AS I AGE

I'm ancient, there's no way around it. My body aches all over, and my eyesight is dimming. My hiking and paddling days are over....but I still have my memory, a bit hazy at moments, but still there, allowing me to revisit places I've been, and places I've seen. Memories, so important.

Days, sometimes long, are passed doodling memories, much like being there making a sketch, and reliving moments long gone. No better way to pass the time than to let your mind wander, and paddle up a channel on a northern lake that you promised you'd revisit one day, but never had the time. 

It's meditation of a sort, doodling. There's no pressure to get it right, just push the pencil here and there, scribble a line, and make it come alive....if only in your mind. 

MAY 2023

May 24, 2023: After what seemed a long winter we decided to spend a few days up at the Blue Spruce Resort located at Dwight, Ontario on the shore of Oxtongue Lake, which is 10 -15 minutes away from Algonquin Provincial Park. May is usually on the cusp of Black Fly and the mosquito season. We were lucky, during our stay we encounter neither, however, it proved to be bit cool, and we did most of exploring from the warmth of the car.

The Blue Spruce Resort, actually a resort only in name as there are few amenities, and no dining facilities. One has to haul all of your food, as well as decent drinking water from home, but this said we've been going up there using it as a base to explore Algonquin for several decades. Recently, the resort was sold from its original owners, and changes are expected, leaving us to wonder if, since we were getting a bit long in the tooth, whether this might be our last year. It's now, as I write 2024, also at the end of a long winter, and we've all but decided that this year may well be our last. It's the end of an era. Good times, and lots of memories. The park has also changed from easy going to regulated, but newcomers will never realize any change and will create, as we did, memories of near wilderness adventures.

For this year we'll head up there in the late summer and try to make a number of sketches, contemporary in nature. I use the term contemporary as, frankly, I'm quite tired of realism, and as I'm now aged and don't have a long future I wish to explore a bit. So stay tuned and check in from time to time and see what I'm up to......