The news early today: No pope elected. Well, I suppose what does not happen can be news. Oddly though, there were few reports of all the other things that didn’t happen today.
One thing that did happen happened on a distant planet. The Curiosity Rover, an astonishing feat of human ingenuity if ever there was one, sent word that Martian rock contains clay minerals formed in a watery environment and, as if that weren’t enough, it also contains all the key elements needed for life: carbon, sulphur, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and nitrogen. In the out-of-this-world world of exobiology, it’s the next best thing to finding organic molecules.
More years ago than I care to count, I was a newly-minted graduate student at Dalhousie University in Halifax and NASA’s second Mars Viking Lander was prospecting on the Red Planet. I decided to do a seminar about it. This will shock some of you younger readers, but during those quaint days of yore everything wasn’t instantly available everywhere. I needed images, and I was just innocent enough to write (remember snail mail?) to the venerable Cornell professor and the father of exobiology Carl Sagan to see if he would send me some. And he did. He generously sent me slides (OMG - this was before PowerPoint!). He “wished me luck bringing Mars to Halifax.”
I teed up what I still think is some of the eeriest music I have ever heard to provide a suitable sonic ambiance for the grainy images of the Martian landscape. ‘Darkness: Earth in Search of a Sun’ and 'Light / Sun' are the first two tracks of ‘The First Seven Days’ (remember LP’s?) by Czech composer and keyboardist Jan Hammer: his musical rendering of the Genesis creation story. The presentation took place in a cavernous concrete lecture theater devoid of any concession to earthly comfort. It was perfect! As the house lights dimmed and images of an alien world appeared, Hammer’s otherworldly compositions amplified the shear barrenness of a place that has yet to reveal signs of life. I’m referring to Mars, not Halifax.
I think my very conservative professor had his worst fears confirmed: I was some kind of west coast weirdo. He was good enough not to mention it.
I work my legs
I pump my thighs
Take in the scenery passing me by
The Kerry mountains or the Wicklow hills
The antidote to my emotional ills
A motion built upon human toil
Nuclear free, needs no oil
***
So come on, get up on your bike
Ah go on, get up on your bike
Pedal on, pedal on, pedal on for miles, pedal on
(Luka Bloom, Acoustic Motorbike)
This summer I needed movement. I considered buying a bike, but instead, I took my old bike from the garage where it had been gathering dust for years. I did a little research. According to Wikipedia, my old Miyata 610 touring bike has "triple-butted splined Chromoly frame tubing." Um, I knew that... It was regarded as a quality touring bike, not top of the line, but certainly good enough for my needs. I also found a blog from Annie, who fell in love with her 610 after it languished for years in her Vermont garage. Alright, then.
I had Cranky's outfit her with a new saddle and tires and soon rediscovered how great it felt to take her out, the countryside flashing by, my heart pumping and thighs burning. We were like old pals.
Soon memories of our past exploits flooded back. The very day I bought her I cycled from West Point Grey to New Westminster, then south to Tsawwassen to catch a ferry to Vancouver Island and on to Saltspring Island. There was the time I wiped out on a patch of black ice only to discover a beaming middle-aged woman peering down at me from the window of her van. As I got to my feet she happily informed me that I was the 8th person to crash there in an hour. Then she rolled up her window to wait for number 9. A more serious crash netted me a dislocated shoulder, a concussion that knocked me out cold, and a physiotherapist who later became my wife. There were cycling trips with friends I haven't seen for years. Great memories. Funny memories.
There is something comforting about being happy with what we have in a world that seems endlessly bent on replacing everything with something new and improved. This old bike is a gem. I would never trade her in.
Stuff that works, stuff that holds up
The kind of stuff you don't hang on the wall
Stuff that's real, stuff you feel
The kind of stuff you reach for when you fall
(Guy Clark, Stuff That Works)
Winter has come early to St. Albert this year, bringing an end to the road biking season. I could hang my new old friend up in the garage, but then again, maybe I'll find a training stand and just keep going.
I lost 24 pounds. What a weird turn of phrase that is – ‘lost’ – as if I’d somehow accidentally misplaced it and might one day be pleasantly surprised to find a greasy bucket of abdominal fat abandoned behind the laundry room door!
Now, if there is anything more boring than listening to someone talk about his diet, which I seriously doubt, I don’t want to hear about it and neither do you. My 'lard rendering plan', as I dubbed it, consisted of a hell of a lot of work and not so much restraint, as a new-found selectivity at the table, eschewing what Michael Pollan calls ‘foodlike substances’ for real food.
I didn’t do it alone. I enlisted a personal fitness trainer who saw to it that I put in the miles morning and night. And what she lacks in credentials, she more than makes up in enthusiasm. Best of all, she works for kibble and an occasional scratch behind her floppy ears. Thank you, Ginny. You’re the best!
I have no idea how many miles the two of us walked and who cares? The proof of the pudding is that I no longer look like one.
So,
you’re probably thinking: okay, big deal! You lost some weight. Lots
of people lose lots of weight. Some of them do it lots of times.
Indeed.
What intrigues me is why it happened now, not last year or the year before that. All I know is that ‘the head bone’s connected to the neck bone...' It’s a mind-body thing. Trust me on this.
Former Alberta Premier Ralph Klein once famously quipped that “Edmonton isn’t the end of the world – but you can see it from there.” Ha! Ha! If you don’t live in Alberta, you may not recognize the friendly rivalry between the province’s two largest cities. The honorable Mr. Klein was once the mayor of Calgary.
What you can almost see from Edmonton is the City of St. Albert, where I live. Founded by Oblate missionaries a century ago, many of its streets bear the names of its founding Metís families: Perron, Boudreau, Giroux. What was once a tiny farming village has long since morphed into a leafy suburb of the larger city next door. St. Albert has all the modest charms of a mainly middleclass bedroom community. Summer evenings have a familiar sound track: the drone of lawnmowers, the murmur of conversation and occasional outbursts of laughter of neighbours gathered on the corner, and the thud, thud, thud, crash of basketball in the street.
What you can almost see from St. Albert is the absurdly named Pinnacle Ridge housing development. Now I know that prairie people make topological distinctions that a native of the coastal mountains such as me would not, but honestly, if there is supposed to be a pinnacle there, I can’t see it. ‘Pimple Ridge’ might be more accurate, if less appealing to potential home buyers. I suppose the pointy clay cut banks that rim the outside meanders of the little river bordering the development could strike someone, a prairie someone, as pinnacle-esque. It’s a stretch.
Am I being too literal, trying to make a mole hill out of a mountain? Maybe the name was chosen to convey exclusivity, privilege - the spoils of success. The houses of Pinnacle Ridge are not so much homes as they are starter castles. Each muscular specimen stands apart from its neighbours, sufficient unto itself in its formidable bulk. And yet these outsized trophy houses are also huddled here, apart from the nearby community. Pinnacle Ridge is an enclave.
When, on summer evenings, I occasionally bring my golden retriever Ginny to walk the very nice trail that lies between the houses and the river or to stroll the broad curving avenues, we seldom see or encounter anyone save an occasional driver passing by. No one is out. There's a palpable absence of sound. The people are here, to be sure, somewhere within the walls of their great buildings, out of sight.
St. Albert isn’t the end of the world, but you can almost see it from here.
When we get home after our walk, someone will hail me from the corner with an amiable insult, sparking a round of chuckles from the handful of neighbours gathered there, drawing me into the conversation. Ginny will seize the opportunity to work the little crowd, soliciting affectionate strokes. The light may be fading, but the basketball game is still on. Thud, thud, thud, crash.
In my opinion, September is the very best time to stare at the sky.
Today was one of those warm blustery late summer days when the sky is as blue as it gets - not a cloud in sight. Each year I make a point of staring upward on such a day. I know this sounds weird, but bear with me.
I place two garden chairs facing one another, park my bottom in one, and my feet on the other. Eh voilà! Perched comfortably in this fashion, I have the perfect blue sky observatory. I stare straight into the depths of the heavens. With the warm wind whipping the trees in my peripheral vision, I behold a kind of infinite beauty.
The sky is so blue,
You can see right through
(The Sky Is So Blue; Jane Siberry)
I wonder why the sky appears to my eyes as a lively dance of moving dots of colour, not uniform at all, as my mind tells me it should be.
Momentarily I’m distracted by a hawk, way up there, tacking against the wind, then a fleeting glimpse of two warblers, flying hard. Years ago, we had huge balsam poplars, whose leaves shimmered rubber ducky yellow and green-gold at this time of the year. The warblers were always attracted.
And then it happens. Out of the blue - literally out of the blue - a cloud simply appears where no cloud was moments before – a curling, stretching splash of white moving across the sky. Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a magical thing to behold.
My left brain, momentarily flummoxed, quickly recovers offering explanations - something to do with droplets condensing on the edge of a cooler current. Never mind that. It’s magic!
And you thought I was weird to look up at the September sky.
When cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all
(Both Sides Now; Joni Mitchell)
