The Citizen, 2019-08-01, Page 5Other Views
Between camping and ‘glamping’
Celebrating nature’s good news Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Since I’ve gotten older (I”m still not
comfortable saying matured) I’ve come
to the conclusion that camping (in a tent)
isn’t something that really interests me.
“Roughing it”, wrapped in a sleeping bag,
surrounded by a nylon cocoon of a tent used to
be a lot of fun, and I don’t mean when I was
knee high to a grasshopper. Even into my mid-
20s, I enjoyed crashing in a tent after a long
night of celebration.
It wasn’t long, however, before I realized
that I wasn’t quite young enough to enjoy that
activity anymore. After sleeping in a tent, I’d
wake up fighting allergies and with a sore
back.
Sure, I can down some drugs to fight
allergies, but the sore back was what really
drove me away from camping in a tent
regularly. Inflatable mattresses are, after all,
completely unreliable - either they deflate just
enough so it’s flat underneath me or it feels
like I’m sleeping in a bouncy castle and rolling
off - so, no matter what, I’d end up, more or
less, sleeping on the cold hard ground with a
thin sheet of inflammable material between
me and the ground.
I’m not saying I’ll never sleep in a tent
again. Mary Jane may want to pursue a future
in Scouts or Guides and I’ll be more than
happy to chaperone those trips. Given the
choice, however, I’ll always take a real roof
over my head and bed under my beleaguered
back.
So, when Ashleigh suggested we go
camping in Bracebridge’s Santa’s Village later
this month, I was apprehensive.
After some brief discussion, however, I
realized that “camping” didn’t really describe
what we’d be doing. As a matter of fact, what
we’re doing is far more like “glamping”.
“Glamping” is a term that refers to people
who camp with all the comforts of home:
internet, television, air conditioning and a full-
feature kitchen.
We’re not quite there with our
accommodations for our upcoming vacation.
With a fully-featured cabin, including air
conditioning, a microwave and a barbecue, we
won’t so much be camping as staying in a
secluded, full-featured hotel room, and closer
to glamping than camping.
We’re also going to be staying at Santa’s
Village which takes a lot of stress off as far as
planning activities for Mary Jane (and, with
Sportsland, making sure I’ve got something to
keep myself occupied).
Between the rides, games and activities, as
well as visiting with Santa Claus of course,
and decorating a gingerbread cookie with Mrs.
Claus, we’ll have at least one day of our four-
day getaway covered for activity.
So we’re a long way from roughing it in the
traditional sense.
To be fair, it’s been a very long time
since I roughed it in any sense of the word,
unless you count shutting off my phone and
avoiding the internet for a week’s staycation
to be roughing it (and I’m not ashamed to
say, that is how I have been ‘roughing it’
for the past several years).
Ashleigh anticipates this will be the first of
many trips to Bracebridge and Santa’s Village,
though I’m not entirely convinced yet. While
I’m sure it will be fun, and while I’m sure I
won’t mind going again, I’m a big proponent
of variety as the spice of life when it comes to
vacations.
Personally, if choosing between sitting
around doing nothing on a vacation or learning
something new through a unique cultural
experience, I’ll always lean to the latter, so
repeat visits to a place like Santa’s Village
might not be as fruitful as a road trip to
Canada’s eastern or western provinces, for
example.
Regardless, I’m looking forward to the trip,
especially with Mary Jane as there will be a lot
of new experiences that we’ll be able to share
together.
Look for my official unofficial review of the
campgrounds and Mary Jane’s experience
later this month.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 2019. PAGE 5.
Who would’ve thought?
Here are a few quotes for you right off
the top. First, one of my favourites.
From former heavyweight champion
of the world Mike Tyson: “Everybody has a
plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
And Tyson would know. He has punched
many a man in the mouth only to see their
“plan” drip down into a puddle by their feet.
As election season ramps up here in Canada
you can’t help but see that everyone has a plan.
Whether it will work or not is another story,
but everyone comes into the summer, and then
the fall, with a plan they hope to execute.
This brings me to the second quote. It comes
by way of former U.S. President Bill Clinton:
“It’s the economy, stupid.”
Now, while the quote is a bit altered from its
original state (it should actually be attributed
to James Carville, Clinton’s 1992 campaign
manager, who hung a sign with numerous
phrases on the wall at Clinton’s campaign
office, one of the points being, “the economy,
stupid”) it boils down to its simplest form one
of the most basic election talking points. No
matter the country, the year or the candidates,
the economy is always going to be important.
Now, with that in mind, think of some of the
important election wars that have been waged
over the years and think of the issues that are
important to you. The strength of the economy,
the safety of your country, its profile on the
world stage, job creation and the beefing up of
services we all use, such as health care,
education and infrastructure. Watch any debate
for any political office (and I have) and these
issues will no doubt make some sort of
appearance in no particular order.
That’s Tyson’s aforementioned plan for an
election, but how many elections have we seen
that began with a plan and by the end you
wonder how it ended up where it did?
It’s happening as we speak with federal
Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer, who
is randomly focusing on the new iteration of
Canada’s Food Guide and dairy’s lack of a role
in it. While dairy farmers might support his
stance, is this an election issue that affects
most Canadians? After all, milk and cheese
haven’t been spirited away from store shelves.
In the last federal election, voters were
similarly distracted. With a flagging economy,
terrorism concerns and climate change all up
for debate, it was a Muslim woman’s right to
wear a niqab during a Canadian citizenship
ceremony that dominated debates in 2015.
The Conservatives were behind this one as
well and it was designed to divide Canadians.
After all, how important was this issue to the
day-to-day lives of your average Canadian?
The last U.S. Presidential election was
marred with issues like these. Whether it was
Hillary Clinton’s deleted e-mails or Donald
Trump paying porn stars for sex, American
voters would be right in wondering how their
well-being was entwined with these issues.
In 2011, there was the Jack Layton massage
parlour scandal. Layton, who has since passed
away, saw his popularity soaring in the
leadership race only to be smeared by reports
telling the story of Layton getting caught up in
a massage parlour police raid 15 years earlier.
In the months leading up to this fall’s
election, focus on the real issues that matter to
you and to most Canadians. Don’t fall for
misdirection. Listen to candidates and research
platforms. Doug Ford campaigned on not
being Kathleen Wynne with absolutely no
platform and look where we are now.
Do your research, be informed and make
your vote count. Many are trying to sway you
and not because they want the best for you.
Somehow we’ve come to a place where
my business – the news business – only
seems to be doing its job if it reports bad
news. Usually a national newscast has at least
80 per cent bad news, and if anyone has more
good news stories than that, they’re suspected
of pandering to the public.
So it goes when it comes to nature. In recent
weeks we’ve seen stories that, in Ontario, eight
species of turtles are endangered and four
species (who knew we had so many?) of bats.
But there’s never much mention about the good
news of nature’s variety.
The subject came up recently when a group
of us were talking and someone mentioned a
column I wrote a couple of weeks ago about
the wildlife attracted by the mulberry tree
outside our kitchen window. Someone else
mentioned a posting on Facebook from a
nature-lover about bear scat filled with
mulberries found on a trail near Goderich.
(Please, nobody tell the bears about our
mulberry tree. That kind of wildlife I don’t
need in our yard!)
After the talk about bears someone else
commented about all the wildlife we see these
days that we never saw years ago. He
mentioned eagles as an example.
It’s not that long ago that I was amazed to
see my first bald-headed eagle in Huron
County. Until then I didn’t know if these
majestic birds, with their six-foot wingspan,
could even live in our area. Today they’re a
common sight along the Maitland River, and
even commoner if you have a chicken farmer
for a neighbour who composts his manure,
complete with the odd dead bird.
On the subject of magnificent birds, I
was an adult before I saw my first turkey
vulture wheeling majestically in the sky. Up
close, the birds are ugly, but in the sky they are
a thing of beauty. Having grown up on a diet of
westerns where cowboys thirsting in the desert
fought off vultures waiting to feast on their
dead bodies, it took some time for me to
appreciate these useful birds that clean up
nature.
Speaking of bringing the old west to life,
we have the explosion of coyotes in the area.
Though the pioneers in Huron County had to
protect their livestock from wolves, wolves of
any kind were unknown when I was growing
up. Today coyotes are common and they aren’t
shy, often coming right into farmers’ yards.
Sheep farmers face the same problems
protecting their flocks today as their great-
great-grandparents did a century and a half
ago.
Speaking of bold, there are the turkeys,
probably the most controversial of the new
arrivals to Huron County. Once native to the
area, turkeys had long been extinct in these
parts. The birds had been reintroduced in
counties south of here but hadn’t made their
way back this way on their own.
I covered the first releases of wild turkeys
in this area in the early 1990s. There was
some doubt (at least on my part) that they
could survive Huron’s harsh winters with
our deep snow. Boy was I wrong. Turkeys
thrived to the point it wasn’t long before
farmers were declaring them a plague. Even
more so than the coyotes, they were not shy,
sometimes coming right into barns and eating
cattle feed out of feed bunks. Still, I’m amazed
when I see one of these huge birds take flight
and perch in a tree.
I haven’t seen one myself, but there’s ample
evidence that bears are back in Huron. They
were plentiful when the pioneers arrived.
There’s a legend in my family that my great-
great-grandfather had to fight off an attacking
bear with his bare hands in the mid-1800s – a
legend that caused me no end of teasing when
I told it to my chums as a boy.
Foxes have made a comeback in recent
years. When I was young, they were a common
sight, particularly in the days when most
farms had a chicken coop. They hunted at
night but we’d often see laggards heading
home in the early morning light. But when
rabies hit in the 1950s, foxes were particularly
affected and the population was greatly
reduced. We see the odd one slinking past the
house these days, and of course there were
those pups that came to our mulberry tree as
mentioned in the column.
I see a much more diverse display of
wildlife in our yard than I ever saw when I was
young. We had goldfinches, then as now, but
we also have the exquisitely-blue indigo
bunting these days and hear the intricate song
of the wood thrush. Bluebirds were nearly
extinct then but, though I don’t see them
regularly, we’ve had flocks drop in for a break
while migrating.
One bird I do miss from my youth is the
meadowlark. With fewer hay fields and
pastures, they’ve lost much of their habitat.
We need to be aware of those species that
are endangered and do what we can to maintain
the diversity we have. Just the same we need to
take time to notice, and celebrate, nature’s
success stories.
Keith
Roulston
From the
cluttered desk
The Citizen
is closed for summer holidays
and there will be no paper
published August 8
The Blyth Office will reopen
Monday, August 12 at 9 a.m.
The Brussels Office will reopen
Monday, August 12 at 10 a.m.
This is important: to get to know people,
listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world
is crisscrossed by roads that come closer
together and move apart, but the important
thing is that they lead towards the Good.
– Pope Francis
Final Thought