A tornado ripped through our farm last year and smashed a lot of trees. The force toppled a proud ash tree that grew on our treeline. The tree fell into the neighbour’s hay field.

The neighbour used a tractor and pushed the ash into the shared fence line, shoving it up among the old split-rail cedar fences. Since then I’ve made trips when I have a moment, to buck the ash tree up with the chainsaw. Then I load the rounds of ash in our little red wagon, attached to my rider mower (that no longer mows) and haul them back to the cottage for firewood.

The emerald ash borer, or EAB, a beetle from Asia, is on a rampage to kill all the ash in North America. This beetle has no predators in Canada. A few years ago when my Master of Forest Conservation class visited Montreal, we learned about trials by the City of Montreal to release wasps to control the beetle. The wasps work a bit like the creature in Alien; they lay their eggs in the larvae of host insects, and then thrive at the expense of the EAB.

Written March 10, 2023, 6 p.m.

At the end of February I caught Covid. I came out to Madoc to recuperate with the dogs. I started to feel a bit better, in the cold air, snow and sunshine. So I charged up my cordless drill, put it in a backpack, put on my cross-country skis, and took the dogs with me to the sugar shack. Over a few days I hung forty buckets on maple trees. Some of this work took place in a blizzard.

After ten days of night sweats, soup, Kleenex and paperback books, I finally tested negative. So I went back to Toronto. Back in town I watched the weather report for Madoc. The temperature went above freezing for a few days, but it was not weather for much sap to run. So when Mimi and I drove out to Madoc today, my expectations were low.

But the situation I found here was not what I expected.

Yesterday marked my first day of class at the school formerly known as Ryerson, now named — in the inimitable wisdom of its board — Toronto Metropolitan University (a fellow instructor remarked, “It took them a year to come up with that?”)

Whatever the name, duty called, and so I gamely packed my battered copy of The Elements of Style (a book I am pretty sure I have never convinced a single student to consult, let alone purchase) in my satchel, and set off on the 506 Dundas Streetcar. The Dundas car trundled east through grey Toronto (it’s the greyest and mildest winter I can remember). We crossed Chinatown, and then downtown, and then I alighted at Church Street. Every time I visit this part of town it feels more crowded; cranes clogged the skyline around me as I walked up the street. The roar of construction, ever-present in Toronto, feels a bit more deafening here. I stopped at Metro to buy some clementines and apples for the students; a guy ahead of me stooped just in front of the supermarket door, picked up a tiny cigarette butt from the pavement, lit it, and sucked mightily; a reminder that there are lots of marginal people in this part of Toronto.

Five years ago this fall I took a buyout from the newspaper where I had worked for a long time. I took the plunge and enrolled full-time in the Master of Forest Conservation at the University of Toronto. The move resembled to some extent a leap off a cliff. Through massive support from my partner and our children, and from my classmates, I pulled it off.

This path I now walk has been full of potholes, twists, turns, and bad weather. I succeed. I fail. I struggle. Ironically, the toughest thing about forestry for me is information technology. I have struggled with Geographic Information Systems, learning management software, Contentful, Mailchimp, Excel… you name it. It’s a challenge.

When I was 16 I visited Europe for the first time. I stayed with my sister and her boyfriend in Soest. Then I rode a train to visit Paris. My memory of that train trip was staring out the windows at the Dutch cattle. The cattle stood, heads bowed, grazing on the grass in the fields. At the time I lived on a farm in Quebec and I saw cows all the time. But something about these cows caught my eye. The pasture seemed unnaturally green and the cows, remarkably well-fed. The scene, for me, screamed prosperity.

This summer I spent ten days in the Dutch countryside. My son and I took a trip, by train and bicycle. We saw a lot of the Netherlands, from Groningen in the north to Tilburg in the south. But what was weird for me, was, we didn’t see a lot of cows.