We had our little bit of rain, it was so wonderful. The weather report says 100% chance of rain today… we will believe it when we see it!
The long, long heat wave has finally let up, it was hot from mid-June until mid-August, usually above 30C during the day, and above 20C at night. Now the temperatures are below normal, going down to as low as 13C at night. The contrast is striking. For us it is welcome.
We took a run out to the Camp yesterday. We had not been out there for just over three months. The heat kept us away, as well as the drought. Our Camp is bush, on the Canadian Shield. It is not a manicured property, other than the small cleared area where we hang out. There is a lot of dead wood on the property, in varying degrees of decay, which is a wonderful environment for wildlife. Unfortunately it is also a tinder box were there to be a fire, and I don’t fancy our chances of getting out of there in a timely manner if a fire started.
It is so dry at the Camp that our swamp is bone dry, no moisture left in it at all.
The municipality where we have our Camp is very strict about fires, and all summer there has been a complete fire ban. Fire permits are required for any burning at all, including camp fires. We have our fire permit and are careful to meet all the requirements for safety. For putting out a campfire we use a rain barrel, filled from the roof of Winnie the outhouse. This barrel is usually full, and it not only serves to douse our campfires, it provides a water source for passing wildlife, in particular deer.
The fire ban on campfires lifted this week. If we want to have a campfire we must call and register the event with the municipality, which is quick and easy to do. I did not call until after we arrived at the Camp, as I wanted to ascertain that the rain barrel was full, so that we would have plenty of water to douse the fire, and plenty of water were an issue to arise.
I am good at starting camp fires. I use three to four sheets of newspaper and a match to start a fire. When there is regular rainfall, it takes careful construction to put together a camp fire that will burn with just three sheets of newspaper and a match. This visit the hot dry summer meant that the wood was very dry, so that the fire started with very little effort. This meant of course, that the fire required extra careful tending. I forwent burning whole dead trees, keeping the fuel in short pieces.
There was a lot of dead wood lying about, branches, a few dead trees that fell. We cleared most of it, leaving the felled trees that were not in the way to deal with on a future visit.
Attila and I are anachronisms.
We both cherish the experiences we had as children, and the lifestyles of our Grandparents. Our Grandparents were born in the late 1800s and early 1900s, into large families in rural communities. Their values were different than the values held by most people alive now, and their communities were also very different. Attila and I both drift toward toward them in our values, and in the way we live. The communities we once valued and enjoyed have succumbed to consumerism and individualism; they no longer exist, but for the memories a few of us hold.
Romantic fictions about our Grandparent’s era and people abound, but in those fictions there is no depth of understanding, no cake, only icing, empty calories.
So there we are at our Camp, sitting in our shabby, worn work clothes, tending a camp fire fuelled by deadwood, toasting our sandwiches, eating our home canned garden coleslaw, enjoying the leaves rustling in the breeze, the clouds drifting by in the sky, and the relative silence.
We are anachronisms there in the little bubble of our property, surrounded by trees and rocks and swamps and wildlife. All around our little bubble are seasonal cottages four times the size of our home Mist Cottage, lakefront boathouses with boats worth more than our home, and vehicles worth more than our home. Our little bubble sits quietly unnoticed.
Sometimes I look at the trees, the rocks, the wildlife, and I feel sad that the next owners here will likely bulldoze much of it down to build a monster mansion.
But for now it all simply exists.
Thank you universe.
Worldly
Weather
20°C
Date: 10:00 AM EDT Thursday 28 August 2025
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.6 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 20.1°C
Dew point: 15.3°C
Humidity: 74%
Wind: SSW 28 gusts 37 km/h
Humidex: 24
Visibility: 24 km
Quote
“Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.”
John Kenneth Galbraith
1908 – 2006
Hands down my favourite economist!! I wish I had met him!
Nice to see a childhood photo of you! Some of my earliest photos are in grayscale, too. I hope the beauty of your camp ground won’t ever be destroyed.
Joan, there aren’t many photos from those days, all black and white. Photographs were expensive to have developed in those days. My Mom, Aunties, and Granny took some cherished pictures of us. I am glad to have this one, taken by my Mom before we moved to the farm.
I hope that for the Camp as well Joan, we will care for it as long as we are able.
Maggie, how can you be an anachronism when you have all this computer and internet knowledge that most our age do not? No, you span the ages, but an anachronism you and Attila are not, I think. Like DH and I, I think you folks prefer the simple life. We plod along doing okay with what we have and being happy for having it.
Our fire ban was lifted last week. After a week of off and on rain, the lawns here are green again. Now, we’ll have a mostly sunny week coming up with highs in the low to mid teens. We’ve actually had low temps of 5 and 6C!
My first photos are black and white, too. But before I was a year old my mom had invested in a color camera.
Ha! I was just thinking about my first pictures with that color camera. My mom won a beautiful baby contest with a pic with me, and I realized then that you and I both had pale blonde hair at that age, but my hair was shoulder length.
Teri, well I can’t really argue with your point about the computer and internet knowledge, it is a good point. We live simply by choice, as you do, rather than by necessity. And a lot of our contact with the outside world is based on internet technology, although we are very careful to curate that experience. Like you and DH, we are happy. to have what we have. There is joy in simplicity.
So glad your fire ban was lifted, and that you have received enough rain to turn the landscape green. 5C is pretty chilly, our night time lows have not dipped below 10C, yet.
Most of my childhood photos are black and white, they were much cheaper to process. My uncle bought a polaroid camera at one point, so we have a few colour pictures from my teen years. I am thinking of posting some of them. My favourite photographs are the ones in the photo album my Granny created for her first granddaughters, my sister and I. I don’t know if she continued doing that as the number of grandchildren grew, I’d like to think she did. I look at some of those photos now, and realize I am the only person in the photograph who is still alive. The past tugs at my heart.
I was very blond when young, as were most of my siblings. My sister and I had short hair, my Mom cut it using a bowl on our heads. I remember the first visit to a hairdresser, my sister and I were given Pixie Cuts. Quite the event at the time.
Oh, I remember the bowl cuts of my childhood! I have 3 pics of such a cut, modified by me when I tried to cut my bangs shorter with a pair of scissors. My mom actually took me to a photographer for pics of my self-haircut. Those pics always make me smile, as I was so proud of myself.
I’m sorry you’re missing your family. I haven’t had any close family since 1998, so I know that kind of ache well. *hugs*
Teri, that would have been super cute, the self-haircut. Your Mom must have had a lovely sense of humour.
*hugs* to you too Teri, we are privileged to have such ordinary wonderful times to remember. One of the appeals of the past, for me, is that it is known, a solid bedrock in the chaos of the modern world. My wish is that all children could have that solid start in life.
Not to diminish anyone else’s mom, but I’ve always seen my mom as the best mom in the world. She was 35 when she died of leukemia. We only had a few weeks warning. I’d just turned 11.
We used to go out to dinner together, everything from pizza while playing songs on a tableside juke box to Chinese food at a restaurant with a little bridge over a koi pond to a nice dinner at a downtown restaurant, where we had grand marnier souffles with flaming sugar cubes. That was the fanciest time. But we did things like seeing the Ice Capades and watching the Royal Lipizzaners and going to fall fairs. Kid shows, but so special.
Teri, what beautiful memories with your Mom!
So terrible to lose her when you were both so very young, what a tremendous loss. {{HUGS}}