buckshot lake

Last weekend we drove up to Buckshot Lake to spend some time at the cottage. Every time someone asks where the cottage is, my only answer is "somewhere in the middle of nowhere." The nearest "big" city is Perth, and that's an hour away. The nearest town is Plevna, a village that nobody has ever heard of before. It's the perfect place to have a cottage.

path to nowhere

wild turkeys on the side of the road

the cottage

going canoeing...trying to take photos at the same time

swimmin'

nice little walk along the shoreline

all that playing in the water leaves us tired

this puzzle kept us up half the night

playing croquet
My favourite part of the weekend was a little furry friend who I named Theo. This chipmunk was a big fan of my partner.

It was like a magical scene out of a Disney movie.

welcome to shady acres...deal with the consequences.

spent part of the long weekend at eccles' cottage at Stony Lake. the cottage, Shady Acres, seems like a surreal magical setting straight out of Doctor Snuggles, which is a TV reference i didn't know about until this weekend because i was not born in the seventies (more on this later).

the folks that hang out there tend to be slightly older than me, so Shady Acres is frozen in a time period or a lifetime that i *just* missed. Batman cartoons and Doctor Snuggles, four track recorders, cassette tape players blasting Sonic Youth/Tool/My Bloody Valentine/Pearl Jam.

time stands still at Shady Acres - we used to hide the clocks and watches too, and as a result weird things happen. what i mean is, basically some of us were playing badminton in shorts while others were building snowmen in the yard. i waded in the lake past the ice floes and sunbathed on the dock. April is an odd month.

how i learned to love patsy cline (even more)

i spent the weekend at a friend’s cottage on Pike Lake, near Perth. see, i don’t have my own cottage, so i’m that jerk that mooches off her friends in exchange for….my awesome company. this weekend it was a gathering of some of my best friends from high school, with whom we’ve managed to stay in touch over the years. it’s always a great time, as you can only have after over ten years of putting up with each other.

we like to pretend that we’ve stayed the same and nothing’s changed, which is partly true and partly false. it’s kind of hard to ignore the fact that EVERYONE at the cottage was now either a med student, a law student, or a pharmacy student. we also can’t stay up all night anymore and take more naps because we get tired. on the other hand, we are all still the same selves deep down inside, fun loving, silly, bafflingly unmarried, alarmingly nerdy and with the maturity of a thirteen year old when immersed in water (or beer).

this time we all seemed to bring our instruments so with a total of four guitars and two banjos at the cottage we got some great jamming in all weekend.

rob and i took a drive into perth on Saturday because he was craving roadside chip wagon poutine, and i suddenly had this moment. i was sitting at the picnic table waiting for the dude to finish up with the gravy. the highway road was nearly abandoned and everything was calm and still, with no sounds but a quiet staticky radio playing Johnny Cash. off to the side there was a flea market going on with folks selling crafts and fruits but there were no customers just then, just a big sign that said FLEE MARKT.

everything was so serene, and i was suddenly struck with this feeling, “so this is the country.” all of a sudden i understood all those country western songs about lovin’ Texas and wanting to go back home to the simple life at the farm. all this time i’ve only seen the bad side, seeing “country life” as synonymous with redneck ignorance or stubborn racism, which is still very true in many parts. all the horrible racist attitudes, and jim crowe atrocities that happened deep south was a result of southern white folks not knowing how to cope with this forced change in their simple lifestyle and paradigm, and so reacting with hostility to this abrupt interruption. but i suppose if you somehow overcome the obstacle of the fact that you will not be immersed in the diversity of humanity (or any kind of crowd at all really) but need to be open-minded anyway, there is much to be learned from just sitting back and enjoying the quiet slow pace. it was almost a Buddhist zen-like moment of peace, and for the first time in my life i saw the attraction of buying a house way out in the sticks.

i probably won’t do that. but maybe i’ll be the first asian to buy a cottage. maybe. or maybe i'll just keep showing up at yours.

o canada

i was lost in the lakes
and the shapes that your body makes

the mountains said i could find you here
they whispered the snow and the leaves in my ear
i traced my finger along your trails
your body was the map, i was lost in it

floating over your rocky spine
the glaciers made you, and now you're mine

i was moving across your frozen veneer
the sky was dark but you were clear
could you feel my footsteps
and would you shatter, would you shatter, would you

and with your soft fingers between my claws
like purity against resolve
i could tell, then and there, that we were formed from the clay
and came from the rocks for the earth to display

they told me to be careful up there
where the wind blows a venomous rage through your hair
they told me to be careful up there
where the wind rages through your hair
-Great Lake Swimmers

i’m looking forward to heading out for Alan’s cottage at Pike Lake this weekend. old friends from high school, plus rob and i are packing a plethora of country instruments in the car (instead of a cooler…this is probably not as smart as we think). it’s going to be a guaranteed good time.

long weekend at shady acres

my long weekend at Shady Acres was one of those things that have made my summer simply amazing. of course, to get there, i had to take a car, a plane, a bus and a subway and a streetcar to get into Toronto from Northern Ontario, and then a subway, a train, a bus, and a car to get to Stony Lake where the cottage was, so i was essentially on the road from 7AM to 9PM. but sometimes these things need to get done.



the cottage was located at Stony Lake, very close to Peterborough.

it was my good friend Steve Eccles' 32nd birthday that weekend, so he decided to celebrate it in style - by inviting some thirty of his closest friends to indulge in a three-day long party. it was a pretty crazy time, and even though i didn't know a lot of the people there, you get to know people pretty quickly when you spend three nights in close cramped sweaty communal quarters with the same folks, patiently waiting for the outhouse, sneakily stealing their mustard, going on canoe trips with them, crawling into a bed with them because that's the only spot left, not showering....



saturday night i made the discovery that sleeping arrangements were rather like a grown up version of Musical Chairs. the last one to pass out will inevitably run out of places to sleep (especially when there are some thirty people there). i tried sharing the sofa bed with two other people, but that was uncomfortable on several levels, so i in my brilliance decided that it would be a good plan to go sleep outside in the hammock and watch the sun rise. the outdoors was infinitely more spacious than squeezing three in a bed, and so much more quieter, so it was a pretty incredible "night" (i didn't actually sleep, and it was dawn). however, i soon learned that sleeping in a hammock really messes your back up, so i learned my lesson and slept the next night in a proper bedroom, listening to corey snore.



i was impressed at how well other people were eating. they were cooking pasta sauces, pepper salads, baked sugared apples, and baked potatoes. i on the other hand, ate three gross sausages and two awesome bowls of ramen noodles the entire weekend. oh, and a lot of breakfast beer. it was not my healthiest moments, but my manservant Carlos was playing hooky and i had no one to cook for me.



this was the coolest polish guy at the cottage. i have empirically determined that he is far cooler than Paul or Luke.

lesson learned: if you want to avoid bug bites, hang around people who are more prone to bug bites than you. then the bugs will go to them instead of you. i love jeanette.



many nights were spent, sitting on this dock, staring up at the clear night sky of stars, playing banjo while trying to sing HTC songs. it was pretty friggin' sweet.

concert on the clyde photos!

because i was stupid and forgot my camera, these are my favourite photos from meg's camera.



that's meg in the middle, rudely cutting me out of the frame.



this is me and karen, holding up the sky and saving us all from the rain.



what i love about ottawa is the fact that we have a pretty sweet country roots music scene. young people are genuinely into country and bluegrass, the real stuff, not those silly indie kids that claim they like country because they like Johnny Cash, or claim they can play the banjo and then end up playing the banjo like a guitar because they've never even heard of the term "clawhammer" and couldn't tell you who Charlie Pride is. and the concert on the clyde is a pretty good reflection of the pretty awesome ottawa music scene.



and as is evidenced by the beer that is in my hand as i swim, i had pretty awesome time.