Family in Snowstom - The Story - January 15, 2011

A short time ago the picture on the left was entered into a photo contest for the Bruce Trail. It was short-listed as one of the top ten picks but it did not make the final cut. It will end up in the winter issue of the magazine, but not on the front cover. I am not a photographer by trade but I am quite excited. It proved an extra bonus to a good hike.

The selection of the picture was, an a way, a catalyst for writing this blog. I had been wanting to begin one for almost a year but kept putting it off. However, when the picture was selected I decided that the story behind it was worth sharing. Thus the blog and this is the story.

We're Canadian. Canada experiences winter in different ways. Southern Ontario has been known to experience largely snow-free winters but not a maritime climate. Arctic Canada knows several different words for snow and likely a number for cold that include some highly creative hyperbole. However, no one really ever gets to escape snow altogether unless they migrate to Florida.

By the time we are 10 we have a pretty good idea of what manner of hats or mitts or layers we will need to weather any given winter day. Our personal knowledge of slush will vary according to our latitude but we all tend to agree that it is lousy. Winter is a defining feature of being Canadian. One could even call it a unifying factor.

That said, it is a first for me to have been traveling in a van in which the children were complaining about each other blocking their view of the snowplow.

There are certain truths that go along with winter in southern Ontario. One of them is that there is a snow belt near Buffalo, one near Kingston and another in the Georgian Triangle, this being the land between Lake Ontario, Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay. The highway just south of Barrie through Innisfil is especially notorious.

Barrie itself has short on and off ramps which ever since I was little and visited my Great Aunt Grace off oro-line 10 has proved challenging to traffic, especially traffic that does not know about the short on and off ramps. It takes a bit of living in the Barrie area to actually figure this out. I mention it here as an aside for people new to the area or traveling through en route to cottage or wherever. There is a reason behind the Barrie Triangle and through traffic does best in the middle or far lanes.

These are Known Things. Therefore, when Donna called from Toronto on Friday and told me that an Alberta Clipper was supposed to hit the GTA I looked up the environment Canada website and noted that there were no warnings out and that the snowfall for Barrie was to be minimal. Donna informed me that she knew of which she spoke. The same thing had happened the weekend before and made the 401 somewhat tricky. Not unaware that Toronto had, in fact, been hit harder in general than we had all winter long I conceded to the argument that we might want to move the hike start time back from 9 to 10am. For a forecast of -3 and light snow in Hamilton, it seemed a bit wimpy to cancel altogether. After all, we're Canadian and we have the parkas to prove it.

You will note that the family in the picture is from Innisfil. We are from a small survey near Horseshoe Valley Ski Hill, Donna and her crowd hail from Ajax and Markham and the third family hiking is from Elmvale. None of us are local to Hamilton. We all had e-mail confirmation of a "go" on Saturday morning except the family from Elmvale, they being on a dial-up connection.

More of a concern than driving through the snow was how to make the trip worthwhile in the event that we did not hike far. We had an afternoon plan to go tobogganing. The Elmvale family had a date with their grandmother in Hamilton and my brother, from Dundas, was joining us for this hike.

This in itself is interesting. His children are 2 and 4 but his method of raising them is more by the book than mine and involves considerably more bubble-wrap. He grew up with me in a  family that drove to Montreal in snowstorms to visit our grandparents and, lately has been exploring life outside the bubble-wrap but this hike, which he did without the kids, was going to prove an education.

Our plow, as it turned out, gave us ample time to admire it since we picked it up on the 400 near Forbes Rd. and did not lose it until Dunlop Street in Barrie. The 10am start time was looking like pure genius and, indeed, we got to the Tim Hortons at Mohawk and Scenic Dr, just as the clock struck 10.

Tim Hortons was about getting coffee and also about getting our kids into their snowsuits. This is a key concept. If you are traveling in the winter remember that the car has a heater. So you don't want your kids perspiring and then being wet by the time they have to go outside. In the Tim Horton's we found the family from Innisfil suiting up THEIR kiddies, having already encountered my brother at the start point.

Fortified and equipped, we headed out to the foot of Scenic Dr. There we found Donna and the GTA crowd. There was no sign of the Elmvale family and the windchill was nasty. Accordingly, we headed into the woods and left the hopscotchers to their task of dropping a car down at Tiffany Falls (the 4.4k point). By the time my fingers warmed up, the cars had been dropped and the Elmvale family had joined us.

This sort of thing really warms my heart since I am not related to the other two families on this hike and yet we are, all three of us, clearly not bubble-wrap types. As an exercise in Educating the Brother one could not ask for anything better. We ended up packing the twins, with one stuffed into the front of my snowsuit and we ended up doing only the 4.4k but we did it with panache and we had fun.

To underscore the added thrill of the drive down, the trail passed over the 403 where we had a great view of the highway we had driven up and all the motorists who were clearly not enjoying the snow at all. We waved cheerfully at the motorists and on the other side of the overpass came to stairs of the same ilk as those on Hamilton Mountain. Layers of snowsuits make good padding for using the sides of these stairs as luge runs.

As a group we do not, as a rule, ascribe to the notion that one ought to blend in with nature. For one thing, if you dress your kid to blend in too much then you might lose it over an overhang on an overpass. For another, this is a well photographed project we're engaged in so we like to look good against the background. On this hike we had a lot of white and grey and the lacy green of balsam fir.

We had Astra, of Innisfil in her lovely wooly coat in bright hues of pink and orange and blue. It was striped. It was bold. We had Pam of Markham in a navy blue duffel coat and Donna did have white on her jacket but the purple detracted from it quite handily. We had Grant, one of the GTA, in  a bright red anorak

So when Grant stepped back a pace and slipped on the edge of the trail he was simply gorgeous as he turned caber-wise to land on a shoulder and his pack where he then slid 30cm's or so before he began to lose his posture. It was a truly lovely fall.

Other falls were not as artistic. I fell while carrying a twin,gauging the pitch on an incline and reaching for my camera and contemplating picture angles. My brother discovered that his niece is heavy on a particularly nasty incline above Tiffany Falls. I slid down a series of terraced stairs with Kolya on my lap. My son is firmly convinced that I will carry him out of the Apocalypse, should it arrive in his lifetime.

Hiking, as I have said, is not really high tech. Negotiating the path, this takes skill. Being ready and aware of local conditions, this also takes some intelligence. We called it quits at 4.4 k and went back to my father's house for lunch, bagpipes and afternoon tobogganing.

The toboggan hill off Old Ancaster Road is one I know from my youth. I learned how to steer a toboggan there and also everything I know about toboggan hill etiquette (yes, there is such a thing). Never walk up the slide. Always clear the slide as fast as possible, lighter kid up front and so on and so forth. This was my first visit back to it as an adult.

It came home to me, as it often does on these hikes, that the land does not really change. It also marks the soul. The pitch of the hill has not changed. The ravine to the left as you slide down has not changed. The hill is a small slice of permanence on a swiftly tilting planet (Madeline L'Engle). There were fewer people on the hill than I remember from the 1980's. I would like to think this was due to the weather but I have my doubts. There was a father there with a 5 year old kid and "build and snowman" on his agenda. He had to scrap this item due to a persistent lack of packing snow.

Land marks the soul. It was deeply satisfying to me to be out there with my children. It was satisfying to my brother and to me to see how the Chedoke Ski hill connects to Tiffany Falls. Walking the trail through Hamilton Ancaster, Dundas and Burlington is a bit like watching each and every step of a magic trick. Even after one knows how it is done the magic remains. The trail is stitched over an aggressively urban landscape and, as such, is a bit of a chimera.

That is the story behind the picture. The saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words and most probably are. However, if the words do not get resolved then the actual story gets lost. In some cases this may be a good thing but this particular picture is not generic. It is an integral part of a bigger story, the one which will keep on unraveling as we go.

My brother, for example, has peeled back a layer of bubble wrap. The mommy in the picture has taken up roller derby. You can read her blog at rollerderbyvirgin.com. The walk which began at Queenston Heights continues. It has a number if good stories in it already, a few thousand pictures, and good times to come.

The Thing About the Mill - June 19, 2010 - Niagara

Today we met the docents of the Morningstar Mill. There was some discussion as to whether we could park at the actual mill parking lot in order to hike. Apparently through-hikers do not, as a rule, tour the mill. It was clear that the interests of the mill and that of the hikers were at odds with each other.

We promised the advent of 6 children and parked the cars. A few hours later, after a discussion with a man on a bicycle at DeCew House, we came filing out of the woods with the promised gaggle of kiddies. We were over the tour like water on a wheel.

DeCew House proved to be a revelation. The man on the bike knew his history. We basked it in awhile, at the house ruins, imagining the sound of white canvas flapping on the lawns. DeCew House was the end-point of Laura Secord's journey to warn the Gen. Fitzgibbons about an American advance. The warning proved instrumental in helping win the battle of  Beaver Dams for the British. Interestingly, when I was in school learning my 1812 history Laura was sort of glossed over No one wanted to say even how old she had been which was frustrating to a girl looking for historical heroines. One had the sense that we were better off just to eat chocolate and not ask awkward questions. There were jokes made about the cow.

In actual fact, Larua was the mother of 6 children when she made her march. She went because her husband could not. She had already covered herself in glory by going and dragging his wounded body of the field at Queenston heights, probably then providing nursing that saved his life. He was still lame. She had to do it. She was 38 years old. The journey was 28kms long and to avoid American sentries she snuck through the swamps. There was no cow. There was a sister in the initial stages but the sister broke a nail and had to turn back. Laura was made of sterner stuff.

Local opinion concerning the Battle of Beaver Dams (June 24, 1913) was as follows: The Caughnawaga (natives) got the victory, the Mohawks got the plunder and Fitzgibbons got the credit." Lara was not mentioned. In fact, she was 85 years old before anyone admitted that she had saved the day.

Some of this we looked up when we got home, much of it was imparted by the man on the bike. This is one of those points where history really informs on human behaviour, where the people in charge get to set the tone. Lara was 85 years old before she got a grudging letter of thanks from the government. In 1982, in history class in the Hamilton-Wentworth school system, her role was still shrouded in chocolate.

Down at the mill the docents were mollified. We all looked at the machinery. We heard about the shipping of the millstones, being of a rock the escarpment does not provide, they came from France. We heard about a very modern ghost, that of an elderly man who went into a cave behind the falls in the 1990's and died there of a heart attack. All this we did and then we left a freewill donation as thanks. We draped ourselves over a picnic table and had lunch.

Why would one want to seperate the walking from the touring in Niagara? True, the land is older than the history that played out here but the history is vibrant. To a certain extent it was shaped by the land. Keys turned here that were vital to Canada's survival as a country. Brock made his plans. Laura Secord made her journey. Merritt powered his empire. A man went into a tunnel in a cliff and emerged as a ghost.

One aspect of the trail enriches the other, much like overlays on a composite map. The peninsula stitches itself onto the people who inhabit it and vice versa. There is push and there is shove. Each shapes the other.

Once I took a relative to Point Pele. She is from Poland and at the time was not much older than I am now. I was in my early 20's. The two of us walked a trail that pointed out how the farmland, which had been carefully tended by one family for generations, was being reclaimed by nature.

"Is it not wonderful?" I enthused.
She was thoughtful, as was her reply, "All that man's work is being undone," and her tone spoke of a sorrow in that fact.

Later I went to live in the urban landscape of Warsaw, where I  saw city married to greenspace, and I understood what she had been saying.In some cases it need not be a matter of nature battling mankind. Synergy can be attained. Symbiosis is a viable model. In fact, given the fate of most parasites, it is even desirable.

On the same day that we toured the mill, the trail took is to Short Hills Provincial Park. Here farmland abuts what was almost certainly also farmland and is now Crown land. The write-ups for Short Hills emphasize geology. They have nothing to say about cultural heritage. The use to which the land was put back in 1812 is not mentioned.

Do we do the land, or ourselves, a service in erasing the humans from its story?

There is a reason why the docents of Morningstar Mill are so protective. When the bottom fell out of the milling industrythe place fell to ruin. It decayed as elegantly as possible and at the 11th hour was noticed by a number of retired professionals on the cusp of Terminal Boredom. Thus was the mill lovingly restored, plank by plank, nail by nail, gear mechanism by gear mechanism.

Much passion went into the work. The end product is outstanding, as is the knowledge base of the people conducting The Tour. There is nothing superficial about Morningstar Mill. She's all dressed up and looking for love.

Yet, if we go by the reaction of the of the docent to our trespass on the parking lot it would seem that little attention is paid to the place by through-hikers. The hikers and the docents are on different pages of a linked story but neither is reading the entire text. In fact, the Bruce Trail guide accurately describes the trail but has very little to say about the history. Me, I would change that.

We, as a species, do not love things that are alien. Each hiker will inevitably build a private relationship with the trail. However, it is through shared stories and experiences that things endure. If the story of the mill can not catch the passion of the up and coming generation of the Terminally Bored then it will again fall to ruin. If the trail can not capture public pride, then it too must fade. It seems to me that the two causes, linked, provide a more compelling argument for preservation than one standing alone.

Thus does a natural wonder gain a human face and become familiar. We do not love that which is alien but we do love a good story. The escarpment, as it happens, is full of stories. Linked, kilometer by kilometer, just as the trail guide is linked, they prove to be wonderful indeed, worth knowing and worth keeping.

F.A.Q's or Things You Might Want to Know

Q. Why chose to spend a Saturday or two per month out hiking?
A. Well, aside from the personal considerations:

•  One's perception of life the universe and everything tend to slow down when hiking. It changes one's sense of scale and one's sense of place. If you feel you are moving too fast then there is nothing quite like hiking with kids to change this feeling radically. Plus, what with the sail's pace and everything, one tends to notice things. We've noticed raccoon prints, robin's eggs, hawks, herons, blue jays, a number of insects, including a very well camouflaged moth, fossils, dead cardinals (right across the road from the Organized Crime Winery) and the leg of a deer, not to mention live deer and, well, it is along list.If you happen to have a penchant for explaining things like geological processes and ecosystems  then hiking provides a beautiful outdoor classroom. 
• Hiking is inexpensive. Any equipment you need is likely either attached to your body or else lying around your house.  In some cases you may run into exorbitant user fees at various conservation areas. Note that these can often be avoided by parking your car elsewhere. In my opinion they also should be avoided because a $20 per diem user fee is crazy. There is no point in building multi-million dollar signs if everyone who might read them is holed up in the basement with a playstation.

Q. Why hike with kids?
A. We like kids.

•  Hiking is easy. Most people know how to walk. most have feet and shoes and that sort of thing so getting out and going for a walk that casually turns into a hike and sometimes into a really long hike, as in maybe you forget to read the trail re-route notices before setting out and 12k turns into 18... (just saying)
• The Outdoor Classroom is really fun. In addition to the flora and fauna and the rocks, there is also opportunity to address things like trip planning. Running out of water is no fun. Carrying everyone else's water is also no fun so you learn to carry a pack. You learn about layers. You learn about temperature variations over the course of a day. You learn that you really LOVE slooshies (freezies) and that a humidex of 38 is toothy. The same might be said about windchills.
• To have a connection with the  land one must, perforce, go out on the land. 
• There are a zillion places where hiking intersects with badge requirements for Scouts or Guides.
• Suppose you are out of shape, what with having had kids etc. etc. If you have a yen to get back into shape, slowly, then taking kids along is a great way to do it. This applies to many other sports such as roller blading, biking and skiing. No one, least of all the kids, is going to mind that you are not perfect at it and you'll get better as the kids get better. If one day they outstrip you and outshine you, well, then you'll still be able to call yourself competent and besides, no one said we all had to be perfect at everything. By doing things like this with children you build a bond and that comes in hand when children morph into tweens, teens and adults.

Q. Why the Bruce Trail?
A. The Bruce has a lot to recommend it.

1. It is a linear trail of over 850km linking Queeston Heights to Tobermory. It is divided into 9 sections. Each section has a badge. So, for each sectional end-to-end hike you complete you can apply for a badge. This gives a tangible record of progress. When the entire length has been hiked you can apply for an end-to-end number and a badge. For kids, and hey, for we adults too, this is very cool.
2. Since is very long you can see how far you have traveled on an Ontario road map and feel awed.
3. You can see the trail on satellite maps, much like the Great Wall of China, only without the deep historical connections.
4. That said, the Niagara Escarpment is a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. It is globally significant. It crosses at least 3 ecosystems and passes through the largest urban landscape in Canada.
5. It is the oldest and the longest footpath in Ontario.
6. The Bruce Trail Conservancy publishes an extremely good mapbook.
7. We're hiking with kids. Kids grow. This project might take 5-10 years and it'll be a thing that links those years with a sense of life well lived.

Q. So, if it is linear, how do you get back to your car?
A. The frequency of this question astonishes me. We coined a new term to explain. The term is: hopscotch the cars... Yup, simple really. On most sections there is parking or a road crossing every 5-10km's. So, if you have more than one car then you're set. You simply run both cars to the end or mid-point and then leave one there and come back with the other (s), depending on the size of your group. If you have only one car, well, I'll allow a bit of a problem there.

Q. Can you get lost on a linear trail?
A: Yes.

• There are side-trails that cross the Bruce. Also, there are the perils of chasing rainbows. The official trail blazes are white with a black background but occasionally you just get white ones. So, for example, let's say you have gone on ahead with the 3 year olds and the 7 year old and crossed over the 3rd Welland Canal and come to the 4th. Then you notice a ship in the bottom-most flight lock. The ship is pretty cool. Really, it is. A trip to the Welland Canals is highly recommended in my books.  
• You follow the ship up the mountain and you're on a bike path and there are white blazes and the world's longest train passes by. Presently, you notice that you are in Thorold along with the ship with the crucial difference being that the ship WANTS to be in Thorold.
• At which point you backtrack, seeing no sign of the rest of your party, and note that the trail did a turn of about 45 degrees while you weren't looking. There is mud on the trail and in the mud you see the prints of a dog. Probably the dog is yours and you are no longer in the lead but you have the 3 year olds so getting to the lead is problematic.
• At the 1st and 2nd Welland canals you wander over a bridge and then you hear your husband calling to you but don't call back because you think maybe you are almost at the parking lot. In fact, you are not and half an hour, after re-crossing the bridge to get back on to the main trail you find the rest of your party looking tired and somewhat worried. They are relieved to see you and immediately began calling your husband and friend to call off the searching which, by now, has gone from trail to streets since you husband back-tracked to the 4th Welland and did not see you, what with you having been tucked away on the other side of the bridge.
• It is widely agreed that the world's longest train prevented one end of the party from hearing the other because at that point we were actually very close only I was feeding apples to the kids as they stood on a bench around a corner and watched the ship.
• Which sort of bring us back to the previous question concerning why go hiking in the first place? It builds relationships. It's a jumping off point for conversations that begin: "I thought for a wild moment that maybe you had been kidnapped..."

Q. Do you have to keep your dog leashed?
A. This is the written rule of the trail and it comes in handy. My dog, for example, has issues with other dogs which makes leashing her necessary. On the other hand, supposing she did not have issues, there is a benefit to leashes. For example, dogs get thirsty. Dogs smell water. Dogs do not, as a rule, expect the water they smell to be at the bottom of a sheer drop into an emptied canal lock. 

Q. So exactly how sheer are the drops?
A. They vary. Also, some of them, depending on the season, can have water falling over them at a good clip. I, for one, do not envy Mrs. Balls her homestead.

•  In some cases you will have exactly the drops you'd expect. If you see DeCew, or Rockway or Felkers falls on the map then you can expect a waterfall. If you see little map indicators of a stupendous view then, yup, expect a drop. Grimsby Mountain was sobering in this respect as we suspect strongly that one of the benches is dedicated to the memory of children who fell.On the other hand, Grimsby Mountain also afforded a view of the spume from Niagara Falls.
• To negotiate the drops we have perfected the "grip-of-(anti)death" in which parent takes child and does not let go until the drop has been successfully negotiated. The "grip-of-death" is also deployed whilst crossing raging rivers, ice patches, glaciers, highways, and suspension bridges (not all situations apply to the Bruce). It is especially important if your child has oppositional tendencies and answers a "step away from the edge, darling," with a surge in the opposite direction.
• In other cases, you'll be surprised by the nature of the drop. For instance, when hiking through Hamilton I had a kid on my shoulder as we walked down a mountain access. I looked over and saw another well below us. Sometimes you'll find crevasses. Sometimes you'll find sinkholes. This is the nature of karst.
• Drops are not dangerous unless you actually fall off one. Keep in mind that limestone is layed rock. It erodes. Any more than 2 people near a drop ought to be called back. Kids generally get the whole visual cliff concept from a very early age but fooling around and/or tripping can present random results, some of which will be fatal.

Q. How do you manage food and drink?
A. Carry snacks. Carry water. Keep the heavy stuff in a car and park it where you expect to be around lunchtime. In the summer plan for luxurious picnics. In the fall prepare warm stews and chili and keep them in a crock pot or the thermal pot Val and Pam found for us. Bring fruit. Bring veggies. Bring biscotti. Oh, and in the summer keep re-fills of water in the car because no one wants to carry 15 water bottles. If you are in Niagara in August, buy a lot of peaches from the locals because these will be the best peaches you're likely to find outside of the Okanogan Valley.

Q. Suppose I do hike the Bruce, where should I start?
A. Well, that depends on your location really.

• It also depends on what you want to do. In our case, we decided on an end-to end and we began at Queenston Heights. This entailed about a 2 and a half hour drive to the trail head. We began at Queenston Heights because we had two 3 year olds with us. The Niagara section can scarcely be described as remote. We had plenty of coffee, end points, restaurants, drug stores, convenience stores, hardware stores and hospitals well on hand. We figure that when experimenting with new horizons it is best to minimize the negative side-effects of the Learning Curve.
• If you live near a section of the trail then doing an end-to-end hike on that section is another viable option. 
• If you plan to begin now, are in the pink of health and plan to end 15 or so tears later then going from Tobermory on down has much to recommend it.
• If you want to get a section down in order to engender interest in the others then start with the Toronto section. It is 50k or so and attainable in a season. Niagara is 90ish and Iroquoia a whopping 120 (give or take).

Q. Seriously? 3 year olds?
A. Yup - twins.

• Really, it isn't that hard. Get a good kid carrier though for an older kid. We like the Kelty carrier we inherited from my friend Colette the best. Encourage them to walk and then carry them when necessary. Eventually they will walk more than they are carried. Inevitably, you'll come to a point where slogging up a slop with a kid on your back nearly kills you. This is when it is wise to begin to phase out the pack. Pack gone, switch to shoulder carrying for short bursts and also the 1 2 3 SWING! trick.
• When we began this thing we all had sinus colds and even the 9 year old has his doubts. We did 7k that day and felt great. Since then we've had up to 4 other kids on board and none of them have doubts. In fact, they all like hiking. The twins, newly turned 4, can do 10k on their own steam and also do not trip over roots and rocks. They're at home out there.
• I hear many people tell me that they will hike or camp with their kids when the kids are "old enough". Trust me on this one, hook 'em while they are young. Get yourself, and them, into the habit while picking them up is still fun for you both.

Why?

Once upon a time two people got married. One was from Dundas Ontario, the other from Hamilton. In their wisdom they relocated to Oro-Medonte and, in the fullness of time, made children, acquired a home, and aged 10 years. This sort of thing happens to a lot of people.

We can skip all the individual variations that make our couple different from other couples because that will become apparent as the story evolves and, besides, they are only part of the story. What is relevant is that both like the outdoors. One is more a hiker, the other more a canoeist, one a cat person, one a dog person. Hey, this happens too. In marriage tastes tend to blend. Thus, one day the canoeist began to consider the merits of hiking.

Dundas and Hamilton and Ancaster and Grimsby, that neck of the woods, is fairly unique in Ontario. I know this because I have lived in much of Ontario. The area is surrounded by green space and trails. It also houses two major steel mills. The juxtaposition of the Royal Botanical Gardens and Stelco/Dofasco is party explained by pointing out that Dundas was once the staging area for emigration to Southwestern Canada. There was much industry in the area. It was settled by a very diverse set of people and some of them went into City Planning on a grand scale. They had Vision.

What with one thing and another, they persevered. If one were to selectively dynamite bits of Hamilton one would end up with a pearl of a city. The aforementioned juxtaposition is also partly explained by the fact that a geological feature referred to in some circles as "The Giant's Rib" encircles the entire area. This is the Niagara Escarpment, also called the Bruce Peninsula, also a shore of the Michigan Basin and the thing about it is that it is not conducive to urban development. It erodes. Bits of it are sheer drops of over 75m. It leaks. In the Hamilton Area something like 100 waterfalls drop off it with great enthusiasm. So, naturally, the only logical thing to do with it is to turn it into parkland.

Actually, if one grows up in Dundas then one knows that it is also profitable to quarry out the limestone. Advanced swimming lessons without fail have a scenario involving some idiot who dove into a flooded quarry. In addition, one knows that the reason Hamilton supplanted Dundas as the economic center is because railways dislike anything over a 4% grade. Oh, and the 100 waterfalls are lovely for powering mills, upon which the fortunes of Ancaster were based until mills fell out of fashion.

It is impossible to grown up in Hamilton or Dundas and be un-aware of the escarpment. One could conceivably grow up ignorant of the hiking but neither my husband nor I suffered that fate. We were both aware of the shadowy thing called the Bruce Trail. We knew it snaked in and around us and we knew it went to Tobermory, wherever that was.

In 1970 the Bruce Trail was still young and newly knit. Passion and planning had gone into the knitting. Zeal and enthusiasm had gone into as well. Over time it is clear that the thing was well knit. It endures and, wonder of wonders, it matures. That is a pretty nifty legacy to look back on.

I had no part in it and neither did my husband. We heard about it though, from our parents, from Scout leaders, from Guides. Every now and then my mother would point out a blaze and say, aha, part of the Bruce Trail and I'd note this and then it would fade into the background of my consciousness. When we were courting I knew that my husband wanted to hike it. I, as it turns, out, am the canoeist.

However, 10 years and 4 children into our marriage I said, "Hey, husband, about the Bruce Trail Thing. How do you figure we ought to do that?" Then I looked up terms like end-to-end hike and internet sites like http://brucetrail.org/

Husband wandered out to Chapters and bought the map book.

This was just under a year ago in April 2010. The family was suffering the dregs of a sinus infection that had been chewing on us since December. Spring was moving along at a sharp clip, causing the Tulip Festival people in Ottawa to gnash their teeth since it was evident that by festival time there would be precious few tulips left. We advised my good friend Donna and my mother in law, Shirley, and decided to meet up at the Brock Monument and see what would happen next.

Now it is not the purpose of this discourse to subject you to a kilometer-by-kilometer description of the Bruce Trail. This has been done quite admirably in the map book. The thought here is to explore various aspects of the entire project. For instance, on that first walk in April 2010 we had a 9 year old and a 7 year old boy and girl/boy twins newly turned 3 and also a granny on the cusp of senior-hood. We had Donna, who has known me since we were 16 and then there was us, the star-crossed couple with the Bruce Trail calling. Oh, and we had a dog. It is simply not done to go walking and leave the dog at home. (I, of course, am the dog person.)

That, as it turns out, is a rather odd group in and of itself. I have lost count of the number of people who say you can't hike with small kids. I'll have more to say about that later. Demographics aside, we're also pretty quirky people. The purpose of this discourse it to celebrate both the hiking and the quirkiness. We'll see how that goes.

I've been scribbling down various thoughts over the course of our hikes. Some of those will stagger in out of the journal and onto these pages. I've been taking pictures. I've been making digital scrapbooks. Hiking is not an obsession, you understand, just a really cool jumping-off point for various forms of creativity.

Plus, we've grown the group over the course of the year, learned a few things, taken a few tours(OK, one tour)and so; as a kind of natural extension of a thriving theme, the blog. Oh, and with luck it'll be a multi-voiced blog. After all, more than one of us is hiking and we all have brains.

Brock's tulips are pink
Epic journeys begin here
Bold spirit endures.
- Lisa, April 2010