Ahh spring

We had May weather in April, so now we are having April weather in May. That is me in the snowy stern of the green canoe last weekend enjoying a three day paddle with canoe club friends in Algonquin Park. My new 42 pound Souris River canoe made portaging blissfully easy in comparison to every other canoe I have ever carrier. More photos here.

Apathy & Eco-douchebaggery

There is an article in the May 2010 issue of Explore magazine by J.B. Mackinnon (he wrote the 100 Mile Diet with his wife Alisa Smith) in which he credits the phrase eco-douchebag to conservation scientist Jennifer Jaquet and her Guilty Planet blog where she features an image of a warning sign in a Whole Foods supermarket: "Dear Customer: Please be advised that our Bread Slicer is used for both Organic and Conventional items." What would compel a store to post such a sign? An eco-douchbag agitator and a foolish acquiescence to said sorry sack.

The article ends with: The greatest enemy of change is apathy, and at the heart of apathy Stanley Cohen found denial: "Our need to be innocent of a troubling recognition." Our small and imperfect efforts are constant reminders that there are patterns to break, whole stories to rewrite, and while they are never enough, no, never enough, a little practice surely won't hurt.

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Spring on the Magnetawan

Friends from the Waterloo Wellington Canoe Club came up to the cottage for some canoeing. Kevin is an excellent canoeist and made my job in the bow easy, notwithstanding the canoe full of water that resulted on Sunday when I pulled us off line.

Winter in Killarney

The first week of March delivered fantastic winter camping conditions -- I spent four nights alone in the interior of Killarney Provincial Park. It was the first use of my new pulk a (sled connected with poles to a waist harness).

I had intended to follow the La Cloche Silhouette trail but as you can see in the photo, there wasn't a lot of snow, especially on sun exposed sections. I essentially followed a canoe route around a couple lakes and did a couple day hikes. The weather was fantastic! One afternoon I came back from a walk up to Silver Peak and sat on the rock in the background of the photo in bare feet for over half an hour.

2011 Columbia River

The route and schedule has been released for the 2011 Voyageur Brigade down the Columbia River. This event will be similar to the David Thompson Brigade of 2008 where there will be lots of community celebrations of the fur trade and we will paddle 25 foot canoes.

Play nice

This photo sequence is not from a zoo or staged or photoshopped. The three fully fed young cheetahs were photographed for 15 minutes as they licked and petted the baby impala before it rejoined the herd. Of course on some other day it will be a different story ending.

Invasive earthworms

I have been catching up on some reading this week. An article in Scientific American (March 2009) might be interesting to those who fish or garden. The article's author has a copy at:
www.michaeltennesen.com/pdfs/sciam_worms_tennesen.pdf

Essentially it explains that after the last ice age the forests around the Great Lakes developed without earthworms. And now that people are moving earthworms around as fish bait, in vehicle mud and in compost it has been discovered that certain non-native worms (such as the "night crawler") eat up the dead leafs which are needed for new trees to grow. The article says, "As a result, some northern hardwood forests that once had a lush understory now have but a single species of native herb and virtually no tree seedlings."

Needless to say, it is impossible to eradicate worms so if you fish with worms, you now need to know if the species is foreign or native, or at the very least, don't let any escape. The article also points out that the idea of a community compost sounded like a good idea but now it is just a highly effective way to disperse the problematic critters.
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What Matters- free book

Seth Godin is promoting a new book with a free book It is a series of large font, one page comments from a long list of interesting people such as Kevin Kelly (Wired magazine co-founder), Hugh MacLeod author of Ignore Everybody, Acumen Fund founder Jacqueline Novogratz who I have mentioned before and lots more.

Justin's first book

Justin Fabian has released his first book. Justin's website showcases his incredible high resolution landscape prints. His first book is currently available directly from the publisher or in the Waterloo area it is already at Adventure Guide and will be available through retail channels such as Chapters by early in the new year.

Travel decision

There are a lot of countries in the world that sound interesting to visit. Norway and Japan are two that have been on my list for a long time. But every now and then I read that Norway and Japan continue to hunt whales. If you have seen the movie The Cove, you will also learn more about Japan's hunt of bottlenose dolphins. Those that aren't sold for 5-6 figures to commercial aquariums are herded around the corner and killed. The meat is toxic so it tends to be mis-labeled and then sold as whale meat. Lovely.