The most magnificent high

There’s nothing better than being first. So I was ecstatic on Wednesday, Oct. 17 when I became the very first Canadian to get high as smoking marijuana became legal in Canada.

I had planned to be the first and sat patiently Tuesday evening, watching the clock. The new law would take effect at midnight.

Others also had plans to be first. Marijuana stores prepared for long line-ups. Thousands were queuing in anticipation of lighting up and being the first to soar. Video cameras were poised to record the magic moments when the very first legal puffs drifted into the night.

None of those news crews would be at my place on the lake to record my historic first. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to be the first.

Midnight in Newfoundland is 10:30 p.m. our time. So at exactly 10:30 I stepped outside and began to make history.

I walked a path through my woods, listening to the night sounds. Almost immediately my mind began to expand and my senses sharpened. I was getting high very quickly.

There is no better place to get high than in the woods. City streets won’t do it. Even urban parks are not the same. And, obviously never inside the house.

Newly fallen leaves whispered beneath my floating footsteps. An owl hooted to its mate and from across the lake floated the sad and lonely yips of a coyote.

There was a rustle and thump off to my left. Perhaps a raccoon setting off in search of something to burgle with those nimble little fingers. Or a bear knocking over a stump in hopes of finding some morsel of grubs and ants – another paw full of protein before denning up for its winter sleep.

The sounds reminded me that I am just one of many creatures sharing these woods. We all use the forest differently but we all share the same grave responsibility – to respect it and take from it only what we truly need and leave it natural for those who come behind us.

I lurch unsteadily down the dark trail to the lake where a brilliant autumn moon sprinkles diamonds across the gently rippled waters. The first people to this lake knew this moon as Mshkawji Giizis, the Freezing Moon, which reminds us to prepare ourselves physically and mentally for the lean, cold months ahead.

In my elevated state I see more brightly the constellations accompanying the Freezing Moon.

There is Taurus the Bull, which some ancients saw as a symbol of sexual love. Also Aquila the Eagle who carries Zeus’ messages down to we pitiful humans on earth.

And of course Aquarius spilling water from his stone jar over a multitude of stars.

Aquarius tells me to dip my finger into the lake. It is cool, where less than one month ago it was still warm enough for swimming. The coolness will intensify until the lake stiffens and its newly-hardened surface starts to collect snow.

The coolness, the falling leaves and the birds winging south make some people sad, even angry. They don’t like change and want everything to remain the same.

Authoritarians like Hitler, Stalin and Trump try to block change but ranting against it and building walls and other barriers cannot stop it.

Nature teaches us that we should accept change. Learn to appreciate it. Adapt to it.

Nature’s lesson is that change is renewal. When autumn leaves turn, die and fall to the earth their decaying bodies bring the soil nutrients that help foster new growth.

Those enriched soils provide us and other animals the things we need or desire. They even grow plants used to get us high – barley for beer, rye and corn for whiskeys, grapes for wine and cannabis plants that produce marijuana.

Those are things that temporarily lift us above our problems. They make us feel better for a short time but they are an insignificant part of nature.

Nature, which embodies the essential qualities of life on this planet, is far more powerful than any individual plant. It can’t be smoked, drank or eaten. It can be consumed only by the body’s senses and when absorbed produces the most magnificent of highs.  

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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Bad news about winter

Time to look ahead to winter and what we might expect from it this year. There’s bad news and more bad news.

Sorry about that but this is Canada, the country that has the world’s lowest average daily temperature – minus 5.6 Celsius.

Also, we have the world’s second coldest national capital. Ottawa ranks second in cold only to Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.

So news of  a cold and snowy winter ahead should not shock.

The Weather Network has given us a sneak preview of its 2018-19 winter forecast. Ontario, it says, will have a winter much like last year with bitter spells followed by significant periods of milder weather.

That sounds like more miserable patches of freezing rain conditions that last winter brought us not-so-great skiing, not so great sledding, much tense driving on icy roads and left us yearning for a real good old-fashioned Ontario winter.

A good old-fashioned winter is exactly what North America’s two best-known, old-fashioned weather predictors are predicting for us.

“Very, very cold,” says The Farmers’ Almanac. And, above normal snowfall.

Colder than normal and snowier than normal for all of Canada, says The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Just so not to be confused there are two Farmers Almanacs. One is The Old Farmer’s Almanac of New Hampshire established in 1792. The other is The Farmers’ Almanac (minus the Old) established in 1818 in New Jersey. (Note the different placements of the apostrophe).

Both claim prediction accuracy rates in the 80 percent range. However, professional weather people usually raise an eyebrow when hearing weather prognostications from the almanacs.

The almanacs have formulas for predicting weather but these are closely guarded secrets. They apparently are based on magnetic storms on the sun and other such astrological events.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac keeps its secret formula in a black box at its offices. The secret formula of The Farmers’ Almanac is known only to someone named Caleb Weatherbee, which we assume is a pseudonym.

Meanwhile there is much talk about how climate change is disturbing weather patterns and making precise weather forecasting difficult. The world has seen a lot of unexpected weather events over the past year or so.

The Florida Panhandle, devastated last week by Hurricane Michael, saw snowflakes last January. The State of Georgia had 15 centimetres of snow about the same time.

It snowed in the Sahara Desert last January and in February dozens of people died in a cold snap in the UK, Ireland and parts of Europe. It also snowed in Rome in February and at the end of June in Newfoundland.

Last April was the coldest in 124 years in a couple parts of the U.S. and it certainly wasn’t much warmer in Canada. The average high temperature in Haliburton County last April was 5.9 Celsius. The warmest it got that month was 17.5 Celsius.

That was followed by a warm May and an unusually warm and dry summer. The average high temperature for May in Haliburton was 22.1 Celsius.

Weather ups and downs likely will be a prominent feature for the future.

There is plenty of argument about whether global warming is causing all the changes. But extreme weather events are nothing new, although there seem to be more of them these days.

One thing to watch is Arctic ice cover, which is shrinking every year. It doesn’t matter whether you believe it is happening naturally or caused by human-produced global warming. It is happening and there is little doubt it is affecting world weather.

In the last 40 years the Canadian Arctic has lost 40 per cent or more of its ice cover. When ice melts it exposes dark waters.

Scientists say that Arctic ice and snow reflects about 80 per cent of the sun’s radiation.  Dark water reflects only 20 per cent.

Less ice and snow reflecting the sun’s rays exposes dark waters that absorb the sun’s rays and therefore become warmer. More water warming means more ice melting exposing more warming waters.

That’s a cycle that you don’t have to be a scientist to understand.

Meanwhile, northwestern Ontario already has received its first dumpings of snow. Looking at the 14-day forecast, ours could be only days, or hours, away.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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A country at war

I step off the airplane into the California sunshine and am welcomed by the sweet voice of America’s senior citizen diva, Barbra Streisand. She is singing, through someone’s car radio, Don’t Lie to Me, a new song she has written to protest the Donald Trump presidency.

“Why can't you just tell me the truth?

Hard to believe the things you say

Why can't you feel the tears I cried today?”

It is an arrival moment that reflects the anguish of this country and its divided people.

This is a country at war. It is a civil war in which cannons are replaced by angry shouting and outright hatred.

The battles are not over pieces of ground. They are cultural battles driven by fears of change and loss of status.

Like Canada and some other countries, the U.S. is being transformed by growing population diversity and the swelling influence of educated, liberated women. Unlike some other countries it is not handling it well.

Change has created a culture of grievance in the U.S. The white, male privileged class is grieving its loss of power and control. Dissenting movements such as #MeToo are grieving and fighting attitudes toward women and the male dominance of society.

The brutal storm over the elevation of the dyspeptic Brett (I Like Beer!) Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court pushed the anger and disunity in this country to stage centre. It also highlighted the political polarization making compromise and working together for common good an impossibility.

 “The country is gripped by a climate of division and distrust rivalled by few other moments in the recent past,” the New York Times reported recently.

One columnist, Thomas L. Friedman, wrote last week that he began his journalism career covering civil war in Lebanon but “I never thought I would end my career covering a civil war in America.”

It is not uncommon to hear or read opinions comparing what is happening today to the events leading to the 1861-1865 American civil war.

Historian Joanne B. Freeman wrote recently of how the U.S. political scene today is similar to the 1850s when Congress became embattled by the slavery crisis that caused Americans to fight each other roughly 150 years ago.

“In 2018, a crisis over different fundamentals — immigration, the rule of law, the status and safety of women and people of color — is doing much the same,” she wrote.

Most worrisome is the state of the U.S. Congress, which was designed by the founding fathers to be an oracle of debate, compromise and consent. It has fallen to the level of a cockfighting ring.

Writes Ms. Freeman:

“A dysfunctional Congress can close off a vital arena for national dialogue, leaving us vulnerable in ways that we haven’t yet begun to fathom.”

If Californians are worried about all this, a visitor would never know it. Things are cool and relaxed here.

The autumn sun is warm and bright, the end of the fire season is in sight and there have not been any recent earth tremors. Also, Fleet Week activities have just ended after providing a relaxing distraction from the nation’s problems.

Fleet Week is a celebration of the country’s naval forces. People stroll, sit and picnic along the beaches of San Francisco Bay while watching warships steam under the Golden Gate bridge and the Blue Angels aerial acrobat team performs loops and dives overhead.

Relaxed though they may be, people in this part of California cannot avoid the signs of turmoil.

Sunday I went to the historic Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland to see Fahrenheit 11/9, the anti-Trump film by Michael Moore. The marque announced that the theatre will not enforce the film’s R rating prohibiting anyone under 17 from viewing it. 

Accompanying the announcement was the following sentence: “Political discourse must not be stifled.”

After leaving the theatre I realized the importance of allowing all teenagers to see the film. Today’s teens are the ones who will have to work to put the ‘United” back into the United States of America.

I also realized the importance of the film to Canadians. We need to learn from America and clean up the way we do politics to ensure the same things don’t happen to us.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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Of mice and mice traps

There is a mouse population explosion this year.

Everyone I have talked to reports their traps clicking and clacking on a regular basis. My own traps are singing loudly and more often than in recent years.

The worst thing that can happen during a mouse outbreak is encountering the critters nose to nose. And, my nose met a mouse nose the other day.

I am not frightened by mice, but it was disconcerting when I opened a cupboard door and found one staring at me. Bulbous, penetrating eyes locked onto me demanding: “Who are you and why are you here interrupting my business?”

I don’t have any government studies or statistics to report how bad this year’s outbreak is. I don’t really care about the numbers. One mouse is one mouse too many.

Mice are believed to have a population cycle of four years. Their numbers hit a peak on Year Four then drop drastically before beginning a new cycle. The last major outbreak in Ontario was in 2014.

Milder winters and warm and dry summers also can be factors in increasing mouse populations. Mice are really into love making and breed as many as 10 times a year, producing six to eight offspring each time.

Mice are cute in photos. They can be dangerous, however, especially in cottage country. Deer mice, the species found in cottage country, carry Hantavirus which causes serious respiratory disease in humans.

Small numbers of deer mice carrying Hantavirus have been found in northern Ontario, including Algonquin Park.

Hantavirus in humans is relatively rare. Health Canada reports three or four cases a year across the country. However, it is out there being spread by mice and it can be extremely debilitating, even causing death.

Hantavirus is most commonly spread through mouse urine and droppings. The greatest danger to humans is in cleaning mouse-infested areas by vacuuming or sweeping, or other forms of raising dust. The virus is in the dust, which is inhaled into the lungs.

Experts caution that mouse messes should be cleaned with extreme care and face masks and rubber gloves always worn. After clean-up the area should be washed with a strong disinfectant.

Keeping mice out of a building is near impossible. They will find entry through the smallest crack or cranny.

Trapping is the most effective, albeit often unpleasant, solution to mouse problems.

There are dozens of different mouse traps, many touted by their manufacturers as magic solutions to mouse problems. The absolute best in my view is one that you make yourself.

It is the rolling log mice bucket. You drill holes on each side of a bucket rim and run a piece of dowel through the holes. Partly fill the bucket with water and coat the underside of the dowel with peanut butter.

Place the bucket in a spot where mice can climb onto the dowel. They walk the dowel, lean over to get the peanut butter, the dowel rolls and they tumble into the water and drown.

Car windshield washer or anything containing some alcohol can be used instead of straight water to slow the rotting of the dead mice. It also can prevent freezing if the bucket is used in an unheated area during winter.

The beauty of the rolling log bucket trap is that you never have to touch a dead mouse. Just dump the bucket, refill and reload and it is ready to trap more of the little beasts.

Mouse poison is not a good idea. Poisoned mice will crawl behind walls or other hidden spots and rot, spreading horrible odours.

Also, poisoned mice can get outside where they are easy targets for birds of prey such as owls, hawks and eagles. When these birds consume a poisoned mouse they are a getting dose of poison.

Some people on my lake have noticed an increase in raptors this year. One cottager has reported seeing three young bald eagles and in fact has a photo of one.

An increase in the number of birds of prey might be connected to the increase in mouse populations. These are magnificent birds and we need to do whatever we can to keep their populations safe.

Let them eat mice (unpoisoned)!

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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