Kiosk at Sunrise

Did another painting today, which makes me extremely happy. I have been really busy the last week or so doing paintings for Christmas presents and the very last one I did, for a very dear friend, turned out GROSS.

I was so disappointed that I stayed away from the brush for a while.

Finally I told her, "I did a painting for you and it really sucks," and I felt so much better afterwards that I started painting again.

The moral of the story? If something sucks, admit it! Shout it from the fecking rooftops! You'll feel EVER so much happier!

This painting, by the way, was inspired by a photo I took a couple years ago at Kiosk, at sunrise, in the northern part of Algonquin Park. We used to go there every spring and every fall for fishing trips. It's a gorgeous place, desolate and wildly beautiful, and I miss it like crazy. (It's available for purchase at my Etsy shop.)

By the way, I can't show you the sucky one because apparently my friend still wants to receive its suckiness for Christmas. So it has to be a SURPRISE SUCK, if you get my drift.

Geez that sounded bad ...

A stellar debut for North Bay Nipissing Life and some, ahem, bragging

Ok, I have to do a little bragging for a moment. I apologize in advance for making you roll your eyes and skip through to a more interesting non-bragging blog, but when a short story you write gets published in the debut issue of a slick new magazine, ya gotta share the news, know what I mean?

The magazine is North Bay Nipissing Life and it just hit newsstands in North Bay (a city about four hours north of Toronto, depending how fast you drive). Our company, Metroland North Media, started a weekly community newspaper there almost a year ago called North Bay Nipissing News and it's been doing extremely well. Readers are excited about the comprehensive community news coverage and the casual vibe. Advertisers are starting to realize that it's the paper everyone's reading and are responding accordingly. All in all, things are looking up, which is why Metroland decided to launch a slick quarterly magazine to supplement the News and provide a vehicle for celebrating the people of the area in a more in-depth way.

I designed the magazine, laid it out and made it pretty so I'm proud of it for those reasons but I'm extra pleased to have one of my short stories in the magazine. The caveat is I WORK for the magazine so it's not like the editorial heavens opened up and said, "You are the best writer known to man and we must print your story." No, it was more like I asked the editor if he was interested and he read it and said, yeah, okay. Also, I didn't get paid.

STILL. The editor has very, very strong opinions on certain things. If he didn't like my story, it wouldn't have been published. So I'm hanging on to that knowledge and celebrating it.

Kiosk is a perfect story for NBN Life. Kiosk is a ghost town in that area, about halfway between North Bay and Mattawa. You've heard me blog about it before – Dave and I go there every spring and every fall to do some fishing and camp in Algonquin Park. What used to be a lumber mill town is now nothing but ruins within the park. Which is great if you're an outdoorsy person who loves camping and loves nature, but is heartbreaking if you're one of the people who used to live here.

"Claire" is one of those people. She runs a bakery out of her log home just north of the park. She makes and sells amazing, almost legendary, butter tarts and delicious pies with crust just like my mom's. She also makes jams, jellies and sells coffee to everyone who goes by. Claire (I hope I am spelling her name correctly) grew up in Kiosk. For her the story of its demise is pure sadness. It was with people like her in mind that I wrote the short story Kiosk and year or so ago. The original story is posted here on my blog.

Gotta love that byline!

Second page spread of the story. The old photos are from Kiosk.

Last page of the spread. In case you can't see the tiny yet IMPORTANT
photo of the girl in the blue sweater, I've blown it up bigger for you, below!

That photo was taken during our honeymoon trip to Newfoundland. I love that place. Yup, chubby bare toes in a mag.
Yup.

The cover.

The masthead. Look Mom, that's ME! :)

***

As an aside, today is a sad day for the people of the Muskoka community. We are mourning the death of Gillian Brunette, a much loved local writer who used to work for the Huntsville Forester and freelanced for many of our other publications. I can't believe cancer managed to claim her. She had such incredible enthusiasm for life, such indomitable energy and she will be missed. Today is her "Celebration of Life" and, in Gillian's case, it is a perfect term because she lived her entire life like it was a celebration. We'll miss you so much, Gillian, and in your own wise words and sunny English accent, "BLOODY HELL."

The Band-Aid Trip

That's my Band-Aid. The nurses always put happy stickers on everyone's Band-Aids to cheer patients up. It works! Look how happy that sparkly Band-Aid is! Every two months I pay a visit to the Huntsville Hospital chemo clinic for an infusion of Remicade, the drug that has tamed my Crohn's disease and changed my life. (If you, or someone you know is struggling with Crohn's, you need to try this drug.) I take it with a side dish of Benadryl and the whole thing makes me goofy for the rest of the day so I always take the whole day off. Last Friday the weather forecast was good, we had no kids and no plans, so we decided to use the extra time to make an impromptu trip up to Kiosk to see if the fishing situation had improved. We were there a month ago and the fish were apparently still sleeping in, their cosy blanket of winter ice barely thawed.

See my hair? It's literally oily with bug spray. Going camping/fishing this time of year is crazy because of black flies. They're tiny little pains in the arses that swarm in your face and literally scrape the flesh off you, one teeny divot at a time. I don't know what we were thinking. Look at my smile, though. That's a Benadryl-looped smile if I've ever seen one.

The bug arsenal: Dave works feverishly to light a Pic. At his elbow is a liberally used can of bug dope. Both are probably highly toxic chemicals. I sprayed my leg with Off and then it literally STUCK TO THE BOAT. It was like I was Krazy Glued! When I finally peeled my leg away a whole bunch of BOAT PAINT came with it! 

Our dog Misty HATED the bugs. She tried to hide everywhere. Even in the grass. Eventually we plopped her in the tent so she wasn't such an all-you-can-eat bug buffet.

Our camping buddy did a lot of mooching. Bagels, popcorn, whatever was being offered.  Chipmunks are the friendliest little critters. Dave's late father used to call them "bush tigers" because of their stripes. I love that expression. 

A white pine near the beach. All the new growth is directed towards the sun, creating a uni-directional pattern that reminds me of the old tuft quilts Dave's mom used to make.

Dave and Misty take a stroll down at the beach.

The call of a loon. So haunting. So quintessentially Canadian. They're curious birds, diving underwater and popping up close to the boat, curious to see what we're up to and who is catching more fish, us or them. Usually it's them.

Fishermen with a lot of money have down-riggers and lots of fancy equipment to get down to where the lake trout hang out. Some parts of Lake Kioshkokwi are 160 feet deep and more so the average fishing line will not get down that far. Here, Dave uses his father's old Murphy troller for steel line fishing. It's a bit of an art, letting out all that steel line, then keeping it at a perfect distance from the bottom of the lake. It's one of the things I admire about Dave – his proficiency with simple, old-time tools and his knowledge of the outdoors.

Now THIS is MY fish! We didn't weigh it but Dave figured this bass was at least six pounds – the biggest bass he has ever laid his hands on! No, we didn't keep it. First of all we always catch and release because we want to preserve fish stocks for future generations. But bass is also out of season. We were trolling for some speckles when these hungry monsters jumped on our lines. This was the biggest one, by far, but man oh man there are a LOT of big bass in this lake.

The fish master in action. "Keep a bend in your pole" is what he is always yelling at me as I reel in my catch.

And he's into the net! So exciting!

Dave's not happy at all, can you tell?

Another mighty bass smiles pretty. Check out the scenery. Isn't it spectacular? I love this lake. I can hardly wait to go back up – hopefully when the black flies are done.

Misty loves fishing almost as much as we do. She curls up in a pile of life jackets and catches some Zs.

If you didn't know already, Dave's been a Chrysler mechanic his whole life so you'll understand if he's a little bit Chrysler-happy. While we were having breakfast the other morning we heard the distinctive sound of a vehicle getting stuck at the boat launch. "Go help," I said to Dave. Sure enough, a nice young couple in a Ford Explorer was trying to pull their boat and trailer up the rocky shore – to no avail. Dave threw a tow rope on the back of our Jeep and, without even spinning a wheel, walked that Ford and its boat and its trailer right up that bank like nobody's business. As soon as we were out of earshot Dave smirked ear to ear. "My Chrysler just pulled a Ford out of the lake," he said. He could hardly wait to show the photo to his buddies at work.

In closing, I just want to say that sometimes I get tired of fishing in a lake. Sometimes I want to try my luck in trees, to see if the fish are any different there. For some reason, Dave gets grouchy when he has to pull my line out of a tree. Men, eh? Go figure...

The Black Fly Song

Well, we went fishing this weekend.

Fishing in northern Ontario.

Camping in a tent in northern Ontario.

In the height, no, the very apex of black fly season.

When I begin to recover from the itchy swollen mound between my shoulders, the squishy, pusified thing that used to be my head, I will tell you all about it.

In the meantime, watch this. It explains everything you need to know about black flies, the scourge of northern Ontario in May. I know, you don't have TIME to watch this. Well, make time. It's a classic Canadian folk tale, one of my very favouritest songs on the planet and, besides, I watched that video YOU posted, so ya owe me.

:)



And I'd be completely remiss if I didn't include the lyrics so you can sing along. Get singing! I'm listening!

The Black Fly Song
Lyrics by Wade Hemsworth

'twas early in the spring when i decide to go
For to work up in the woods in north on-tar-i-o
The unemployment office said they'd send me through
To the little abi-tibi with the survey crew

And the black flies, the little black flies
Always the black fly, no matter where you go
I'll die with the black fly a-picking my bones
In north on-tar-i-o-i-o, in north on-tar-i-o

Now the man, black toby was the captain of the crew
And he said, "i'm gonna tell you boys what we're gonna do
They want to build a power dam and we must find a way
For to make the little ab flow around the other way"

And the black flies, the little black flies
Always the black fly, no matter where you go
I'll die with the black fly a-picking my bones
In north on-tar-i-o-i-o, in north on-tar-i-o

So we survey to the east and we survey to the west
And we couldn't make our minds up how to do it best
Little ab, little ab, what shall i do
For i'm all but goin' crazy on the survey crew

And the black flies, the little black flies
Always the black fly, no matter where you go
I'll die with the black fly a-picking my bones
In north on-tar-i-o-i-o, in north on-tar-i-o

It was black fly, black fly everywhere
A-crawlin' in your whiskers, a-crawlin' in your hair
A-swimmin' in the soup, and a'swimmin in the tea
Oh the devil take the black fly and let me be

And the black flies, the little black flies
Always the black fly, no matter where you go
I'll die with the black fly a-picking my bones
In north on-tar-i-o-i-o, in north on-tar-i-o

Black toby fell to swearin' 'cause the work went slow
And the state of our morale was gettin' pretty low
And the flies swarmed heavy, it was hard to catch a breath
As you staggered up and down the trail talkin' to yourself

And the black flies, the little black flies
Always the black fly, no matter where you go
I'll die with the black fly a-picking my bones
In north on-tar-i-o-i-o, in north on-tar-i-o

Now the bull cook's name was blind river joe
If it hadn't been for him we'd have never pulled through
For he bound up our bruises, and he kidded us for fun
And he lathered us with bacon grease and balsam gum

And the black flies, the little black flies
Always the black fly, no matter where you go
I'll die with the black fly a-picking my bones
In north on-tar-i-o-i-o, in north on-tar-i-o

At last the job was over, black toby said, we're through
With the little abitibi and the survey crew
'twas a wonderful experience and this i know
I'll never go again to north ontar-i-o

And the black flies, the little black flies
Always the black fly, no matter where you go
I'll die with the black fly a-picking my bones
In north on-tar-i-o-i-o, in north on-tar-i-o

Home from Kiosk

My lord. Could I be any more tired? My ass is dragging so low I need to buy me some of those pants on the ground, just to prevent dirt build-up in the crevices. I'm so tired my vitamin needs a vitamin.

First off, my apologies for not being around to your blog to say hi. I've been away for the last five days in a place where there is no internet, no cell phone service, no phone, no pool, one pet and no cigarettes. It was our annual spring trip into Kiosk, the northernmost camp area of Algonquin Park, a former logging town, now a ghost town that is rapidly disappearing in amongst the trees and everything Mother Nature can throw at it. We think we're going to leave our mark here on this earth forever but the minute we turn our backs, the earth reclaims what was hers.

We don't go to Kiosk to philosophize, although this place brings the philosopher out in me. Something about the wild beauty, the scream of gulls, the harsh, throaty rattle of ravens, the eerie call of loons, the thumping machine-starting rhythm of the wings of ruffed grouse – all these sounds, carried on cold northern winds, settle into the oldest part of my old soul.

No, ostensibly we go to fish – although we were almost skunked in that department. Dave caught one fish. His brother, Tom, caught another. My sister, Liz, caught enough clams to host a clambake, I caught a piece of driftwood big enough to be called a log and my sister-in-law, Susan, caught a nap. My brother-in-law Don caught a hole in his boat and managed to fix it with some silicone before the good ship made like a smaller, rattier version of Titanic and sunk to the bottom of Lake Kioshkokwi like an ignoble stone.

Doesn't matter whether fish were caught. Our thirsty lungs filled up with fresh air like sails on a great ship. We ate too much and we laughed too hard and we slept like the dead.

Right now I'm recuperating from the long drive home, the hours of unpacking and piles of laundry, and I'm absolutely warm for the first time in days. Man, it was cold up there – cold being the understatement of the year.

I'll tell you more about it later. Right now I've gotta have a bath and get ready for work. Gak. How can five days come and go so damned fast?

Dave's lake trout. No, we didn't keep him. He begged
for mercy and promised he'd send bigger relatives in
exchange for his life. We believed him. Haven't had
a fish lie to us yet.

The pensive Dave. Kiosk's scenery always makes us that way.

Don and Liz in the Good Ship Sink-a-lot.

Adorable Misty in her lifejacket.

Tom and Sue hanging round the campsite.

Trying mightily to catch a fish in the golden light of sunset.

Old pier at the place where Lake Kioshkokwi meets the Amable du Fond river.

View from the campsites.

Amable du Fond, rushing into Kioshkokwi.
When the suckers are running, this is the best place
to catch huge fish.

The ranger cabin at Kiosk. The cabin dates back to when the lake was first
settled by trappers, fur traders, lumber barons and the railroad. Tourists wanting to experience
that authentic old-time feeling can rent out the cabin for about a hundred bucks a night.
Some outdoors purists say they don't like Kiosk because of the remnants of
those old lumber days but I think it's why I love this place so much.
It's history, our history. It's who we are.

A to Z Honesty - Y is for a Year since Kiosk

Where are you, right now?
Sitting in front of your computer at the kitchen table?
Sipping coffee? Looking out your window?
I'm here.
*waving*

Magic happens every spring and we rush to this spot, to watch it happen.
Ice melts, sun shines, fish bite.
No one else in this world, this northern mystic, this land of silver birch.
Reflections of our own faces
the only ones we see.

"Hello, Mr. Lake Trout. How have you been?
Did you have a busy winter?
Was Santa Claus good to you?
How are the eggs? Did they all hatch out?
No worries, fishy friend, we just wanted to chat."
And, sploosh, back into the water he goes.

I wish you were here.
I wish we could argue over whose fish was bigger.
(It was mine, by a scale.)
I wish we could make s'mores tonight by the fire.
I wish you were with me.
In Kiosk.

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.

Kiosk Fall 2011 and Bear Poo

Got an e-mail from my friend Alan in Newfoundland who wondered why I've been so quiet lately. I've been fishing, Alan! Dave'll tell you – I haven't been quiet, I've just been noisy in a different, internet-free place.

Kiosk is one of the northernmost camping areas in Algonquin, one of Ontario's most famous and largest provincial parks. The are no roads into its vast interior, just a loose waterway of canoe routes, lonely dark lakes and black forests. The bottom end of the park has a highway and several campgrounds running through it (we go to one of those campgrounds regularly, Lake of Two Rivers), but there are really only two campgrounds in the north part, Brent and Kiosk. Both are at the end of long dirt roads stretching through Crown land. Both are former sawmill and railway villages, now ghost towns with only foundation remnants as clues of once thriving communities. And both are launching points for adventure-seekers looking for true wilderness experiences.

While Dave and I have camped in the interior, our trips to Kiosk are far more comfortable. We bring our trailer and our aluminum motorboat and spend four days every spring and every fall looking to catch and release some big fish, spend some time together and catch our breath. No jobs, no kids, no pressure.

The weather was downright terrible. Grey skies and rain the whole time we were there – except on Sunday, when it was time to pack up and leave. Oh well. We've never let the weather put a crimp in our style. We fished, we rode our bikes, we read our books, we played cards. We celebrated our first wedding anniversary in a place we have both come to love as much as we love each other.

I took this picture to show you the difference between water levels in the spring and in the fall. This past spring we couldn't get under this bridge because the water was so high. Last weekend the water was so low there was barely enough water for our boat – the difference is at least four feet. The bridge, by the way, is part of the abandoned railway line built by lumber baron J.R. Booth in the 1800s. It's the main reason Brent and Kiosk existed, with sawmills cutting up the rich forests of Algonquin and shipping them, via railway, all over the world. Before Algonquin was cut bare of trees, it was mostly giant pines and spruce that grew here. The regrowth has brought maple to the park, making Algonquin a gorgeous place to be in the fall.

Normally you would never be able to perch on a rock in the rushing Amable du Fond, the river that connects Algonquin's northern lakes: Kiosk, Manitou and Tea. We've never seen the river so quiet but took the opportunity to walk up the waterfall and take some photos. Dave brought his line and tried to wangle a brookie onto his line but even the fish thought there wasn't enough water.

This was my fish, a nice 4 pound bass. Dave, of course, did fish holding duties, baiting the hook duties and looking good in his rain suit duties. I did all the real work, wrestling that beauty in, kicking and screaming. We posed him for a pic, than he flicked his tail and disappeared into the water. 

Dave also caught a nice bass - not as nice as mine, though. .. jest saying...

And a trip to Kiosk just isn't complete without a lake trout. Dave was happy to snag this one.

Isn't this ridiculously cute? I know. You should have seen her waddling around in it.

When I was taking this photo I couldn't see Misty in the viewfinder – she completely blended in with the orange leaves and dark water of the Amable du Fond waterfall.

Because my friend Linda requested it, here's the bear poop in our front yard. Yup, we went all the way up north to see wildlife and we come home to see that a bear had ripped down our bird feeder and then crapped in our front yard. Linda, you can see the pitts of the choke cherries the bear had been eating. Judging by the freshness, the bear had been there within the last day. And judging by the size, it was a BIG bear. For ages we were under the false impression that there were no wild animals in our neighbourhood, other than a few foxes, raccoons and skunks – but now we know there are bears so we have to be a little more careful. We did see some wildlife in Kiosk – on our way there we had a rabbit run right towards our vehicle – Dave had to swerve to avoid it. The hare had eyes as big as saucers. A little bit down the road we saw the reason why: a fisher hunting it. "Run, bunny, run!" we shrieked out the window. Dave honked the horn and scared the fisher into the bushes. We hope we gave the bunny enough of a break to survive.

Our busted bird feeder with poo in the background.

The top of the feeder the bear had ripped off.

The wire that had held the feeder until the bear decided to have a closer look.