Injun summer after all

Great White Dispatch

Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 41
10/27/09
0620

It’s damn near November, which means that while winter hasn’t exactly settled in, it’s standing outside our door holding a suitcase. Last Friday, a Christian Slater-style hard rain resulted in this…

…pretty much out of nowhere. It wasn’t really cold enough for accumulation, but the sheer volume of falling snow stacked up pretty quickly. Which made the drive home from work in my Chevy Toboggan sorta hairy at times. Have I taken precautions against another situation where an impromptu snowstorm makes driving a rear-wheel drive pickup with no weight in the bed a little less dangerous? Of course not. 300 pounds of sand is buried somewheres in my garage.

Anyway. A few days before the Day After Tomorrow slapped us in the face, were granted one last beautiful summer day. I managed to sneak out with my camera and remind myself that no matter how doom-and-gloom I get, I can always step outside and say, “Yeah. This is mine.”

The entirety of Barn Bluff, as shown from the, er, other bluff.

This is taken from the park that basically surrounds my house.

These, too.

The view-from-the-dock shot it kinda overdone, but for good reason. Damn, it’s purty.

And here's some other random shots from the day:

There’s a bunch more pics posted at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vangoat.
Enjoy these, because I’ll be spending Halloween weekend five hours north in some cabin in the woods. The next pictures you get here might be from the county coroner, and might include my axe-murdered body. Cabin in the middle of nowhere? On a lake? On Halloween? With no place to poop indoors? Yeah. Clearly not MY idea.

Seriously, though, the place looks pretty rad. My goal is to grab a picture of a moose.
http://www.snowshoecountry.com

What. Ever.

Great White Dispatch

Notes From Damn Near Canada

No. 40

10/12/09

0750

Three weeks before Halloween and I'm watching a legitimate snowstorm. Good times here in Minnesota.

Nice and happy pics

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 39
10-7-09
17:29

Since so many people gave me the bitchings about what a downer the last post was, here's some shiny happy photographs!


This is partying down in Red Wing.



Hey look, a bug on a flower. HOW CREATIVE I AM.


I do believe this young chap lives under my porch. Since he started showing up and dancing for the camera at PRECISELY 8:26 every night, Tulip the Dog has been trying her damndest to dig through the porch floorboards. This may be a coincidence. Or it may be awesome. Do you have a fox den under YOUR house? HELLS NO, YOU DON'T.


Felty.


Fawny.


Glowy.


This is Cankles the Deer. He has some sort of swollen hoof issue. His rear passenger-side foot is twice the size of his others. When deer have foot problems, their antlers grow asymmetrical.


And finally, a shot of Barn Bluff and the Eisenhower Bridge from Bay Point Park. Really, the Red Wing scenery even makes a hack like me look good.

I'll have a whole bunch of other pics posted soon at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vangoat if I can ever get my goodamn uploader to work.

Sure am glad it's rainin'

Great White Dispatch
Notes From Damn Near Canada
No. 38
10-5-09
18:45

It’s been pissing rain for two weeks. It literally has not stopped raining for something like 12 days. Even when the sun does poke out, there’s always a dark cloud or two hanging around, ready to drop a few on your windshield, just so you don’t get too comfortable with all that warmth. But for the most part, the sun doesn’t even bother. We’ve had a peculiar wet and grey coupla weeks, a very Ohioesque stretch. It’s been kinda cool. Weeks like these actually make me miss Ohio a little.

But this morning, the rain was hard and cold and depressing. It had an extra bite to it, a subtle reminder that, yeah, this will soon turn to snow. It’s not the threat of winter that has me bummed. It’s the passage of time. Another season down. And what have you done?

When we moved to Minnesota, one of my overarching goals was to slow down. To take breaths now and again, get some things done that needed done not for practical-life purposes but for peace-of-mind, better-yourself purposes. To stop worrying about every goddamn little thing. To slow down, physically and mentally. I was going to do it. I was.

But you can’t slow down. Time won’t allow it. Christmas becomes Easter becomes summer becomes fall becomes Christmas. Every chronological landmark is a reminder of something I’ve meant to do but haven’t. The end of the baseball season reminds me that I haven’t paid my fantasy football fees. The first morning frost reminds me that I haven’t slapped plastic over the two-way wind tunnels acting as windows in my house. The falling leaves whisper that I haven’t mastered photography enough to properly capture them. Every Christmas, another year older, every New Year’s another chance to feel shitty about the three half-written novels on my hard drive.

You’d think that typing this, getting it on record, would be a form of catharsis or at the very least, a way to jumpstart myself. Something that causes me to leap into action.

Nah. I just want to bitch about something.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to watching the rain. This black and dreary day matches my mood, and I want to enjoy it. I’ll get something done another time.

*And I didn't take the photo. Stole it from somewheres.