Journey To The Center  

I haven’t posted anything on this blog since a year ago today. Much of the reason had to do with difficulties with my web host. Too long a story to get into, but suffice to say that I became quite discouraged and gave up trying to post anything for many months. However, the problem is somewhat resolved now, so perhaps I’ll get back to blogging again. I keep saying that I’ll try to write more often, but this time, perhaps I will.

My last post was on the seventh anniversary of Don’s death. Today is the eighth anniversary. I’m writing this post from about the last place that I expected to be on this date. When Don died, I closed up the house and left to travel west and then south for the winter. When I returned in the spring, I sold our farm and departed the area for good — or so I had hoped. I bought the house in Round Hill in 2010 and fixed it up enough to live in most of the year round – and have been there from then until now. Unfortunately, as has happened so many times in my life that I’ve pretty much lost count, life has thrown another curve ball, so I’m back here in eastern Ontario for awhile. Truly, it is about the last place on earth that I want to be, especially on this particular anniversary, but so it goes.

In putting together this post, I decided to use some older photos scanned from prints. Most of the photos are of Don with some of our dogs – Tara, Sheena, Maggie, and Sabrina. The two collies in the above photo are Tara and Sheena. We loved them very much, but lost both of them within the space of 60 days to a very aggressive cancer — the veterinary oncologist here in Ottawa had never seen such a thing happen. Our hearts were very much broken.

The above photo is of a little bantam chicken that became Don’s special pal. Chikchik used to march up to the house and perch on Don’s arm any time he was sitting in his favourite shady spot.

After our first two dogs – a husky named Kaila, and a border collie named Tippy – all the rest of our dogs have been Rough Collies. The tricolour in the above photo was Maggie. She was a wonderful dog. She loved going out in the canoe with us. That’s her in the top photo of Don turning to look at her while we were out in our canoe one autumn.

We always liked to have a young dog to raise with our older dog because we found that the older dog passed on a lot of its wisdom. That’s Sabrina as a puppy, with Maggie the Elder Dog. Sabrina was the last of the collies to know Don. Sage and Shelby came later. Sabrina died in 2013.

So, well, what to say? I guess I’ll be around eastern Ontario for awhile this autumn and perhaps winter. I find it very painful to be here, but I’m going to try to make the best of things by getting out hiking around to places that I know as well (or perhaps better) than the back of my hand. Don and I hiked over so many trails time after time that there are trees and plants that were like old friends to us.

I didn’t really mean for this blog post to come off as melancholy, but I guess that’s probably how it sounds. Well, you know how it is with me. I’m not a big fan of doing the fake happy thing. Just chalk this particular blog post up to feeling stressed and kind of weirded out to be hanging out in a part of the world that I’ve been avoiding like Superman avoids kryptonite. Being stuck in suburbia adds an extra level of hell to the whole experience. However, I seem to be reasonably okay for now (but check back with me in two or three weeks). Of course, it could all be made wonderful if my old hiking and paddling partner showed up to walk some trails and ply the waters of a few lakes and rivers. Unfortunately, that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon. But, you know, I haven’t found a hiking partner or canoe buddy in Nova Scotia either, so what the hell. Lately, I’ve been thinking maybe it’s time to replace the canoe with a solo kayak.