This post is overdue, and quick. It’s 10:15 and I almost broke my New Year’s resolution to write here daily. On Day 2. Something that keeps me going back to the cabin is the sense of wonder I feel there. The place is familiar but never the same. Each winter at about this time I pull out the binders of blueprints and maps and sketches and start making lists of all the things I want to build or plant or change. My good friend Carter indulges this curiosity and longing with his sharp drafting pen (he designed Walden). So there’s a shelf-full of slightly different plans and blueprints here, full…

In case you’re just joining me here, Day One of this New Year, welcome! I’ve been blogging at this address since 2001, mostly in a scattered attempt to capture some observations and to share some life lessons. I have done a terrible job of both, but whatever. In case you missed them, here are some nuggets from the Walden archive while I collect my thoughts and repack the cannon after yesterday’s trial blast: > Now that Grandma is gone, I can finally write this story. She said it would make grandpa turn over in his grave. I disagree. (January, 2006) > Ten years later and I still hate muffin tins.…

There is always a good reason to avoid writing here. Lately, it’s been because I have too much to say and don’t know where to begin. I was much better at this when I didn’t believe that a good personal blog had to be brutally honest. Nowadays I can’t stand to read whimsy shit, especially my own stuff. If you want to read some refreshing honesty, click here. I think maybe writing well is like stumbling – moving forward in a less controlled manner with involuntary movement and expression. But I have to be careful not to get too poetic here. I’ll get to honest in time. I hope to…

“A bewitching stillness reigns through all the woodland and over the snow-clad landscape.” – H D Thoreau. December 9, 1856 My sister popped by Walden yesterday to check on things and to turn off the heat for the winter. I was set only at 5C, but that is enough to keep the deep cold from the mattress and to avoid spills from split jars of frozen pickles in the pantry. Now it’s time to let the cold and stillness in. Val reports that the spring is running fast down the hill past the cabin, from the head by the turning spot and beneath the drive to where it spills out…

“If you get up and have a hot shower, you’ve already had a terrific day.” I forget who said this last week, probably someone on the radio musing about the January blues and imminent come-home-to-roost post-Christmas reality. Overweight, overdrawn, overstimulated. I’d like to think I appreciate the simple things in life, but as I write I’m syncing my new iphone and am taking a break from figuring out how I can share photos via the cloud. Still, what keeps me going is the chance to sit by the wood stove again with Simon, coffee in hand, as he pokes at the embers. I live for beating back brush where there…

I’m 45 years old. After much prompting, the kids are slowly transitioning from calling me Old Man, to “Cactus” (Simon’s idea), or “Darth Father” (Jasper’s). I’ll take either. I hate getting older. The wisdom thing is great, but not so much the pain in the hip or the hair in weird places. And although I feel I have a lot more to share now (and I definitely care less about what people think about what I think), my 10PM bedtime makes blogging less possible. Even though time is passing more quickly than ever, I’m conscious that there are still many things I could be doing now that will help me…

Fun Dip now comes with two candy sticks. I discovered this on Christmas Eve when a wide-eyed kid who had already had too much sugar stumbled into me and showed me the tangy candy pouch like it had just been invented. Idiot. “That’s so 1974, dude.” I said. Then I remembered that he was born in 2006. Fuck. Then, to establish my cred: “Grape is the best flavour. This was 10 cents when I was your age, and the sticks were bigger.” (but we only got one). Now Fun Dip $1.50, and that kid had checked his texts by the time I’d finished my talk. Maybe the second stick is…

“Well, that was the best ‘rock bottom’ ever.” Our friend and neighbour Michelle has a gift for summing things up tidily. And this was no exception. It was August 19, 2013. I had just taken a leave of absence from work to quit drinking. Then the real work began.

It’s 7:25 AM, any random weekday. Puddy is on the bed, purring and pacing. Simon (9) has a blanket pulled over his head, pretending that this isn’t happening. It’s as if it’s the first time I’ve ever asked him to get up (I do it every day). A monologue/song is usually required, made up on the spot. Here’s an example. Simon (yelling): “Go away, Dad! I don’t want to get up! School sucks! I don’t like you!” Stuart (yelling back): “Well, I don’t like you either!” (There’s a pause, and a little face with shocked expression pops out from under the duvet) (softer) “I don’t like you, Simon. I love…

I’ll never forget September 4, 1984. It was a Tuesday — a day that would later be called Landslide — and I was working the closing shift at MacLean’s, a one-cashier country grocery in Winsloe, PEI. Tuesday was a slow day at MacLean’s. Harvey the butcher usually left at 6 or earlier, the meat case fully stocked after the weekend grocery rush. Demand for hardware or painting supplies usually peaked in the morning, and the post office in the back was only open “government hours” — although owners Heath and Phyllis would go get your mail for you anyway if they happened to be down getting smokes from their apartment…

I really wish I knew when it’s the right moment to harvest tomatoes. I have four different varieties growing on my third floor deck: The ubiquitous Big Beef, familiar Homstead, and a collection of cherries and grapes including tiny orange Golden Girls — each cherry-sized tomato easily outperforming brawny big beef in all categories of flavour and acidic punch on the palette. I planted half of them in upside down four-post planters from Lee Valley Tools, and the rest in colourful felt garden bags from Gardener’s Supply in Burlington, Vermont. The upside-downs did well at first but dried out more easily. The floor bagged plants are, by contrast, still lush…

As the town receded into the distance, I thought: Well, at least if I’m being driven into the desert to be raped and killed, this was beautiful. It’s lonely at the border of Syria and Iraq when you’re a 20-something English-speaking foreigner. Deir Ez-zor is about as far as you can get from anything in a country that’s not exactly overrun with tourists (especially now). I was attracted to the far-flung eastern desert town because of nearby Mesopotamian ruins and also because I wanted to flip the bird to Saddam’s forces at the barb-wired border — my way of finishing the job where Bush (the first) had f*cked up. It…

It was nearly 1:30 a.m. by the time we collapsed in bed, hearts pounding, sweaty. Neither one of us thought we’d be able to sleep. The carpet burns and throbbing scratch marks were almost too much to bear. Then the moaning started again, and I knew it had been a mistake to get a cat for Jasper and Simon on Valentines Day. Our first mistake was probably renaming the cat. It was 6 years old, after all, and had gotten used to “Button.” We just weren’t a “Button” family. But the cat had arrived suddenly after a friend called saying that her 10-month-old son was hospitalized with a respiratory infection.…

“We were there to suffer. The suffering wasn’t a by-product; it was the point. I started to accept this, and quit fighting it. I realized that facing anxiety and pain without any way to escape is the course’s primary teaching tool. After hours of struggle, my mind settled. It began to observe my situation objectively. And then the physical torture and mental anguish started to melt away.” See full article in Macleans.ca