A Long Walk Coming

     On February 29th,1704, Abigail Nims, who was Fleur-Ange’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, was one of 109 (or 112) captives taken by the French and several First Nations people from the English frontier village of Deerfield which later would be part of the state of Massachusetts. Abigail was only 3 at the time so she must have been carried most of the way through the winter snows back to various areas in what would later be called Quebec. As the “Queen Anne’s War” drew to a close, some of the 89 captives who survived the trek to the Montreal area returned to Deerfield but Abigail did not. This year there is a meeting of some of Abigail’s descendants in Deerfield in October. As a special “art project,” Fleur-Ange is planning to do a return walk from Montreal to Deerfield. It will be a roughly 480 kilometre (300 mile) walk. Fleur-Ange has an elementary school friend, Pauline, who plans to do the whole walk with her. In order to cut down on costs of gas and keep us all fairly close to a vehicle on the walk, I plan on doing a shuttle with Fleur-Ange’s van so I will walk a bit, return to the van, drive ahead, return to meet Fleur-Ange and Pauline, then start the procedure over. We expect to start the walk from Montreal on September  3 and arrive in Deerfield on October 1. At this point in time I am looking at Google Earth and Google maps to try to follow, as closely as possible, the route that the captives walked.

        Fleur-Ange is planning on starting a new blog to record her adventures. I will post the address on this blog when she gets started; meanwhile, I am hoping to blog my part in this activity here. So here we go . . . .

        So far, we have made arrangements for some people to stay in our house when we are gone to take care of feeding the animals and keeping the house occupied in our absence. I have roughed out the route, have two bed & breakfast reservations for a total of 7 nights, one motel reservation, and campsites for 5 nights. There are lots of other preparations to do in the next two weeks before we drive to Montreal. Busy, busy, busy, . . . 

Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre

I spend at least part of 5 days a week at the Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre in Brantford. It is one of many local "gyms" but on a quite grand scale. It has 4 full sized hockey rinks, which I have never used; an indoor track, which I use on very  hot or very cold days for runs; two swimming pools; two hydro pools; a sauna; a full sized basketball court; an exercise room; a very large equipped weight room; a cycle room; and an indoor dry-land training room. Depending upon the time of year and time available I participate in weight training, swimming, aqua-fit classes, spin classes, yoga, Pilates, and track running. I keep thinking that I should buy some ice skates and learn to skate since I have been in  Canada for so many years but somehow it has not happened yet. Maybe later?

When I am not Running

Managed an 11 km run this morning. It was not fast but it was hot and I did do it. I am slowly building up my distance again.

Meanwhile back at the camera . . .

Sometimes even Slugs are beautiful.

I am revolting against Flickr putting many photos on a page all surrounded by black.

This is one of the "Asian Lady Bugs" that "bite." I am not too keen on them.

This is how I changed the Lady Bug for Flickr. I do like playing around with edges.

I like early  morning fog

until

it turns into

a humid day.

Playing with Photos

In addition to spending a lot of time mowing, and never getting finished due to rain and rain and rain, I have been playing with photos off and on. Here are three of my latest.

I was called to the bathroom to see this spider reflected in the bathtub the other day. It reminded me a a sculpture in front of the National Gallery in Ottawa:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maman_(sculpture)

This plume moth was found on a White Avens flower at the RBG last Friday. The plume moths are quite unique in both shape and colours.

Last Sunday we went hiking in the Dundas Valley until we got rained out. Then, after a bit of ice cream, the rains went away and we made a stop at a nearby waterfall. This is a double exposure with the girl both pointing at the falls and climbing a log that appears to be in the falls.