Five Years a Writer

Mum, cringing; Amanda, smiling; Charles, grinning at the camera --  all enjoying morning tea made by Dad outside on the Coleman stove and served in  thick melamine mugs. Since learning that the townsite of Jasper and part of Jasper National Park have been engulfed by a raging wildfire , my mind has been filled with memories of one particular camping holiday my parents took us on way back in 1971.  At the time, we were living in Germany for my father's work, so the 6-week trip in a truck camper through British Columbia made a particular impression on my young mind. We had summer holidayed in Spain and winter skied in the Austrian alps, but that trip around BC with its spectacular scenery and those camp sites in national and provincial parks was out of this world wild and wonderful.  I remember the campsites, those enormous trees, the quiet, the fun of cooking over a fire, the not-so-fun of rudimentary toilet facilities, the patience of the conservation officers explaining the life o

  CONTEXT : I am writing this on Monday July 22, 2024 for posting on Tuesday July 23, against the backdrop of Joe Biden having stepped down on Sunday July 21 from the ticket in this November’s US election. ———— I’m wrestling with a big problem of my own these days. I will listen to experts and to those with more experience than I have, but, ultimately, it is I who must make the call. I am the one who created the situation and it is, therefore, I who must sort out the problem that has ensued. While I do not control all the factors involved in the problem, I nonetheless feel — and am — responsible for it. Oh, I want things to be different. For sure, I want to have known more from the outset, to have managed the situation more expertly along the way, to have, actually, made a different call from the very beginning. But here I am now. Facing the hydrangeas in the raised bed in the front yard. After a wicked rain storm. The beautiful bountiful blooms are water drenched; the branches and ste