THE BOG IN WINTER, WHAT A JOY TO WAKE UP TO.........

This Christmas Day blog is dedicated to Hanne, Mike and Carrie Smith from our bogland neighborhood, here in Gravenhurst, who were amongst the pioneers of the Calydor Subdivision back in the 1970's, and who insisted on re-building their homestead, after it was destroyed by a fire several years ago......because being associated with this beautiful Muskoka neighborhood was life enhancing, as it had been for so many years of their residency here. And when we very nearly lost it, a number of years back, when Gravenhurst Council starting selling off the properties of which we entrusted to their stewardship, there were a number of folks, even in our neighborhood, that couldn’t have cared-less if it had been compromised. These are folks who head to work in the morning, come home for dinner, go out in the evening, come home again, and seldom if ever notice the deer huddled within a canopy of snow-laden evergreen, or wish to waste time looking at the owl perched on a pine bough, the woodpecker tapping for dinner on an old pine trunk, or give a second notice to the moose poop on the path to the communal mail box. Well, the Smith’s would have missed this place greatly, as would have many other families, who have lodged contently next to The Bog for decades, like the Burns family, who also worked with us to save the property, from indiscriminate urban sprawl, and steaming tarmac proposed upon a small but significant wetland.

When we arrived home on Christmas Eve, and found a note from the Smith family, with pictures of the wonderful wildlife that has, most recently, visited their Parkette, at their beautifully replicated home, Suzanne and I were overwhelmed by the kind words extended us, regarding the preservation of The Bog. On that fight we were also joined by members of many other concerned town neighborhoods, as chagrined about the loss of open space, a filtering wetland, and the many species of wildlife which have called this place home for generations, as we were, and it showed beyond doubt, that the apparent failed stewardship, by the town, was not going the distance without a tooth and nail fight from the rank and file citizenry. What’s so darn pleasing, is that it is still talked about, not just amongst neighbors on Segwun Boulevard, but throughout town, when I meet up with folks in local grocery stores and while mainstreeting. I also close our conversations with the advisory that sooner or later they’ll try it again......or to compromise some other natural place that serves us well, to suit their fiscal objectives. I’m sorry to say this, but after The Bog debacle I could never fully trust a council again, to be the stewards they should be......and I remind them, that the shock and awe they felt before, when they stomped on citizen rights, can and will return when required, to defend our resources from compromise and the covetous grasps of profit taking.

The Smith’s reminded me of a little story I have, of my friend David Brown, who was one of the finest outdoor education teachers in Canada......a man I was privileged to know so well, and trusted, that he asked me to pen his biography. What he didn’t tell be was that he was suffering a fatal illness at the time, and I was going to have to finish the book alone. I did. But I never doubted he was watching over my shoulder all the while. It’s not a long story but an important reminder of apathy we suffer from in this world, this country, and particularly in the school system, where there is not enough emphasis placed on outdoor education with on-site instruction about the relevance of conservation...... as a foundation of life, not just as a pleasant backdrop for the wedding photographer and landscape artist.

When I began searching for good graphics to accompany Dave’s biography, a book largely for the Hamilton area where his outdoor education centre was legendary for former students, there was one image I had to use that had been taken by a photographer with the Hamilton Spectator some years earlier. It was a picture of Dave walking down a hillside, near the Botanical Gardens property in Hamilton, with a troop of youngsters following behind. I enlisted the help of artist /colleague Jim Thompson, (who retired to a cottage in Bracebridge) to create a painting of Dave from the essence of the Spectator photograph. It was perfect for the back cover, an inspiring way to remember Dave after reading the text.

Dave was a big man but he was a soft touch let me tell you. He had a compelling method of teaching, that involved every kid all of the time. There was no such thing as a standoffish kid on his watch. He was patient and adjusted so well to each youngster, whether they were scholars or daydreamers....Dave had a story for each one that put them on a personal relationship with their surroundings.

Andrew and I went with Dave to a special arts program, for the Hamilton students, at Skeleton Lake’s Camp Kwasind, and travelled with him and his entourage, through the woodlands of the property. At intervals, he would ask the students to stop and sit on a rock or fallen log for a few moments, to enjoy the surroundings. He’d ask them to listen to the environment around them, and try to identify the sounds and what was making them. For the first half hour, the observations were pretty vague and they couldn’t really get much past waves hitting the rock shore or the sound of a motor boat, a canoe paddle or the wind rustling the leaves overhead. Good but still muted! It got a little better before we got back to the camp but still they were identifying larger and more intrusive noise-makers ranging from planes to cars bumping down a nearby dirt road.

I was writing an article for the local press, on the nature / arts camp, and I had a good interview with Dave about the students somewhat dulled senses. He said that all the students would be more comfortable, and more alert to the sounds of the forest over the next several days of the camp experience, as the walks would continue twice daily. What he pointed out to us, was that it always takes this long for inner-city kids, particularly, to sensitize to the new reality. Instead of dealing with the daily din of jack-hammers, construction, destruction, four lane traffic, horns, jets and sirens, having to identify that a chickadee was singing, or a squirrel chattering, wasn’t quite in their range. They were instead looking for the hefty noise contributors that they were familiar with at home. By the end of their stay, they were able to identify the sounds of bugs, some rustling under the ferns and old leaf cover. They could identify a squirrel’s scolding from a chipmunk’s plaintive call to a partner. They heard the woodpecker, and could identify when a fish jumped from the water even if they couldn’t see the spot it had occurred. They could see and experience the minute aspects of nature they couldn’t on the first few outings. When they arrived at camp, it’s not that they didn’t understand nature, or know its place in the grand scheme, because of what they had learned in the classroom. Yet many hadn’t enjoyed the immersion with this wild place that is the cradle of all life. They were desensitized and programmed to an urban way of living their lives.....without having the freedom my sons have enjoyed throughout their lives living across from our wetland. Dave by the way, had been doing this same thing with summer camps near Dorset for decades, as an outdoor instructor by land and canoe. Thousands upon thousands of youngsters became enlightened, and familiar with Dave Brown, as the painting reveals.....following the leader down the forest paths of Ontario.

Dave’s outdoor education classroom was one of the finest anywhere in the world, largely made up of articles and creatures he had rescued, found preserved in many other forms, and natural species for show and tell that to many kids were nothing short of magic and enchanting.....and yet it was nature that amazed them. Dave was the conduit. The guide. The teacher. Nature did the rest.

When the clowns who thought they could govern us, at Queen’s Park, back in the former Tory government, of the 90's, decided to make some education cutbacks, Dave’s outdoor education days were over. He was sent back to a run of the mill classroom and it wasn’t long before nature came calling. While the cause of Dave’s failing was a disorder of the blood, I never believed for a moment, it had been the true cause of death. Any one who knew Dave from this finale recognized how devastated he was, to have been pulled out of that wonderful classroom he had taken decades to outfit. It broke his heart not to be able to take those kids on the nature hikes through the woodlands. While he volunteered when and how he could, even after taking his retirement well ahead of schedule, and guided hikes as before, it just wasn’t the same, and I felt very much as if he had given up on a life’s work of enrichment.

Dave Brown used to take our family on hikes through The Bog, when he lodged with us on hiatus weekends, when he was returning from canoeing adventures in Algonquin and Haliburton. He meant a lot to my boys, Andrew and Robert, who had enjoyed intensive outdoor education from this talented, insightful man, who knew the species responsible for every poop in the forest, bear, deer, moose, wolf, coyote, racoon or pooch.....each paw print, hole whacked in a dead tree, and as for flora and fauna, he was an expert.....who lived to share his knowledge. Yet for all Dave’s passion for nature, he was by all means an historian and realist about the environment. He knew development would have to claim land, and some of it wetlands like ours. He loved trees but he felled them as part time income in Hamilton. He wasn’t an environmental zealot but he knew all about good planning and sensible proportion. He was afterall, a gent who had spent most of his life in the city, except for teaching jags in the north each summer. Dave wasn’t at all against progress but rather against poor planning and damaging sprawl that was threatening us all, in the long run.

Dave and I talked well into the nights, here at Birch Hollow, sitting out on the verandah, sipping wine, and celebrating the day’s project.....from hunting old books in local antique shops or meeting up with his outdoor cronies for more story swapping. It was this scene, looking out over The Bog, and watching the deer amble by, the occasional bear popping-up through the evergreens, and the owls hooting from the shadows, that reminded all of us about the real life values that enhance each day, if we truly, without reservation, allow them to influence us.......just as it influenced those city kids at Camp Kwasind, who eventually found a myriad of life forms where, days earlier, to them, there had been nothing but city echoes......and Thoreau, that famous writer / camper at Walden Pond, who found nature so enthralling and important, that his literary compositions and observations continue to inspire after hundreds of years.

Shortly after Dave’s death, I was invited to speak at a resort planning seminar, for a new Muskoka development. While I was asked to speak on matters of local history, I was never very good at following instructions. For Christ’s sake, I got kicked out of Cubs, because I challenged the pack leader on several points of protocol. No kidding. I was shown the door. My parents weren’t surprised. I was a born agitator and political pain in the arse! So when I found my talk had made it in, under the budget of time I was allowed, I told them the “Dave Brown Story,” I’ve just now presented to you. And I wondered if these corporate executives, planners, engineers, investors, and bean counters etc., would like to come on a nature hike with me, some time, through the property they were planning to obliterate for profit. I wondered aloud to them, if they, under the same constraints as the urban-desensitized students of Hamilton, would be able to hear the wee sounds of life within, and clearly identify a scraping sound of beetle inching through the leaf cover, from the foraging of a rustling mouse or chipmunk.....the sound of a tiny cataract of a nearby stream from the gentle brushing together of cat-tails along the lakeshore. I suppose I did add the editorial, regardless of their answer, that possibly this desensitized way of living, is why we have so much careless destruction of nature these days......the people so willing to sacrifice our resources never took that all important walk in the woods, with an instructor like the good Mr. Brown,...... because if they had, well, stewardship would always trump profit, as being in the best interest of all our lives on this planet.....not just those who measure the successes of life by profit and the luxuries it affords.

I won’t say I was given the bum’s rush but I never got invited to speak to the group again. They didn’t seem eager to take those expensive shoes down a dirt trail, or be pestered by the kind of bandy-legged wee beasties that call our forests home. Did they pay any attention? Did Gravenhurst Council get the message about The Bog? We hope so but only time will tell.

The great shortfall in the education system of this region, this province, and nation, is the outdoor education deficiency in time and money invested. Not enough! We have urban stressed and desensitized kids in our rural communities.....youngsters who have never had the opportunities to amble along country paths, through bog and woodland, as I did growing up in the same town(s). A lot of those accessible open spaces are gone now, (even in small communities) and most have to be accessed by car and responsive parental interest. So here we have it, that not only is there a problem getting city kids to appreciate the intricacies of nature.....we’ve got country kids in the same circumstances, and this is troubling. It was long appreciated that country kids were wiser because of their immersion in ruraldom. That has been a dramatic change as urban stresses are reaching further and further into the hinterland each decade.

When these desensitized students become the planners, developers, architects and teachers in the future, will that shortfall affect their ability to protect and conserve our natural resources? I fear this shortfall of education and insight more than anything else.

Thanks again to the Smith family, for reminding me about those friends of nature, who still abound in this grand world of ours, and appreciate nature as an integral part of our lives, not a casual, fleeting consideration, like when forced to stop a car for a passing moose, or a family of ducks inconveniencing your schedule.

Thanks Dave for helping the Curries experience our surroundings, and love our place within!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years.