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Posted on episode 191

The Brink

A couple weeks ago I stood at the edge of a cliff, half way up a mountain, looking west across a smoky haze shrouding the setting sun as it cast an eerie pall upon the landscape.

As the summer forecast creeps into higher and higher temperatures, the meteorologists are predicting that we’re entering another span of unseasonably hot temperatures for the third time in two months.

Smoke and heat. The world is burning, literally and figuratively.

And just yesterday the United Nations released another climate report, ringing the warning bell yet again to a mostly indifferent world, politicians with their heads locked into timespans of election cycles, not generational catastrophe.

In fact the little man who calls himself the leader of our province stood on a podium in front of the media yesterday and called the effort to adapt our energy habits to a changing climate that is literally killing us “a utopian impossibility.” Hardly a rousing, inspirational speech as much as a shrug and a “why bother even trying” approach. I have many reasons not to vote for his party, but the doubling down on the very thing that is destroying us has cemented my resolve.

I don’t like to get political here, but my dream of a fantastic vaccinated summer camping, cooking, and exploring has been trampled by air filled with so much smoke that it’s dangerous to go outside, temperatures so hot that my head pounds after a few minutes of exertion, and a head-in-the-sand, anti-vax ignorance that has stumbled us all into what should have been a completely avoidable approaching fourth wave of pandemic.

And now the understated conclusion from the UN report of our headlong rush into climate disaster and destruction of our fragile ecosphere tells me little more than that the rest of my life will be much of the same, if not worse, and as we hand things off to my daughter’s generation… well, let’s just say that the looming sense of nihilism I’ve been feeling over the last day has been justifiably gripping.

Travel broadens the mind and enriches the soul, and in travelling we learn that we are but small, temporary beings that have but a passing moment in a vast and complex society that is itself but a speck in an infinitely more complex universe.

We are mere passengers for a brief time on a world that neither needs us nor will adapt itself to us, and we are shaping that world for ourselves in a way that seemingly leaves us unable to survive in the singular place in that whole complex universe that will abide us.

Warm weather is nice. And yes, the smoke offers a unique opportunity for hazy romantic photos of the glowing red sky from atop a mountain hike. Yet, I would trade it all in the blink of an eye for a little bit more hope in our future.

Posted on episode 190

Hobbling and Hurting

Sunday Runday, and it’s been a couple weeks since I sat down to write a post. It is a summer break for me, after all, and I’ve been out on the road, in the mountains, on the lake, and … as the topic of this post will soon reveal, running through the wilderness.

In fact, a few interesting things have happened in my running career since last I checked in. In particular, I may have spent some money on race registrations. In person race registrations.

The BIG one I’ll save for another post.

The little BIG one ties back to this morning’s Sunday running adventure that was had, all resulting from a spontaneous decision to sign up for a local (quasi) ultramarathon and the opportunity to do some practicing for that.

And again, in fact, I wrote in passing about my intention to do just that a few months back when I wrote about a nature sanctuary we had visited west of the city.

The River’s Edge Ultramarathon is an honest-to-goodness ultra marathon race through challenging terrain hosted on a large chunk of private land at the edge of the North Saskatchewan river. (Adult) distances range from a short 12km sampler run to a full 100km solo looping race of insanity.

Last weekend I signed up for the half marathon “koda” distance, twenty-one klicks through rolling riverside terrain (and even some wet crossing to a small island, I understand).

As the race host prepares the course and readies for the event, he invites some interested locals (ie. us) out to the start line to help clear trails, trial the trails, or just run the course. So, Sunday Runday and seven of my crew found themselves driving thirty minutes west of the city to spend three hours in the wilderness for one of the permitted practice runs on the “homestead” loop.

Across a little more than three hours, we pushed through nineteen klicks of grinding hills, mucky soft peat, cliff-side crags, cow pastures, grassy stretches, ambling over barbed wire fences, and stumbling down rope-supported descents.

On top of the regular running pain, the wasps had taken over the landscape. I didn’t count but I would confidently say there were well over two or three hundred nests along the length of the trail, and I was stung at least twice… which was about average for me and my fellow participants. Ultra-style trail running with a hot, burning, muscle-spasm of wasp-sting pain in your calf is nothing to shrug off.

In about six weeks we’ll be back out there for the real race, trudging through similar loops on a (hopefully) cool September day, and my in person race career will have seemingly resumed with a challenge I wouldn’t have expected to take on again so soon.

Posted on episode 189

Casting Call

Our recent camping trip north of the city opened the door for a few good opportunities to toss a line into the lake. I brought along my new fishing rod, rigged it up for the ready, and leaned it against an out of the way tree in case the mood or moment struck.

The shadow silhouette of a fisherman.

Our campsite was a sixty-second walk to the shoreline, and on a good choice of visit I often found empty a small wooden dock protruded five meters out into the murky lake water.

On a less-good choice of visit I found the dock occupied and myself instead needing to trudge through the spongy layer of grasses and mosses growing from the loamy sand to find a spot clear enough to edge up to the waterside to be able to cast out without tangling my line in the vegetation.

Conversation Starter

It also turns out that a fishing rod is something of a lakeside invitation to chat.

Strolling to the shore, invariably someone would comment on the potential for a catch. “How’s it looking?” someone would call out. “It might be a little hot for them out there right now.” Someone else would add, noting the 30C heat still lingering from the day.

And “Any luck?” not just someone but everyone would ask as I strolled back to camp empty-handed after an hour of tossing my lure into the water.

As it turns out the most inviting pose a guy can take (by far) when visiting the lake is to sit by oneself at the end of a narrow dock, dangling one’s feet over the end, holding a fishing rod with a line threading outward into the water. This must project some magnetic signal to other campers inviting them to wander up, sit down and chat.

I found myself playing host to all manner of random characters telling me their tales as I sat holding court with my fishing rod patiently dangling outwards.

Catchless?

At the end maybe the weather was too hot or I was too impatient or perhaps my small collection of lures was not in agreement with the fish swimming through the murky lake water that weekend.

I didn’t catch so much more than a few clumps of weedy grass.

I did however catch a moment of peace, and a few curious stories.

Posted on episode 188

Picture Perfect

The nice thing about scaling back on my posting commitments for a couple months is that I’ve been able to comb through the site I’ve built this past year and tweak what’s here, refine how it’s displayed or add completely new things.

An orange hazy sun sets over a river.

Most of this is “under the hood” so to speak, but regular readers may notice a few minor changes I’ve made to castironguy.ca over the last week or so.

One of the big things is photo galleries.

I hastily added a photo gallery plugin at the end of June as a means to do some light updates to the site in between my sporadic summer posting schedule. If you haven’t seen that I’ve been updating a Summer 2021 gallery of random photos a few times per week.

I’ve been fascinated by online photo sharing for a long time now. Fascinated? Well, intrigued and captured by the potential of sharing a medium that I love in a fluid and barrier-free way, I guess would be the better explanation.

For years, in fact, I maintained an online gallery that had thousands of photos grouped into hundreds of albums, ranging the gamut from kid-pics to be shared with the family, all the way through to a kind of semi-professional portfolio of my better, high quality images. The effort got dated, of course, content and software-wise. It was lightly hacked. I took it down, archived it and never tried to replace it.

I did replace it with social media, I guess. Over the last couple years I’ve been active on Instagram sharing photos to various curated accounts, one private for people I know IRL and a couple public themed accounts for everyone else. Yet, social media has lately become something of a tangled mess of paywalls and advertising and fake content and frustrations, so I’ve leaned away from that and other platforms in recent months and chosen to put more effort into private website content like this site.

So having added that gallery plugin I’ve been getting some photos into it, deciding how I want it to look and act, and posting some updated collections. It makes me excited to have a place to post more photos again. Stay tuned.