A Temagami Break

We just returned from a getaway to Temagami, a forest and lake paradise six hours north of Toronto. The drive there leaves the flat lands of southern Ontario and cuts through ancient granite passages blasted out by dynamite. The forests of maple give way to long stretches of pine and birch, towns grow further and further apart and the temperature drops down down down and gas prices, food prices go up up up as you leave the busy highways. Trucks roar past you on the two-lane Highway 11 with logs, supplies. Small ponds edge the sides of the road. You are beyond the busy vacation properties of Muskoka or the tourist havens of Algonquin. It's the beginnings of the north where life runs hard, rough and a lot less busy. It's where the landscape is beautiful and heavenly to the visitor but ordinary for those who live there day by day. Here the lakes are frozen solid. Waterways become highways and shortcuts.

When the drive is over, the air is crisp and cold. The low winter sun splashes long purple shadows from the forest on the wind-blown lakes. If you hold your breath long enough and hold your head steady, you can see nothing move or hear any sound except for the warm blood moving in your chest. For months I dreamed about getting away - not just to a white beach or a New York vacation. But really away. And it turns out I don't have to go south, fly anywhere, or book a tour of anything. Just head north. Standing there, on the first night, in the middle of a frozen lake, watching the sun set, I still wondered how something so still and so unmaufactured so unmanmade can bring so much pleasure.More to come later.

TD Centre

For a long time, I hated this building in Toronto. It's like a black force of evil on the skyline. Cold, boring, square, and dark. Home to thousands of cubicles, computers and well balanced lighting and heat.

But with all the clutter and choos of city life, I now appreciate this building for the same reasons. Simple, efficient, sturdy and elegant with its lines.

Like a banker in a pinstripe suit. 

Saturady Shopping

Had a very exciting Saturday. Woke up really early to the sun and a blue sky. Time to lace up my boots and walk the 'hood. Everyone's out shopping, walking, just standing there in the sun. 

Storm

It's 7:59 a.m. the snow fell all night. I opened up thes curtain to see nothing but white. The cars in the parking lot are like stones under a bedsheet. I'm stuck.

Snow Storm, London Ontario

It's 9:14 p.m. I'm sitting at my desk in the Radisson Hotel in London Ontario. My room is perfectly sanitary, neat and colour coordinated. TV is on playing hockey: Leafs vs. Boston.

Outside a snow storm is dumping flakes on the roads; a thick white blanket grows thicker and thicker on the parked cars in the parking lot. From the dark sky, the flakes fall through the streelights like sawdust. It's snowing so hard that I can only see the glow of the Gas Rite, Harvey's, 2001 Audio Video, and KFC. I'm in strip mall territory with no neighbourhoods in sight, no kids making snow men.

I went for a walk and heard the flakes tapping on my jacket hood, felt the thick snow creep up over my shoes. My rental PT Cruiser is out there somewhere buried, stuck. I'm wondering how I will get out tomorrow morning.

I take the elevator back up to my room 711; there is a family wrapped in towels. They had been in the hot tub and pool, smelling of chlorine and wet hair. I pass the coke machine, the ice machine. Swipe my card and come back in.

These hotels are so anonymous - you have to write it down to remember any of it.

4:47 on the way home from the country

Driving home back to the city after a weekend in the countryside, the sun is low and golden in the west, lighting up the glassy skin on the bare tree branches from the ice storm the night before. At 4:47, the sun is in just the right position, at the perfect angle to catch the stubs of yellow hay stems poking up through the snow. I can hardly keep my eye on the road. To the east, the old wooden barns and grey roads leading off to somewhere, the snow and ground and sky all but five colours. The lights in the homes come on. The temperature is dropping. As I get closer and closer to the city, I feel its pull. Soon it will be: more lignts, more concrete, more people, less sky, less long flat fields... empty empty empty.