THE SOUTHAMPTON RANGE LIGHT

DEAD SLOW

NO WAKE

Lighthouses inherently inspire all manner of allegory. The symbolism we read into them creates a multiplicity of meaning. There is one, among many, on the Huron Coast and specifically in Southampton that that has touched me from the first moment I saw it. Look out to the lake driving in or out of town and you can’t miss it.

The Southampton Range Light sits sentinel-like peering outward over the vast expanse of Lake Huron to the empty horizon. Rising like an exclamation point at the extreme end of the concrete long dock, a man made extension of the Saugeen River’s north shore, The Light points the way to safe harbour.

There is a sister Light upriver just past the bridge off highway 21. The Saugeen River Light sits about 2300 feet from the Front Light. It is a smaller structure, only 31′ high. But because of its hill location, it rises 61′ above water level with a fixed, electrically powered, automated signal.

Sailors and boaters line up the front and back Range Lights and stay the course to reach the river channel.

The Front or Southampton Range Light is a square tapered wooden building, painted white with a red top. It is electrically operated. Like all great lighthouses it has a working foghorn. A signal from a marine radio turns it on. Its bellow can be heard well into town.

DEAD SLOW. NO WAKE. These four words on the side of the Southampton Range Light greet everyone sailng into harbour.

DEAD SLOW is in red, bold face, all upper case letters. It is shouting to get your attention…a warning to watercraft to throttle down. NO WAKE is a confirmation of the initial request. What they are saying is simple…the uncertainty of Lake Huron is behind you. You have reached the shelter of the Saugeen River shoreline.

I started taking pictures of The Light the week I moved here. Each season lends it’s own unique, hypnotic ambiance. From high on Scubby’s Point, from ground level on either side of the harbor or road, at sunrise or sunset, there is always something dramatic in your viewfinder.

Whenever I’m shooting The Light, I always find myself drawn to those four words. There is a life lesson in their simplicity that goes beyond any maritime meaning.

If the lake represents the unpredictability of everyday existence, perhaps the message The Light is trying to convey is this: we must all live with cautious purpose (DEAD SLOW) and do no harm to anyone (NO WAKE).

But that’s just me.

 

A SIGN OF SPRING

Caught this ROBIN in our Ash Tree just before a day-long snow-fall. Poor thing has since disappeared.

THE VIEW FROM MY SITTING ROOM

The crows are quite vocal this afternoon. They circle the tree tops in a tight crowd and in their own time light on the topmost branches, black smudges on White Birches, bare White Ash and dark-barked Black Walnut trees. All the while causing a commotion that shatters the quietude of the day. The clamor persists as more join their gathering. Then, for no obvious reason, they take flight heading down the line of trees to yet another perch to begin the process all over again. The bush behind my house is a favourite gathering place for crows.

I live on the shoulder of the Saugeen River. It is but minutes from my back door. But between the water and me is a thick forest of red tipped Sumacs, high weeds, gnarled apple trees and wild lilacs choked with wild grape vines that descends into a steep bank thick with cedars. These cedars have grown so dense that little light gets through. You must look up past their dead and dying branches to the green canopy to catch a glimpse of sky.

Somewhere along the brow of this line is a hard to detect path leading to the river. It slides down into darkness. The dead branches arch over it making the descent a sinister passage like Orpheus into the Underworld.

We seldom take that walk. We say it is because the path back up is an uncomfortable pitch for our old legs. But perhaps the claustrophobic forest recalls some deeply buried childhood fear. Why else would it attract crows?

This line of bush is different in winter, though.

Below it, the canyon that holds the Saugeen becomes a snow channel. Winds off the water charge through the harbor mouth and follow the path of the river blowing the lake effect squalls up and over our river-hill subduing the bush and trees and obliterating them under a weight of white. When the weather changes so does the view.

This is the forest outside my sitting room window.

Its tree line catches the light of the rising sun, then turns black at sunset. Green, grey, beige or white, whatever the season’s colour, there is never a time when it is boring or taken for granted. It is constant in its consistent changes.

 

 

SNOWY

They came to occupy our back roads and farm fields. Stoically perched on hydro poles and fence posts, they survey their bleak surroundings, heads rotating in seemingly full circle, ever vigilant for any movement in the mud and snow. Oblivious to any kind of weather, they wait. Patience is their stock in trade. They sit almost motionless for hours; the only sign of movement is the wind ruffling their feathers. When they take flight they glide low over the ground. Then with a few short strokes of their wings they gain height and settle again on another high vantage point – to wait.

It all started with emails from Bruce County Birders. The Snowy Owls had arrived in more than normal numbers. This was something that doesn’t happen every year. Sightings were posted. Locations changed from day to day. The excitement was palpable. The news sent all serious birders on a quest. The search was part of the excitement. Those that found them were happy to send their photographs.

Our first sighting was early in the morning driving down Bruce Road 3 at 80km an hour…one solitary bird, high above the road on a hydro pole in the breaking dawn light. It was an accidental view, a fleeting glance but a glance nonetheless. We crisscrossed the county a number of times after that. Finally, one sunny day, on our way out of Paisley towards Underwood we saw four of them. They sat quietly for their portraits waiting for us to be done.

Looking at them I got the impression that they were unimpressed with the whole procedure. If I were a Snowy Owl looking down at all these people with their binoculars and cameras with protruding lenses I would probably be wondering what all the fuss was about.

But I’m not a Birder or a Snowy Owl. 

Winter Sunset on Edward Street

WINTER WINE

I’m making wine. It’s not my first time. I’ve been making wine for years. In Toronto, I had the luxury of a basement. Here, in Southampton, there is no basement. Just a narrow laundry room. When you open the door and walk in the odor of fermenting grapes hits you in the face. It takes me back – back to when I was a child living in Sault Ste. Marie.

My grandfather owned a large corner lot not far from the employee entrance to the Algoma Steel Plant. He had enough land to build two houses separated by a courtyard with a big garden plot behind that ran the length of the property. We lived in the corner house that also had a candy store and my uncles’ barbershop. After school I would help out by sweeping the cut hair into a hole in the floor. On weekends I would shine shoes. Once I got caught stealing licorice pipes from the candy store. My uncles told me, ‘next time, just ask.’

Making wine reminds me of my grandfather’s wine cellar. As a child I remember it as a vast underground cave that ran deep under the houses and courtyard, long and cavernous, divided into locked rooms some with stacked barrels, another with a stained wine press, one with sausage, salami, bresaola and prosciutto dangling from racks like cobwebs, a room where shelves filled with jars of fruits, vegetables, jams, sausage in oil, and sugo (tomato sauce) covered the walls. Finally there was the room with a long stainless steel table and a rack of knives, cleavers and grinders, the room where I watched my father, grandfather and uncles turn lifeless carcasses into food for the family.

In the fall, rectangular cases of grapes, dripping juice and followed by fruit flies, where delivered and stacked next to the wine press. Soon the odor of fermenting wine from open barrels filled the underground cavern and seeped upstairs into our house. The smell lasted for weeks and only disappeared when the ‘purple pop’ (as I called it) was racked and sealed in aging barrels. Every week they would draw a sample, taste, shake their heads and hammer the bung back into the barrel. And then, months later, they would open the spigot, draw a glass, taste and smile. A pitcher would then be poured, a salami taken from the rack and sliced, fresh bread was ripped apart and the celebration began. I was allowed a glass of the winter wine mixed with 7Up and then sent upstairs. My grandfather, father and uncles wouldn’t leave that room for quite some time.

So now, in my mind, as my winter wine ferments away my adult imagination recalls those days. The magic of wine making in my house is not the same, though. There is no cavernous, multi-room cellar. My wine ferments in a plastic pail sitting beside the furnace…in my laundry room. Times change.

My Winter Wine ferments in a plastic tub. No gravitas there.

My Wine Cellar - a cold room under the stairs.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,700 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

TIS THE SEASON

A Celtic Christmas Blessing
May peace and plenty Be the first to lift the latch On your door And happiness be guided to your home By the candle of Christmas. Come the New Year, May your right hand be always stretched out In friendship And never in want. •••

GARLIC POACHERS

For the last few years I’ve had great success cultivating garlic. Cloves for my first planting came from Smith’s Apple Orchard. Grow local they say.

They were big, white cloves that produced rich green curly scapes in early summer. We learned how to use them in salads, soups, sauces, toppings, and pastas and how to cook with them. Then in mid-July we took our first harvest. We were rewarded with big fat bulbs whose colour went from white in some to a light purple in others. Some were saved for the next planting. Some went to friends and family.

Each fall we would till and fertilized the small bed, planting two rows, then four last year. Each summer the results were the same.

Until this summer. The buds were not as big as before. So we delved into farmer’s lore and decided to rotate our crop, moving the planting to another side of the garden. After laying down a layer of mulch we considered our work done until spring.

Today I just happened to walk behind the garden shed to discover that my garlic garden had been attacked. Holes had been dug along the edges. Earth was piled here and there on top of the mulch. The garlic patch was under attack. Now there are really only two creatures that can dig like that…raccoons and skunks. I know this because I watched them destroy my lawn a few years back when we had an infestation of grubs.

Alas, this is a sad state of affairs. Who knows how many cloves they managed to gobble up? Who knows if they will be back? Who knows how to keep them away?

We can only hope that the now frozen ground will be deterrent enough.
I can’t help smile, though, at the thought of a raccoon reeking of garlic. Or even worse, how lethal these skunk raiders must be. They can spray you or unleash their garlic breath on you…deadly at both ends. Just another reason to avoid these poachers if you catch them in the act.

Skunks and Racoons? One or both are doing damage to my garlic bed

MAYBE IT’S ME!

“You have notifications pending.”

The message popped into my email inbox. It felt like a reprimand from one of my high school teacher/priests. Recently I logged out of Facebook because I saw no reason to waste my time there. (No offense to all my ‘friends’). Still the notifications and comments come. I thought I was done with all that. Obviously membership in that social network is like membership in a street gang or the mafia…you’re never out completely.

On top of that, I’ve spent the last few days playing catch up with the planned obsolesce thrust upon anyone who owns any device from Apple. In order to stay connected I’ve had to download upgrades for my laptop, desktop, iTouch, iPad and iPhone (yes, I have all the toys) or be left behind. Without the latest operating systems I would be lost to the world, forbidden a fully functional roll in the ether or should I say The Cloud. Because I failed to stay up to date some of my files were rendered unsupportable: believe me the feelings of loss, anger and frustration were palpable. There are too many passwords to remember.

‘Simplify, simplify, simplify,’ said Mr. D, Thoreau. What with so many applications, so many games and so many sites pushing so much information there is too much to keep up with and no time to keep things simple.

Twitter has trivialized the world. In 140 characters the detritus of people’s lives, the superficial urgings of private agendas spills on to your screen. The only ways to stop it is to unfollow or log out.

Yes, we have the choice of being there or not. I am probably one tiny squeaky negative voice in the vast multitude. The irony in this is that I maintain this blog. And I’m writing this post…complaining. 

And this is nothing new. Back in 1807 William Wordworth reacted to the first Industrial Revolution with this sonnet: He was right then and he’s still right. OK. I’ll stop now.

THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US        The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.