It’s winter in Canada. The sidewalks are slippery; the roads are amuck with salt and slush; the temperatures are icy cold. Everywhere one goes, one hears account of travel, whether recent, pending, planned or debated. Considering the news from the United States of America that the dearth of Canadian snowbirds this year has caused a substantial economic impact, one wonders what the domestic narrative is. Reading random entries on Substack, there seems to be a persuasion that staying home is not entirely objectionable – neither politically nor culturally. Nonetheless there are unquestionably those hardened to removal from the Northern Hemisphere. Only a moment ago for example a friend wrote of his planned excursions.

I would prefer being in a warmer climate . So I have booked a 50 day holiday leaving Feb 11th to numerous places starting with Fiji and then to Sydney, Australia where I will embark on a Viking ship for 30 days and will disembark in Bangkok where I will spend a week or so there and in the Gulf of Thailand. I have been to almost all places which we will visit but will do so with a different eye. Returning to Ottawa on March 30th.

Then on May 6th will be flying to New York to join the Queen Mary II for its 7 day transatlantic crossing to Southampton . Once there, will be spending 17 days in England and will fly back to Ottawa on June 1st.

In addition my erstwhile physician has already abandoned his country estate under snow in the Village of Ashton; and Bunny too soon leaves her frightfully urban Ottawa apartment in fashionable Westboro headed across the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean – or perhaps directly across the South Atlantic Ocean – to the identical sub-equatorial destination. In addition we have friends already rejoicing in Australia and New Zealand. Add to this the impending expeditions and odysseys of neighbours who haven’t the courtesy to contain their excitement. It makes for a frigid assessment of one’s own intentions.

Yet – oddly – today was cause for reflection upon this warm and nutritious subject. The weather outlook is Sunny and 3°.  I drove along the highway this afternoon with  the car windows open. It was a breeze of cathartic effect. And critically it is a reminder of my lingering and incremental limitations, medical, dental, physical and psychological.

Plus the weather today was such that – as is normally the case when the air is dry and the sun is bright – everything within sight was glamourized and enhanced.  Certainly I recall similarly evocative views in the Florida Keys or on Longboat Key or Hilton Head Island; but it is unfair to diminish the rapture of a wintry baby-blue sky streaked with pink, or blueish-white snow encompassing a windswept field.

The long afternoon shadows streaking across the face of the frozen river distinguish poetic architecture of their own. Then – as though answering my quandary –  remorsefully under the heading “The Life You Choose“, I read a short but stringent line, “Wherever you go, you’re already there!” Admittedly it may carry more encouragement for the armchair pedant than the shivering beast. My only circuit around the adage is to ask, “All other things being equal (which of course they are not), where would you prefer to be?” As, dear Reader, I have thus parenthetically observed, the original premise is corrupt; that is, one mustn’t presume or surmise that things haven’t changed.

It is a curiosity to me that, in spite of one’s alleged devotion to reason, we so easily consume an absurdity of universal equality. It is those very details which have altered that so contaminate the result.  If we were to return to the identical platitude which for years we so willingly – and fruitfully – embraced, then what?  As much as I am wont to reason in its favour, I keep resiling, falling back, trusting my instincts (an old habit I’ve never relinquished), refusing to allow myself to be dissipated by this plain sailing but illegitimate logic. By the way – trusting one’s instincts is something never to be abused. This assertion alone is weighted by every cadence of both logic and science: if you don’t want the embarrassment, recall first the mordant question, “What was your first clue?”

Until I resolve the matter – and, yes, there are events at stake – we shall continue to maintain our course, walking the bridge with a wary but cheerful eye, while casually ruminating upon the thrust of the issue.