MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Summer 2020

38 Fast-forward 35 years and reset the scene. A pandemic of international proportion has put a very different lens on the notion of everything including camping and how we spend our time outside. The beaches are closed and the two-metre rule is firmly in place to safely separate us from our seasonal sidekicks. Yet challenges are merely opportunities to evolve. As Neil Young reminds us, “Rock ’n’ roll is here to stay”, so we find new ways to gather, to breathe in inspiration and exhale creative expression. Some gather at the ends of driveways to jam (a hockey stick– length apart) while neighbourhood kids circle on bikes like sonically hungry sharks. Others offer Vivaldi from lonely violins to neighbours sequestered on their balconies over the narrow Italian streets. And here on Georgian Bay I find myself in a field of nut trees, surrounded by bolting asparagus, shooting stars, and camper doors slapping shut as farming friends migrate to a waiting campfire with banjo, ukulele and mandolin. The songs are simple. A few cowboy chords and a chorus everyone can catch the second time around. As the chorus thickens, we all feel a little lighter; a lot closer to the things we miss, the people we love and the world we want to inhabit. And in these quieter hours, we hear the space a little louder, too—the peepers, the drops of rain, the distance between one rolling wave and another. The sound of silence, the stillness in time, the enormity of the night sky, and the magic of a melodic voice reaching out. If we might gather something from these wild times it’s that so many of our anxieties can be remedied with the simplest of human endeavours: getting outside, sharing music, appreciating connection and being creative. Stadium concerts with pyrotechnics are an awesome spectacle—quite possibly because they remind us of that primordial glow of faces around a campfire. I only kinda sorta remember seeing the Stones play the SkyDome. These summer nights singing under the stars, I’ll never forget.