I loved how neighbours would dash from their bungalows as the delicate licks of flame danced with the wind across the tips of sun-browned April field weed. One little spark could become a rapidly advancing line of fire a few hundred feet wide in a matter of seconds. Nothing brought the community out faster than a grass fire. Everyone suddenly had a flat spade beating the flames back from BBQ tanks and cedar decks. Up until that point in my life, I had felt no greater power.

There's great submission in lying down. We accept things are the way they are because of the construction that provides the input. You and I may not be able to agree on how to define the colour "blue" but I can tell how disciplined you are with your kids by checking out the underside of your kitchen table.

As she was packing up, Leslie volunteered that she thought red wine was probably my biggest current oral foe (something I'm painfully aware of lately). Maybe this is TMI, but I chew nuts on the left side to avoid discomfort.

Don’t you just wonder: If you have a “toothbrush jar,” what does it indicate about your other choices and preferences? Do people who share a toothbrush also do joint chequing? Is the inverse true? What else do they share?

Alison looked nervous, but there was little I could do about it. She had picked the swarthy French guy as her buddy, so fixing up her hoses wasn’t my responsibility. By that point we were at the water’s edge. Still, I just couldn’t resist clipping her secondary air supply properly, so I just reached over and did it. She turned and looked at me, then swung around to the French guy and said, “Uh, ‘scuse me, I’m switching buddies.”

My very capable executive assistant Andrea told me today that the natural state of ripe oranges is Green. “So why are they called ‘oranges?” I asked. She quite calmly and confidently asserted that oranges are called that because of the colour inside, not because of the skin. She added pointedly that she has always known this. She, 33. Me, ten years older and clearly misinformed. Then, squeezing more out of this advantage, she said, “And most people know this.” Apparently, the skin of an orange is only orange because of a chemical dye used to make it attractive for sale. She pulled it up in wikipedia. Pointed to it. Shattered…

It’s been a year since my last post – mostly because I’ve been all over the map promoting energy and environmental action. Something’s been nagging at me about this, and it’s only occurred to me lately what it is: People in my “industry” seem to have forgotten why we’re doing this. The sense of urgency that turned a fledgling gaggle of energy and environmental first adopters into a global industry of social entrepreneurs has lost its way. Lately, environmental and energy conservation action is “just business.” This scares the crap out of me. Some days I want to flee to Walden and sharpen pencils by the wood stove. Don’t get…

My mother wasn’t allowed to play cards as a teenager. Snakes and Ladders had evil connotations (the game’s called Chutes and Ladders these days). Heck, even thinking about sex was considered a mortal sin in Church of Christ PEI — something that was hard for a horny Island teenage boy to handle. There were rules. The world was all explained. So I should have known better than to mess with the spirits. This week, my smudge went rogue. An Aboriginal colleague at work recently smudged our office. She is studying with elders the age-old tradition of burning dried buffalo sage to rid a space of negative energy and old trapped…

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Last night I wrote a bit about death. Things were fine then. It was all so abstract and remote. Then this morning at about 7:30 AM Suzy stepped into the shower and stepped out in excruciating pain. She hadn’t pulled a muscle or twisted. Something random had happened. And we spent the whole day in the critical care unit at the Ottawa General Hospital. For a while there this morning we were talking with doctors about colon cancer, heart attack, pulmonary embolism. We’re still not sure what it was. By this time tomorrow we’ll know if it’s shingles or a pinched nerve. Tonight I’m thinking: Maybe I should stop saying…

I think about death a lot. I don’t know why, really. Life is great. I’m still close to the median age, and I like how Canadian life expectancy is climbing at about the same pace that the earth circles the sun. It’s fair to say that I don’t want to die. My biggest fear is leaving my kids prematurely. I picture Jasper and Simon sad, lonely. Suzy would pause and move on. She’s like that. This summer I awoke with a start early one dewey Island morning in the loft at Walden and noticed a tuft of downy feather stuck to the skylight above my head. A bird had struck…

My super team at One Change has been working on a water campaign for about a year. We’ve got energy nailed (or screwed) with bulbs as the catalyst action. Like the light bulb is to the house, the tire gauge is the car, the simplest first action. The sound the tire gauge makes (Psst!) is the call to action of fuel efficiency. That works well. But then there’s water. I thought we had the scoop on water a year ago when, with great fanfare, I flew to Alberta to present an idea to the Alberta government. Minister Renner’s a great guy, and when I showed him the vinyl toilet tank…

I’m having powerful cabin dreams. Usually this doesn’t happen until February/March. I decided years ago that this annual phenomenon indicates that I’ve been away from Walden for too many months — that I need to get back to the woods. But this year, the dream is different. I’m moving stuff around. I’m discovering new rooms or whole new floors that I didn’t know were there. Sometimes the world around is blanketed by melting snow. Like always, Dad makes an appearance. He’s been gone for 9 years but he’s there in the woods. Usually he talks to me in the dreams. This year he’s just watching as I explore.

Why do new TVs have to sing a little song when you turn them on? Seriously. Who thought that up? Imagine yourself in the board room that the idea was first presented: “Customers will love it, like the TV saying ‘Thanks for turning me on!’ It’s the fifth anniversary of Project Porchlight today. Five years ago this morning Suzy walked a hand-written application form over to City Hall to register Porchlight as a not-for-profit organization. We debated whether the $90 fee was a good investment … Five years later I spent the afternoon on a conference call with a team of communications managers in New Jersey discussing the new fridge…

Strange things are happening. Again. Yesterday. I’m driving. It’s cold and rainy and dark. At 11AM. And I’m thinking: “We gave away 13,000 digital tire gauges this summer, and now that it’s cold and wet, nobody’s going to be checking their tire pressure.” So I pull into the parking lot at the Starbucks closest to Jasper’s Saturday hockey game. 10 minutes later I’m getting back into the car, lattes in hand, and I notice that four cars over a guy driving an SUV is kneeling by his front tire. Then he attaches a little device the size of a shoe box to his tire, a wire leading into his car.…