Hope Ness

Yes, that’s snow

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How’s the weather where you are?

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Better than here, I hope, especially if you’re a farmer trying to plant crops, or, like me, a market vegetable gardener.

This is April 26, 2016, southern Ontario, Canada, just south of the 45th Parallel, halfway between the North Pole and the Equator. And this snowstorm you’re seeing in these photos is not normal for this time of year. By this time I’ve usually been out in the garden for two weeks, cultivating the soil, and then planting some of the early, hardy crops like peas, definitely peas, beets, carrots, lettuce, and even potatoes. Continue reading →

Living in hope, finding a way

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A lovely old garden shed  on the “to do” list needs some TLC

I live in Hope.

I do that literally, as in I live in Hope Ness. I also live in hope of learning how to tap into the special spirit of Hope Ness so at this late stage in my life I can finally do justice to it, and life.

About time; it’s been 37 years since that wonderful, hopeful moment when I came out of the woods, around a curve in the then still-gravel county road and was stopped in my tracks by a place that called out “home” to me.

There were more twists and turns, more ups and downs over the years; here sometimes, sometimes not. But hope and stubborn perseverance have seen me through, and I’m here to stay for good now in Hope Ness, at the place I have come to call Cathedral Drive Farm, beside the Hope Bay Nature Reserve, the Hope Bay Forest, and Hope Bay itself, of course.

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Counting my blessings, being fearless

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So, this morning is an opportunity to count my blessings.

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The morning after in the backyard at Cathedral Farm

I guess I was one of the lucky ones. The freezing-rain and snow storm that yesterday and last night went through this part of Ontario was much worse farther south, where 100,000 electrical customers are without power this morning, so the news says. Hopefully, for their sakes, their power will be restored.

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A “storm warning” moment

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It’s March in Ontario after all, so anything can happen; and it will.

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It’s not over yet, Mr. Massey Too

The forecast today for the Bruce Peninsula area calls for freezing rain, ice pellets, snow and north-east winds for the next couple of days. Environment Canada’s weather forecasting service has issued a “winter storm warning” for the area. School buses are cancelled all over the Bluewater School Board area that includes all of Grey and Bruce counties. I understand from the news it’s the same story all over southern Ontario.

And here I am at the end of long and vulnerable phone and electrical lines, down Cathedral Drive and through the forest along an unopened road allowance. I’d say the prospect of fallen lines and a power outage is more than likely, for me here, and possibly lots of other people on the peninsula. We’ll see. But our local “hydro” crews always do all they can to help us get back on line. Continue reading →

On being out of time

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The building over a period of months, and now this past week the official opening of a swanky new supermarket in the town south of Hope Ness has certainly given me pause to think about changes marking the passage of time and how they may suddenly, unexpectedly, hit home.

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Usually, life seems to move slowly with little if any change from day to day, week to week, month to month, perhaps even year to year for some of us, or so we may fool ourselves into thinking.

But then one day it hits – so much has changed, so many things have happened, and the reality of time passing and the changes that involves must be faced, or not. Continue reading →

A walk through Wilma’s woods

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IMG_0178The day before I had started to walk that section of the Bruce Trail that enters, or emerges, from the woods right at the end of my driveway. But as some of you may know my attention was caught a short distance along by a rock formation partially covered by moss that was luminous with life on an otherwise grey day.

I went back late this afternoon to finish that walk to what surely must be one of the best lookouts on the Niagara Escarpment. The sun was low in the sky, but bright, and lighting up the still largely snow-covered forest floor. So, in places it was still a bit of a slog. But at this time of year without the leaf canopy overhead you get a chance to see the forest in a different, perhaps more revealing light in some ways. Continue reading →

It’s official, the miracle of spring has arrived

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Allow me to be the first person to tell you that spring has officially arrived in Hope Ness and most of the rest of southern Ontario, in the country of Canada, on the planet Earth, in the Milky Way galaxy, one of many galaxies too numerous to count in the still-expanding universe, about which we still know next to nothing.

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Let the seed-starting begin

So in the context of that cosmic vastness, what is so remarkable about the first day of spring, that I should proclaim and hereby celebrate its arrival even though it’s technically still two weeks away, as the Sun and the Earth do their annual dance?

It’s remarkable because so far as I know, and you know, and anybody else knows, this little blue-green jewel of a planet is the only place in the universe where this annual miracle of life awakening happens. Oh, yes, certain assumptions have been made. How could we possibly be alone in such a universe? And where are those mysterious radio-like signals, if that’s what they are, coming from? Continue reading →

We’re all pilgrims looking for home

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home

I was chatting on-line recently with someone I knew years ago in Toronto, and found by chance again on the Internet. We had a good, interesting chat that led to me inviting him to come up sometime for a visit. After going on, as I do, about the natural beauty of the Bruce Peninsula and my little corner of it here in Hope Ness especially, I asked the long-time Toronto resident if he’d ever been up to the peninsula. He said no, and wondered how long it would take him to get up here by car from the city, where he lives downtown. About four hours, more or less, I said.

I wasn’t surprised; after all, it took me a long time to find my way here, after going on various searches much further in other directions, but never really feeling at “home” where I ended up. Yet, here it was, all along, right in my “back yard,” so to speak.

I had the opportunity as a child born in the big city to live on a couple of farms in the southern Ontario countryside. The family circumstances that led to that happening were sad and difficult, but I won’t get into that.

My point here is going from the city to the countryside was a revelation for a boy of six when I went, first, to the farm near Streetsville, west of the city. It was only a distance of about 25 miles, or 45 kilometres, but it seemed like a totally different world.

Going from the city to that farm in the rural countryside was like going from black-and-white to colour. Continue reading →

Shackleton’s heroism still inspiring

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IMG_0123Life in Hope Ness is not all “sweetness and light,” especially in winter, the way we get it here sometime in this part of Canada: from sub-zero, Arctic-air-mass cold for days on end, followed by a day or two of winds from the south bringing a sudden thaw, and rain, like today. It’s not pretty.

Strange the way the mind works sometimes, but I was thinking I’d even prefer last winter’s record-setting cold, when the deep freeze came and settled in for months.

Then I thought of Antarctic, which led me to think of Ernest Shackleton, one of my historical heroes. And that led me to thoughts on the nature of his heroism, and that it arose in desperate circumstances stemming from apparently disastrous failure.

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Getting ready

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I was in Owen Sound doing my laundry at the preferred laundromat when the call came on my cell phone, from a dearly beloved family member who cares deeply about me too. She is quite religious in a way that I am not. We talk about it sometimes, but have learned not to let it come between us.

She had something to tell me she thought I should know. She had had a dream a couple of nights before, a “vivid” dream about me having died. She didn’t know how it had happened. She said it made her cry.  She took it as a message from God, the message being that I should be baptised and otherwise get ready. I said I had already been baptized as an adult, though many years ago. She said there have been recent changes in my life, which is true, and I should be baptised again, taking them into consideration.

I wasn’t surprised or dismissive towards her, on the contrary. I wasn’t taken aback, except in a good sense, by the remarkable timing of her dream and its subject – my death, and getting ready for it.

Now, before anyone gets turned off by the apparent morbidity of this topic, let me say I’ve had second thoughts about it being about me, or anyone else for that matter, getting ready for death. It’s really about getting ready for life and the idea that it’s never too late to do that. And that’s not just a question of age, it’s also about putting down the burden that makes people – way, way too many – feel bad about themselves, and hopeless. Continue reading →