On Tuesday morning it was -26°C with the wind chill, and I was in Freetown on horseback.

This was not what I imagined when I tentatively sent an email in June of last year:

I’m a 55 year old widower who’s never ever been on a horse. If not now, when!?

My friend Josh says “Venture Stables is the place for you!”

I thought I might dip my toe in the water with one of your one hour trail rides, but, what being a widower and all, don’t meet your two person threshold.

Any other way I could get on a horse?

The reply from Jasmine came quickly:

It is never too late to try something new and getting out of your comfort zone gives us the ability to grow :)

Would you like to join us on our next trail ride that we have going out?

We can also schedule a 1 hour riding lesson.

I opted for the lesson. And thought that would be it: I’d walk out of my comfort zone for an afternoon, call it a win, and move on.

But at the end of the first lesson Jasmine asked when I wanted to schedule my second lesson. And so I did.

And I’ve been at it ever since. At first it was every two weeks, then every week. I believe I’m hooked.

Riding is nothing at all like I thought it would be: I imagined it would be a mostly technical exercise, like learning to rock climb, or weld.

And there certainly is a technical component to it: I am only now just getting comfortable with the straps and hooks and loops, the “7-4-1” of the belt that tightens the girth, which part of the halter the cross-ties clip to, how to comfortably hold the reins.

It’s in the emotional realm that the surprises come: there is no room for thinking about anything else when on the back of a horse. It demands a mixture of intense concentration and intense relaxation; an openness to communicating, to feeling how the horse is moving underneath, using subtle movements of legs and reins to communicate back. The effects can be profound, and, more often than not, I leave the stable with a clearer head than any other time during the week.

There is simply nothing else like it.

And it is not at all an exaggeration to say that the degree to which riding has opened me up contributed significantly to being able to open my heart up to another.

And so I return, every week. In the rain, in the snow, and when it’s -26° with the wind chill.

Sharon MacNeill died on Christmas Day after a good and full life, an inordinate amount of it living with metastatic breast cancer.

Sharon was a great supporter to Catherine, and to me.

Sharon sent me an email on this day two years ago, writing, in part:

I am so glad to know that Catherine feels ‘finished’. That is my one hope, that when I die I will feel I have finished my life. Well more or less finished, as I suppose one might always want to tie up a few loose ends. But Catherine’s contentment tells me she feels she has finished. This is peace.

You and Catherine and Oliver will not leave my heart. Every morning I will hold you in my reflections and every evening I will light a candle for her,

Of all the writerly discoveries I made last year, James A. Reeves has emerged as a favourite:

Nobody’s sure what they should be doing, plague-wise. Uncertainty hangs in the air alongside the virus. We’re still vaporizing each other with our voices. Our breath. But they say it’s mild now, mostly upper respiratory. But it’s also sweeping the nation and disrupting public life. They’re still making alarming charts. No matter how this shakes out, uncertainty is here to stay—and how do you learn to live with that? Meanwhile, I’m keeping an eye on the statistics again, wondering if we’ll go to London next month.

I just picked up a grocery order from Sobeys—the fancy one across the river in Stratford. It was my first time ordering groceries online, but COVID times, and being responsible to a “steady 10” bubble, called for pivoting. I miss the familiarity of the (less fancy, but more familiar) Allen Street Sobeys, and feel pangs of promiscuity-guilt for abandoning them. But at least I didn’t shop at the Superstore.

I’ve been helping make the Internet since 1986—35 years—and in recent years I have grown cynical as I’ve seen the good, altruistic, spirit-of-sharing Internet give way to the crass, commercial, polarized Internet. It’s hard not to feel a sense of shame for my role in simply letting that happen.

But it’s good to be reminded that it remains a Meccano set that can do everything from letting me order a mango from my phone, to learning about cooking on a sailboat, to arming tenants against landlords, to reading the newspaper from 100 years ago. It is the greatest decentralized collaborative project in history; I’m going to allow myself some pride for my small role.

Several years ago I found myself in a bar on College Street in Toronto having a drink with friends. The talk turned to online dating, and Bumble, and I was able to indulge my curiosity, as two of our party had subject-matter-experience, and one had met her fiancé-now-husband through Bumble.

I was cynical: it all seemed so cold and algorithmic to let the AI robots commodify romance. While the field reports made it seem slightly less so, I remained unsold.

Until 2021.

When I woke up to being single, and came to terms with the notion that I was ready to move on to new romantic chapters after a long, cold, lonely, necessary year of grieving.

I stumbled at first. But kept at it.

I had 3 dates with C. (she ended it with a stunningly compassionate text). A lovely long distance with P. over the summer (we remain good friends). An awkward few days of chatting with A. from Halifax. A month of getting to know M. from Summerside.

Each of these were connections facilitated, one way or the other, by this Internet. And each experience, each woman, taught me something. The “valuable learning experiences” weren’t always happy at the time. But they were learning experiences nonetheless.

Then, on the second day of December, I met L. On Bumble.

We chatted, tentatively at first, less-tentatively as we progressed. Novels worth as the weeks continued. And I realized that, AI robots aside, this Internet was allowing me to use words, words that I love, that are my lingua franca, to woo and be wooed.

A month has passed.

We are getting to know each more and more each day, connecting. Building ties. It’s kind of a miracle.  

The Internet opened the door to that. And so I feel an extra dollop of pride for that.

It’s some pretty mad Meccano.

Happy New Year.

I booked myself an appointment with my therapist for Boxing Day at 9:00 a.m. It was my Christmas gift to myself.

I was chatting with a good friend this fall about therapy; he was resistant to seeking it for himself, thinking he could “just handle things on his own.”

What I replied was that talk therapy is that, at least in my experience, both in the simple act of asking for help, and in the dialog itself. Therapy is hiring someone to help you help yourself. It is handling things on your own.

My agreement with myself is that I’ll book a therapist appointment when I have even the faintest inkling that I should: I have never been disappointed in this practice, and good things inevitably result.

My appointment for Sunday is not because I’m in crisis, or really even that anything feels wrong: I’m doing okay, starting to rebuild, feeling confident. That’s what I plan to talk to my therapist about: I want to explore those feelings with a disinterested third party, to, in essence, have a guided conversation with myself with the help of someone who knows how to facilitate that.

I can think of no greater gift to myself, and to the others in my life.

Don Jardine has been posting stories about Island shipwrecks on his Island Climate blog, and this morning it was the tale of Schooner Emeline, wrecked at Broad Cove in 1870:

The schooner, Emeline left Charlottetown for Bay of Islands, near Corner Brook, in Western  Newfoundland on December 10th, 1870 with Captain Edward Saville of Grand River, PEI  (born on Feb. 22, 1829 in Gloucester, MA, USA) in control. The Emeline appears to have been sailing back to Charlottetown when she wrecked during a storm off Broad Cove Marsh in Cape Breton on January 9th to 12th, 1871.

Don references a poem by A. Currie in the February 20, 1871 edition of The Examiner, and I tracked it down.

It is beautiful.

They sleep ‘neath ocean afar from home.
Friendship may not raise
A monument above them, nor
Strew flowers o’er their grave;
But gentle zephyrs as they sweep
The raging billow o’er,
Shall sing a requiem for the brave,
“The brave who are no more.”

Shall we all have the favour of being memorialized so.

I’d all but forgotten that Robert Downey Jr.’s rise and fall (and rise and fall) (and rise) included a star turn on Ally McBeal in 2000, a role that resulted in a credible rendition of Joni Mitchell’s River.

The second season of the small town podcast has dropped:

In the second season of the small town podcast, host Monica Lacey conducted a series of interviews with artists who are based on Prince Edward Island. Each of the five episodes focuses on a different artistic discipline, bringing two artists together in conversation about their art practices. Featured artists: Somnia Lucent & Joe Millar, Patricia Bourque & Niyi Adeogun, Daniel MacDougall & Norma Jean Maclean, Reequal Smith & Megan Stewart, and Sarah Saunders & Sandi Hartling!

Yesterday I learned that the number of days I can go without posting here before kind-hearted readers reach out to inquire about my well-being is 7. 

This blog, it seems, on top of whatever else it might be, is also, as I wrote my (concerned) friend Dave, a sort of front porch light. When the light goes out, or flickers, the neighbours get concerned. 

I love that. And apologize for causing worry. 

For in truth, everything is peachy. To be able to write that, after the kind of years I’ve had of late, is a hard-fought achievement. 

The thing they don’t tell you in grief school is that after the dreadful fog of loss starts to recede, the road of “what the hell do I do now!?” rises up to greet you. 

At worst that’s paralyzing, and encourages facing inward, downward, into a cocoon of “okay, I’ve figured out eating and laundry, now I just grit my teeth and avoid sudden movements.” I’ve taken that tack, by times. 

But in February I decided to try facing outward and upward. I found a therapist of the “help me figure out what next” type, and started to, if not exactly come up with a plan, at least to sketch out the terrain. 

And that has been the grand adventure of this year, exploring that terrain.

It’s been hard. I’ve had high highs and low lows. Sleepless angsty nights. I’ve filled up a thick journal with my emotional wranglings. I’ve dealt with rejection, and shame, and emptiness. I’ve cried tears of sadness, and longer tears still when I’ve felt the deep sadness passing. But I’ve also enjoyed moments of true connection and beauty. And I’ve become more confident as I wander, venturing into new and unfamiliar corners.

My friend Peter wrote this today:

But there are lots of reasons to be hopeful. As Max Ehrmann’s epic poem Desiderata says: “…in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.” There is no end of broken dreams in our midst, with many recent reveries shattered by COVID, but it is indeed still a beautiful world. And PEI is a particularly special part of this beautiful world.

That is a good thing to be reminded of, and something I have found my way to on my own.

Many years ago my friend Tim, at a time when I’d just dropped out of college and was particularly angry and listless, told me that I was defining myself by what I wasn’t, not by what I might be. That was sage advice then, even more so now. And it’s what I’ve been trying to do.

So, yes, I am okay. 

On occasion my wanderings will take me away from this space; fear not, I shall always return. And I shall endeavour to send proof of life at least once a week if I end up at the end of a remote archipelago.