As You Like It (More Education; No More Mewling and Puking)

I came home after my last evening shift of the work week; just too sore and restless to wind down enough to get to sleep. The soreness is undoubtedly due to overtraining, and I always seem to get weirdly restless after touring hospitals (work-related visit); I can’t explain why*. My first free evening of the week was yesterday, in which after all these years, I finally went to see a production by the Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan festival. The play was the comedy As You Like It, and the setting and characters’ costuming were adapted into a “steampunk” art design motif. It was one of Shakespeare’s plays that I never read through yet, so it was great to see a performance that I had no preconceptions about. The “All the world’s a stage. . .” speech was well delivered, and made me pause for thought about which part in life I’m playing now, along with remembering an earlier discussion in the week. I’m thinking more about returning to being the “whining school boy with his satchel”.

One of the more meaningful discussions I had at work before this week ended was with someone who had convocated from university recently, and we chatted about the challenges of the dilemma of buying into getting more future education versus trying to balance life in trying to make a living from what there is around now: we shared our thoughts and stories from her and my perspective, given our respective current living statuses and situations. As happy as I am to see more of a paradigm shift in the way that education is heading with the evolution of the resources available via the Internet, the critical element still remains to have self-initiative, and making learning cool and fun for yourself. What I'm most bitter about through all the years of classroom learning that I had was the emphasis on what to study (much of it now archaic and obsolete) and none on how to study (there was just rote-learning, no effort to teach mnemonic devices, lack of creativity in presenting abstract concepts by fusing them with concrete examples). 

I’m always open to educating myself, but for the most part the I’m constantly in an exploratory mode: I pick the most random of subjects to read about and study, and I haven’t yet sorted them all out to condense them down into a curriculum for a portable and meaningfully applicable skill set for anything radically different and from what I do now that would be more life enhancing. I still have a habit of actively trying to keep what I studied academically alive in mind. I have books about higher mathematics, statistics, and social/natural sciences, and critical essay compilations scattered throughout my place; I know don’t read them for entertainment. I’m not really proficient in many other languages besides English, but I still find myself trying to read, or intuitively translate, the odd web articles and news captions in French, Spanish, German, Ukrainian, and Russian** to keep my limited vocabulary and grammar of each of them from being entirely extinguished. I honestly don’t know why I’m compelled to do this. I learned some bits and phrases of these languages for some reason; I just lost, or have not yet found, any practical use for them. For the hell of it, I create spreadsheet projects for myself; some are practical, most are not, which later become easy victims to disuse and obsolescence. I do it mostly to not lose my basic knowledge in how to program, process, and organize data, even though my current job doesn’t really demand such talents. Money and time to sit in a class, or study with correspondence material, to get formal certification for valid credentials seems harder and harder to come by, and it gets more and more expensive each year I delay such making such a commitment.

Maybe what I really need now is something that can’t be taught in a class.*** Just meeting new people with such interests and intellect would be a good start.

*- Don’t bother trying to pry at me about it, client confidentiality comes first.

**- The only one of these that is meaningful (and yet have least knowledge of) to me is Ukrainian, and only because it’s the language of half of my ancestry. I figure that given the current global statistics, knowing these languages would allow me to communicate directly, or by means of a secondary protocol standard, with 52% of the world’s population. If I knew some Mandarin, Japanese, Portuguese, and Arabic, it would be more like being able to speak with 84% of the world.

***- Even if there were such classes for these alternate things, they would most likely be evening classes, which my work schedule would overlap.

Mendel Tour and Civilization V

The scale here doesn't show it, but
what struck me about this armour was
 how small the actual body size of it
 was, like pygmy size, compared to how
 large people are here today.
The samurai may have been little folks,
but they were tough and disciplined.
 (Photos from Mendel Art Gallery)

My comment about the samurai warriors in my last entry was somewhat coincidental. The day after, just for a hoot, as I was walking around the river trails, I went to the Mendel art gallery to check things out there. To my surprise there was an amazing exhibit there with arts and artifacts from feudal Japan, of the era between the 1600s to the late 1800s when European explorers and traders started to infiltrate this society that was isolated and closed itself off to foreigners for centuries. There were many splendid watercolours and woodblock prints that depicted life and culture of ancient Japan. If you are in Saskatoon and interested in historical art pieces from Asia, I highly recommend viewing the Edo exhibit at the Mendel Art Gallery while it’s still there.

It was a rest day for me yesterday from my running schedule, and not too soon either. My knees and feet have been getting a little too fatigued and joint pain and cramping is resulting. Even though it was a perfect day to be outdoors, I was relegated to chill out at home and occupy myself with more sit still activities. I had a restless mind though, and the afterthoughts of theme of the long Japanese isolation at the Mendel Art Gallery prompted me to I dig out a PC game that I haven’t touched in ages, which I became totally enthralled with as I played it, which is the reason my eyes are so sore today. It is the ultimate game for people, especially adults, who have a freak on for history/anthropology. The game is Civilization V (V as in Roman numeral five).

An authentic samurai sword, its scabbard, and tsuba (hand guards)
circa 1600. Perhaps this thing actually did have a soul.

For those who never heard of the Sid Meier’s Civilization series, created by Firaxis, the concept of the game is basically that of a “god game”: where you start out being given a tribe of Stone Age era hunter-gatherers, and through trial and error, using the environment they are subsisting in, you try to create a more evolved and advanced form of their civilization by means of discovered resources, trade and commerce, and variable degrees of war and peace with the other neighbouring tribes which are competing against you. The most dominant civilizations that have existed, or still do, in our history (e.g. the Egyptians, the Greeks, the English, the Americans, etc.) are the ones that are used as archetypes for opponents in the game. The first version of this game was the one which changed my attitude about video games not being educational, or just for kids. It came to my understanding that some teachers were actually using this game in their history classes as part of their curriculum. The wild thing about the game for me is that it always primes my head with questions as to what the world today would look like if there were courses of alternative history that consequently followed if someone in a leadership position zigged instead of zagged. Such questions include things like “what if. . .

·         The Japanese weren’t an isolated nation and actively explored the world?

·         Neither the Soviet Union, nor the United States was involved with the space race, but it was taken over by the Chinese instead?”

·         The Earth’s landmass wasn’t composed of mainly continents, but rather scattered little islands and archipelagos?”

·         The Aztecs or Incas had first contact with the Arabs instead of the Spanish?”

·         The Russians never adopted communism?”

·         Neither Judaism, nor Christianity, nor Islam existed as any one of the world’s major religions?”

·         The Zulus first discovered electricity and were the ones to create an Industrial Revolution?”

·         The world was drier and covered with more ice (like the previous Ice Age)?”

·         The Iroquois totally exterminated the European colonists in what is/was Canada?”

·         The Vikings continued to rule the British Isles?”

·         Only one giant continent (Pangaea) spanned across the face of the planet?”

·         The Romans became dominated by the Greeks, instead of vice versa?”

·         Australia was colonized by settlers from India?”

·         The Persians conquered all of Eastern Asia?”

All those examples of such scenarios, and countless others with their respective timelines could be theoretically played out and explored through the course of the game. The ultimate object of the game is to establish your own civilization’s presence within a given time span by means of scientific, cultural, economic achievements, and/or military force if necessary. There is an expansion pack available for it which I don’t have yet: Civilization V: Gods and Kings, which involves creation of religious factions and influence, and more political skullduggery in the course of the game play. I want to deal with religious and political matters as little as possible, so I think I’ll leave this one on the shelf.  

 I can hardly see this as being a game for children, it’s too educational! The nice thing about the game is that it in it is provided a built in civilopedia to help the players learn about actual historical facts and progressions in society. I don’t usually use more than an hour to fiddle around with console or PC games, but this one hooked me in for at least five. I was involved with creating an alternate history and empire for the obscure kingdom of Siam. I managed to discover electricity at the same time when some other civilizations were in their medieval period. My biggest problem is an enemy called the Songhai, an African tribe with an attitude of Attila the Hun, but I’m keeping them at bay so far with some good diplomacy.

Parents, if you are looking for a PC game that won’t warp your kids’ minds too much with senseless violence, will give them some savvy about the otherwise boring subjects of history and economics, and one which you could enjoy along with them, this would be the one to get. I believe parents have to be more involved with the interests of their children; many aren’t because they are far too estranged from the technology that their kids are using for entertainment and too damn foolishly stubborn to say so. Parents/adult guardians have to sit down and learn to play video games with their kids and enjoy the experience: to monitor the content and activity, to learn how to get comfortable themselves with new technology* and information/social media innovations that are going to be a major part of their children’s future.

Some video games are now developed such that they may be beneficial to your mental health. More and more studies are showing that brains actively involved in exercises of monitoring kinetic motion, using logic, playing music, creative problem solving and language skills, are less likely to be afflicted by geriatric mental disorders like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. All of those aforementioned activities can be engaged with and exercised in playing video games (in moderation of course).

If you were ever worried that video games were dangerous things, I’d like to share a thought from a man who is one of my modern day heroes. He is a fellow Canadian by the name of Frank Ogden, who markets himself and his consulting services as Dr. Tomorrow. Frank is definitely not a candidate for dementia or Alzheimer’s. Frank is a futurologist: a person who specializes in observing trends and studying what their possible impact may be in the future. Frank is well into his 90’s and still being an active pundit and keeping tabs on the latest in technology, resource management, and trends in education and media in the real game of civilization**. One of his quotes is "A bulldozer of change is charging over the planet, and if you're not part of the bulldozer, you'll become part of the road."

 From what I learned at the Mendel, Japan may have been a cultured, yet isolationist nation but in the real world game of civilization, it is winning with video games, thanks to their corporations like Nintendo and Sony. I hope that our government and industries in this nation gain this kind of spirit of adaptive prowess soon.

*- Are you listening Mom?

**- Interesting note: Frank was involved with the first clinical studies of experimentation with LSD here in Saskatchewan in the 50’s and 60’s, which occurred here first before it ever hit the scene in a place like San Francisco.

Day Off Project: Kitchen Reclaimation

It was disappointing to see that my first day off after this crazy week was rainy. It took the wind out of my sails for checking out most of the things I wanted to see today. If I couldn’t escape to a place with a totally new scene, the next best thing was to make some radical, yet inexpensive, changes at home. Plan B was then put into effect: I did something practical by cleaning and rearranging my kitchen. Most of my afternoon was used for scrubbing and degreasing surfaces, ceiling to floor, wall to wall; economizing space, de-cluttering, taking inventory, and purging useless items. Totally exhausting, monotonous, and boring, for sure, but it was something I meant to do ages ago; I’m happy that I overcame this procrastination and that it’s finally done and over with. Once I get, assemble, and install some other fixtures from Lee Valley and Canadian Tire, I think I’ll find the results satisfactory.

Throughout the process, given my work schedule, I was thinking about just how little time I actually spend ‘living’ in my own home throughout the course of a day. Seeing that Ella stays in here longer during the day than I do by far, in reality, my condo is turning out to be just a glorified doghouse. I was at a point where I had to fuss around and convert/remodel it to reclaim my space to enjoy it more if I’m going to be around home for the next few days. I have other ambitions of dealing with the other rooms the same way, the theme being to make better use of my vertical space, but right now I’m just eating the elephant one bite at a time. The kitchen was just the most important one to get finished first.

My kitchen represents the busiest, most productive, most creative place, in my home that yields the most tangible results. It has been since moving to this place without any workshop space. Throughout the years, I have gained a better working knowledge of efficiently operating in a kitchen more so than the average bachelor, but I could always find ways to improve. I must note that my kitchen environment at home is radically different from the one I use at work for the odd bit of food prep I do there. People who witness me cooking there are not seeing the genuine way I cook for myself. Let me run you through my BACHELOR style of cooking and meal prep:

1.       Blades – My personal cooking maxim is, “Nothing makes a kitchen like state of the art weaponry.” Unlike the knives at work, mine are well-honed and kept razor sharp. They aren’t subjected to the stupidity of being used as can openers, nor are they used to chop through frozen food, and they sure as hell aren’t ever put in the dishwasher for cleaning. The samurai of ancient feudal Japan revered the crafted sharpness of their weapons so much that they believed that their swords were animate beings, i.e. that they actually possessed living souls. I’m sure that if the Bushido, their warriors’ code, stayed contemporary today, it would have a most excruciating punishment reserved for those who would dare inflict the degrading torture to a soul-endowed cutting edge by allowing it to be debased in scalding heat, and then dulled to shit by rattling and clanking around inside a steamy, mechanized cauldron. My big Chinese cleaver is the most versatile and favourite bladed weapon. . . er, implement in my kitchen.

2.       Aromatics - The choice of quality and freshness in herbs and spices is what I think makes a hugely major difference between being a masterful chef, and being just a shit-flinging monkey of a chef. I use fresh garlic cloves and ginger root; not that pre-chewed looking shit that comes in jars. I grow my own fresh herbs (basil, sage, thyme, oregano, spicy peppers), and use them fresh whenever they're available. Dried herbs and aromatics aren’t all bad, (I actually prefer using dried chili peppers over fresh ones), but it’s senseless to use them if they are really old and stale (as is so often the case at work) Brushing the dust off what's covering such a spice container and adding it to you food is probably about as effective.

3.       Containers – It's rare to find nutritious stuff that comes in single sizes, so I cook lots from scratch, thus leftovers are pretty much a given for me. Proper storage and freezer containers are must haves. My storage containers are stacked compactly and conveniently in one cupboard, and each one has an actual corresponding lid. They are mostly square or rectangular, to fit in a cubic space like a fridge better. There are no half gnawed up things left on plates wrapped in cellophane wrap in my fridge.

4.       Hot Sauce(s) – The strongest stuff at work is, at best, a pussified condiment compared of some of the sauces I have around here. I thought of bringing some for them to sample, but I’m sure the potency of this stuff would only fuel a bizarre incident of some sort. I don’t want to create anymore unnecessary drama than already is there.

5.       Efficient Energy Usage – The waste factor is significantly lower here, both in terms of time, ingredients, and energy. I have everything in arm’s reach, I can prepare five meal’s worth of stuff within an hour using one oven burner and a third of the water (per person) when I prepare food here.

6.       Liquor – I don’t have this at my convenience at work. For cooking, I have found using dark or amber beer for making stew essential. I use wine for marinades, I can flambé things and make interesting sauces with brandy and other liqueurs. Plus, internal use of it does a lot to fire up my culinary imagination.

7.       Open Mind – One thing I don’t hear around here is a big chorus of “Ewww!” when I openly wonder about experimenting with things like octopus salad, beef tripe tacos, steak and kidney pie, eel sushi, blood puddings, vegetarian lasagna, durian, and other exotic fare. I have tried all the aforementioned stuff by the way. Liked most of it. The only foods that make me gag are: turnips, salted ray/shark meat, and certain other ranker forms of canned fish.

8.       Ratios, not recipes – I rarely ever use a recipe (I don’t seem to put a lot of effort into remembering them anyway). My saving grace is that I’m aware of only a few basic proportion ratios, and cooking temperatures to keep in mind when preparing things like rice, beef, pork, chicken, fish, and some forms of dough and batter. All else is experimentation. The only thing I get a little more regulated and scientific about in the kitchen is when it comes time to make beer.

A First Anniversary (of sorts)

I noticed from my list of entries that it has been a full year as of yesterday since I started this blog. I honestly never thought I'd stick with this project for this long. I have no special celebration in mind for this anniversary, except to review and reflect with this entry. I clicked back to my pilot entry to compare what I started my mission notes to what I have been doing in reality in regards to applying myself to improving my writing skills. It turns out that I found using dictation to be too much a pain in the ass in the beginning, so I dropped using it all together. As for developing my skills with CSS and HTML, they have been confined to drag and drops of blocks of code and simplistic editing and format corrections; nothing too magical, in-depth or detailed terms of study or implementation. Other than those failures, I think I've been more or less committed to meeting the objectives that I set for myself in creating this thing.

In the past couple days, I've been messing around with lots of complicated formulae*, for building analysis spreadsheets for my training progress. Ordinarily, I love using MS Excel, except when it comes to creating equations and formatting for unique elapsed time variables. I have to custom make such things. I couldn't find, through any search engine, any (free) prefabricated templates from which to strip apart and salvage usable stuff from to suit my needs. Any formula I create soon tends to get a little crazy and festered with lots of nested conditionals, logic bombs, and spaghetti code when it comes to using the variable of elapsed time within a function. The Help icon becomes a very close little friend; even then, sometimes it doesn't live up to its moniker for me. Enough of this digression.

Back to this review. . . Generally, I guess I can honestly say that there have more improvements than setbacks since I've been doing this. There were so many ways some things could have turned worse should I have allowed it to happen. For instance, I could have let my health decline had I not written things here that prompted me to think about and be more mindful about my condition. I've found that with the exercise of writing, one becomes more instantly mindful of one's choice of words on the screen (or paper), which in turn reflects in one's tone and manner of speech. I've come to respect intellectuals a lot more. When I write something out of anger, I'm automatically relegated to note how it would be perceived by someone who was listening to me if I were to spew the same words out loud verbally. I can't ignore how aweful I would find it to see myself  dumping the toxic emotion of anger on someone without any reason, or if it only served to worsen a problem instead of correcting it. The goals that I write down are more likely to be achieved (and surpassed) than the ones that just remain passing thoughts. When I write something out of genuine happiness, gratitude, and compassion, sometimes any one genuine written thought, within such a scope, is enough to prompt me to carry myself with a more positive demeanor throughout the day (if not longer). Writing has such a vast potential to be a powerful tool (or weapon). It makes allies or enemies; its power to move and transform things should never be ignored or underestimated.

The biggest weaknesses that I have now in writing are: not recording enough higher goals with greater clarity, and I allow myself to be too easily stricken, crippled and defeated by doubt, instead of allowing myself to dream and hope for bigger things. I write too much with the analytical/logical side of me, and ignore, or fail to explore topics that fall within the realm of emotional instinct. I think I'd be way too reluctant to ever post any of those things.

*- Geek speak alert: skip this paragraph if programming doesn't interest you.

Heatwave/Other New Goals/Practicing Mind

It's early evening, and I finally dared to sit outside, as the sun has swung around to the northwestern side of my building; allotting me some much needed sweat-free relaxation time in the shade. The humidex reading climbed to 41 degrees today, and luckily I managed to get the settings to work right on my ancient, ailing air-conditioner. I had it on long enough to at least make it comfortable to operate my stove to finally cook a meal in here after five days. As nice of an option it is to have and use, I only run it intermittently: because I notice now how badly any radical and damp artificial cooling makes my semi-arthritic knees ache, plus the thought of catching a summertime cold by exposing myself to such drastic temperature fluctuations doesn't appeal to me either. The lesser evil seems to be indulging in a lot of cool drinks. An icy cold half and half blend of kombucha tea and water with a generous squeeze of lemon is both quenching and invigorating; or at least not so dulling to the senses as beer is at this temperature. My poor little black-haired dog is performing her usual summertime ritual in the futile exercise of instinctively trying to find 'shade' by staggering and waddling around, hiding under any furniture she can fit under, discovering with restless discontent that there is no satisfying spot she tests out in which to take refuge from the sticky heat. I expected a thunderstorm to roll around soon after such a day, but neither the forecasts nor the view of the sky is promising anything of it for either now or later tonight.

It's a lazy summer day, occurring on a day when I'd rather not be lazy: the simplest of chores seem to take five times the effort and energy to do. I had a mind/body conflict happening all day. I've reached that point of fitness now where sitting still seems like too much of an abnormal thing, and yet it's hard to cope through such a hot day,where expending energy needlessly is an unwise thing to do if one wants to keep enough stamina and strength for training throughout the rest of the week.

I have a couple more running goals to add to my list. Firstly, to reach 3000 kms of recorded mileage before the end of July (coming close to doing that). Secondly, to lower my average pace time down from 7' 00"/km, to 6' 55"/km by the end of August. With the hotter weeks ahead and the tougher measuring adjustment created by the enhanced accuracy of my new metering tools, the latter goal is definitely the greater challenge.

I borrowed a book today from the SPL called The Practicing Mind. It seems interesting, maybe something to help me keep motivated in the learning of the new things I'm checking out now; to stay enthralled with the process. Even now at this age, I'm still searching for at least one unique thing that I really excel at doing, and really using it for my prosperity. Exploring some more new interests is one thing that I hope could help bring that about. At the very least, if the findings from current studies are at all credible, the effort will make me less likely at risk for acquiring dementia or Alzheimer's disease in my senior years.

Camping Season

I can’t believe how quickly this first week of July has gone by. Lately, my operational theme seems to be getting a better sense of tracking position and direction: both in physical location, and with trying to make the right thing moves in dealing with other personal issues. I rewarded myself with a GPS sports watch recently, for achieving one of my training goals. The good news is that I have a greatly improved degree of accuracy with such technology; the bad news is that I have to note the wildly fluctuating degree of error from my old sensor readings, which means now that my old speed, pace and distance records from my sensor are below what they should be in actuality. After my first upload with it, I also somehow mistakenly uploaded multiple readings of the same run (my fault). I couldn’t edit them on the site, so I was relegated today to compensate by running the extra mileage that was listed to keep at least my distance record more accurate. It was about 30 degrees that afternoon; I did it, but I suffered the consequences. I had been quite woozy and heavy on the fluid intake since I got home that day.

 I had my results from my physical back. I tested as very healthy except for those damn freakish pancreatic enzyme readings again. I feel OK, but it seems to be an issue that is still carrying on from last year. My doctor is yellow-flagging this for me and recommending another visit in a couple months.

As the week began with Canada Day on Sunday, I’m reminded that we’re entering of the latter half of the calendar year. During some of it, I spent most of my free time trying to organize paperwork, and tidy stuff up in my office. I don’t think I come close at all to taking a serious bite out of any of the projects I planned for myself. I hoped that putting some things in some sort of better order would increase both my momentum and motivation for tackling such things. I at least succeeded in taming down, and filing a couple of huge piles of paper and correspondence.

I had a lovely surprise earlier this week. A person, who I’ve missed working with for quite some time, showed up a couple times and graced us all with her presence. Any words I know are inadequate to describe her genuine kindness and soulful character. All I know is just that I wish more people were like her. Had she not come around, it would have been just a depressing day with me being sickened by the stupidity of some people before I even got to work. I couldn’t help but to enjoy the long chat we had as we caught up on things. As much as I’ve missed having her around, I’m grateful that life seems to be working out well for her at her other position. We touched briefly on the subject of camping, and I was a reminded of what I hoped to do when I joined up with my nephews later in August for a family camping trip we had planned. I was hoping to teach them a thing or two about navigating with a compass, and to perhaps beef up the lessons with an excursion of hiking and orienteering. It also prompted me to think about what my idea of an enjoyable camping trip would be.

I respect my parents’ idea of camping, and to be honest, I did enjoy the times we had when we joined other family at places like the regional and provincial parks around the lake lands when I was younger. We organized ourselves a bit for our upcoming date in August already to have the same sort of affair, I’ll be happy just to avoid having another staycation. However, as an adult, my perception about what my ideal camping environment would be like has changed a lot since those years. It’s a little more of an adventurous thing, leading one off the beaten path. It involves actually roughing it and using survival skills. To describe it better, the experience would be more like:

·         No trailer or cabin: I’d prefer being alone in a two man tent with privacy, rather than being crammed with four other people in a total sleeping (snoring, farting) space that is smaller than what the area of my bedroom in my home is now. Tenting also allows one to tuck oneself into some more secluded area, where a trailer can’t go (see next point).

·         Outside of a typical campground: the last couple of times I left town to spend the day at a regional or provincial park, it seems like I was stuck in a spot where I was surrounded by more obnoxious neighbours who were in even closer proximity to me than the ones I left in the city. This isn’t relaxing, and the extra crowding and party noise detracts from my idea of being in the great outdoors. Get a few peoples’ trailers, boats, and vehicles crammed too close together, and then I feel like I’m sitting in the middle of a walled compound. Establishing oneself around an open view of wilderness (where the local wildlife isn’t frightened away), and having a decent buffer zone for some isolation and solitude is my idea of camping.

"When using a public campground, a tuba placed on your picnic table will keep the campsites on either side vacant." ~Author Unknown

·         Cooking Gear/Food Supplies: To be limited to a simple mess kit of a spoon, fork, cup, bowl, small cooking vessel, and a mini stove that fits in a backpack (only to be used on a rainy wet day, when a proper campfire can’t be lit). I wouldn’t go so far as to rely on snaring muskrats or squirrels for sustenance. I would bring food, but my choices would be more sensible and compact. Food would be mostly dried, canned, or cured (beans, rice, lentils, couscous, trail mix, soup mix, dried fruit, granola, muesli, jerky/dried sausage, nuts, evaporated/powdered milk, bannock mix, spices, hot chocolate, tea), i.e. things that are not cooler dependant, have less packaging, make less garbage, and are easier to string up, or cache away from bears and other scavengers. Four day’s worth of such rations would easily fit in a backpack. If fishing is good, they’ll last longer yet. Thinking back to the old days and seeing three coolers worth of food (that included very perishable prepared salads and desserts), packed for one weekend of camping, which amounts to more food than I use in three weeks now, looks a little ridiculous in retrospect.

·         Having practical survival challenges: to at least try, making a fire without matches or flints, using navigation skills (with and without a compass), foraging, fishing, building a rudimentary shelter, finding and purifying drinking water, fashioning your own tools and implements, anything that involves improvisation and overcoming functional fixity.

"How is it that one match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box of matches to start a campfire?" ~Christy Whitehead

·         More exploration, less stationing oneself: some valuable things I learned how to do while growing up in Parkland region of this province where was picking mushrooms and saskatoon berries around the coulees and wooded pasture land in our area. We never thought of it as hiking and foraging, but it was. My interest in the art and skill of hiking renewed itself when I when I was trekking around the trails of the jungle laden foothills of the northern Andes in South America. I think I did that to learn how to avoid being a victim of anacondas, amoebic parasites, venomous spiders, and drug smugglers. Whether it was approaching or avoiding something, the greatest lessons came always through being mobile in the outdoors. In a designated campsite, the only challenge some people are given is being just mobile enough to park a big ass camper on a level spot with the intention to stay put, and not straying too far away from one’s beer cooler. Really, how sad is that?

·         Entertainment or ‘luxury’ items: Pen/pencil and blank journal, dynamo radio, solar powered pocket calculator (for mapping), deck of cards, a mickey of whiskey/rum, garlic and onions, binoculars, meditation cushion (doubles as a head pillow)*, chipping knife (for carving and whittling), anything thing else that is reasonably compact and doesn’t rely on gasoline, batteries, or an electrical outlet to function would also be kosher.

·         Leaving no trace of where you were: to try to keep things as pristine as you found them. I think any bit of litter tossed in natural habitats is utterly despicable. What ultimately pissed me off, and made me unwilling to camp in public campgrounds ever again was my last experience in Blackstrap Provincial Park.  I was assigned a spot where some stupid, lazy, asshole that was there before me, pitched a bunch of soiled disposable diapers into a pile amidst some shrubs in my site. It was disgusting to say the least. I notified the park authorities, but no one was sent to clean up the mess. After no help was sent after two hours, I exited the park, but not without leaving scathing feedback comments in their suggestion box first. I never returned there since.

As I age, I’m sure the idea of camping with “comforts” would be renewed again; I think it is still important though to keep oneself knowledgeable about basic survival in an emergency situation, with little to no conveniences, and practice them to keep them fresh in mind.

*-It’s stuffed with rice, which is stable and holds its (and my) form surprisingly well during a session. If worse comes to worse, I could eat the ‘pillow stuffing’ if I were lost or stranded, and really that desperate for food. Being forced to eat sweat infused rice, tinctured with some flavour of the odd blast of flatulence would no doubt count as a desperate measure.