Unfortunately I missed the Logger’s Games, the Celtic Festival, the Army-Navy Air Force, the Great Way of Life, and 50 km/h, but I got to see some of the Maynooth Madness. (Could have been different Maynooth Madness. Hard to say.)

I took a zillion pictures. I’ll probably post some more in the next little while. This is the morning mist on Kamaniskeg Lake.

Here’s the sky from off my back porch.

Kingston in the summer is all about boats. This was taken down at the waterfront.

Here’s the house where I used to live. The middle one. It’s 547 Bagot, right next door to Robert Meek elementary school. Near the Cataraqui river.

My son Jake went to Robert Meek for grade 8. We were so close to the school that he used to wait until he heard the bell ring, and then he’d head out. Later he went to KCVI (Kingston Collegiate and Vocational). He graduated from high school at the same time as I finished my degree at Queen’s. I guess he was around 18 then, and I must have been… um… 48.

I liked living in Kingston, although I didn’t quite realize it at the time. I was a little younger than I am now, and I was a full-time student in a cool city. Plus I had more friends there than I do in Ottawa.

I felt really nostalgic on my road trip, seeing the old neighbourhood and everything. Then we had lunch on the patio at Chez Piggy. Very nice!

Here’s Kingston’s Market Square, out back of City Hall.

I think my sick-of-working day did me quite a bit of good. Anyway I hope so, because I am still sick of working.

Brillante

If you must keep awarding Brillantes to people who already have one, I suggest you award them to Coyote down at Singing Moon. And zoom could use a few more too.

For me the gathering was mostly a chance to see a lot of people I haven’t seen in a long time, and it has been a long time. Hobbitish greybeards, looming out of the gloom, kept resolving into someone familiar and dear to me from the old days. (Hippie men get more wizened as the years go by. Hippie women get witchier.)

Most of the stories about Jim Campbell mentioned his tireless work out of the spotlight, the letters he wrote to prisoners, and his goofy infectious laugh. My favourite story was the one where he had a job painting the Second Narrows Bridge in Vancouver, which took months, and when he was finished painting it one way he turned around and painted it the other way. Demonstrating his lifelong commitment to infrastructure.

Fall meeting

It was raining when I left on Saturday morning, and it rained off and on most of the day.

It takes me 3 1/2 hours to get there and I didn’t get a very early start. Unfortunately I’m the kind of person who is never late for anything. I stopped once on the highway to take a few pictures, and I stopped for a sandwich at Tim Horton’s in Renfrew, but mostly it was just go go go.

The meeting was at Dallas’s cabin. Here’s Dallas.

My son Jake came to take the minutes for the meeting. He’s thinking of buying a share in the old hippie farm. After all, he was born there. As the wheels keep turning around and around.

Here’s Dallas’s cabin. It’s next to a beautiful bog.

The bog

Patti at Dallas’s

Jacquie. Dallas showing us how big a fish he caught. I think he was lying. ;)

Cabin again. It’s very Walden Pond down there in the bog.

When I wasn’t meeting with people I went around looking at things up close. It’s that kind of place. There used to be long views over the hills, and probably there still are in the wintertime, but now the bush is so thick that you have to look up close.

I waited quite awhile for this leaf to move out of the shade so I could photograph the drops of dew before they evaporated. This was in front of Patti’s house on Sunday morning.

I don’t know what any of this stuff is. It’s kind of creepy, isn’t it? That’s what you get when you go around peering through a camera. I’m working on an explanation for that sharp thing. I think it involves vampires.

Bunch o’ leaves

Scary haunted maple tree. Still scary this year.

I like how Danish modern and Ikea-ish my place up there is. There’s hardly anything there. Just two Ikea rockers, white, and a chess table. It’s very minimalist.

It looks like you could sit in one of those rockers and Ingmar Bergman would sit in the other one and you’d discuss being and nothingness. (I’m all for being, myself, but Ingmar would probably take the opposite point of view.) Then Bibi Anderssen would bring us big bowls of wild strawberries with milk, and after that we’d play a game of chess. I’d be the knight and Ingmar would be Death. Bibi would riddle us a riddle and then we’d dance the dance of the dead. What fun!

Little fungusy things living on the mossy floorboards of my back porch. And a nail.

Here comes a series of pictures of leaves in a rain barrel. You can skip them if you want, but I like them!

Leaves in rain barrel 1

Leaves in rain barrel 2

Leaves in rain barrel 3

Leaves in rain barrel 4

My 911 number. Which I can never remember, even though it’s a very simple number.

My house with red and blue cars

Leaves on gravel road

Leaves in water

This is a Ford Courier truck out in front of my house. Someone has covered it with brush so it won’t look like a wrecked truck. I find this unnecessary. It is what it is, and eventually it will return to the earth it came from. It was a good truck that served me well.

That’s what happens when you let other people live in your house. They have different ways of thinking about things.

Here is some grass

Bright coloured leaves

Old goat shed

(Sigh) Another leaf

After the meeting some of us went to a memorial for Jim Campbell, long-time anarchist and dedicated communitarian, who died of a heart attack while riding his bike in Maynooth. The memorial was in the greenhouse at Dragonfly Farm, and it was attended by people from all over the place. Jim touched a lot of people in his life.

I’m hoping someone will write a guest post about it. I don’t feel qualified to do it justice, since I’m not an anarchist and I didn’t know Jim as well as many others did. Plus I didn’t take any pictures. So stay tuned for that.

This is a picture of Jim and his partner Julie. I got it from a facebook group about Jim and his life, called Dimensions of Jim Campbell.

Then today I came home, and that was the fall meeting for another year. When I was returning my rental car I walked over to see what was going on at the Somerset House. Here’s a picture of the damage. You can see that it’s wide open to the weather. What a mess!

What a demeaning practice! It accuses everybody of shoplifting. I’m not going there anymore either.

I didn’t take any pictures on the road. Highway 7 is very straight and dull, and one Tim Horton’s is much like the next. Near Madoc I got a speeding ticket from an idiot cop, J.A. Locke by name, who was trying to fill his quota.

It seems I was going 90 in an 80 zone. Oh, the horror! My awful crime will cost me $40.

In 1998 I lived in Peterborough for part of the year, and I liked it there a lot. It seemed to me that there was something very spiritual about the place. My friend Patti sometimes reminds me of a day when we went to Jackson Park together and I saw God there. It’s true that at that time I was always on the lookout for him/her/it, but I don’t know if I actually saw them on that day. (But I might have.)

I was in Peterborough because I didn’t feel like I was finished with my education, although I had recently graduated from Queen’s. I studied computer science at Sir Sanford Fleming College for two semesters, thinking I could combine that with my English degree for a career in technical writing.

When the summer break came I was unable to find a job in Peterborough. Soon I gave up on the idea of finding a “summer job” and became willing to take any job, just to survive; but I couldn’t find anything in Peterborough.

The lowest point came when I answered an ad to paint fire hydrants and didn’t get the job. If you aren’t suited for painting fire hydrants, what on earth are you suited for?

I knew if I could survive until September I’d get some more student loan money and life would go on, but I wasn’t sure if I could survive that long. I thought I might have reached a mysterious life divide – the one that people sometimes unwittingly pass over, and end up living on the street. If that was my destiny I wasn’t looking forward to it.

Anyway, I was miraculously saved. I won a large cash prize in a writing contest. I used it to get out of town, up to my place at Maynooth, and take some time to reconsider my plans. In September I switched to technical writing at Algonquin College in Ottawa, and when I was finished there I was hired for the job that I still have now. So here I am.

We had the birthday lunch at a place called Karma’s Cafe on Hunter St. Here is a picture that shows my old friend Karen, Jake’s mother Joyce, and Jake the birthday boy.

I was very impressed with Hunter St. It has cool restaurants and coffee shops on every block, all concentrated in a few short blocks. Aside from my street, Somerset, I don’t know any place like that in Ottawa except maybe the Market. But Chinatown and the Market don’t have the same kind of youthful energy that I felt in Peterborough.

Here’s Joyce and Jake at Patti’s place.

I went home to Ottawa on Sunday. As usual Highway 7 was very uninteresting. I stopped for a burger at McDonald’s in Perth. What a food factory that place is!

Back on Cambridge St. I picked up the Centretown Buzzes off the ground and put them back in my neighbours’ mailboxes.

I’m glad I went. I needed an adventure and I liked seeing Jake and everyone, and I do think there is something special about Peterborough. Maybe I’ll live there again someday. This time I might be able to land my dream job – painting the fire hydrants.

For the return trip I took the southern route back to Renfrew, which goes through Denbigh. For this route you start by driving south on Hwy 62 to Bancroft, about 20 km. Bancroft is the closest large town to Maynooth. It’s known for its minerals and for this big cliff called Eagle’s Nest.

From Bancroft you take Hwy 28 east. Here is the Google map from Bancroft to Renfrew: http://tinyurl.com/wzav5

What a scenic route! I became a traffic hazard driving this route, that rubbernecking tourist who drives too slowly and is always looking for a place to stop and take a picture. This put me in conflict with my pet-peeve worst driver, that guy in a big hurry who tailgates you and won’t pass. But somehow I survived it.

Look at this!

I stopped at Yirkie Lake. I love it when the sun sparkles on the water like that. I’ve always thought if there were a God, a matter about which I remain uncertain, he might choose to reveal himself in this way. He might just sparkle on the water and you could see him or not as you wished.

Then I spotted some cows grazing on the best hillside in the universe. I wouldn’t mind being a cow if I got to be one on that hillside.

Hwy 28 East connects with 41, and then it slips into Renfrew through the back door as 132. It’s actually quite far from Renfrew to Ottawa (90 km), and that part of the journey isn’t very interesting. The highway just gets bigger and bigger as the city sucks everything into its maw. There is nowhere to stop and take a picture. I took some pictures through the windshield while I was driving, but I only did that for a short time. It was obvious that if I kept on doing it I was an accident waiting to happen.

And that was the end of my road trip to Maynooth.

More road trip:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Look at all Jim’s firewood!

After the meeting Patti and I walked down to her place. On the way we inspected the gravel that was bought for the driveway. It was bad gravel. (Bad gravel is sand with big rocks in it. Technically you might say it averages out to gravel, but it isn’t gravel.)

Bad gravel

These are the ruins of the original farmhouse. I lived in it for several years, and my son was born in it. I’d say it’s returning gracefully to the earth.

The meadow around the old farmhouse is overgrown now. All the old paths where I used to walk are gone. Even the huge maple where I once hung a swing, and which I used to tap for syrup, has turned into a scary haunted maple tree.

Here’s Patti’s house. The first floor of it is stackwall, meaning it’s made out of firewood stacked up. (Logs cut short and turned sideways.)

Patti has a lot of neat stuff, such as this lawn statue.

And this…

Here’s a little pond out back of my place where zillions of frogs live in the summer. I guess they’re hibernating now.

This is the back of my outhouse. It includes the old Paradise Lunch sign. That was a cafe I used to have in Bancroft. Gone but not forgotten!

More road trip:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 4

The land meeting was at Jacquie’s. I walked over there on this path.

A dog came out to greet me. Jacquie and Jim also have another dog and a bunch of cats.

Jacquie, graphic designer, with a huge cat in her lap

Dallas, writer and scientist

Patti, psychology student

Jim, actor and carpenter

The jolly blogger

Several people were missing from the meeting. This led to the main topic of discussion, which was the nature of the collective and members’ commitment to it. Since I don’t live there I don’t have a lot to say about this. My own status as an absent owner is part of the problem. Another part of the problem is represented by this house, which is empty and in a state of extreme disrepair.

In fact only four people live on the land full-time nowadays (five counting Jacquie’s young daughter), and two of them were absent from the meeting. It was a good discussion but there weren’t any conclusions.

My own intentions regarding that place change all the time. Sometimes I think I should try to sell it, but I’m not sure how much you can get on the open market for a haunted hippie shack. Other times I think I should just hang on to it.

I don’t know what retirement will be like for me. Although I enjoy city life right now, I can’t predict how much income I’ll have later on. It might be better to be an old guy picking up bottles in the ditch along Highway 62 near Maynooth than to be an old guy living in a furnished room in Ottawa eating cat food.

On that happy note, and speaking of cats, here is a happy cat…

and a relaxed dog.

More road trip:
Part 1
Part 3
Part 4

My friend loaned me a car for the trip. It even had firewood in the trunk! The firewood was definitely required. Remember this stuff? They have it on the ground in Maynooth.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. To get to Maynooth, first you go west on Hwy 417 to Renfrew. From there I took the northern route through Eganville. Here is the Google map: http://tinyurl.com/wkffe

I saw some cattle near Eganville. I was going to say I saw some cows, but that guy in the front is no cow.

After Eganville the road climbs for a long time until you reach Wilno. You can see forever from there, even on such a drab day as this. Here is a view of the hills from Wilno.

Wilno is the site of the earliest Polish settlement in Canada. Here’s the plaque to prove it:

It feels later in the year in Wilno than it does in Ottawa. Many of the leaves have already fallen, and it’s colder. My son’s mother lives in Wilno. She has an art gallery there called the Garden Gallery. We’re pretty good friends, but I didn’t have time to stop and visit on this trip.

In Barry’s Bay they are building a monument to a Polish-Canadian test pilot, Janusz Zurakowski, who flew the ill-fated Avro Arrow. This is the kind of wacky stuff that makes you either love or hate small-town life. Here is a statue of Janusz.

And here is a small-scale replica of the Avro Arrow in flight. Zoom!

After Barry’s Bay I passed through Combermere, where a tornado did a lot of damage this summer. It is mostly cleaned up now. Here is a picture I took there in the summer.

After three and a half hours of driving I made it to Maynooth. This is the Arlington Hotel, scene of many great shenanigans over the years. It’s for sale for $250,000. Haven’t you always wanted a hotel?

Our place is about 5 km past Maynooth. It’s on top of a hill. Here is the view down Hwy 62 to the south toward Bancroft.

This is looking north toward Maynooth. My son Jake used to catch the school bus out there when he attended Maynooth Public.

There’s my house. Errr… Cabin. Hippie shack. I just found out that the locals call it “The Haunted House.” I love that! (Yes that is snow on the porch roof.)

More Road trip:
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4