Getting Grounded Spacearm

Getting grounded can be tough. The job is even harder when a ton of weight lets go. There is a tendency to stay afloat.
In the third week of April, Ward and I lifted off the ground. We travelled to visit family (hence the long time between my musings and postings). We left in a blizzard and flew to the east coast where grass was already green. There was garden planting, shore walks to Peggy’s Cove and chowder by an inlet lined with colourful houses and boats by the docks. Then we flew to Toronto. We strolled amongst the fluffy pink and white cherry blossoms of the Japanese Somei-Yoshino Cherry Trees in High Park. (quite the opposite of fluffy white snowflakes). The cherry blossoms represent the renewal, strength and delicateness of life. The citizens of Tokyo donated the trees in 1959 as a thank you to Toronto for helping to relocate Japanese people after the Second World War.
Then on Music Monday, May 6th, we left Toronto. We found ourselves rising above Billy Bishop airport at the exact hour that 600,000 school children from across Canada sang Is Somebody Singing with astronaut Chris Hadfield live from the space station. On the plane I mouthed the words along with them, enjoying the moment of communal voice as I headed home.
Now Hadfield too is back home, but he has a much bigger adjustment than we pilgrims have as we try to shed the skin of winter. He has the loss of real weightlessness to deal with. Returning to an atmosphere with gravity, he even struggles with the weight of his lips and tongue. But that hasn’t stopped him from making great comments. I smiled when he said that he took as much pride in building a dock with his buddy as he did in working with the Canadarm!
While building docks is a common Victoria Day weekend project, I enjoyed a more leisurely way of spending the holiday. May 2four always has been one of my favourite times of year. You can hear a collective sigh across the country as people make preparations for the long weekend. Folks acknowledge the urge to seek the outdoors. Tents and bicycles and RVs find life. Marshmallows or a beer by a campfire, staring at a sunset or catching a fine fish power the pedals to a getaway spot. Ahhhh Canada, spring is upon us.
On the sunny Saturday afternoon, before the soggy Sunday and Monday mornings when thunder bellowed in this new season and rain drummed on the roof ( bravo to all tenters that survived the downpours), I took a few hours to walk the beach at Agawa Bay. Lake Superior Park had opened its gates for another camping season. Some hikers were rambling through the park’s interior trails but I had chosen to stick to the shore. Along the way I spied some of last year’s earthstars. These intriguing life forms, about the size of the end of your thumb, are related to the puffball or “stomach” family of fungi. The old earthstars resemble curled up flowers or opened stars. When early peoples saw them, they mythed that earthstars were the remains of stars from the heavens.
Theose I spotted had grown under the pines at the top of the beach last year. They have a fascinating life cycle. In June, the young earthstars’ onion shaped sacs are filled with spores. Three layers of skin or peridium allow the earthstars to do an amazing feat. When it rains, two layers of the skin split and uncurl to form arms which make a star shape. The arms raise the sac higher up in the air and it gets ready to release the spores. Sometimes the arms lift the plant so high that they force the earthstar off the ground and away from the root of the parent body. Even they have troubles staying grounded.
I held the brittle, curled earthstar in my hand for a moment and then continued on. The lake was a mirror with just a few wrinkles teasing up the surface. There were no bugs and the warm sand was perfect for barefoot walking. The winter fell off my feet as toes squished between tiny shimmering quartz pebbles. I took in all the driftwood sculptures and listened to the orchestral whispers from the lake. The beach sighed. It was fresh from the weight of winter. The promise of summer had never really left.
The walk showed me something. Getting grounded isn't so hard after all. It can be as simple as getting beached.

A manual would be handy

     A manual would be handy. Or a binder with glossy photos. How about an App? There must be some way of figuring out what’s going on with the weather. It still feels like a fridge outside.    

In the middle of this cold wet spring we had to get close and personal with the other type of fridge – the real one that keeps milk and veggies fresh. We had to buy a new one, even though a shiny barbeque is a more seasonal purchase. However, it might be a while before we can spend sunny days cooking outside.      

We’re still waiting for the snow to leave the grass. And winter boots still are permanent attachments on our feet. Even Lake Superior is trying to work it out.  Low water levels are teasing the imagination as well as the dock builders. Where has all the water gone? There’s more and more exposed beach and boulders. I can walk on sand that is supposed to be under water and sit on rock that is more used to the weight of waves. Ice, quite reluctant to let go, still grasps part of the shoreline. The inland lakes are buried under white sheets, waiting for the big melt, as are the eager fishermen. However, patience will win out. The melt will come. Ice has left most of the rivers. The Sand and Agawa Rivers are swollen with frothy currents that will join with those of the lake. The lake currents are of a different variety again. Those on Lake Superior follow a predictable path, one that boatmen and scientists have been charting for decades and decades. Their maps show surface waters running in a counter clockwise direction.      

The currents make a slow arc up from Whitefish Bay and pick up speed as they approach the far north shore. The fastest surface currents, sometimes reaching speeds of 60 cm a second, are in the middle of the lake and flow towards the nose of the wolf-head shaped lake. At the same time as we watch our spring melt, there is another flow, much further away, to keep an eye on. The circulation of the water in the distant Atlantic Ocean can shape the weather outside our own doors. When warm surface water, such as the Gulfstream, travels as a current from the equator, it becomes cooler and denser. The current then acts as a conveyor belt, transporting the warm surface water toward the Poles and then returning to the Equator with cold, deep water. But excessive amounts of freshwater dumped into the North Atlantic from melting could alter the density of the seawater.      

The pooling and release of glacial meltwater, the sudden collapse of an ice shelf or the lubrication of a glacier's base through repeated melting could slow down the flow of the North Atlantic Ocean current. Some scientists think that it would take about two centuries for freshwater runoff to bring the North Atlantic conveyor belt to a standstill.     

Another theory floating around concerns the lack of sunspot activity. The sun’s influence on the earth’s climate can be measured by looking at previous data. Comparing these observations gives an interesting picture. Through the use of hindcasting (using information from past events), it is possible to see how carbon build-up in tree rings coincides with expanding and receding glaciers and sunspot activity.    

 In other words, fewer sunspots mean less tree growth and less ice melting. Could this be why we are so cold right now? Did the conveyor belt of warm air take an early dive? Did it head back south after it hit the cold end of the pool? Is the sun’s retreat from activity cooling off the earth? We will have to wait for future hindcasts to know those answers. Forecasters aren’t infallible. They have theories but no absolute truths. There is no perfect manual for the weather.     

But our fridge manual did offer some comedic relief from the cold. As we read over the “how tos”, we came to a section that gave us both a laugh. The manual writers must have had a hilarious time putting those notes together. They described in great detail all the noises that one can expect from a fridge. Pulsating, whirring, popping, rattling, banging and hissing are part of the repertoire, as are creaking, cracking, buzzing, gurgling and sizzling.      

The best was Ker-plunk!     

That’s probably what some folks feel like doing right now. And that’s ok. Not to worry. The manual says that’s a normal part of the operation.    

 

April Eiffel Drip Drop

True to the old expression, the beginning of April has been quite the joke. And trying to determine what’s real has been somewhat of a test. Are you beginning to feel like we’ve been fooled?

Wind and cold tricksters might laugh at spring, but there are other places we can find a smile. The two cuddly panda bears that arrived in Canada to live, and hopefully raise a family for 10 years, may give some people the warm fuzzies. Chewing on bamboo in China one day, landing in a Canadian zoo the next - those bears must be wondering if someone played a trick on them.

Aside from April Fool’s jokes, it really is difficult to believe some of what the world is telling us these days. I read a story about Xeroxed cities that I thought must be a joke. However the remarkable stories are true. Architects and builders in China are creating copies of American and European towns and cities complete with exact replicas of monuments and buildings. Places like Hangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing have neighbourhoods resembling those in Venice, Paris or London. The mind boggling projects also include a 108 m Eiffel tower, about 200 m shorter than the original.

There’s a British Town Dorchester, a mini version of Barcelona and a complete rendition of the Unesco World Heritage village of Hallstatt, Austria. And by 2019 in Tianjin, Northern China, on the site of a 15^th century fishing village, a re-created Manhattan, with Rockefeller and Lincoln centres standing in front of  a Hudson River, will become one of the largest financial complexes in the world. Whew. The story had me at the Eiffel tower replica.

Such architectural plagiarism makes me wonder about our outdoor environments even more. True, rivers and lakes can be created, but I don’t think Lake Superior is within man’s copy and paste menu. And it has to be almost impossible to clone a natural forest.

The Algoma forests, while not endowed with the huge heights of the Eiffel, do have pines and maples that tower. These past few weeks we’ve been enjoying the forest more than usual as we are making maple syrup. The maple trees grow away from the shore of the lake, higher up along the ridges in the hills. This year’s exceptional amount of snow pack makes the 15 minute trek along the trails a good dose of medicine! Our own sap gets moving before we gather what the trees offer. The best time to head up is early morning when the trail is hard packed. The shadowed stroll around the twists and turns of the lower trail is a meander on a frozen white boardwalk. Climb the hills into the sunshine and sparkles off the snow are a field of fairy dust. Get to the top and the work begins.

We tapped a few trees on March 9 in eager anticipation, checking each tree for last year’s hole and choosing a new spot to drill. (The rough heavy bark can make previous wounds almost invisible.) I thanked each tree along the way. We attached the metal pail to the spile and the first clear sweet drops slipped out of the tree.  Maybe Spring will be here soon we thought. Huh! Winter said “No!” The taps froze and so did all that sweetness in the bottom of buckets. Chopping frozen sap became a new experience.

But sunshine prevailed and a couple of warm days gave us what we were waiting for - a day in the sugar bush to cook up some syrup. We lit the fire and gathered sap. The deep magnetic blue of Lake Superior shone through the trees and waves swooshed on a cobble beach down in the distance.

The trails from tree to tree became soft and snowshoes made mush out of the hardpack. Without snowshoes, feet and legs would have ended up knee-to-thigh deep in a sudden hole beside a sloshed pail. With care, it didn’t take long to bring the silvery liquid to the fire.

Boiling down sap to syrup is a beautiful alchemy. Steam rises from the cooking pots. Woodpeckers rat-a-tat their echoes through the bush. Warm sun heals a cold face. And the rhythm of sap droplets into buckets reveals the heartbeat from awakening trees.

By late afternoon we have a couple of litres of syrup to carry down the hill. The sun is lowering into the west. The trail is soft; our legs are tired. But we are wearing a smile.

And even though April might be the fool’s month, this is no fool’s gold. For a day in the sugar bush is the real thing indeed.

Metric Stones

           

Could there be something in the water? Some local folks have done it again. Sault Ste Marie once more is on the map.             
Sault Ste. Marie’s Team Jacobs, with Skip Brad Jacobs, Third Ryan Fry, Second E.J. Harnden, Lead Ryan Harnden, Fifth Matt Dumontelle and Coach Tom Coulterman caught the attention of the curling world.
     Their recent win at the 2013 Brier gives them the privilege to don Team Canada jerseys and represent Canada at the World Men’s Curling Championship under the arena lights of Victoria B.C. 
     At the end of March Jacobs will be calling the shots against teams from China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Japan, Norway, Russia, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.S.A. But the beating hearts of the local lads resonate with the hum from this fair land.
     People might have seen NO on the backs of the jerseys the team wore at the Brier but Brad and the boys proved that they really meant YES. 
     There’s a universal appeal to our Northern Ontario. Even though our first day of spring looked like the first day of winter there is a magic to Lake Superior country that strengthens the spirit and resolve of everyone who manages to live here. A day in the Algoma outdoors can give a huge dose of muscle medicine. I experienced the wonders of our region as I skied along the beach the other day.
     The skies were that deep bright blue from Lake Superior’s palette mixture of clear skies, wide open water and freezing temperatures. It was hard not to stare.
     The day just before the first day of spring the snow conditions were perfect. The cold temperatures eliminated any stickiness factor and the trail to the end of the beach was packed to perfection. To the west, a glistening fresh water sea touched the shore with long easy rollers. To the east, erosion resisting roots of giant pines held back the banks of the beach. A few seagulls squawked by and an eagle flew north towards the Montreal River - looking for a fish no doubt.
     I stopped in my trail several times to look around and take in the sunshine. Even the cold wind was losing its grip under the spell of the mid March sun. There haven’t been too many winters when it has been possible to ski the beach like this. Usually the boards under my feet scrape against the various sizes of granite boulders.
     This latest Brier win made me think about the buried granite rocks. Couldn’t they be used for curling stones? I called up the Canada Curling Stone Company in Komoka, Ontario (outside London) for some answers. Company spokesperson Kimberley Tuck let me know that the granite in curling rocks is special, so special, that a mountain in Wales is the only source on which they can depend. The quarry outside the tiny village of Trefor in North Wales has an exclusive contract with Canada Curling Stone Co. A long way from original curling rocks, flat bottomed stones from Scottish rivers that 16th century Scots sent flying over frozen ponds. And even further from the ones we once used at school --- cement embedded in cut off bleach bottles.
     Trefor granite comes in shades of blue/gray and red/brown and has a large grain structure which makes it resist cracking. When I asked if Canadian i.e. Lake Superior granite was suitable, Tuck told me that our granite is “not strong enough” and “can’t withstand the pounding”.
     I could relate, having seen how Superior’s pounding waves can break up boulders all along the shore.             
     Curling teams now have premier rocks and along with them, premier brooms. Those who sweep, especially during this winter of non-stop removal of snow from sidewalk or deck, know that an efficient broom is worth its weight in bronze, silver and gold medals. Today curlers use brushes instead of brooms. Fabric, hog hair or horse hair heads have replaced noisy, original, debris laden corn. And the handles are fibreglass or carbon fiber. Thus players can sweep faster and apply more force.
     In spite of all the modern developments, the game itself is still about the heart of sportsmanship. Jacobs is well aware of this. He won the Hec Gervais MVP award at the Brier for that very reason. The focused strong mind and the happy healthy body sweep a clear path to the goal.
     So here’s a workout song for our men with brooms - Synthetica, a tune by the Canadian group Metric. The crisp, gutsy voice of Emily Haines powers lyrics that reflect the urgent need to remain authentic and stay true to form.
     Good luck Team Jacobs from the shores of Lake Superior.
     The water might not have something in it for you, but the rocks sure do.

a good long nap

Shh. They’re still asleep.

At least that’s what they tell me. Hibernating bears are getting a good long nap this year. Nestled snug in their dens an adult bear can sleep in peace until the sun warms up their den, or the cubs wake her up. 

While sleeping through the winter might be attractive for some right now, the black bears of Algoma have been at it since the leaves fell from the trees. But during the cold months we tend to forget about the bears. I thought about them the other day as I photographed ice covered beach boulders. Some of them resembled slumbering bears. They reminded me that elsewhere there other piles of ice and snow which are hiding a bear - or three. 

Thinking about our slumbering friends sent me on a Google search. I found Peter Tyson’s December 2000 Bear Essentials of Hibernation on a Nova/PBS website. The site gave a lot of good information as pertinent today as it was a thousand years ago. Bruins prepare for over-wintering by gorging themselves on a carbohydrate-rich diet of berries and other foods. (BTW, according to these stats, for every person killed by a bear, 60 die from domestic dog attacks, 180 by beestings and 350 by lightning strikes.)

During this period, they can gain as much as 15 kg per week. In early autumn, a bear (and its cubs, if any) will rake leaves, twigs, and other plant materials into the den to form a nest. As the fall progresses, the bears get slower and slower until they get the message to quit moving altogether. At this point the bear begins a cocoon life in its burrow, cave, hollowed-out tree, or rock crevice. The entrance to the den is just large enough for the bear to squeeze through; interior chambers are a metre or two wide and almost a metre high. Our furry friend has to roll into one very tight ball to fit the space. 

In the early fall, the heart of a hibernating bear beats about 40 to 50 times a minute for most of each night. By December, when the bear is deep in hibernation, the heart rate can slow to as few as eight beats a minute. Fat breaks down to supply water and up to 4,000 calories a day; muscle and organ tissues break down to supply protein. Then they can restore that muscle and organ tissue, take nitrogen out of urea and build more new protein. Plus they don’t get cramps or suffer degenerative bone loss while they are rolled up for months at a time!

 Researchers would love to know their secrets. Folks can’t resist trying to find out how they manage to survive. Bears hold such mysteries. On the website, bear expert Lynn Rodgers recalls his encounter with a sleeping black bear: “On January 8, 1972, I tried to hear the heartbeat of a soundly sleeping five-year-old female by pressing my ear against her chest. I could hear nothing. Either the heart was beating so weakly that I could not hear it, or it was beating so slowly I didn't recognize it. After about two minutes, though, I suddenly heard a strong, rapid heartbeat. The bear was waking up. Within a few seconds she lifted her head as I tried to squeeze backward through the den entrance. Outside, I could still hear the heartbeat, which I timed (after checking to make sure it wasnt my own) at approximately 175 beats per minute.”

This confluence of beauty, terror and cuddliness of the bear flows through our culture. We fear bears and at the same time we adore them. Folks used to make pets of them, chaining them to a post when they got too big to handle and then taking pictures of them. Probably the most famous bear, ever, has been Winnie the Pooh. Most of us are familiar with the notoriety Winnie gave the town of White River. This is where the WW1 soldier Harry Colebourn bought the young cub in August of 1914 when his troop train stopped at that CPR town. The $20 bear cub became the darling of the London England zoo and the muse that filled A.A.Milne’s pen.

I’ve always had a pet theory about Winnie. I’d like to share it with you now. I think that his real name is Winnie Depew, named after Winnipeg Street in White River and the Depew trapper that sold the young cub to Colebourn. Check maps of the White River area and you will find the Depew River and maybe Depew junction. The family was famous in the area, probably more famous than anybody knows.

But for now I’ll not worry about names of bears or whereabouts of the hibernating ones. I’ll just dream about them in their cosy dens and let sleeping bears lie.

Spring into SnowShoe Meteor

I know. You can’t wait for spring. Enough is enough.

But hold on. Things are getting interesting. Those huge piles of snow are our harvests from the storms. I bet there are snow bank aficionados out there who are becoming attached to the monoliths in their yard and driveways. It’s like having a couple of giant stone lions guarding the entrance. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone hasn’t started the snow bank Facebook site!

                Another thing this looong winter world has provided is a multitude of photo ops. The lucky countries where winter makes white coverlets on everything have some amazing eye candy for the camera. In fact, Russian photographer Marart Ahmetvaleev got the shot of his lifetime during a morning foray to capture frosty landscapes. At 9:20 am on Feb.15 he snapped an unbelievable view of the meteor that fell to earth near Chelyabinsk Russia. His image of the 17 metre wide and seven to ten thousand ton space rock shows a brilliant white ball against a backdrop of skinny sentinel trees by a white field. I found the pic in the archives of the Astronomy Picture of the Day on skynews.ca.

                About every hundred years earth is supposed to feel the impact of such a meteor. This century Adele’s Oscar winning song, Skyfall, is the perfect background music to the event. And how fortunate that the meteor avoided hitting any other sky craft. The fact there was no collision in the atmosphere is miraculous actually when you look at how many planes are in the sky each day.

                Recently I had the opportunity to get an idea of how many planes are dancing through our skies. A friend alerted us to a website called flightradar24.com. The site is a live flight tracker and one can see all the planes that are flying over any region in the world. Find the map of the area that holds your interest. Wait a few seconds and planes soon will appear on that map. Tap on a plane and all the info comes up, including flight number, origin and destination. If I hear the roar of a jet overhead or see the white plume streak the sky or even find the plane itself outlined against the deep reflected blue of Lake Superior I have the option to check the site. I no longer have to wonder who might be looking down at the lake. I can discover that it could be a flight from Shanghai to Toronto or from London to Los Angeles. It’s fun to look up and have some idea about the folks in the plane looking down at Superior.

                The maps on the site can be quite comical. Zoom out and it looks like all of the States and most of Europe are covered in flights. Some of the maps resemble bee hives covered in flying critters. The site has confirmed what I already suspected. A lot of people spend a lot of time going to a lot of places. That’s what many folks must do to escape the thick of winter. Hopping on a flight to southern climes is a quick release from snow banks and shovelling. The sunny south

calls so pack the bags with bathing suit and sandals and hit the beach.

                But for those who can’t do Cuba or the Caymans, or those who are back from Cuba or the Caymans and wish to return to a land of ‘dos cerveza por favor’, there is a cool alternative. The winter beaches of Lake Superior pack a full load of sunshine that is hard to beat. The other day I grabbed my snowshoes and headed out to capture some vitamin D. Sunshine was so bright that sunglasses were mandatory. Sparkles of reflected light were scattered diamonds on top of the brilliant snow. 

                 Snowshoeing was floating through stars. A thin skin of ice on the lake wheezed up and down, slow breaths from resting water. February warmth fell from the sky and slid right into my bones.

                If a beach is too far, find a sit spot close to the river. If the river is too far find a sunny window or a south facing shelter. Feel the strength of the returning heat. You can be in any sunny world your imagination lets you. And that same sun IS coming back.

Time to breathe

               What’s going on? Are things still speeding up? Is fast the norm? We know that some fast things are part of our culture. Within the food industry, ordering the Friday night pizza can be a staple and the quick breakfast sandwich jumpstarts many a person’s day.

               Some super-fast machines are never fast enough. Each year snowmobiles and race cars strive to beat the previous year’s records. And the speed of the internet, with its constant streaming of information, is astounding.

               Every once in a while, just for fun, I check the speed test on my computer. Friend and computer guru Marco knows what those numbers mean and has told me that a download speed of 4.03 Mbps and an upload speed of 2.78 Mbps are amazing for where we are located. Our old internet system, which I thought was miraculous, seems obsolete. If we had been humming along with dial-up, we never would have seen a thousand ice fishing cabins on the frozen Saguenay River at the same time as we heard a news story about it on the radio. But it’s not full speed ahead yet.

               I still remember some old slow tricks that really do work. Like snail mail. I like to send real letters. I’ll write a little note, attach the stamp, turn the letter over in my hands for a second, then slip it into the mail slot and wish the note bon voyage. Overseas or over province, in a few days someone else gets to hold the same letter in their hands. No way can the internet deliver that kind of personal touch.
               Appreciating slow has helped as I watch the lake trying to freeze. With the steady round of east winds, it has been fairly calm on this part of Lake Superior shoreline. I keep looking at the wrinkles on the water, expecting them to solidify with the next breath of freezing east wind. The best view is in the evening, when the pink orange glow from the setting sun reflects off the almost ice glassy surface. On the horizon huge ice humps resemble islands and for a brief moment the sun trail appears as a road to another kingdom.
               But there is ice formation which can be startlingly fast. And that is the build – up of ice banks. If the wind is powerful enough to push rolling ice cakes onto shore, they can pile up on each other, creating icicle - laden arches, cliffs and caves. This year there are some smallish ice banks on the shore. The lake has been slow to make the gigantic transformation.
               Moving towards a slower modus operandi can be quite challenging. If you’re eager to get out of the fast lane, there’s a rather interesting, tongue - in - cheek website called the International Institute of Not Doing Much. Some of their advice for going slow is obvious but it’s a fun read anyway.
Drink a cup of tea, put your feet up and stare idly out of the
window. (They even sell the mug - with their logo of course.) Do one thing at a time. (Is this even possible?) Do not be pushed into
answering questions.

               A response is not the same as an answer. Ponder, take your time. (I like that one.)Yawn often. Medical studies have shown that yawning may be good for you. Read slow stories. Spend more time in the bathtub. Practice doing nothing. (They admit that this is the difficult one.) And avoid too much seriousness. Laugh, because you're only on planet earth for a limited time.

Chris Hadfield, the Canadian commander of the International Space
Station, knows about this one. He spends quite a bit of time smiling, looking out his window... and singing. He and Ed Robertson of Bare Naked Ladies fame have just recorded a song together. Hadfield, in space, grabbed a floating guitar pick and strummed along with Robertson and a choir, on earth. Their song, ISS, stands for Is Someone Singing?, and maybe too for International Space Station. The opening lyrics speak of a strange dichotomy. First they describe incredible speed.
               Eighteen thousand miles an hour, fueled by science and solar power. The oceans racing past. At half a thousand tons, Ninety minutes moon to sun, A bullet can’t go half this fast.
Yet the long gaze out the window reflects a hunger for the slow.
Look out my window, there goes home. Fast or slow, tortoise or hare, how can we know which way to be? And do we need the answer right now? But if you’re asking me, I’m going to need some time to think about it.