works of wanderlust

Category: cast iron guy

  • Across the Universe

    This afternoon I was driving through a snowstorm listening to a science radio show on the CBC talking about the launch of the new James Webb space telescope.

    The James Webb Space Telescope is a space telescope being jointly developed by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. It is planned to succeed the Hubble Space Telescope as NASA’s flagship astrophysics mission.

    – Wikipedia

    That programme got me thinking about how a couple weeks back I looked out across the evening sky while I was out for a walk and noted that three bright “stars” were lined up right there above me. I opened my astronomy app on my phone and oriented the navigation tool to point towards them above the horizon and realized that I wasn’t looking at stars, but instead very likely and as best as I could deduce, three planets neatly aligned just over the roofs of some neighbourhood houses.

    Looking at the sky makes me feel pretty small in the vast scheme of things, peering out into the universe and realizing that even our one little solar system in the backwater of our one little galaxy barely registers as anything but points of light in the vast inky blackness of the multiverse.

    Describe your 2021 in politics, culture, and the universe?

    I point this insignificance out because I think there are those of us who feel the reality of our smallness and rareness in the vast universe and embrace it. I also think there are others who lash out against it in ways that are indecipherable to the rest of us.

    Both perspectives emerge from that mist of confusion in many different forms representing many different things.

    For me, it emerges as rambling blog posts, art, occasionally music, and adventures through my little corner of this tiny planet.

    For others, it seems to emerge in less constructive ways. Politics, online rage, cruelty, crime, and willfully working against the general goodness that is possible in this universe.

    In the upcoming year I hope you find a way to lean into even just a little more constructiveness — for yourself, for me, for all of us — as you whirl through the incomprehensible vastness of the universe, and that you continue to enjoy my attempts at the same right here as I continue to write about cooking, travel, adventure, and filling my face with delicious foods.

  • Black Hat

    Every guy needs a good hat.

    Personally, I’ve been a Tilley Hat loyalist since my years as a boy scout in the early 90s, but it was only in the last couple years that I expanded my collection beyond the single version of this Canadian outerwear icon that I’d bought way back when.

    And this year I added to that collection with an order of a simple black bucket hat that arrived in a nondescript cardboard box through my mail over the summer.

    What object will forever
    remind you of 2021?

    As with my new one, my previous Tilley hats have all been bought with purpose.

    I own a great brimmed hemp hat that I purchased a few years ago and is really a wandering and travel hat, the head gear I wear on hikes and camping, into the woods and out into the wilds.

    I also own a great big orange sun hat made by Tilley. This is my backyard hat. I wear it when I mow the grass or work in the garden or sit by the fire cooking steaks, and it keeps the sun off while staying pretty cool.

    This past summer. I got it into my head to get myself a local adventure hat. We weren’t going far over the past year, so I wanted a lid that I could take along with me as I walked the dog, went to the park, or stepped over to the farmer’s market without looking like I was about to embark on a wilderness adventure.

    I landed on a simple black bucket hat with a floppy brim and a comfortable sense about it.

    It quickly filled that role and became my go to hat for summer and fall, and my favourite purchase of 2021.

    Forever is a long time, but right now I think the object that will forever remind me of the year we left behind is very simple, faithful hat that I toted around the neighbourhood upon my noggin for the better part of a strange and adventure-sapped year.

    This is not an endorsement. This is simply commentary on a product I have purchased myself. Do your own research and do your best to buy local products that support businesses that deserve your business.

  • Travel Advisory

    It seems almost ironic that the day I set aside to sum up my year in travel, the government of my country leaked that they’ve decided to reinstitute yet another travel advisory sometime in the next day or so.

    Here we go again.

    Or, really, here we don’t go anywhere.

    What is travel anyhow? Getting away from your house? Your city? Your country?

    Did you travel in 2021?

    I’ve been fortunate enough that despite multiple ebbs and flows of restrictions and limitations we’ve made our way around our beautiful province this past year.

    In particular, a couple week-long trips to the mountains this past summer broke up the monotony of working from home and the never ending bad news cycle.

    We packed up and spent a week exploring the world famous sights around Banff, hiking through day trips up mountains and through canyons and into cute little restaurants for elaborate lunches.

    We spent another week in the mountain town of Jasper later in the summer, doing more hiking, meeting old friends for wild runs, and dabbling in the icy waters afloat in our new inflatable kayak.

    For the last couple decades we’ve been fortunate enough to be travellers of a more worldly sort. The year before the pandemic we spent nearly three weeks between Scotland and Ireland. We tripped through some of America’s interesting cities like New York, Los Angeles, Maui, Las Vegas and Orlando. For a couple years we got into cruising and snorkeling off the back of a boat and from exotic island beaches. One summer we even donned our winter clothes and spent ten days touring Iceland. It has been a life spent on experience rather than things.

    The past couple years have been tough and we tried to make up as best we could with local adventures, and made those adventures as satisfying as possible given the realities of a locked down world.

    Tomorrow the news is either going to be bad or really bad. Either we’re spending the holidays worried, or we’re spending them locked down at home once again. It’s the right thing, I know. I believe. But it doesn’t make the yearning for distant adventures any easier to bear.

  • Level Up

    I don’t write about it much (or ever really) but I enjoy the odd video game in my downtime. When I need to relax or spend time with my daughter, the controllers come out and we play. When I don’t have the mental energy for a book or for writing, I flip on the PlayStation. And I usually go in for either puzzle games or, when I’m feeling ambitious, role playing games.

    The conceit of most role playing games is experience gathering.

    The idea of “leveling up” comes from taking on the role of a character in a game who needs to practice skills or abilities over and over again as the story progresses to become better, stronger, faster, more agile, or smarter.

    Real life doesn’t often work much like a video game at all, but I do tend think one trope from the realm of digital entertainment translates quite succinctly from the real world in a way that is useful. It probably goes without saying that practicing any skill can make one better, stronger, faster, more agile, or smarter.

    What was your biggest
    achievement of the last year?

    I could make a list of all the interesting skills and abilities in which I’ve challenged myself to “level up” this past year, but one only needs to scroll through the archives of this blog to see the writings I’ve already left here about many of them.

    Instead, I’d simply suggest that the very act of trying to become a better learner, the notion of taking on new things, digging into interesting problems, tackling the unknown, and diving into literature and documentation to figure out stuff I didn’t know before, that act itself was a grand achievement of a sort.

    It is notably easier to sit on the couch and watch other people do interesting things on television.

    Heck, I often click over to YouTube and watch some other outdoorsman or culinary amature share their video blog of adventure, exploration, and investigation. It really is mindless to watch someone else cook a great dish. It is absolutely simpler to let the video run as someone else pitches a tent in the wilderness and roughs it in the winter weather while they narrate their camping trip to the camera. That’s basic.

    What is far more difficult is writing down that recipe and trying to prepare it yourself.

    The real challenge lies in conquering one’s own wilderness, be that deep in the woods or a campfire out the backdoor.

    So what is my best achievement of 2021? I don’t want to brag, but tackling some interesting challenges has definitely left me (at least a little bit) better, stronger, faster, more agile, and possibly even a little bit smarter.

  • Pathfinding & Found Paths

    Sunday Runday and we should have known better than to go onto the icy trails after an overnight snowfall less than a week after an ice storm.

    But the sun was peeking over the eastern horizon and lighting up the December sky in all sorts of pretty colours, so the ice seemed like a temporary problem which could easily enough be solved by four guys in winter running shoes.

    Compared to this time
    last year are you
    more lost or found?

    It wasn’t a temporary problem, of course.

    And no amount of winter grip can make up for ten kilometers of hidden ice under two centimeters of fresh, light snow.

    No amount of dodging into the neighbourhood streets and hoping for better traction on the suburban car-packed roads made much of difference.

    No amount of pathfinding through the crunchy, fresh snow counteracted the frustration of pulled muscles and near falls and aching hip flexors.

    Like so much this year, running has become something of a microcosm of my life and an analogy for everything else. A determined effort to engage with the world that has been met with all manner of resistance no matter my level of persistence. This week it happened to be icy sidewalks, but two weeks ago it was heel pain. A few months ago we were battling wasps. Over the summer I tripped and hurt my shoulder as I collided full force with the trunk of a fir tree.

    Yet, we keep going and trying to make it fun.

    Likewise, this whole year has been something of an exercise in navigating.

    The pandemic. Probably enough said about that, but then again…

    Work changes have taxed my frustated mind.

    Friends and family seem complicated by twisted politics and nearly fully electronic relationships.

    Weather. Supply chains. Misinformation.

    Rules. Regulations.

    Waves and lockdowns and everything else.

    It’s hard to even recall that two years ago I was feeling quite solidly purposeful in my own way. Things felt found. Things were on course and on track.

    At the start of this year, though, I think that like so many others I was feeling not just a little lost, but caught in a maze of a world gone mad. We cheered the end of 2020 as if it somehow marked the end of the worst of it. Yet, here we approach 2021 and I’m not clear on if I’m still lost, somewhat found, or just resigned to the newish reality in which we exist now.

    The last year has been a little like running on ice. Uncertain underfoot and apt to cause a slip unless one watches every step carefully. At the end one feels a bit accomplished, a bit sore, but a bit foolish for venturing out looking for a running path where none should rightly exist.

    On the other hand, the only other option is to stay home and wallow in the lack of action.

    Maybe it’s not a bad thing to go pathfinding after all, through snow and ice… or through a crazy, slippery year.