Echo Creek:

I was not here for a few days. 😦

We had no hydro, you see.

Hydro = hydroelectric = electricity.

We live18 km outside of a small town in “Cottage Country” in Ontario on a winding bumpy country road going nowhere. When there is a storm, there always is a Tree – or 2 that fall on the “hydro lines”, rip them apart and shred our ancient primitive phone line as well.

End of story for a few hours – sometimes a few days. Eventually someone will show up and fix it all, but until then you = we are on our own. So is everybody else, who lives around here. Most permanent residents live along the road closest to town. Then,the further out you go, the more cottages you find. 2 km behind the turn-of to our 15000 foot driveway there are 2 lakes, surrounded by cottages. Only 3 permanent residents live there.

No hydro? – We all have a generator, plenty of fuel (hopefully) a wood stove to stay warm and on which to cook. We turn our generator on a few hours during the day, to keep fridge and freezer cold, then again a few hours after dark…

But stuff like computers and “rocket hubs” to connect to the internet are not hooked onto this rickety system.

Normally we are on dial-up = 18 kb/ sec = kilo bytes a second – No, not mega bytes – you read correct: kb:(

It takes a couple of minutes to send and receive an e-mail of 2 sentences and iffff you send me a picture it will get stuck and the whole system will seize up.

That was our Internet until about a year ago. Then a VERY generous friend bought us our “rocket hub”, a small device that connects us to the next tower and now we have at times a connection of up to 54 mb/sec! 🙂 The WWW and with it this blog arrived at Echo Creek.

Echo Creek is actually Kawpakwakog river, the meandering waterway that flows through the back of our property, from one Beaver lodge to the next. Kawpakwakog means Echo in Algonquian.

We have 106 acres of mixed bush, creek, wetlands and marsh.

Our home made log house stands pretty much in the middle of it all, overlooking a side arm of the creek , an old Beaver lodge and several Muskrat condominiums build just last fall.

Our next door neighbor is a Bear. Last fall she had 4 cubs. 4!!!!!!!

I am soooo glad, that we had a mild winter. When this gang wakes up, they will be hungry and it will be tough to find food. That is the time, when I have to take our Bird feeders inside at night. Right now they are the hub of activity here: Redpolls, Junkos, Goldfinches, Blue Jays and of course chickadees come and go all day long. The Tree Sparrows arrived yesterday, together with a murder of 9 Crows.

Other winter Birds we see regularly are the Ruffed Grouse, Turkeys, the ever present Ravens and of course our Owls.( They have posts of their own on this blog already 🙂 )

In terms of Animals, we have the – still sleeping – Bears, who’s den is in the back of our land, several Wolves, that have a rendezvous site here and also a den further along the river. Then there are the obligatory Moose and Deer, Snowshoe Hares, Porcupines, Skunks, Raccoons and Foxes as well as Squirrels and – tooooo many Mice…..

Next to name is Itkli the Marten and the Fisher, who – sad to say, is forever just waiting to sink his teeth into the life blood of everybody else. Fishers are fierce and our Fisher queen is fearless as well. She is bold enough to come to the house and beg for food – but – so does pretty much everyone else as well.

 

Where you to look out the window of the living room you would see our snow labyrinth. My husband Peter loves to go out onto the frozen creek and snowshoe a 7 circuit labyrinth into the fresh snow.

It then becomes a wonderful place for a moving meditation or just to have a walk in the beauty of nature and clear your head.

Playing my mouth organ in the center of the labyrinth

I wish you could join me.