Toronto and Area

Permanence of Change: Hiking at Boyne Valley

/ Oleksandra Budna / 1 Comment

Today I realized it’s been almost two months since I posted anything on the blog. And sure, I could blame it on colder weather and fewer camping trips. But that, of course, is not the main reason. Connecting with nature, after all, doesn’t require days of paddling or backpacking. Nature can be experienced anywhere: during our weekly microadventures, a brief walk around the neighbourhood or even on my balcony in the middle of Toronto. This dry spell is not so much due to a lack of new locations but rather scarcity of new ideas. So here I am sitting in my bedroom, bathed in November’s late afternoon light, listening to a boisterous bickering of sparrows on my balcony, and attempting to tackle this writer’s block the way I would normally tackle a trail – by putting one foot in front of the other or, in this case, one word after another.

Today’s post is going to be about one my favourite microadventure destination – Boyne Valley Provincial Park. Our microadventure tradition started years ago, born out of recognition that we were more familiar with far away parks than places close to home. Since then, almost every Saturday, unless we were camping, we would pack snacks and drinks and head for a hike somewhere within an hour drive from Toronto. One by one, those stories made it onto these virtual pages, some places more than once. All but Boyne Valley.

Continue reading →

Sunrise in the time of COVID: Part II

/ Oleksandra Budna / 1 Comment

Last year, when the word ‘pandemic’ split our world into the before and after, I headed to Lake Ontario to watch the sunrise – my attempt to find an anchor, something to hold on to in the face of uncertainty. Last week, I found myself on the same spot at Humber Bay Park, next to an uprooted tree trunk, stripped and polished by water into a work of art – a foreground for many of my Lake Ontario pictures. A few of its roots and branches had gone missing since last year – a big triangular shape that had worked so well for framing the CN Tower was now gone. Other than that the scene looked no different from last year – the same fiery orange paint spilled along the edge of the sky in anticipation of the big star’s entry, the same comforting lull of the lake…

Waiting for a sunrise at Humber Bay Park on Lake Ontario
Waiting for a sunrise at Humber Bay Park on Lake Ontario

Same spot, two images a year apart

Continue reading →

A look back: 2020 in pictures and words

/ Oleksandra Budna / 2 Comments

Early morning is my favourite time of the day. As I lie in bed, eyes still closed, I savour the silence, interrupted only by deep breathing and an occasional snore from my husband and kids. I finally open my eyes and look through the window – craggy silhouettes of Green Mountains slowly come into focus. It takes me a few minutes to remember it’s January 1st. Which means 2021 is here. And even though in this tiny cabin in southern Quebec, in the presence of eons-old peaks, time units like years seem ridiculously arbitrary and inconsequential, even though I am fully aware that pandemics and other global crises don’t follow a calendar, I still can’t help that growing sense of relief. 2020 is finally over.    

view of Green Mountains at AU Diable Vert in Quebec in the winter
Continue reading →

Nature musings in the time of corona

/ Oleksandra Budna / 1 Comment

About a month ago, as everyone headed for the stores to stock up on essentials, my first stop was at Lowe’s to get compost and more seeds for my seed bank. If we were to get stuck inside, I could at least make sure my balcony garden provided an escape from reality, which was quickly morphing into an episode of Black Mirror.

pots with plants on the windowsill

I know it’s a privilege to be able to focus on escapes when many people are just trying to survive. Both my husband and I are able to work from the safety of our home and not worry about income. One of our kids is a grown-up, the other one is getting there and is more of an adult in spirit than anyone in our family, so we don’t have to juggle work with constantly entertaining them or helping with school work. Unlike many people who are now alone and isolated, I am quarantined with my family. What’s more, we are well prepared for being cooped up in close quarters after years of spending days, sometimes weeks in a row, within the confines of our tent or a backcountry cabin, with just the four of us for company. Continue reading →

The world in sepia: November musings

/ Oleksandra Budna / 1 Comment

Sometimes beauty roars. It stares right at you – an immense chasm of Grand Canyon, billions of years in the making. Or a vast expanse of the Pacific pushing its grandeur towards the shore, wave after rolling wave. It towers over you like giant sequoias or imposing cliffs of the Rockies. This is the kind of beauty that overpowers, overwhelms, humbles. It reminds us how tiny we, humans, are.

But there are times when beauty whispers. It requires listening intently not only with our ears but every fibre of our beings. It demands that we look closely – the kind of gaze that radiates right from our core. This beauty tells of nature’s attention to detail, reminds how much work has gone into creating those perfect lines and curves.

  tamarack branch and pine cone

drops on a yello wmaple leaf Continue reading →

Go Fish at Hockley Valley

/ Oleksandra Budna / 4 Comments

We are nearing the end of Isabel East Side Trail at Hockley Valley Provincial Nature Reserve when vigorous splashing coming from the creek stops us in our tracks. This is not our first time on this trail. In fact, this park just north of Orangeville has become a bit of a fall-back microadventure destination for those times when I fail to do research and find a new place to visit. This is one of those times.

creek at Hockley Valley Continue reading →

A serious case of butterflies

/ Oleksandra Budna / 3 Comments

Butterflies have been plentiful this year. All day they flutter by my office window, flaunting their exquisite dance moves and the kind of freedom that is only possible if you have wings. Lured by their charm and hoping to finally capture them in their glorious multitudes, I grab my camera and head to Colonel Samuel Smith Park near Lake Ontario. After an hour of unsuccessful wandering around, I am finally rewarded with a butterfly mosaic clustered in a tree. And while they don’t amount to millions, like in this story from University of Ottawa biology professor Jeremy Kerr about his visit to the monarchs’ overwintering site in Mexico, it is still a mesmerizing sight.

monarch butterflies in a tree Continue reading →

Close-up magic or my search for a fern flower

/ Oleksandra Budna / Leave a comment

July 7th is Ivana Kupala, a traditional holiday celebrated in some Eastern European countries. That is according to the old Julian calendar, which is still used for holidays (that’s why Christmas is on January 7th and there is such thing as old New Year where I come from). According to the Gregorian calendar, the one we use today, that would correspond to June 24th making Ivana Kupala a summer solstice celebration. So no surprise that most of the activities happen on the night from July 6th to 7th, one of the shortest of the year.

Ivana Kupala (roughly translates as John the Bather) is a pre-Christian holiday associated with fertility and purification. Many of the rituals involve water and fire, which have sacral qualities on this night. Once Christianity was introduced, the day was renamed St. John the Baptist (I guess both have John and bathing in common). The old traditions, however, never fully disappeared. The holiday is still often referred to as Ivana Kupala fest and many of the rituals, like making flower wreaths and letting them float down the water or jumping through a bonfire, are featured at celebrations in Ukraine and other places in Eastern Europe.

Ivana Kupala festivities aside, many Ukrainian religious celebrations incorporate pre-Christian traditions. On this day, for instance, my grandparents decorated their house and gates with flowers. Pentecost is called the Green Fest and involves bringing branches of linden into the house. The centrepiece at Christmas Eve dinner is a wheat sheaf called Diduch symbolizing the spirit of our ancestors. Some of it could be explained by a relatively young age of Christianity in Ukraine. Most probably, it’s because our connection to nature is impossible to eradicate since we are part of it. My childhood visits with my grandparents involved many trips to church but religion, somehow, never really took root. Instead, forests and meadows became my cathedral and I learned to look for God in nature and see miracles between blades of grass and flower petals.

One of the activities on Ivana Kupala features a search for a fern flower. It is rumoured to blossom on this night only and will bring luck and happiness to the one who finds it. And while it’s not scientifically possible, it is a beautiful metaphor for our quest for magic, which is all around us if only we look close enough.

fern

Continue reading →

Somewhere on the edge of spring: Hiking Bruce Trail near Smokey Hollow Falls (photo essay)

/ Oleksandra Budna / Leave a comment

What are the first signs of spring you usually look for? Tree branches swelling with buds, dainty flowers poking their delicate heads through last year’s leaves, that cheerful bird twitter in the morning. How about rushing waterfalls? Or better yet ankle-deep, thick mud. We certainly encountered a lot of the latter on our most recent microadventure.

Spring, when rivers are at their fullest after the snowmelt, is the best time for waterfall chasing. And with Hamilton, the waterfall capital of the world, located less than an hour away, finding one is never a problem. (Although deciding on which of its 100 tumbling water features to visit can sometimes present a dilemma). Then, once we enjoy the sight and sound of rushing water, we find Bruce Trail or one of its tributaries, which are always bound to be somewhere nearby, and set out on a hike.

Smokey Hollow waterfall near Hamilton

Our most recent microadventure took us to Smokey Hollow Falls, also known as Grindstone, Waterdown or Great Falls Continue reading →