Month: May 2022

Posted on episode 324

Campfire Club

Ahhhh… outdoor campfire season is upon us once again. I do try to get outside and warm myself by some flickering flames year-round, but from May through October it is always a little more favourable to casually cooking and gathering around a pit of hot embers.

So I did last night.

Sadly alone….?

Or maybe…advantageously alone.

Reluctant to waste a great opportunity to enjoy a perfect Monday evening in spring, I rather took it as an opportunity to indulge in two of my pastimes. Not only did I light a fire and enjoy a small outdoor cookout, but I tried my hand at recording some more video footage of the whole experience.

I hardly need an excuse to set up a grill experience on my firepit. I mean, it helps immensely to have someone to share it all with, but even our small family seems to struggle to converge our precious free time with great weather and perfect opportunity. Sometimes you just gotta get out there and do your thing, even on a lonely evening. All that said, it never hurts to add another reason to break down those barriers (and create a positive space to fill in my over-planned life) by planning to share those lonely backyard fires with someone… anyone, and if I can’t convince my family, friends, or neighbours to wander by for reals why can’t that “anyone” be with my internet friends?

I’m gelling this whole multimedia creation process, the effort to make more videos and record a podcast to accompany this blog, and part of that gelling means turning sparks of inspiration into creative opportunity.

So, a new video series… a series of one so far… called the Campfire Club:

And if nothing more, I think a good chance for me to break out my firecraft skills at least once per month, record some grilled eats over those hot coals, and share the fun here in a format that transcends words.

If only I could let you taste it, too.

Posted on episode 323

Monday Zen: Simplification & Leaving Spaces

Cultivating a less-complicated life and living the cast iron philosophy shouldn’t need to be an active, busy pursuit towards simplification. How would that even make sense, after all?

I opened up my email inbox this morning to a corporate reminder that I had excess vacation to use up. Somewhere in a human resources database I not only have a number that represents a full year’s worth of unused vacation days but there is a second number that is reminding me of the days I neglected to spend last year.

That second number represents nearly three weeks of time off.

Combined with the first number, I could theoretically take the entire summer off.

I say “theoretically” because realistically my work schedule and project due list is not so forgiving as to let me vanish for two whole months without consequence.

I write this if only to note that as much as I evangelise here about that aforementioned less-complicated life and living the cast iron philosophy, it is a daily effort even for me to draw a clear line between the professional self that I so often am and my personal self whom I aspire to be.

Working from home has blurred that line even more, eroding the old barrier between being at work and at home, on and off.

How then does one seek to cultivate that philosophy, pushing against the momentum of a work-a-day lifestyle that comes with being a modern suburbanite and needing to pay the bills and save for retirement?

It is like attempting to stop a boulder already rolling down the hill, and instead just following the routine and letting it roll.

Apart from scheduling breaks, the existential mindset that seems to be necessitated by a carefree approach to simplification doesn’t jive with daily video chats at exactly 9am and thirty minute lunch breaks and commuting through jostling traffic.

And as much as I have nearly two months of overdue vacation hours pending some confluence of opportunity and action and approval from a higher authority (in other words my boss) even setting aside larger chunks of time to be less “at work” doesn’t really shift anyone into a permanently new mindset.

Actively thinking about it helps.

As does planning to unplan. Preparing your world and your space and your mind to be ready when a bit of clear space opens up, for when an opportunity arises.  True spontaneity is rare, and almost impossible in the type of structured life that is required to hold down a forty hour office job.

But a plan that leaves unfilled gaps is ready to help cultivate adventure.

A simple analogy might be to think about the choices made when doing something as simple as parking your car or riding the bus. 

Often we’re inclined to reduce the gap and park close or hop off transit as near as possible to our destination. Choosing a parking spot or a bus stop with a larger gap to where you need to be leaves a space, a space that might be filled by a meandering walk through a trail, neighbourhood or a park, and through where you never really planned to go.

Cultivating a less-complicated life and living the cast iron philosophy comes from the same kind of planned lack of a plan “gap” and in leaving spaces between those more structured moments.

I look at my weeks of unspent vacation and ponder how I can best make use of it.  Sure, I should travel (and I will) and sure I could take off a big chunk of time and do something useful.  

On the other hand, those hundreds of hours of unplanned time could make for dozens of meaningful gaps in my life, gaps to be filled with spontaneity and simplification.

Cooking. Campfires. Hikes. Runs. Or even just sitting somewhere and sketching a while. 

Who can say? And that’s the point.

Posted on episode 322

Race Report: Blackfoot

Sunday Runday, and I’m moving gingerly around the house this morning in recovery mode after a long, tough race yesterday.

After a two and a half year wait, and two covid-postponments, the Blackfoot Ultra finally crossed the start line on Saturday. A good proportion of the racers never showed up, obviously fallen out of training or enthusiasm after signing up for a race in 2019, but those who did — including myself — spent hours in the rolling parkland, baking under the spring sun, and plodding out our distances towards the finish line.

I had signed up for the 25km edition, the ”Baby Ultra”, and just a bit more than a half marathon. Road race distances are a meaningless comparison to trail running distances though. One kilometer in the woods can feel like a nature walk …or mountain climb. The mental focus of watching the terrain and adjusting to the trail is incomparable to running on asphalt in the city, and times can vary wildly based on a thousand factors that don’t even exist in an suburban run.

The woman who I had been training with for the last few months (specifically for this race) and the last two and a half years (in general) was one of those who did not reach the start line. Even as we were debating carpool options and pickup times and collecting our race packages, she stuffed a covid swab up her nose after some worrisome symptoms and withdrew due to a positive test less than twenty-four hours before the gun. A huge disappointment for her after such a long wait for just this one race.

I didn’t have any excuse.

And this would mark the third time I’ve run this race. I knew what I was in for… generally.

I ate my breakfast, and filled my water bottles and packed my trail running gear into my little black truck. I loaded up a group shelter tent to set up at the finish line and tossed a lawn chair in the back, and then drove for about an hour through and east of the city to a bit of medium-sized provincial parkland wrapped around a cluster of lakes and rolling landscape all traced through with trails and winding paths.

In the winter this is a popular cross-country skiing area, and the wide paths are groomed by a tractor-sized ski-track groomer that sets paths in the road-width nature path.

In the summer, the province mows and maintains the trail for cyclists, and hikers and runners, but it is still a rutted, rooted, muddy mess in places.

The longer editions of the race, those running multiple laps to clock in 50km, 80km or even 100km, had started in some cases before I’d even gotten out of bed and had been running for as much as six hours when I stepped to the start line. Even in our little running crew, about half of our contingent were doing the 50km double lap race, while a few of us tackled the more conservative 25km baby.

Even so, by 11am when our start time finally kicked in, the day still felt young though the sun was high and the skies were blue and the multiple cups of coffee I’d consumed leading into it all had well-and-good kicked in.

With an unceremonious countdown from five, a couple hundred of us were off into the woods for our crack at the trails.

I could detail thousands of bits that still cling to my memory now the next morning. The mud. The sunscreen sweating into my eyes. My running companion chatting away to me and the trees and everyone who we saw. Leaping over roots. Hearing rumours (and later genuine reports) of a bear on the trail. That tree that seemed ready to topple in the breeze, cracking and groaning as we dodged by. The glorious taste of fresh cut watermelon at the aid station. Taking off my shoe 14km in to bandage a small, fresh blister. Swatting away swarms of bugs. Or the hundreds of little micro conversations that were had as we passed or were passed by others.

It was a slog. A glorious, painful slog filled with three hours of unique experiences.

Yet, to be clear, I haven’t run more than a half marathon distance of 21km since well before the pandemic started. Twenty five kilometers, and trail kilometers at that, were tough. There are many mighty fit folks, lots of whom passed me as I forced my body up yet another hill, who cranked through multiple times more distance than I did and still looked fresh as the morning dew. I struggled, admittedly. I walked long bits of it willing my legs to achieve a speed faster than a brisk woodland stroll, particularly near the end stretch as the aches and pains and mental fog began to hurt everything about the experience.

Then we rounded a corner and there was the finish chute, a pathway between the tents and lawnchairs of the spectators and crews leading into the flag marking the finish line, everyone cheering and clapping and one couldn’t help but push just a little bit harder and finish the race strong.

And suddenly, after two and a half years, the whole thing was just done. I collapsed into my lawnchair and recovered my wits and my breath. Twenty-five kilometers of trail behind me, and for the first time in a very long time, not a single race on my calendar. As I sipped my water, and ate the bison smokie dog they handed me at the finish line, and waited for the other runners in our crew to finish, we chatted and relaxed.

I don’t know what is next, but I think I’ll rest my legs a few more days before I try and figure that out.

Posted on episode 321

Attack of the Freakish Foliage

As of next week or so, we’ll be celebrating the seventeenth anniversary of moving into our house, our neighbourhood, and this place we call home. Seventeen years is all at once a short blip and a really long time. It sometimes seems like we’ve both lived here forever and also just moved in.

In reality though, a lot has changed. Where I look out my back window and see houses, trees, grass, gardens, birds, and blue sky, on the day we moved in was a construction zone with heaps of clay clumped into piles amongst weeds, lonely streets paved through a blank field, and utility stakes poking from the ground.

We “built” our house, in that we went to a local building company, and from them bought a piece of land, a house plan and contracting services to turn lot and plans and heaps of supplies into a finished home. It took the better part of a year and was simultaneously exciting and frustrating.

Development companies exist largely to do exactly this type of work: turn a chunk of suburban landscape that used to be farms and fields into rows of neat little houses at the edge of the city, and they both do it very well and simultaneously take shortcuts that have long term impacts.

Last year I noticed one of those shortcuts while out on my walk with the dog: a tree planted by the developer had done something that no one had ever intended. It had started turning from a lovely ornamental cherry tree into a scraggly crab apple tree.

Pictured above is actually a single tree.

On the top is green foliage that is starting to spring blossom for a crop of fall apples.

On the bottom (or should I say middle?) is red-hued cherry, an ornamental tree with gorgeous colours year round, and a favourite of developers trying to add colour and splendour to a new neighbourhood.

On the very bottom is the culprit and cause of the mix-up: the fake cherry was actually a graft of cherry branches onto a much hardier crab apple trunk. This was all well and good and no one would ever have known any different. But then droughts and stress and age and seventeen (likely more) years have passed and the cherry bits have been overtaken by new growth from the trunk and now a freakish hybrid of a tree sits at the edge of a small park making passers-by wonder at what the heck is going on.

I’m in no way against tree grafting. I used to have a tree just like this on my front lawn, a cherry trunk grafted with a mismatched collection of less hardy cherry branches. It died after about four years because here on the Canadian prairies life is tough, especially for a mutant tree.

My point, if I actually have one, is that of the downside of taking shortcuts if you’re not going to be around for the long haul.

Shortcuts in life, gardening and most anything else can be time savers and budget buffers. Getting something the quick and easy way can be a nice perk of knowing what matters and what doesn’t.

When building a community, my developer took a shortcut and saved some time, money, and planted a tree that looked great … for a few years. Then they left, went off to build other, newer neighbourhoods, and the community was left with a plant that needed more care and attention than anyone could be bothered to give it. Left to its own, the faux cherry tree has done what nature let it do, in a long, methodical, slow process… revert back to the plant it was always intended to be: a crab apple tree.

Shortcut: zero. Nature for the win.

Had the developer spent a little more care and attention to put in plants that were local (and we have many beautiful trees that grow natively not a few hundred meters away in the river valley) right now there would be a park with something less frankenstein growing at the gate and more fitting for a pretty suburban neighbourhood. But the cherry looked great at the time, sold the idea of suburban paradise to people looking to build lots of new homes, and years and decades later has outlived its purpose.

It was a shortcut, and years later for the long haulers like me, a shortcut to the simple but important reminder that the people who built our community then are not the ones who live in it now and continue to build it today.