Early Days

Reflections 1

The Culmination of a Life-long Love of Nature

To be admitted to Nature's hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

Thoreau

The outdoors has always been an integral part of my life. As a child growing up in the heart of a small city, I had the good fortune to live across the road from St. Alphonsus Seminary, a sprawling forty acre campus, much of which was made up of apple orchards, small woodlots and vegetable gardens. From an early age my friends and I spent almost all of our free time there, occasionally being chased through the apple orchard by the priests who never seemed to catch us, probably because they never intended to or maybe those flowing, ground-length black frocks slowed them down. I suspect it was just their way of making sure that we didn’t get too comfortable lounging about in their apple trees. There was also the bee colony where I stole my first kiss, and farm buildings complete with foul and pigs. There was the huge strawberry patch which we would often raid after sundown to avoid the ever vigilant eyes of the priests in training, the sweet, unmistakable scent of freshly crushed strawberries assaulting our nostrils - and staining our clothes - as we slithered on our bellies, snakelike, through the rows of ripening fruit. 

We spent what must have been hundreds upon hundreds of carefree days there. We ate apples until we never wanted to see another, until next time, or until the priests discovered us. We played hide-and-seek, pick-up softball, cowboys - I was Gene Autry, and had the six guns in their black leather, steel-studded belt and holsters to prove it. Another of my childhood heroes was Davy Crocket and again, I had the ‘coonskin’ cap and fringed jacket to bring the “King of the Wild Frontier” to life as we explored our ‘wilderness’ territory and killed imaginary b’ars in the heart of small town Southwestern Ontario.