There are few sights more welcome than a fallen tree that perfectly bridges a stream. I've shimmied across a fair share through the years, closing gaps from side to side, and I get to walk home with dry feet. There are few metaphors more sharply pointed to what my daily journal does for me – connecting everything otherwise trapped in my mind and memories to you. It's been the focus of my existence for all of my adult life. I was twenty years old when I started out in November 2007, and now I'm thirty-six. Today marks six thousand days down the line, and I've never missed a single one. Never will, until the day I die. The intersection of every significant experience means everything. From my wedding day in October 2011, to the death of my grandfather in April 2014, or the date of my first nationwide book release in March 2023. Nothing gets passed by on the adventure.

Most writers and artists of all kinds create in ebbs and flows. That's also true for me from day to day, sure enough. I could make a six hour hike in the afternoon, and write several pages of text in the evening – or take a ten minute walk and scribble a single short poem. But big breaks in creativity were never for me, and leaving weeks to marinate or meditate just ran the risk of giving up all together. I needed my daily journal to keep me focused – which is something I'm rarely able to manage for very long at a time. My mind is always multitasking a multitude of thoughts and emotional states, and I get exhausted battling it too long at once. I like the imagery in that ancient Genesis story, six straight days of creation followed by one of rest. But I chose instead to take my rest at night, and make it straight seven.

If you're like me, even the cost of a book runs the risk of leaving you broke. Times are tough, incomes low, and bills are higher than ever. But if my journal – which I share for free and always will – holds any value for you, I hope you'll consider a thank you as a monthly supporter on Patreon. Your pocket change can make a difference. Never doubt it.

April 15, 2024
St. Croix Cove, Nova Scotia

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There's no squirrel perch like a chainsawed stump. All the bits and bobs of pinecones they've been gnawing on, scattered like the floor below a messy eater at the table. There's something attractive about a flat surface to certain creatures – and I'm always fascinated to see which animals seem most interested in what we leave behind. Certainly porcupines and raccoons are champions of human leavings, looking to make their homes in rotting walls and rafters. It's sometimes hard to tell a game trail from a manmade one, which kind are keeping it open, wild or tame. As I stumble my way in the crowding forest, I've always got an eye out for activity I just missed. I'm not subtle enough to stop from scaring it off. When you're the biggest thing crashing through the woods, I figure you might as well appreciate it.

April 14, 2024
Arlington West, Nova Scotia

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Mainland Nova Scotia is mostly a flat affair. You never get much higher than rolling hills, and everyone knows it, so that tends to leave the few handful of viewpoints overlooked. To my knowledge, there are only four treeless clifftops along the North Mountain ridgeline, not counting anything cleared by human effort. One of them is easy access, you can drive right up to the Blomidon Lookoff. The other three are just about in my backyard, all looking down on Clarence Road. Porcupine Rock, the Clarence Cliffs, and this one – Rumsey Ridge. Each of them take some exertion to arrive, no throwaway visit to make without an effort. This is my second visit. The first was just a few weeks back, chilled and blown over in the dark grey weather. Now it's bright and blinding, hot spring sun cajoling those buds below to open. Just a couple more weeks of bare branches before shade returns. But here on the naked rocks, there's no shelter coming, not ever. Just circling eagles and ravens and me.

April 14, 2024
Clarence West, Nova Scotia

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There's a good deal of work you can skip when it comes to the effort of exploring. Trees you don't have to climb, streams to pass on hopping; boulders for the long way round rather than climbing over. But I decided early on to make the most of mobility while I've got it, put my muscles through their paces instead of conserving energy. I'm no great athlete, granted, but I greatly value every ounce of youth still in me. The tumbling scree slope that makes up Rumsey Ridge is certainly something uneasy, much of it unsettled – in some slow motion movement given away by what little grows. Any life is mostly in a field of lichen, clinging to the countless stones, and the rare bit of moss and brush that found precarious purchase. As for animal activity, there's no telling how many creatures call these crevices home. They belong the way that any of us do – by lasting long enough in one place that we start to share its secrets.

April 14, 2024
Clarence West, Nova Scotia

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Everything was an adventure with our little lives bordering the forest of Beaconsfield. We never reached the end of what the woods meant, under the shelter of a hundred thousand trees making their hard climb up the mountainside. The four of us kids would pull on ragged rubber boots, running out wild in the woods together. We’d enter wherever the tangle would let us, under angry tendrils of wild roses and through the hilltop field of raspberry bushes, rasping and tearing our skin with their spines. If I could find a spark in my mind, some invented story of a jungle-wandering trekker, I’d become him for a moment. Maybe searching for prey or praying for shelter, running headlong into the young growth.

I made too much noise to catch a creature in the trees, but sometimes I’d spot a red fox running off, or the shocking shuddering of a startled pheasant spreading its wings. We cleared the old survey trails, three boys and our sister, with just a hatchet and a handful of hand tools. They were paths of discovery, uncovered wanderings to a deeper magic. I made maps of every bend and curve on big sheets of paper, marking locations of significance – here stands the treehouse, nailed up in scavenged lumber; there goes the furthest trail to the darkest corner, here grows the tallest tree I’ve found.

We’d make our way to a stream that dripped down beneath the briars and brambles, kick off our boots to naked feet, and wade in cold water that held a chill all through the summer. We’d make dams in the mud, hold back the rushing flow, call out gravity for being less of a law and more a suggestion. I fell in love with the rainstorm as soon as I knew what it meant – sometimes in springtime, with echoes of thunder and wonder, torrents of southbound water faithfully seeking the river. Like young gods, we’d toss in little plastic boats, and watch them drift from sight.

We never named a thing in the woods. The Stream, that’s all we called her, the only one close enough to matter, just a blue squiggle on the map. By the banks stood three sickly apple trees, hopelessly overgrown and past their prime, and the blue skeleton of a pick-up truck rusting in the shade. We’d follow the trickle north and steep, through tangled brush and fallen trunks, over loose rocks and slippery scrapes on granite boulders. We’d dig deadly caves in loose dirt edges, often collapsed by the next time we passed, never considering the risk of cave-in when we were present.

Every return home was the triumphant arrival from a long journey lost. There was a kind of happy, lonely, empty feeling of being more independent than yesterday, a little bit wilder than expected. On my walk back, I’d duck between the twin wooden posts of the Beaconsfield sign, and imagine another world on the far side. An imperceptible change maybe, some shift to another dimension. I knew that I was imagining, but it would have been cheating to admit it.

April 13, 2024
Beaconsfield, Nova Scotia

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