I wasn’t crazy about writing when I was a kid, but I did like it when the teacher gave us a picture as a starting point, especially if the picture inspired questions. Who? What? Where? And the best one: Why?
What would I have written if she’d given us this photo (which she couldn’t have because I shot it just this weekend)?
What’s the story here? What do YOU think?
It’s easy to love the colours of a Caribbean sea, captured during my first ever vacation to a warm place last month.
But there’s beauty to be found in the often monochromatic world of a Canadian winter too. On the first day of this winter, I was struck by the bits of ice forming on the branches that overhung a widening of the river near my home and the pattern they made. (My dog was more interested in the sticks.)
Since the two Sock Fluff posts straddling this one address some of my reading pleasures when I was growing up, I thought it would be fun to post a photo of me taken during that period of my life. Here I am with my dad.
This is my mother dancing with my father in 1974. It’s one of my favourite pictures of her. Sadly my mother passed away in 1996 with COPD, the same condition that took the life of Peter Gzowski.
She would have been 86 in a couple of weeks. If you’re still watching over me, Mom – and sometimes I think she might be – happy birthday!
Is there anything more lovely than a summer sunset over a lake? This photo was taken looking out over Lake Huron on the way to the cottage in 2008.
How many summer sunset photos do you have in your collection? 
I love the colours in this hammock. I love reading in it, too. But although we’re coming into our fourth summer in our current home, we haven’t yet found a place to hang it. Soon I hope, though, now that the heavy-lifting part of the work on my upcoming ya novel is done. (More on that subject soon!)
A ten-minute walk from my home, I can enjoy this lovely view. Well, not quite. Since this photo was taken two years ago, a metal barrier of sorts has been embedded in the rock with a sign attached warning hikers “Deep Gorge Keep Back from Edge”.
If I were drunk or otherwise inspired to foolhardy behaviour, the barrier would not prevent me from falling over the cliff, but the installation of the bars, complete with the defaced (of course) sign affixed to them, probably means that the Grand River Conservation Authority cannot be successfully sued if such a thing were to happen. It also means that people like me, sensible enough to keep back from the edge without the warning, can no longer enjoy an unobstructed view of this gem of a landscape.
I used to go there often with my dog (she’s sensible enough to stay back from the edge too), to sit on the rock and contemplate the beauty of the trees, the water, the sky. It’s not the same now that we have to stand to enjoy it.
Big deal, I guess. There’s still lots more woods and water and rock to enjoy in our local conservation area and I’m grateful every time I go in there for the daily opportunity to do so. Still, the desecration of natural beauty in a futile attempt to protect people from their own stupidity? Well, sorry, but that’s my beef on this lovely spring day.
There’s a bit of a disconnect between the mood in this photo and the mood I’m anticipating at the Hackmatack celebrations in Moncton this week, when hundreds of kids from all over New Brunswick will gather to honour the authors of books they have been reading this year. But there is a connection. Both came about because I wrote a book called Highway of Heroes.
There are certainly more “fun” books than Highway of Heroes on the Hackmatack lists for kids to enjoy reading, but I’ve heard from lots of Hackmatack readers and Silver Birch readers, too, who have written to tell me they enjoyed the book, even if it did make them feel sad for the boy in the story who travels the Highway of Heroes with his family.
Some kids who sent letters were expressing their feelings to others, too, like these:
Dear Soldier,
Thank you.
Dear Families of Soldiers,
It must have been heart-breaking to hear about your loved ones.
Those are the kinds of sentiments that inspire people to line the bridges over the Highway of Heroes whenever a fallen soldier is returned to Canada. This phenomenon in turn inspired me to write the book. Highway of Heroes won’t win any of the tree awards it’s up for this year but that’s okay. As all the authors of the nominated books will tell you, it’s great just to know that our books are being read. And really there’s no better prize I could ask for, having written this book, than the hug I got from the mother of a fallen soldier in Fredericton in 2010, after the Remembrance Day ceremony there, at which this post’s photo was taken.
Of all the photos I shot during a spring river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest a few years ago, my favourites fell into the category of “Doors & Windows”. This one was taken in Miltenberg, when I wandered away from the tour group, as I found I tended to do quite a bit.
How about you? Are you an organized cruise/tour kind of person or do you prefer to chart your own course? What’s the best holiday you’ve ever taken?
This month’s photo, like last month’s, was taken in Nova Scotia – this time on the beach at the Kejimkukik Seaside Adjunct. We’ve taken our Seaside Writing Workshop Retreat participants there each year, and hope to again this year, but in this photo it’s my lovely daughter enjoying the enormous sky and exploring one of the the massive rocky outcrops there.
