I’m Here
On the Road in the Thousand Islands
It’s been a hectic summer. My wife Katherine and I have bicycled the hills of Vancouver Island and the Okanagan Valley. We’ve buzzed through Toronto twice, visited the grandchildren in Ottawa, spent some time at our rental “shack on the lac” in the Laurentians (Life Sentences, Aug. 9 2024), dodged countless construction zones in Montreal, drowned our car in northern Ontario, and now we’ve washed up at Katherine’s family cottage in the Thousand Islands. We will pass the rest of August here in, I hope, a more relaxed mode.
All to say, I’m putting my feet up, offering an abbreviated post this week. As the pictures suggest, the river is a place for that sort of thing. Although I can’t help but note that looming in the mist, just across the tranquil St. Lawrence, is the American shore, a reminder of the angst that consumes us, we Canadians, as much as it does our neighbours. But let’s save that for another day.
I do feel I should catch readers up on last week’s post. A couple of people have asked about the fate of our Subaru, which, as I described, took an unexpected dunking in a creek. Alas, the Subaru is no more. We’ll be shopping for a new car next month.
Someone suggested if the car was lost, I should offer a eulogy. It’s tempting. The Subaru took us to many destinations before it gave up the ghost, and I called it plucky for that. But it never had a ghost to give up. Nor does the AI called Claude, the detective I brought in to explain how iPhone Maps screwed up.
That was part of my point. We’d anthropomorphize a broken shoelace if circumstances were right. It’s our nature, I suppose. We reach out to find a reflection of what is already within us. That’s not a bad thing. It’s a good one. For all our follies it’s part of what gives us a ghost to give up or keep.
Now back to a Muskoka chair on the deck, a beer, and the river
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Summer always goes by to fast. Enjoy what’s left of it :)
Enjoy the peace!!