Today was a balmy summer day of incomparable lethargy! Getting out of the apartment was no challenge in spite of the soaring temperature or the pandemic. What however presented a moderate trial was achieving a degree of novelty. Fortunately for me I long ago adopted a preference for what some would look down their noses and call the lesser scope of habit and repetition. Nonetheless I flatter myself to presume that whatever I do – whether habitual or repeated – has at least an element of artistry or discovery depending upon the nature of the undertaking. A mere drive in the car for example affords me the dual ingredients of artistry (the bucolic country landscape) and discovery (insinuating the nearby cafés and restaurants). When wintering on Hilton Head Island or in Florida it was nothing for me to recollect wistfully the pleasure of a summer’s drive among the hamlets and villages which dot the landscape of surrounding Lanark, Renfrew and Leeds Grenville Counties. Our repeated sojourns to Burnstown, Calabogie and Ivy Lea Club on the St. Lawrence Seaway have inured us to the tranquillity and surprisingly agreeable resorts within a short distance of home – where “rural and urban lifestyles co-mingle in diverse and historic communities“.
