squall

as the door clicked shut
my headlamp broadcast a stark beam
slicing a path through the winter dark

as I took my first steps
my watch reached skyward for a signal
tracking my pace across the icy walks

as I started to run
my face caught the sudden rush of wind
sensing the winter air stirring ahead in the park

as I felt the sleet
my skin braced to the bluster crescendo
wincing at sudden needles of assaulting ice

as I turned back
my heart sunk at the lost moment
pondering my fortunes timing for not departing earlier

- bardo

I set out at about 730pm last night for a short evening run. From the time I shut the door to the time I warmed up my watch and started running, a rare winter storm, a blustery squall, had descended upon us and the still evening streets turned to sleet-pelted wind tunnels ... all without warning. It was all I could do to retreat back to the house as I was hammered with sleet.

I have reserved some space on this blog each week to write some fiction, poetry, or prose. Writing a daily blog could easily get repetitive and turn into driveling updates. Instead, Wordy Wednesdays give me a bit of a creative nudge when inspiration strikes.

Comics: Backpacking with Kids

When my daughter was younger I wrote, illustrated and shared an online web comic about fatherhood. It documented some of the quirky things we did and used some of the funny things she said as the heartbeat of the jokes.

The comics are mostly still (mostly) online at www.piday.ca but to save readers from trotting over there to hunt through the relevant ones, here is a short triple-strip series I made shortly after one of our backpacking trips.

Of course there is a much longer story behind this brief comic trilogy.

It involves a kid who was a little worried about being eaten by a bear on top of a mountain and parents who (were just following the rules and) added to that fear by locking our food in a hard, steel bear locker while we slept a hundred meters away in a soft-fabric tent.

As it turned out, on one of our short day hikes we chanced upon not just the ranger station but the ranger himself who (being a great example of being an above & beyond public servant) gave us a tour of the ranger shack, told the kid about how they tracked bear movement for safety, and handed her a BC Parks pin for her jacket.

And she left pretty certain that if the ranger would be out there watching her back for bears, though informed me that if the ranger fell through that Dad would be on the hook to wrestle the bear.

Thankfully, it was a bear-free trip and my honour was spared for another day.

Cracking Woods

(serialized fiction)

My watch had just chirped marking thirty minutes into my run, so it must have been about half past six in the morning.

A gust of wind shoved its way through the wooded ravine. The trees responded in a wave. A roar of a hundred million rustling leaves built in crescendo puncutated by the groans and cracks of old tree limbs straining under the percussive bassline. A tiny bird erupted from the undergrowth and startled me. The waxing dawn light filtered through the stand of trees and lit the trail with an ambiant glow that cast shuddering shadows on the rough and twisting path. I was wearing my red shoes and there was a grape-sized splotch of mud on the left toe.

These are my memories.

The mind is funny and selective about the things it recalls.

In fact, I felt the punch of the branch hitting my shoulder and back even before my mind registered the noise of the nearby cracking wood.

Does sound actually travel faster than shattered chunks of wood, or did my mind prioritize the events of that moment?

I tasted the acid bite of mud mixed with my own blood simultaneously to understanding that I was face down on the narrow path.

The moments after that were even more ethereal. These memories of those fleeting seconds before I lost consciousness were a mix of curiosity and frustration. The gust of wind had passed. The trees were creaking as they swayed with residual momentum. My arm seemed to be nailed to the ground by a splintered piece of tree. And I couldn’t seem to reach up to pause the tracker on my GPS watch. The last thing I remember was thinking that the pace on this morning’s run was going to be shit.

(cracking woods - part 01)

Gaige Gildon is a fictional trail runner who lives and trains in Edmonton. After a trail accident, he quit his tech job in 2019 to focus on his recovery and his passion for outdoor adventure. In 2021 he partnered with The Cast Iron Guy blog to write and post about his upcoming pan-Canadian multi-sport trip.

Book: Campfire Cuisine

For Thursdays I was thinking about starting a regular feature called Tuck & Tech that would let me muse about gear, books, recipes, and other kit. I’m neither sponsored nor provided any of these things. I just find them interesting or useful.

A curious recipe book showed up in my stocking this past Christmas: Campfire Cuisine by Robin Donovan seems to be a hearty collection of tasty dishes that meet a couple basic criteria around food transportation and storage as well as ease of preparation over a hot campfire.

A lot could be said about the fact that the wife and I have already conversed about trying some of the collection of marinades, breakfasts, sandwiches, and main courses at home first. There is nothing necessitating a campout cook style for many of the dishes … which, I guess, means that the collection is a solid book of hearty dishes that also happens to be amenable to cooking and eating in the great outdoors.

It’s the middle of deep winter as I write this, and I did have a short campfire in the chilly backyard for New Year’s Eve, but we used it to symbolically torch the 2020 calendar and I wasn’t comfortable cooking on those flames afterwards. Our simple go-to would likely have been pulling out the marshmallows to make s’mores, after a round of grilled hot dogs.

Yet this book definitely seems to be more than one-dish meals or meats-on-sticks.

I re-read the introduction this morning again and it lit a feeling of kinship between myself and the author. There was a symmetry of philosophy in those words, even as I set off (it’s still my first week) to write a daily blog checking boxes that Donovan checked long before me, and in print to boot.

Living to eat well.

Travelling to taste and experience.

Savouring experiences.

I’ve yet to try any of the recipes, and definitely not over a firepit, but for that synergy alone I’ll be pouring over the hundred-ish recipes in the book now (and as warmer tent camping weather approaches) to construct the menu for our next outbound excursion.