works of wanderlust

Month: April 2021

  • pihêsiwin ᐱᐦᐁᓯᐏᐣ

    I need to get serious for a post.

    I had a tough conversation at work yesterday about racism.

    One of my coworkers had been slurred while out walking in our otherwise beautiful trails… because of his visible ancestry.

    Really. I mean… *ugh*

    I have a lot of conversations like this recently. Simultaneously not enough talk but sadly too many instances. I guess I should feel good that a work friend feels he can confide, and give me an honest ask of “as a white guy… what the heck is up?”

    (Not that I have an answer.)

    I try to use this blog to write about positive things. After all, like me, I’m sure you have all had enough of folks veering ever-more divisively on political topics throughout your social feeds. But here’s the thing: I go for many walks in the woods, through the trails, around my city, and rarely do I feel fearful. Learning that anyone, but maybe today and particularly a guy who I work with, who is essentially my professional contemporary in position, age, and education, feels threatened walking through those same spaces… that sucks. It compounds the negative and works against the vibe I’m trying to create here.

    This morning yet again I was reminded of this.

    In a meeting someone suggested, as a election approaches in the fall, that we learn to pronounce our ward names. Over the last couple years, Indigenous Elders and urban Indigenous community members worked to tie some historical indigenous naming to what was previously a numbered collection of electoral districts.

    I now live in a ward named pihêsiwin.

    Pee - HEY - sa - win

    The name pihêsiwin means Land of the Thunderbirds and was given to this ward because from an aerial view it is shaped like a pihêsiw (thunderbird).

    These trails I explore, that weave through and between and among the places I work and play and live, they have a long history. My ancestors may have come to live here many, many years ago but on cultural timescales it has been such a short time that I’ve been a part of this space. I share this Cree word, pihêsiwin, because it reminds me of a bigger story hidden among the poplar trees, swimming through the river, and swooping through the skies above me.

    I may spend my entire life here. I may live here and call it home. I may hope to shape it and build in it, and enjoy it, but like everyone before me and everyone after me, I’m just passing through. I hope I can leave something of a mark upon this space, but only if that mark builds upon all the great stories that preceded it and made this space what it is today.

    More importantly that story takes everyone to write no matter your history, shape, colour, or philosophy, all of us shaping it together. And I like it that way.

  • Wanderlust

    There was a moment in time, however brief, when this blog was almost called “the Wander Guy” wherein I wrote about wandering through the world and between those adventures got distracted by taking pictures, cooking great food and other things… rather than, y’know, the other way around.

    wawn - derr - luhst

    The yearning and all-consuming desire to walk and travel about, see the world, and explore the universe.

    There are many languages from which we English-speakers borrow concepts. Many of the ones I am familiar with are derived from German origins.

    When I was about twenty years younger I took some German language courses to fill my evenings. One root of my family tree traces back a couple hundred years and multiple generations to some soil in that particular area of Europe. I was one of those guys who, in his twenties, started digging around those roots and trying to find some cultural branches through which I could climb and explore. This all resulted in an opportunity to travel about through Germany for a few weeks while those lessons were still fresh in my head. I have some very distinct memories of time spent wandering through Berlin, Munich, and other various small towns, learning and immersing, seeking some connection and grounding… but mostly eating currywurst and drinking lots of beer.

    Words like wanderlust are among those perfectly distilled concept words derived from another language that we haven’t bothered to replace it with something other.

    I’m glad for that.

    Being struck by a lingering case of wanderlust that has gripped around my heart for now most of my life, and finding some vague-and-fuzzy connection to a fragile root of my own personal history, I feel like I can slot this word into my own vocabulary in a purposeful way.

    There is a bit of me that often aspires to be more of a “wander guy” and nurture the wanderlust that lurks behind that. To travel. To explore. To put on a trusty hat and good shoes. To find a trail, sidewalk, cobbled road, or dusty route. To wander away from home, far and wide, and cure the longing behind that.

  • Travel Eats: Smoked Fish and Bagpipes

    In the summer of 2019 we spent two weeks in Scotland.

    My wife and daughter are competitive Highland Dancers with a dance school here in Canada, and every four years or so the school makes the trip overseas with a busload of dancers, parents, and teachers to participate in an authentic Scottish Highland Games.

    They all get to stress about dance. I get to wander around, take photos, and eat interesting foods.

    In early August 2019 I found myself on a rain-soaked morning meandering around the muddy grass of Strathallan Games Park in Bridge of Allan, UK, where the annual Bridge of Allan Highland Games are held in the shadow of the Wallace Monument towering in the misty, rolling hills a few kilometers away.

    The games themselves are wrapped around a race track. Running and cycling field events that happen on the track itself are more modern additions to the more familiar caber tossing and hammer throws that take place midfield. The dancers huddle around a stage at one end of the inside field, the bagpipe bands set up at the far opposite end (though their warmup hum can be heard forever away.) Scattered in the empty spaces between food and craft vendors find customers like me wandering through the games action.

    The column of smoke can be seen from nearly everywhere, and I found myself organically attracted to the action to see what was cooking at its base.

    From an article on the website itself this is what I found:

    Arbroath Smokies are famed throughout Britain and beyond for their wonderful flavour and smooth, flaky texture. For those new to this particular delicacy, smokies are smoked haddock, prepared according to highly traditional methods by a number of producers in and around the wee North East fishing community of Arbroath.

    I stood at the back of a very long line and when I reached the front I ordered two.

    Delicious. Amazing. Perfect food for a perfect morning.

    If (or when) we return for another Highland Games in a couple years, I’ll be saving some room for a second round.

    I’m a huge fan of smoked fish… which is a difficult kind of fan to be when you live in a city on the land-locked Canadian prairies. I’ve been thinking a lot about cooking (and maybe even smoking) fish over an open fire. In an upcoming sequel and follow-up post to my Suburban Fire Craft (Part One), I recently purchased a new movable fire pit for my backyard. I’ll be doing some cooking on it (so long as the weather cooperates) this coming weekend and writing about it here. It probably will not be fish. I’ll save that for when I’ve practiced a bit more. It will be backyard cooking over an open fire, though, and that’s almost as exciting as a day of Highland Games.

    Almost.

    Now, obviously, my new fire bowl isn’t an old whiskey barrel, nor is it the foundation for a multi-generational history of smoking famous fish. But my neighbours might soon be wondering what cooking at the base of a column of smoke from my backyard. I’ll save the bagpipes for another year.

  • Those Woodpecker Winters

    ”Wake up! Wake up!” The woodpecker knocks, flying from tree trunk to tree trunk, swooping gracefully between the branches. “Spring is here. Wake up!“

    Against the pale white bark of the poplar trees, her red crest hat can be seen by all the creatures of the forest, like a flame alight in dark meadow.

    “Wake up, poplar!” She knocks. “Wake up, spruce!”

    “Let us sleep. It is only April. The winter is still not over.” Poplar replies with a shiver of her branches.

    “Even the ants are still hiding in their burrows. ” Creaks spruce. “Let us be if only for a few more weeks. Wake us when the hares winter white coats have fallen, or when the wasps stir from their nests. Not now. It is still too soon.”

    “Oh, but poplar, if you do not wake now and show the fresh green your leaves to the winter she will not know her time is passed. And spruce, if your boughs do not bud fresh and bright winter will wonder why you wait.” Woodpecker knocks, flying from tree to tree tapping her bill against the cool wooden trunks. “So, wake up! Wake up, I say!”

    Spruce shivers her needles in the spring breeze.

    Poplar shakes her bare branches against the whisps of low clouds.

    ”Let us sleep!” The trees all say together.

    And so woodpecker flies along her way, red hat and all, chased by a stray snowflake fluttering down towards the ground and adrift on the cool spring winds.

  • Winter Reprise Surprise Run

    Sunday Runday, and yesterday morning I did some work in the yard, took the dog for a lovely spring walk, sat in the grass, cleaned up some flower beds, and generally enjoyed the spring.

    This morning we met for a run on icy sidewalks and through ankle-deep snow.

    These woodpecker winter days are nothing too surprising for anyone who has lived here very long. The gentle-jabbing joke that quickly circulates on text threads between local friends is “ok, who put their snow shovels away for the winter! It must be your fault!”

    So, surprise… no.

    But it is still very much a shock to the system when one is expecting something slightly warmer when planning a spring run.

    I’d already cleaned up and packed away all my winter running gear. The mitts, hats, heavy jackets all tucked into the closets once again. The shoe spikes hidden away for next winter.

    Maybe it was my fault the snow came back for a reprise.

    We immediately made for the trees and escaped the icy city streets dropping into the river valley trails. The snow was deeper there but the ice was far less dangerous.

    The snow storm had blown in quickly and aggressively, dropping a near-horizontal storm on the whole region. Somewhere between five and ten centimeters of fresh white powder covered the ground and then also the west side of everything. Wind. Horizontal snow. It sticks in unexpected places. The fluffy white kiss of winter’s last gasp clung to the trunks of trees and every branch of every tree creating a magical scene along the trails.

    I spent almost as much time snapping photos as I did running.

    As much as we’re used to a fresh snowfall here, it never ceases to be a breathtakingly beautiful opportunity to inhabit these familiar spaces as they are temporarily dressed in an all-encompassing snowy veil.

    And temporary is the key word.

    Even on the loop back I could see the melt begin.

    Have you ever felt that sensation of momentary awe when you witness some bit of slow-motion nature happen in real time. Like, when you walk through the woods and a branch tumbles to the ground from high up in a tree. It has been growing there for years attached to the trunk of an even older tree, and then in that one moment as you pass by it happens to reach a critical tipping point between gravity and connection, and it falls down to the ground.

    This morning was like that, except in high speed clumps of snow were loosing from their grip on the woods, tumbling through the lower branches and releasing a puff of snow as they crashed to the ground, here, there, here, over there, and there too.

    Even the slippery city walks had mostly thawed as we returned to our vehicles and stopped our GPS watches for another successful Sunday run.

    And by next Sunday, likely as not we will be back to treading through familiar spring trails and snowy paths will be just another week gone by.