urbancampersite

Hello Everyone

Welcome to the second relaunch of Urban Camper, the blog that documents are family’s outdoor adventures in the urban landscape.  I have been on a hiatus from the blog but not from outdoor adventures.  We’ve been busy hiking, camping, canoeing and playing in the outdoors.

The relaunch of the blog coincides with my registration in The Wild Deer 1 Program offered by The Pine Project.  The Wild Deer 1 Program occurs both in and out of the city and is designed to build outdoor wilderness skills, establish connections with nature and foster mentoring skills.

We had our first monthly weekend workshop of six in Baysville, Ontario at the end of January.  We worked on nature connections, tracking, fire building and emergency shelter construction.  Really cool and fun and I met a great gang of like-minded urbanites looking to re-connect with nature.

I plan to share our Wild Deer 1 adventures as well as those of our family’s in ensuing posts.  I hope you enjoy and I welcome your comments and experiences connecting to nature while living in the city!

 

My son, Nicholas, heard me speaking about the various animals I often saw in the evenings visiting our backyard.  He really wanted to see them but his bed time is before they usually visit so I said let’s see if we can get some tracks of the animals so you will know who was here.

We went to work making some mud then putting it into a low flat pan we had in the garage.  Nicholas wanted to test it out first and made his own tracks.

Next we smoothed out the mud again and placed it at the bottom of our deck stairs hoping one of our nightly visitors would walk through it.  We sprinkled some dry cat food on the steps to increase the chances someone would walk through the mud.

Nicholas grudgingly went to bed and woke up the next morning eager to see who had visited the night before and someone had …

We got out our trusty Camp Out book by Lynn Brunelle, to see if we could identify the tracks of our night-time visitor.  Here is our guess …

I think we will try this again, perhaps with some different bait next time and see if we can entice anyone else to walk through or “tracking” mud.

 

My wife came across a Facebook group called the Friends Of Taylor Creek.  I looked them up and they were having a guided hike in the Taylor Creek Ravine in the east end of Toronto in the former borough of Scarborough. It is an urban ravine that connects to Massey Creek, that goes through a small ravine/parkette at the end of our street.  We drove the couple kilometers to the meet up and tagged along on the informative hike and learned about the history and flora and fauna of the area.  Turns out it was part of a big dairy farm and dairy so most of the current forest would have grown since then as the original forest would have been cut down.  In addition to native species there are a number of non-native and invasive species.  There are efforts currently to plant more natives and eliminate invasives like the Norway Maple.  Ironically, a group of environmentalists inadvertently planted a bunch of cultivated cranberry bushes that had been mislabeled native by a local nursery that are not consumed by local birds and bees. Despite minor setbacks there have been a number of new native plantings organized by a variety of groups.

The end of the hike was organized to coincide with a City of Toronto community native tree planting.  We joined in and did our little part to help the environment and build biodiversity.

City of Toronto Staff ran a short demo on planting and had plenty of shovels, soil, gloves and plants for everyone. Lots of families, individuals and groups showed up to help pitch in.

We chose a Rosa Carolina to plant in a wet area.  After digging the hole and putting the plant in we covered it in a cardboard shield to help keep water in the soil and keep weeds down until it got established.

We added additional wood chip mulch to again maintain ground moisture and reduce weed and grass competition until the plant is established.

And now, bring on the big trees…!

 

After we heard and saw that Justin Trudeau had visited and canoed at Rouge Valley Park earlier this summer we thought we should go a see what it was all about. Apparently, it’s Canada’s First Urban National Park!  We live in the east end of Toronto so it seemed quite convenient although we did not know much about it.  We loaded up the canoe, our gear and some food and made the 25 minute car trip to the mouth of the Rouge River.  If you don’t drive you can also get there by local transit or the Go Train.

We arrived early so we snagged a parking spot in the lower lot close to the put in which was really convenient. Space is limited but there are overflow lots about half a click (0.5 km) up the hill or on the east side of the river.  Transit stop is at the top of the hill by the overflow lot and the Go Train Station is 0.5 km further.  The park can also be accessed on bike trails including one that runs along the lake shore.

We launched just a few meters from our car and headed up river to see what we could see. And here is some of what we saw!

 

Shore lunch

After a nice shore lunch we headed back downstream to check out the mouth of the river, lake and beach.

We found a great beach so we set up for some snacks, rock throwing and swimming.  We were amazed at the wildlife, river habitat and awesome beach that was much less busy than the city beaches we had visited.  We highly recommend a trip out to the Rouge for hiking, biking, canoeing or just hangin’ out at the beach.  We even did our part and carried out some trash on the way out.

And the best part was that the take out was right beside our car!

Happy Urban Camping everyone!

The spring blooms have faded but the summer flowers have emerged in dramatic fashion to replace them.  Although this is a mostly a native plant garden I was conscious that it existed in a city neighbourhood where the majority of properties had monoculture lawns.  I tried to strike a balance between a completely wild front yard and a cultivated garden by group planting the natives.  In this way I created beds, albeit casual, to give some semblance of a “garden” and swaths of impactful colour that would be aesthetically pleasing to the urban eye.  As noted earlier, I added the brick path and bird bath to reinforce the “garden” feel which had the added benefit of being able to access the garden and provide water for birds and insects.  Although I have received some overt negative feedback I have been pleasantly surprised at the overwhelming appreciation for the garden.  It does not hurt when the neighbours can forage for wild strawberries and blueberries and the kids have fun running around the brick path. I believe that I will not be fined or have the plants removed for having noxious weeds in my front lawn; I hope or society is past that.  I like to think the front yard is a little Noah’s Ark in the middle of monoculture madness.

Here’s the pics with labels to the best of my recollection.  If you can identify any I did not label, please add in the comments section with the corresponding number so I can label it.

If you are looking to start a native plant garden I would start with small plantings in patches and slowly add to it each year; unlike me who did it all in one shot and had to endure 2 -3 years of a pretty sparse garden.  It is more manageable and less of a shock to the neighbours.  Despite the desolate looking early spring and late fall I have found the blooming garden very pleasing and have enjoyed seeing a multitude of birds, bees, bugs and wildlife foraging, nesting or passing through.

So we finally replaced the cover on our old IKEA Klippan sofa and were left with a big piece of canvas that I could not bring myself to throw out.  The cover had three pre-cut holes that seemed perfectly designed to stick a bamboo pole through. I happened to have an extra bamboo pole in the garage as well as  some extra tent pegs and our mini-miner’s tent was born.

I used a crotch in the apple tree and an old chair to support the main bamboo cross beam and some old rope to pull back loose material and create more space inside. Some old tent pegs pushed through the material fastened the tent to the ground and held the sides out.

…aaaaaand he loves it!

Sooooo……  I have decided to take the plunge and integrate a big part of the camping experience into my life.  We already spend a lot of the day outside in the park, hiking in local natural areas,  playing in our garden and don’t have a T.V. so our family, including our 2 1/2 year old, is mostly electronics free for recreation.  After a  day either at work or play and once the kid is in bed I have gotten into the habit of watching a part of a movie or You Tube videos before I go to sleep.  Now it is probably less than the average for screen time but it does take away time from connecting with my wife, extended family, neighbours and friends, keeps me up longer than I should be and likely over excites my brain before bedtime.

Soooo…. tonight the universe conspired to create a situation where I was able to take the plunge.  Since a recent basement reno adversely affected airflow to our second floor, my wife and kid sleep on the main floor when it is really hot.  Tonight was one of those nights.  I was going to go into the basement as I often do to eat, check email, play a game of online chess and maybe watch a bit of a movie but my son intervened.  He insisted on following me everywhere rather than going to bed.  He can now open the back door so my wife said to go outside and lock the door but that was not my plan, would involve me getting a key to let myself back in later and just a general hassle.  After a frustrated exchange with my wife who was tired and sick as we all were I grabbed the keys, a book, my dinner and went out to the deck.

I sat down with my dinner,started reading and was immediately reminded of sitting outside  at a cottage or campsite eating, reading a book, surrounded by nature and feeling really good.  Then I started feeling good,  like I was on vacation and just by simply walking out on the deck.  We often eat out on the deck or back yard picnic table but I am not always as conscious of the calming effects of our surroundings as I would like to be and I resolve to try and be more aware.

In addition, I am committing to avoiding games, videos, radio and movies on the computer, especially in the evening.  Instead I resolve to spend more time with my wife, visit a neighbour, work on a project, read, write, practice an instrument, learn another language, increase my self care time and go to bed shortly after sunset (and to rise with the sun in the morning).

 

Tonight after eating, instead of heading to the basement I stayed outside until dusk tying and hanging the lavender I harvested from our garden then came in to write this blog. It’s 10:00 pm and I’m heading to bed.  I’ll keep you posted on how no recreational electronics and a more natural daily rhythm goes.

Update July 13, 2016

So a little update on my progress on this project to date. It took me a couple weeks working up to this but last night finally went all in and after putting kid to bed, tidied up the kitchen, took a bath and went to bed just after sunset (around 9:30pm). I had been doing pretty well until then but was still needing an hour of screen time (that I seem to have been addicted to) which was making my bed time way too late. So it was up at 6:00am today and gettin’ at ‘er! Gonna try and keep this rock rolling. Shocking how addicted I have become to distracting myself with visual and audio noise.

 

It’s my birthday and we had planned to go on an urban foraging hike with a local Toronto group that had organized an event starting very close to our home.  Seemed perfect, right?  Well, firstly, I could not connect with them before the event so we just decided to show up and of course, no one was there.  Secondly, it was raining.  Thirdly, the first kilometer of the trail was under renovation and a muddy mess.  Despite all these challenges we persevered and had a great adventure!

We packed snacks, donned our rain gear and headed out.  Having arrived early at the meet up spot at Warden Subway Station (Toronto) to check things out since we had not been able to pre-register, we searched around for the group.  Of course, no sign of anyone.  The event may have been organized by a Meet-up group that cancelled due to the weather, but who really knows.

Well, we were prepped and dressed and itching for a hike so on a hike we went.  We left the car at the subway parking lot and headed into Warden Woods.  Little did we know that the city was doing work on the trail and the river banks and the trail was a muddy, wet, slippery clay mess for the first kilometer.  Other than my wife wearing runners, we all had the proper gear and decided to trudge on.  Our 2 year old loved the mud and giant puddles.  Although we initially questioned our decision, we soon passed the quagmire and reached the main trail.  We were not sure how far we would go, or exactly where we were going but decided to do some exploring and kept heading down the trail.  We had the Taylor-Massey Creek on our right and the subway line to our left so we were pretty certain we would not get hopelessly lost.

We bumped into a couple of dog walkers who shared some information on where we were and where the trail led.  Our son decided that it was time to have a snack so we stopped by a tree with convenient seating to eat and regroup.  Here are his Before and After snack faces:

      

One of the dog walkers said that he had parked in a lot near Pharmacy Ave. which we knew not to be too far from Victoria Park Subway Station.  We decided to continue along the trail with the goal of reaching the subway station and taking the subway back to the car.  On the way we had time to stop for our son’s favourite activity of throwing rocks into the river.

We reached the parking lot on Pharmacy then asked a local apartment dweller if there was a local access to the subway.  She kindly pointed the way through the apartment complex and we accessed Victoria Subway Station through the back door.

Turns out we walked 3.4 kilometers and our 28 month old son walked the whole way on his own although he did enjoy the subway ride back as well.

All in all a great unexpected adventure.

In general I do my best to reduce my use of plastics and consider myself a low user of plastic and a diligent recycler with what I do bring into the house.  My goal is to not bring anything plastic into our home and to eventually eliminate all plastics from our home.  Kind of extreme to do it all at once so I continue my quest by replacing one plastic item at a time.

Today, I am replacing plastic and chemical dental hygiene kit with a more environmentally friendly one.  My concern with plastic toothbrushes is the time they take to degrade in landfills, toxic leaching once in landfills and ingesting toxins from the handle and bristles.I recently purchased two toothbrushes; one adult and one child.

Both are made from fast growing, renewable bamboo with plant based bristles.  Even the container is biodegradable as is the plant based wrap.  The big one will stay at base camp and the smaller child version will become my travel brush and stay in my day pack.  For now I will keep the brush in the packaging it came in.  If anyone has a suggestion for a natural pouch or bag I’d be happy to hear suggestions.

On a side note, my wife found a great floss made with cotton string coated in beeswax.  The container is still plastic, albeit recycled and recyclable plastic, but we do our best.  This is to replace floss made from nylon, or increasingly now with PTFE (teflon), so it glides easily between our teeth.  Look up PTFE/Teflon if you want to know how nasty it is for your body and the environment. They are also tricking floss out with all kinds of hot stuff.  Check out this description from a floss company patent, he summary of one dental floss patent reads: “Porous, high strength (PTFE) dental floss is coated with micro-crystalline wax. If desired, the floss may also incorporate one or more active tartar control, anticaries, antiplaque and/or antibacterial actives and/or dentally acceptable agents such as polishing and abrasive agents, coolants, flavorants and/or coagulants.”  And many studies show that plain old non-toxic floss works just as well.

And lastly, I have replaced the mainstream,chemical based, handy travel brush with Tom’s all natural toothpaste.  And before all the cynics get their knickers in a not and start spouting about “everything is natural” or “everything is a chemical” I refer to plant based ingredients that humans have been consuming safely for thousands of years.  I bounce between the fluoride free and fluoride added options depending on if I am more worried about my teeth that day or my general health.  Need to figure the whole fluoride thing out still.

 

As the box says, over 2 billion plastic toothbrushes go into landfills each year.  Bamboo grows quickly, is biodegradeable  and imagine all the happy pandas with more bamboo forests.