When I arrived in Almonte in June of 1976 I rented a house from Rev. and Mrs. George Bickley who then resided in the manse of St. Paul’s Anglican Church where Rev. Bickley was the minister. The first house I bought in 1978 was a very small house. Otherwise there are few remarkable features of it I now recall.  One however lingers.  That was a handmade bespoke stained glass window.  It too was relatively small, say 1½ feet square, with an ancient pine frame. The glasswork was made by Robert Pauly who I believe then had the further distinction of living in the Village of Clayton.  I do not remember how I was introduced to the artist but I clearly recollect that in addition to appreciating his talent I enjoyed dealing with him.  He stood out as they say. He was animated and up-lifting. The small window was located slightly above eye-level on the eastern exterior wall of the living room. As you might well conclude, it invited the early morning sunshine and profited in due course from the exuberance of the thriving stained glass. The little window (it was almost a porthole) opened and closed, with a brass hinge to secure it.

That, dear Reader, was strangely the first thing I thought about when I began my daily empyrean musings earlier this afternoon as I motored along the Appleton Side Road set upon fulfillment of my mundane repetitive custom (which is to say, getting the car washed). I may have been provoked to the aesthetic source by the site of the kayaks and canoes stored in the basement locker as I tricycled back and forth earlier this morning for a half-hour. The compelling flair and buoyancy of colours struck me.

My mental ramblings further stimulated me to reflect upon the globe from space.  Thus located I pinpointed my position on the face of the earth then imagined trips northward to the Arctic (where my father and I had once traveled together), southward to the Antarctic (to which I have never been nor wish to go), eastward to Asia (to which I have never been except perhaps within miles of Russia in northern Finland where my father and I also went together), westward to Europe (where I visited England, France, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Holland/Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Sardinia). I have driven across both Canada and the United States of America; and, I have seen some of Mexico and much of the Caribbean. Notably missing from my erstwhile itinerary are South America, India, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.  Frankly I believe my travel education is at an end. What bubbled to the top of my reflections was that, as alluring as it may be to circulate in Rome or Moscow, I haven’t the capacity for self-propulsion. My days of convenient mobility except from the bedroom to the bathroom or from the elevator to the car are over.

The good news is, I haven’t a care!  What one mustn’t overlook in the assessment of things is not only the thing itself but the method of interpretation.  I word it so because, as I discovered upon my continuing analysis of this heady topic, there are many and diverse aspects from which to view the universe; for example, literal (that is, actually being there whether mobile or from a wheelchair), magazines, movies and books. Patently some are more easily managed than others; but I am not convinced that one is necessarily more satisfying or enduing than the other.

Energized by this candid admission (and incontrovertible submission to old age), I was however explosively enthralled by the dominion before my eyes; viz., the beauty of the day and the resplendence of the County of Lanark (through which by now I was sailing along the highway from Stittsville to Renfrew County and thence through the backwoods towards White Lake, Waba, Pakenham, Blakeney and Bennies Corners).

Here I had what can only be described as a lapse into the vernacular. In addition to mystic contemplation of the inexpressibly picturesque vistas which I by-passed with noticeable regularity as I drifted up and down along the winding ribbon of highway parallel the Mississippi River, I gathered in my impassioned mind a summary of things (all of which are too vulgar to relate) which preserve my indisputable alliance and commendation. It is one of my incontestable inadequacies that I have allowed myself to be taken in by materialism. Furthermore I have employed the coarse appetite as a vehicle by which to quantify and qualify myself.  Think of things like a key chain, a piece of jewellery or a stick of furniture; it doesn’t matter what, things that for whatever shallow reason speak to you. The vulgar conjunction of Nature’s bounty and my own dwindling productions revived within me a rare bounty of enthusiasm having the identical heartfelt gusto upon locating a lost pair of shoes. I was homeward bound!