Summer

Where I live, there exists a short and precious span of time between snowfalls. It is when gardens grow strong, trails turn green, and daylight extends well into the night.

SUHH - murr

For July and August, this blog is on a summer publication schedule: still posting, but not-daily. Check back for sporadic summer check-ins and stay turned for my regular daily blogging schedule to return this September.

In the meantime, my summer photo gallery will be updated as often as I can remember to post new pictures.

Thanks for reading!

– bardo

Dog Days of Summer

It’s officially summer here in Edmonton where I live, and the days are marked by a sharp increase in temperatures and an equally sharp decrease in my motivation to move with any sort of speed … yes, even when I’m running!

Also, it’s been a long, dark winter … at least sixteen months if I recall … and this summer seems more welcome than any of us can put into words, I think.

With the arrival of summer, the re-opening of our world (locally at least) following a long, exhausting pandemic, the end of the school year for my daughter, and the wrapping up of a huge project I’ve been involved with at my real job, I’ve been eyeing the arrival of July with no shortage of excitement.

I’ve been writing this blog for nearly six months, every day, and making it a daily exercise has not only resulted in one hundred and seventy plus blog posts since January, but has given me great motivation to go out into the world more openly, explore more deeply, cook and eat more adventurously. Six months is not long, but it has been long enough to kickstart a respectable quantity and tone of articles that I’m (mostly) proud to have online.

Of course I never wrote about how I intended to keep blogging every day, well … forever. Because… to be honest I didn’t intend that. I intended to write daily for as long as I could manage to keep it interesting for myself and for my readers, and (more importantly) for as long as I wasn’t trading the living of my life for the writing about it.

Summer is short and definitely for the living of life, and with all those simultaneous moments approaching with the first of July, I am in the important moment and existential position of asking myself if I’m following that very rule: I don’t want to sacrifice adventure to the publication cycle of a blog.

You may have also noticed that more than a few of my articles lately have been a bit … um … navel-gazing? Bland? Space-filling? I’ll be the first to admit I’ve phoned in a few posts this month. Gak!

So, here’s the thing…

I’ve decided that I’ll be switching over to a summer schedule for July and August.

This summer we have some mountain vacations planned, some technology-free camping trips in the north country to do, weekends at the lake or on the river to enjoy, and a whole of lot of intention to get away from our screens as much as possible. I will still be posting here, probably more regularly than I should, but look for my posts to be a little more scattered over the next two months as of the first of July.

Expect your daily dose of cast iron guy goodness to resume to full daily schedule in September, and with any luck I’ll have a long list of stories to catch you all up on.

Work-Life-Balance

I’ve had a busy week.

While this blog tends to be a great outlet for me to find some balance between my time at my desk and my time in real world, sometimes that balance tips too far to one side and I find myself sitting on a Friday evening with not much to write about because I haven’t done much worth writing about over the past week.

Today is kinda like that.

Balancing Screen Time

With dozens of readers coming to this blog every day you may be wondering why I still need to work.

But seriously.

I have a great job with lots of flexibility for time off and to live a life where I can sleep in my own bed every night. I’m grateful for that.

That said … said job is ninety-five percent spent in front of a screen.

So you blog in your free time? You ask. On a screen?

I enjoy having a place where I can be myself and do something similar that I do for others, but do that thing for myself. But yes, not every day do I find myself savoring the idea of another few minutes in front of another screen.

How does one balance?

Balance comes from a having a plan, or so I find. Balance is the result of having something to do that pulls you away from the easy thing to do … too easy, like flipping open your phone and scrolling, or flicking the remote and queuing up the next streaming show.

Balance comes from doing the things that you need to do in proportion to the things you want to do. Not everyone has that luxury, of course, but it is something that we all seek and for many a thing that we will spend much of our lives working for, looking for, striving for.

I’m here on a Friday afternoon after completing a very long list of things I needed to do.

Meetings. Reports. Emails. Managing.

I’m hoping my weekend holds an equitable list of things I want to do.

Wandering. Cooking. Running. Creating.

That’s my work-life balance.

Be Careful Out There

It’s been a couple months since I rolled up the hem of my shirt and did some serious blog-related navel-gazing. Yet today is meta-Monday and the last day of May and the day after I posted my one-hundred-and fiftieth daily blog post and just one of those days when I got to thinking about all the bits of good or bad advice online and has me wondering if I’m contributing to that in a meaningful, positive way.

Consider this photo.

Someone influenced us to go hiking there last summer. I don’t remember who. A guidebook or a blog or something we’d read in the news or maybe just a friend.

We do that. We are inspired by others and then inspire in turn.

I took this photo while standing part way on the ascent of the Wilcox pass and had turned my camera towards this mountain range vista that included the Athabasca Glacier, Hilda Peak, and Mount Andromeda. Another photo from this trip has shown up as fodder for a different blog post. Yet another pic is the profile photo on my Twitter account.

The well-trod trail served as a picturesque vantage for a collection of other peaks I’ll likely never climb but, perhaps, aspire to someday have the inclination to visit.

A couple of people who I don’t know and likely did not inspire were otherwise inspired to climb one of those pictured peaks. They got caught in an avalanche over the weekend and didn’t make it home to post their photos or inspire others to follow.

It was just one more story among a multitude of sad news over the weekend, but one that tweaked in my mind given that every day I’ve been writing words that may have the secondary effect of encouraging people to go out hiking and running into the trails, build roaring fires in their backyards, cook with blisteringly hot slabs of iron, and generally be adventurous.

That’s a big part of why I write these things.

I assume it’s a big part of why others read those words.

Inspiring each other: while none of us is fully responsible for the actions of others, whether those actions cause you to burn your hand on a hot grill, trip on a root while you’re running and bruise your arm, or climb a dangerous mountain and get buried in an avalanche, we do have a responsibility to give each other information that is correct and careful. We also have a moral obligation to remind each other to participate safely no matter what you’re up to.

One hundred and fifty posts into a daily blog has amounted to one hundred and fifty ideas, notions, thoughts, curiosities, and (I hope) inspirations for living a slightly more interesting life. I’ve probably got at least another hundred and fifty left in me right now, so as you read and ponder and lace up or light those coals or season your cast iron, just remember: be careful out there.

Reminder: Blogs are not a replacement for professional advice. Please read my note on safety and safe participation.