Music of the Scarp - November 13th - Iroquoia

I am of the opinion that we need a Bruce Trail musical. Whether it be opera or operetta remains to be seen. It can't go so far as to bow to modern convention in musicals, though. It will have to either define a new niche or else stick with older, classical ties. In a pinch a series of ballads might suffice, but surely, one day, they could be strung together to tell the whole tale.

This is the sort of idea you get when walking in the fall with kids in Hallow'een costumes and one (a girl) stands in a dead tree singing opera and the other (a boy) sits at her feet pretending to throw up. If that doesn't do it then there's another point in the same hike whit the girl singing sweetly and a different boy mimes the playing of a punk rock guitar. The juxtaposition, in both instances, was striking. Nature is like that. As the Bruce swings into Hamilton the hiker finds another juxtaposition, nature rams itself firmly up the gullet of urbanization.

We need a haunting  morning hymn for mist. Fog and mist change everything. They take the ordinary and make it extra-ordinary. They cloak things. They provide a means of conveyance for things that always were extra-ordinary.

I really like fog. I like the way it muffles things. I like how it can turn the everyday world into one of secrets. It can, for example, hide the existence of a city the size of Hamilton. I know this is no mean trick because Hamilton is stubbornly pervasive.

Actually, for fog we need more than one tune and in more than one style. Fog is hard to pin down. A theme runs through it but the shape of the theme shifts. When one hikes in mist one really connects with the source of the myths and fables of Eire.

We also need some percussion to denote the various rustles that leaves make. Amid that percussion, strings or xylophone to represent the colour. Deep rich tones here, saturated colour this is, the exercise and the Earth providing an anodyne to the perils of seasonal affective disorder. Thread that into the theme as well, dark and mercurial - lurking.

Holst wrote "The Planets". Lloyd Webber wrote "Cats". Some mix of the two might serve to begin to capture the personalities of this hike as we revolve around each other, tango with the city, drop in and out of our orbits and tend to our shifting constellations. No actual storyboard is required, rather a piece reminiscent of "Fantasia," heavy on the "Night on Bald Mountain" for the fall.

Music too for the concrete. A built edifice is not without its charms. Two lines of bitterly controversial highway snake their way up the mountain, the only straightforward thing about them being that they connect Point A with Point B. Hyperspace need not apply. The trail runs under them, providing an opportunity for storytelling on a moonscape.

Celestial tunes, so long as we are at it, for the parts where the trail takes the hiker above the rooftops. On this hike the lingering fog loaned an almost model like appearance to the housing survey below. Thus might a capricious deity look down on making and scheme to move one figure so, another thusly and then knock over a model garbage can, blame it on a model dog and carry out a model heist. I tell you, Playmobil (t.m.) really alters a person's view of the world.

Needless to say, much music is needed on the subject of water and rock; specifically, water falling, crashing, seeping, dripping, dribbling, dropping and plummeting over rock. As the seasons change the rock does not. The quantity of water falling ebbs and flows but the rock is pretty much timeless.

On this particular hike we came to Felkers Falls. As it turns out, it is quite similar to Tewes Falls, only different. In addition to the Bruce Trail ballad CD the world, I am sure, is in need of a Symphony of Falls. Holst had to deal with nine planets (Pluto being "in" at the time). Hamilton Ancaster and Dundas collectively have something like 100 waterfalls running scherzo in the spring, allegro in the summer and mordant come fall. Then for the ice of winter, ahhh, something clear and crystalline, shot through with the subtle tones of the blues.

Oh, and also a cleaver little ditty concerning all the sheer drop-offs that needs must be avoided. Skipping around them with small hands grasped firmly is kind of fun. Then again, perhaps Pink Flloyd covered that already in "Learning to Fly".

I can also almost hear in my head the rousing chorus of the song "Coming up the Kennilworth Access". This would be in the spirit of a canoeing song, only without the canoe. Alternatively, she'll be tending great big bunions when this ends...

On this hike we also had a session with lose rocks that was truly the stuff upon which opera is built. The fallout, for me, of this encounter, involved spending Sunday and Monday in agony. Short of actual death, opera could not ask for more.

Oh, and just prior to that memorable encounter, we traversed my favorite part of the hike when the trail came across the slopes of an ex ski hill, full of field grass and teasels. Here people were parachuting off the brow of the escarpment. That scene requires light and airy music - the uplifting kind. Ones muscles are tired but the soul hums a happy song.

Ghostlike on the mist during this hike came the imagined sound of bagpipes. This because my father way playing in the Hamilton Santa Claus Parade. We could neither see nor hear it but the knowledge of it sufficed. With bagpipes, I find, this is often the case.
So there we have random images and thoughts for a symphony. Once past Kenilworth, though, we acquired and actual plot. This first became evident when we noted that the trail was taking us beyond our car. In fact, from our vantage point of about 1/3 the way up the escarpment we could see ourselves approach Azsa, draw level with her and then see her begin to recede. Also in recession was the daylight. The score for this part begins happily enough but gets nervous and darker.

Thus did we conclude that the Gage Park Access Trail was no more and thus did we fall directly off the mountain. Insert a bouncy theme here with overtones of 7 league boots.

Now we add a touch of the bizarre in the "Going for the Fetch the Cars" section of the opera. Here the canny Hamilton native returns triumphant and unscathed and also un-followed because the others were using a GPS. This part of the opera will digress significantly into heavy metal or something equally jangly and discordant.

'Cos the thing is, of course, that Hamilton can stymie even the most well meaning GPS. Mountain access and one way streets and, of course, the highly controversial Red Hill Expressway all conspire to hoodwink the unwary. One person was sent to James St. and had to extrapolate her way down Main.

Another, being notorious for double guessing her GPS, had a darker journey to make. Words for this section of the opera will be written in a specially designed language so as to avoid actually swearing on stage. Musical renditions of colourful metaphors will be employed.

Picture if you will the darkness falling on Gore Park, the temperature dropping like a rock and the husband speculating musingly on the probably state of mind of his wife should she A) phone to find out where she is or b) accidentally stumble upon the park. True epics are spun out of just this sort of situation.

The kids played in the park. They played right past dark. When mommy got back she had a flea in her ear, a bear in her hair, no one had parked the shark and no one got any beer - yup, definitely opera (with thanks to Dennis Lee).

Another scene may be written the afternoon before this hike in which the 3 year old threw up and though that the bug in his mouth was causing him to throw up his brain. He was understandably upset. Oh yes, we are in need of a musical dramatization, we really are.

Lessons in History I - Sir Isaac Brock and Tecumseh

I've read quite a bit of history. After all, I hold a major in History from UofT. I've read textbooks. I've read historical fiction. I've suffered through episodes of the CBC extravaganza, "Canada, A People's History". Yup, I am no stranger to history. I actually love history but I have to agree that most history is badly presented by teachers and writers and TV people - even national broadcasters.

Now, this is not always the case. If you read Henryk Sienkiewicz's trilogy, Potop: (The Flood), then you'll absorb a lot of history and fall in love with and era and a nation. Potop is historical fiction but it is extremely accurate in its descriptions of: motivation, politics, war tactics/battles, collective psychology, individual psychology and geography. This makes the three stories some of the best ever written. They are absolutely not boring. If you want to read Potop in English get the Kuniczak translation - same advice applies to Quo Vadis.

Likewise, the BBC makes some very good historical dramas and pays careful  attention to dress, surroundings and societal norms. It is telling that the Canadian novel Jalna by Mazo de la Roche was given life on TV by the BBC and a hit in Europe whereas here one would be hard pressed to find the series in any library.
 
When you begin to hike the Bruce Trail from the south, going north, you begin at Queenston Heights. You do not have to go and see the Brock Monument. The trail does does not pass by it. However, if you're trying to get the most out of your surroundings then it is worth a look.

The Brock Monument is big. It is actually one of the biggest monuments in Canada. It marks the site of the Battle of Queenston heights and also the site of Isaac Brock's grave. The size of it says its a pretty big deal and yet the only in depth reference to Brock I ever got out of all those years of history was in grade 8.

I had an amazing teacher in Grade 8. His name was Mr. Rayner. He had a wonderful collection of very broad ties which other kids laughed at. He also had a plot in the Dundas cemetery reserved and took us there on a field trip. I remember thinking this was kind of creepy but also a good example of thinking ahead. Mr. Rayner was great at teaching science and history. He knew his stuff. He gave it life.

The two things about Brock that stuck in my head were that he was a tricky man (in that he gained the bloodless surrender of Detroit from G. Hull) and that he was a fair man (in that he gained the loyalty and trust of Tecumseh). I had the sense that he was an interesting man but it was grade 8 and in the early '80's even Mr. Rayner had to go quickly over the War of 1812 since, after all, it was a war with our great friends to the south and, therefore, kind of embarrassing to talk about.

This is part of the problem with history. We read it from the perspective of the present. It takes a lot of imagination to go back even 50 years into a different culture and mindset. We forget our former selves. We concentrate on the now. We do not think ahead, nor do we think behind. Not many of us have grave sites reserved.

Naturally, once we had begun our epic journey, I looked Brock up. I figured that the kids were hiking through battlefields and this was cool, especially if you KNEW you were hiking through battlefields. So I had them learn along with me.

As I said, I had a favourable impression of Brock and what I read confirmed this impression. It strengthened it actually because I noticed that Brock had a keen genius for thinking ahead and also for human psychology. He had no love of Canada. He was a career soldier and a perfectionist. He got sent to the backwater that was Canada and it probably ranked because he would much rather have been bashing Bonaparte on the Continent. Still, he did his job.

The War of 1812 did not begin out of the blue. People saw it coming from a long way off. They were pretty pessimistic about the outcome too and they had reason to be. The Americans outnumbered the British and Britain was more or less committed elsewhere whereas the U.S didn't give a damn whether or not Boney ruled Europe. Everyone knew this. Everyone also knew that the defenses of Upper and Lower Canada were a mess. Brock toured them and concluded that of all the forts only Quebec, maybe, could hold against invasion. He was right too.

This is one of those places where history gets very interesting because here is a case where one man and his decisions shaped the next 200 years of a nation, right up to my day and age. Brock could have shrugged and joined in the general apathy but no, he was a perfectionist. He was a visionary and, I am guessing, he hated losing.

Brock spent two years or so haranguing his superiors and the men under him and putting some heart into them. He wrote that the people around him were demoralized but that, "I, however, speak loud and look big." It worked and it's a fine motto.

Forts strengthened, Brock threw convention aside and went out to negotiate a firm treaty with the Shawnee chief, Tecumseh. He struck hard and fast when the war began. The natives wanted to see victories and the British troops in the Canadas needed to see victories. I think that Brock and Tecumseh were very well matched. In a different time they might well have become good friends.They could never have done so in 1812, even if they had both survived the war but it looks as though they shared mutual respect. Brock was almost certainly ahead of his time. Had he survived the Battle of Queenston heights I like to think Tecumseh's outcome would have been different.

To teach the War of 1812 in grade 8 and not to really take a hard look at Brock is to do a disservice to the students. A nation needs heroes. Okay, so Brock was not Canadian and had no desire to be Canadian, had, in fact, been approved for transfer back to Britain when the American invasion began, but so what? He was here then and his actions made our now. Without Brock we'd not have had Sir John A. We'd not have had the British North America Act. We'd not have "won" the war.The man was snufffed in October 1812 and the work he did prior to that helped the win in 1914. Pretty darn amazing really

Brock was loyal to his government. He was a good pre-Canadian. Plus, in his temperament were certain key traits that one would like to see in one's citizenry. If you're teaching history then you have to teach about heroes. Bad luck for you if your heroes pe-date your constitution.

Sienkiewicz had no such problem. He had it easy. On the other hand, when he wrote Potop his nation no longer existed. If he could write about heroes of a nation that had ceased to exist then surely we can write about hereos of a nation that was going to exist. It's two sides of the same coin, really. Get past the warp and the woof, look at the entire fabric. .

While we're at it, take a look at Tecumseh.

Someone felt strongly enough about Brock that the monument was erected and trended and re-built and buffed and polished and turned in to a National Historical Site. So, yeah, pretty good but what about Tecumseh?

If you poke around the massive granite  base of the Brock Monument you will come across a bunch of sticks tied together with twine. Hanging from the sticks is a bundle of feathers, the odd bit of ribbon and bead and a laminated piece of paper stating that this is a monument to Tecumseh that was erected by the First Nations.

There is a whopping metaphor there and also a very graphic example of how the telling of history is shaped by the victors and by their times. Even now, in 2011, we have not given Tecumseh equal billing. Even the number of streets names after Tecumseh is fewer than those named after Brock. Sure, Brock sought the alliance but Tecumseh honoured it, even after Brock was dead. Tecumseh died almost a year after Brock in October 1813 at the Battle of Moraviantown, left to fight it afetr the British line broke and ran. The British "won" the war, the Shawnee categorically lost it.

The General gets granite, the Chief gets a bundle of sticks and we think the mindset of 1812 is too alien for us to imagine.

That's a pity because our history informs our present. If a nation can be said to have a soul then much of that soul is made up of history. The older the nation the richer the soul. Give a nation enough soul and then finally it might begin to engage our imaginations, take Egypt and Greece, for instance.

I don't think one can engender a feeling of national pride without a good love of national history anymore than one can engender a love of the Earth without going out onto the Earth. When the CBC released "Canada, a People's History" I was quite excited. I made popcorn. I got comfortable. Sadly, I fell asleep long before the first episode was over. Equally sadly, it is difficult to obtain in libraries and prohibitively expensive to buy.

Fortunately, the facts are out there. Sometimes you can come across and old school textbook that actually looks at the history of Canada as a whole. This is nice because while Mr. Rayner was an excellent history teacher he did stick to curriculum and in Ontario you learn Ontario's history. In Quebec you learn Quebec;s history and so on for each of our 5 regions in this country. This is about as effective as learning the biology of the human body by only studying the liver.

So, we're stringing together some history as we hike. We string more together as we travel coast to coast though Canada. We collect history like beads of wampum. We get the broad picture. We get that history unfolds according to cultural norms and also according to geography. At the end of the process I hope that we'll have  grasp of Canadian history that is vibrant and entire.

Just because we were taught history badly does not mean that we have to continue to teach it badly. Maybe, if we stick at it, we'll glimpse the national soul. Maybe we'll walk tall and think big.

http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?BioId=36410
http://www.warof1812.ca/tecumseh.htm

Plan B - June 4th - Iroquoia

Allow me to point out right off the bat that Plan B is the title of a very good book by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. The very good book is part of a very excellent series.

In general, people consider fear to be a negative stimulus. Still, for some reason, they tend to seek out the thrill-factor. Amusement parks know this. They make a good income on this fact.

This presents a lovely dichotomy. Your average person does not like to be afraid and yet pays good money to ride the "Drop Zone". What gives?

Me, I think it has to do with predictability. I think that people have no problem with being afraid so long as they also believe they are safe. It's like watching a movie. You know the good guys will win and that nobody really ever dies.

Now, the problem with predictability is that in daring a predictable outcome one can never really come way feeling brave. It's a bit like signing on for the crucifixion and knowing for sure that the resurrection is in the bag. There is not a whole lot of glory in that kind of deal.

I've never really liked amusement parks. I find them artificial and noisy. That said, I experienced one of the most self-defining moments of my life at the C.N.E when I was 12. My grandmother put us on the gondola ride thinking it was a round trip deal. It was a long ride. It was also 1 way. So I had to be brave and I had to be smart and I followed the gondola line back, on foot, with my 9 year old brother in tow and I was successful. I got us through. I developed a Plan B.

In my late teens I decided if I was actually experiencing fear in any given situation then it must be dire indeed. By then I had figured out that fear is self-limiting. The trick was to get competent at things so that the little stuff would not hold me back. It made good sense to limit the controlling aspect of fear and keep it lurking over in the corner along with the bug-eyed-monster.

This policy has served me well over the years. It gets me places. It encourages me to keep on learning and to be flexible. You may remember the T.V. show "McGyver". I admired the character for more than his looks.

On Saturday we went out to Mt. Nemo to pick up our hike. I was out with Donna and my brother and the kids, but no dog. The bother was wrangling two dogs. We figured 3 adults, 4 kids and 2 dogs was about right. The weather forecast had promised a p.o.p of 60% with thunderstorms. I am not an advocate of hiking in a storm, but thunderstorms being what they are and about 2k between each car parking spot, well, we figured we could wait them out easily enough. We all knew that p.o.p 60% is no big deal.

We set out in a light rain. The high was supposed to be 23'. Rain is good in that instance. It keeps the bugs down.

The rain persisted through about 2.5k of well-fenced and tall soggy grass. The paige wire fencing on the quarry side of the trail and on the road side of the trail was impressive.The aggregate is clearly taking Safety to the nth degree, although a paramedic would need wire cutters to get though to an injured hiker, the likelihood of impulsively running out into traffic or into the quarry is nil.

As the trail left the fence run to turn right and head down Blind Line, so also did the weather turn. The wind picked up. Bits of new made  leaf snapped off the trees. The temperature dropped slightly.

A thunderhead cruised into view. It was not the friendly sort. It was the jagged-edged toothy sort. The sky was not precisely green but it was thinking green thoughts. There was nothing casual about those thoughts either.

My brain began doing calculations that involved the merits of lying in a ditch and the most efficient way of getting back over the 2.5k to Azsa (the van). This was when the lightning hit and the thunder sounded at the same time (never good) and my youngest child froze, screeched and jumped into my arms. Then the rain came sheeting down.

Holding the kid, mindful of the other 3 kids, and 2 dogs, we watched two cars splash by. The smell of ozone wafted by. We were spared the necessity of stepping out in front of the next car by the fact that it stopped voluntarily and the young man behind the wheel offered succor. At the same time a sharp whistle beckoned us over to a nearby garage.

My brother was dispatched to get the van and the rest of us ran for cover. Two very nice men were in the garage discussing wood and woodworking projects. "Bad day for a hike," the opined. "No kidding!" we agreed.

Andrew arrived with Azsa, allowing us to beat a hasty retreat back to Mt. Nemo through the driving rain with many thank you's for the rescue.We waited out the rain. We noted that a storm of that intensity at 11 a.m. meant some baaaaad karma. Interestingly, the man in the car had stopped because it was good karma. Ah, balance.

The rain tapered off. We decided to hike another 3k to Kilbride.

They were a nice 3k. We crossed Bronte Creek in full flood. I recognized it. Bronte Creek is the site of another defining moment of my youth, one involving a Rover troop, a Ranger unit, a kayak, and some canoes. Some day I will visit Bronte Creek in the dry of the fall but for now we seem fated to meet in the spring.

In Kilbride, we found the world's safest, and most temporary, road hockey venue. A huge pine tree had snapped in the middle and come crashing down across the road. About a hundred meters past that was an uprooted tree, also blocking the road. We began to suspect that perhaps the weather forecast had not been entirely accurate.

Hospitality was again offered, this time by a woman allowing us to use her washroom as we dithered as to whether or not to continue. She confirmed the conculsions we'd reached following the ozone-sniffing. That strike had been darn close, perhaps even over the pond on the corner of Blind Line. We'd been hiking during an actual severe t-storm watch. Oops.

As I said, I categorically do NOT advocate knowingly doing such a thing. However, as with any situation involving adversity there are positive points to be scored if you do inadvertently end up  in one. I think this is a big advantage to adverse situations. Boring ones seldom yield fresh points of view.

Having done it, and talked about it, I find people's reactions interesting.

In Poland if someone rescues you from your erroneous assumption that there would surely be room at a B&B in Leba (after laughing a lot), by lending you a tent and setting you up with the relative of a relative who runs a venue called "Stork Camping" then the mood will be mellow. There'll be a sense of shared adventure. People will be curious. They'll want the whole story. They might even ply you with tea. There'll be a shared understanding that hey, plans go awry but enacting them is preferable to staying home under the bed. Then again, if someone in Poland tries to keep a fellow from jumping off a bridge and fails then that someone will shrug it off and figure, his funeral.

On the other hand, I have just read a story about a woman who was sailing and got stranded for a week on an island and all the comments are negative. They all center around forcing people to be safe.

I have nothing against safe. I do have a problem with forcing. This is because it is my opinion that since 9-11 society has been moving increasingly towards fascism in North America and fascism is baaaad karma. It is fostered by people who are afraid to do anything EXCEPT abide by the rules and who, consequently, seldom do anything brave. They seek to achieve control by forcing people to abide by limits. They get right pissed off about failing to stop people from jumping off bridges. They seldom allow for individual wants or needs or capabilities.

Not good.

We, for example, knew what we were doing. We wisely decided not to continue hiking past Kilbride because the kids were wet and getting cold. Also, the sun was not coming out. More rain was moving in. We knew our parameters. We knew how far we could push them. We did not intentionally seek to be out dodging lightning. We're pretty practical people, really.

I am raising children. I have to chose what kind of characters I wish to help forge. I am not interested in keeping them under the bed. We do not own a Nintendo. I have to chose challenges for my children to face, ones I can share. The sequel to Plan B is called I Dare.

On Sunday morning my 8 year old son went out and got the pine tree pelt he had dragged home from Kilbride. It is almost as tall as he is. He could and did wear it like a coat of armor.  "What do you want to do with that?" I asked.

"I was thinking maybe we could nail it to the wall and it would fill our house with the scent of pine," he said.

He was quite serious. I have that sort of house.

My youngest son woke up early Sunday morning. He looked at me and made sure I was awake. "Mommy," he said solemnly, and with great pride, "I am brave."