Exploring and Options

One of my (slightly odd) personal traditions is to mark Katherine’s birthday by taking time on my own to wander, explore, think and generally mark the passage of time. After you have kids, you rather forget about your own age until your birthday rolls around and then you generally cringe slightly. With children in your…

Bell Island – a place for many adventures.

There is irony in a person who lives on an island going to still smaller islands in search of adventures. Fogo Island, Exploits Islands, and Bell Island have been among my insular destinations within Newfoundland. You can tack St. Pierre & Miquelon on to that tally if you wish, they being off the southern coast…

Windows and transparency

Churches are fascinating places to my eyes, particularly when empty. When a building that is designed to house a group of people with a common purpose is stripped of those people, even temporarily, it is like removing the leaves from a tree or the clothes from a body; the elegance of the lines and bones…

Waiting for spring…

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn. ~Hal Borland To get me through these long stretches of winter, I often troll back through pictures of previous years’ springs and summers. Hope is wherever you can find it sometimes and evidence that winter ends is essential. Generally speaking, I actually get more solace from…

A Thimble-ful of invisible cats

Up long Oxen Pond road there is an old cottage, named Thimble Cottage, which is a part of O’Brien’s Farm. It’s a beautiful little place and is a registered heritage structure. It’s quite old, very lovely and exquisitely situated. The folks in the neighbourhood are fiercely proud of it and rightfully so. As I said…