park, Labour Day.

Cedar Lake, Labour Day weekend.

Kiosk fishing trip, Dave and brother Tom, September.

Kiosk fishing trip, Liz's lunker. September.

Kiosk sunrise, September.

Lake of Two Rivers, Algonquin Park, Thanksgiving.

Two Rivers hiking trail lookout, Algonquin, Thanksgiving.

That incredible view. Algonquin, Thanksgiving.

Me and Laura go camping with Sue and antics ensue

Laura Eno will not go camping with me.

I never figured her for some girly-girl but apparently her concept of being one with nature consists of listening to the spindly philodendron on her desk crying for a mercy killing, and scooping piles of dog crap the size of Buicks from her Astroturfed backyard. (I've seen pictures of her dogs – I can't even imagine the turds those sons and daughters of Jezebel must produce.)

Which makes me want to drag her sunless carcass into the great outdoors even more. I bet she hasn't seen the sun since 1973. I bet Xan Marcelles sees more sunlight than Laura does. And he's a goldurned bloodsucking vampire.

Me, I love camping. Am going camping this weekend, as a matter of fact (and so will be internet-free... again....) (Thanks to Babs and Henry LaRue for housesitting  - please don't let your rottweiler eat the couch this time, OK? Beast is the size of a Volkswagen. Why can't people have freaking normal sized dogs?)

I invited Laura to come along but she as refused because she's a big wussy-pants.

She'll be wishing she was fishing (yes I'm a poet) with me, however, because now she's in deep trouble over at I Refuse To Go Quietly. Fellow Friday Flash alumni Sue Harding noticed Laura's camp-phobia and wrote a very, very scary (more poetry) story about me and Mizz Eno going camping together.

Of course I think it's the bees knees (poetry) being the subject of a Sue Harding story. Even though the ending

FREAKS.

ME.

OUT.

You'll have to go see for yourself what that ending is cause I'm not gonna tell you.

Let me just say, my fingernail polish really is pink. Really.

Now. Off to catch some lunkers. Coming, Laura? (Wussy-pants.)

Greetings from Normalcy

Extremely cute black bear poaching blackberries in the Henvie Inlet area near Grundy Lake Provincial Park.

Lordy, lordy it's a beautiful morning out there. First time I've seen sunshine in a week and it's pouring through the skies over the river, shedding glorious golden light through the branches of the trees in our front yard. Backlit by the sun, the newly rain-infused leaves glow and my shell pink cabbage roses are fragrant with dew. There's a tiny sparrow in the feeder, a blue jay in the pussywillow and a few weeks worth of stinky garbage at the curb.

Home again, home again, jiggitty-jig.

It was a quiet camping trip, that's for sure. With a week of crappy, cloudy, rainy weather and no kids to yell at, Dave and I fast-tracked into a routine of selfishness, eating what we wanted when we wanted, taking afternoon naps that lasted into the dinner hour and reading, reading, reading. Dave read the Hunger Games while I zipped through the entire trilogy. He clocked me when I wasn't paying attention and apparently I was reading three pages to his one. Yeah, I said, but you can change the brakes on a car in the time it takes me to pee. We're all good at some things... at least his talent puts bread on the table.

I thought I'd share a few pictures with you, give you a little taste of the extreme laziness that was our latest adventure. Don't you love the bear? We were out for a drive when we spotted him mooching blackberries in the ditch beside the road. He was shy but the berries were bountiful so he didn't take off when we stopped in front of him for a photo. It's been a bad year for berries because of the drought. With the bears having such a poor food supply we'll have to be extra careful around our house, taking the birdfeeders in at night and cleaning the barbecue – bears are nice to see when they're in the wild but not so nice when they're at your front door.

Just a few hundred feet from where we spotted this bear there was a townhouse with a fenced backyard. Not just a regular fence, this one was probably 10 feet high and made of chain link. There were a few kids playing on monkeybars inside the fence. I guess if I lived in bear country I'd want a fence for my kids, too. Yes, we have bears in this area but not to the degree they have them further north.

The chipmunks were crazy tame - but only if you had peanuts to share.

Dave's new buddy.

My lap buddy, Misty.

Did you know a chipmunk could ride a bicycle?

View from where we launched our canoe on Pakeshkag Lake.

Weird, huge caterpillar at the French River Provincial Park visitor's centre.
I did some Googling and the best guess I have is the Imperial Moth Caterpillar. A big fellah, about five inches long. Any ideas?

The French River area snowmobile club (I think they call themselves the Voyageurs)
 erected the biggest snowmobile bridge in the world! There are three bridges crossing
the French River in this area: one's a bridge for cars and trucks, one is for trains and one is for ski-doos.

The Highway 69 bridge crossing the French River.

The French River is absolutely stunning. So beautiful.
Carved by the glaciers, it runs from Lake Nipissing into
Georgian Bay and it was the route the Voyageurs took
during the fur trade, Canada's formative years. 

Another view of the French River. 

Snowmobile mileage sign at the French River – if you were on a sled here
in  the middle of winter, you'd have a long, cold trip to the next town!

Happy trails

Whoever coined the term "summertime and the living is easy" is full of shite, no?

I've been busier than a one-armed paper-hanger.

No, I've been busier than a two-headed rooster in a hen house, and I'm not saying which head the old boy has two of!

So please, take my apologies for not being around lately and in advance for not being around in the coming week. We're headed out for another week of internet-free camping – this time in Grundy Lake Provincial Park, which is between Parry Sound and Sudbury. My mom says I was there when I was young but I don't remember it, so this will be a bit of an adventure with all sorts of new places to explore. We've packed the canoe, our bicycles and running shoes to make sure all parts of adventures will be properly investigated. (Note to thieves - the house is being house-sat by large dogs with big teeth and small people with big guns so buzz off ... or was that large people with big teeth? ... another senior's moment)

A bit of sadness yesterday - Sam said he was homesick (for his father's house) and didn't want to come camping with us. Angus already said he didn't want to go. So it's just me and Dave. Deep down inside there's a little part of me that's jumping up and down and hollering "no kids! no kids! no responsibilities" but honestly I'm heartsick. Well, I was heartsick yesterday. Today the sky is blue and we have a whole new adventure to look forward to and I plan on enjoying every minute! Enough worrying about stuff I don't have any control over! Enjoy the moment, live in the moment, appreciate all the good things or they'll pass us by.

Speaking of good things, I had a quick moment to see that JoJo is ENGAGED!!! SQUEEEE! I am so happy for you, JoJo, I really am! I hope you're as happy as me and Dave are and that's pretty darned happy! By the way, love your ring – gorgeous!

Well, it's time to finish packing and hit the road. I hope you have a fabulous week and I'll see you on the flip side – sunburnt, bug-bit and happy as that two-headed rooster.

Oh, and yes, I shall be avoiding the hammock.

The joy of camping

Camping – the mere word conjures up bucolic images of loons, canoes and the theme song for Hinterland Who's Who. After enduring the brain-shrinkage from the Muskoka Novel Marathon and a rather stressful period at work, I was looking forward to a pastoral week of summer slacking in Algonquin Park.

If you've ever been camping, you know the short period between packing-driving-setting-up and taking-down-driving-unpacking is rather peaceful, lovely and exceedingly short. It's those bracketed ends of slave labour that do you in. 

For me it's laundry-laundry-laundry in the days leading up to the camping trip because gawd knows there's enough icky camping laundry afterwards without adding moldering week-old underwear. I always do laundry leading up to any big event. Trips, parties, weddings, bar mitzvahs, tornadoes nuclear armageddon – I do laundry in advance. A whole town full of zombies approaching my front door to tear out my gizzard? I'd be telling them to hold off until the rinse cycle.

Shopping for camping is crazy. I don't know why this is but we always eat far better during camping trips than at any other time of the year. Maybe it's to make up for sleeping on a thin slab of foam and walking 40 miles to the loo. Yup, if I'm going to wash dishes in a plastic tub full of ice water and do without a bath for a week then I'm going to eat steak and cheesecake every night! Woo HOO! Let the righteous win! Let the arteries harden! Bring on the blessed bacon! 

By the way, the high cost of steak and Jiffy-Pop is hard to justify to the bank manager when you're whinging and writhing on her office floor arranging a second mortgage to pay for it all.

When you've bought every last pound of bacon, bag of ice, sack of Doritoes and package of Twizzlers in the store you bring it all home and stuff it in the car. That and clothes, rum, pillows, rum, blankets, rum, sleeping bags, rum and pool noodles. Whatever you do, don't forget the rum. 

The packing is an all day fiesta of carrying crap. By the time everything is loaded, you're toast. Burnt toast. And all you can think of, as you're driving to the park, with two kids fighting in the back seat and repeating "Are we there yet?" in a Marathon Man litany of pain worse than that endured during root canals sans freezing, is how, when you finally arrive, you have to get out of the vehicle and help your husband back a 21-foot trailer into an 18-foot campsite. I kid you not, this is the number one reason for divorce.

Suffice it to say, all I wanted to do after we got to the park and set up was nothing. A big blob of zilch. Dave sensed this (funny how massive amounts of whining in his ear sharpens his mind-reading skills) and set up the hammock for me. What a wonderful man he is. I crawled into the hammock and squiggled into the most comfortable position and watched puffy clouds float across an azure sky. Ahhhh, camping ....

That's when the hammock failed. WHOMPF. I landed unceremoniously butt-first in the dirt. I stared up at the puffy clouds and I swear they were mocking me. I started crying, big, ugly, mucous-endowed bawling while I felt around my butt to see if my hip was broken. 

That's when I noticed the lady in the next  campsite staring at me. 

I pulled my hand away from my derriere and tried to act nonchalant.

"You saw that, did you?" I asked, a goobery plop of something gross hanging off my quivering bottom lip.

"Sorry, yes I did," she said. Then, whatever societal politeness she had been clinging to let go and a honking projectile bray of laughter spewed out of her cavernous, lipsticked mouth.

My utter mortification was complete. I closed my eyes and lay there like a well-trussed slug.

My butt still hurts. I didn't go near Killer Hammock for the rest of the week. Dave insists it wasn't my beatific buttocks that crashed the hammock; the ratchet strap slid through an eye loop or something.Yeah, whatever. This kind of thing never happens to skinny women.

The hammock wasn't my only ordeal. Two days later we were on a canoe trip along Sunday Creek (which should be called Bog of Death) and not once, but twice, I sank into the harrowing depths of a leech-encrusted abyss of muddy squelchiness. The first time, with one misplaced step, I went right up to my crotch. Pulling my leg out was like giving birth. I've been having nightmares about vacuum suction ever since. I've washed my formerly white socks three times since then, in bleach, and they still look like men's black dress socks.

The second time I just stayed there.  

A week later, here I am,  feeling much like a weiner in a Pillsbury crescent roll, watching puffy clouds (and turkey vultures) go sailing by. 

I really do find camping relaxing ... don't you?

101 reasons why duct tape is the most important thing you will ever own. Reason #64 - camping

How was your weekend? Mine was quiet ...

A to Z Honesty - V is for Vital Stove

OK CLASS, listen up! This here is an INFORMATIVE post, which means you will come away having lurnt something. I so rarely do "INFORMATIVE" posts that I thought you deserved fair warning. Those who have no room for new stuff in their brains can leave, now. *watching entire blogaverse unceremoniously leave* (And yes, I spelled lurnt like that on porpoise.)

That weird looking thing in the photo is a Vital Stove. Dave saw it online and ordered it from my ex's Home Hardware store in Haliburton but you can find it online or ask about it at your local outdoors store, like Algonquin Outfitters. In case you couldn't tell by the ginormous green canoe on my banner, Dave and I are rabid outdoorsy type people. One of the highlights of our outdoorsy year is our spring fishing trip to Kiosk, Ontario - part of Algonquin Park. In fact, we're going on Friday (CAN'T WAIT! WOOT!) and thus won't be online for five days because there is no interweeb in the great outdoors. I am going to pre-post the end of A to Z because I feel obligated to finish what I started but unfortunately won't be around to go blog-hopping or add comments. Forgive me!

We won't be taking the Vital Stove this weekend, however, because we will have our outrageously luxurious trailer with amenities like a microwave and a furnace (I know, crazy right?) but we won't have any fancy stuff when we go on our canoe trip into Algonquin Park this summer. It'll be just us, our canoe and enough freeze dried grub to send the astronauts into orbit. When you're packing everything on your back, the last thing you want is extra weight. A traditional camp stove is a heavy thing all by itself, but then you have to cart around either camp fuel or bottles of propane. All of it has to be carried in and all of it has to be carried out. You can get to resent things like camp stoves on long portages, trust me.

That's why this Vital Stove thing is SO COOL. First of all, it's tiny and weighs practically nothing. Plus it folds up to about the size of a Kindle. To use it, you unfold it, put a battery in the blower-thing, and load up the teeny fuel reservoir with bits of kindling and tiny chunks of wood. You just need a handful and it can be scavenged from dead stuff lying on the ground. You light it and then turn on the blower. (In the picture, above, Dave is adjusting the blower.) The blower pushes oxygen into the teeny tiny fire and suddenly you have a goldurned blast furnace! The heat coming from this ridiculously small stove can boil a pot of water in a few minutes!

So that's the Vital Stove. You can imagine how happy I was that Dave bought a new contraption that started with a V. That's him, by the way, under Misty's close supervision. Misty doesn't really care about the Vital Stove. All she cares about is if it cooks bacon. Honestly, that's all I care about, too.

Yogurt in a Yurt

This past weekend Dave and I drove four hours north to Killarney Provincial Park. Our quest? To go winter camping in a yurt. What, you may well ask, is a yurt? To me it sounds just like yogurt, or something you might pick up at IKEA, but a yurt is a slightly more permanent version of a tent. The ones in Killarney and in Algonquin parks are insulated and come equipped with an electric heater and lights. So no big roughing it, sleep-wise. Bathroom-wise was another story. The nearest outhouse was a quarter of a mile away. When it's cold outside, you want to make sure you really have to go to the bathroom before you venture to the outhouse. If you're like me, cold air makes you want to pee all the more so, technically, you could walk a quarter mile to the outhouse, pee, walk back and realize you have to pee again, walk back to the outhouse, pee, walk... well, you get the idea. The best thing I brought along was a pee pot – more valuable than gold when your bladder is full to burst in the middle of the night.

This is Mohawk. He was a regular visitor at our campsite, chattering our ears and giving us crap as red squirrels are wont to do. Dave nicknamed him Mohawk because of his weird tail. It looks like he had it cut and dyed at one of those metalhead smoke shops downtown. Not that I would know anything about such shops.

The yurt came with several amenities including a barbecue, electrical outlets and mattresses but, alas, it didn't come with a dishwasher. Luckily I brought my own - the Super Duty Dave. See the toboggan in the background? That's how we hauled all our gear from the parking lot to the yurt, a distance of about three-quarters of a mile (the park roads are closed in winter so you have to hoof it.) That wouldn't be too far if it was flat ground but flat it wasn't – there was a mighty big hill up to climb and I was out of puff just bringing the crap in and out.

There wasn't a lot of snow in Killarney (the lady who works in the park office says they don't get much, for some reason) but there was enough to strap on the cross-country skis and give it a whirl. And here I thought I was in shape.... pffft! My legs are still killing me from a few hours out on the trail. Why do I keep thinking I'm 25?????

Handsome hunkaroo husband extraordinaire out on the trails. He does improve the scenery, don't you think? We saw a ton of animal tracks while we were out and about: white-tailed deer, marten, otter, fox, partridge, wolf or coyote, and plenty of red squirrel. Deer tracks were everywhere but we never did spot one. They're like ghosts in the forest; or statues. So hard to see. But they were watching us – a half an hour after we passed one area, we returned to see fresh deer tracks on top of our ski tracks. 

Our yurt! Isn't it cute? 

A little fuzzy, but I thought you might want to see inside. Bunk beds, plastic chairs, plastic tables, a heater and a shelf. That's it! And, I've gotta say, the yurts aren't cheap: two nights cost nearly 200 bucks. For that kind of money you could get a nice hotel room for the weekend – one with an indoor pool, a jacuzzi and an inside toilet! 

Dave eating yogurt in the yurt. For some reason we thought we were just hilarious saying that. That's my coffeemaker I dragged along on the toboggan. I brought a fancy coffee for the excursion. Muskoka Roastery's maple flavour. Yum-o.

We also did a lot of reading on our Kindles. Dave was reading Quick and the Dead by Louis L'Amour and I thoroughly enjoyed Blood and Fire, the cool new offering from Carrie Clevenger and Nerine Dorman. I flew through that puppy. It was almost as delicious as my coffee, and that's saying something! Carrie has promised me an interview with her lead character, vampire Xan Marcelles, in the near future. So stay tuned... Speaking of reading, I want to thank everyone who read my Friday Flash last week. It was the first one I wrote for ages. I had been talking to Carrie and she was saying how much she missed the Friday Flash crew, being such a busy novelist now. I realized I missed it too, so sat down and wrote Funeral Sandwiches. I didn't get a chance to read other people's flash because we were internet-less in the yurt, but I will this week, I promise. I also have something exciting planned - Letters from a Friend, a series of letters from some of the bloggers who have had the biggest impact on me. I've received the first one from Laurita Miller and it is FABULOUS. Brought me to tears, it did. I can hardly wait to share it with you. For now, I'm off to work. Happy Monday, everyone!