I was out of bed at 3:49 this morning...just in case.

After the Toronto shenanigans I've doubled the sentry duty around my urban compound and all leave has been cancelled.

Okay, maybe that's taking it too far but you never know when some yoga instructor, inspired by the G20 mobs, might read just enough Noam Chomsky to go over the edge and launch his own personal assault on the institution of private property.

That's why I keep a very sharp ballpoint pen by my bed, which in my expert hands can be used as a very tiny but lethal spear.

Anyway, enough of that wild and irresponsible talk. After all, as we all know random attacks by yoga instructors have fallen way off.

The real big news is that Deb and I hiked in Banff National Park yesterday.

I am forever surprised by Banff. The mountains are always more steep, sheer and severe then I remember. It is a cliché to talk about how they dwarf us in the dimension of space, but we are also specks before them in terms of time and force.

If you have the gift of historical imagination or in this case prehistorical imagination it is terrifying and awe inducing to consider forces so old and immense that they thrust up the floors of ancient oceans 14,000 feet in the air. Downtown Banff can be buzzing in it's international and bohemian way, but when the sun catches a cliff face so far above the town site I can't help but think of that Carl Sandburg poem about the rail cars, and that we and all of our stuff will be gone in a hundred years, but not the mountains. I also note that the previous sentence was so long that you gentle reader may have wondered if you were caught in the land that time forgot.

I will only say in my defence that I'm writing this on my berry and don't feel like parsing. Forgive me.

I'm going to go now. If life is but one brief flicker of the candle I'm going to have some more coffee and tackle the day. I have dragons to slay, maidens to rescue and yoga instructors to put on notice.

On our way up to Waskiseu today from Emma Lake.

Have seen three black bears this morning. One yearling that dashed into the forest, and a boar and a sow we suppose in the ditch.

As we approached with the car papa bear moved into the woods. She ate in the ditch but we're not certain what she was eating. Was it dandelions? Dandelion roots? Maybe just grass. Anyway she was non plussed while I took her picture decked out as she was in a lovely black fur.

Off to fish now for walleye and pike. Fish should fear me!Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry

My dad, brother Arol and I are all at my brother David’s house at Emma Lake Saskatchewan. A good day. We had big plans to go fishing today, but instead ended up looking at eskers, drumlins, kettle lakes and moraine in the Narrow Hills. Jade Lake was especially interesting.

David is the biologist in the family but we all have an interest in plants, animals and, apparently, geology. Dad at 81 was identifying alder, bear berries, high bush cranberries, lily of the valley, wild raspberries, willow, chokecherry. Arol and David knew them all too. I was humiliated by my relative ignorance. I knew maybe half as many as they did.

The discussion carried back to the house where we debated Balm of Gilead, which is derived from Balsam Poplar and Balsam Fir, among others. We discussed the new Quebecor Media idea for a new TV news network in Canada. The support in our focus group was overwhelming.

Here’s to competition amongst media outlets and let the people decide.

A lot of laughs today and some great discussion.

A wonderful walk through my tiny principality in north west Calgary this evening. It’s my sense that spring has come quite late to Calgary this year. It must be at least two weeks behind. Only now are we seeing plum, cherry and apple blossoms, a full month after I saw them in Toronto. That said they are lovely and I’m happy to see trees blossom twice this spring.

I came across two jackrabbits, which seem to live in large numbers in the north west. If you’re from parts east you might not appreciate that these are significantly larger critters than a typical bush rabbit. Typically they live on the prairies but life in the suburbs seems to agree with them. They’re fast enough that they would escape any neighborhood dogs.

I have been wearing a pedometer now for a couple of weeks, which I warn you can become a kind of religion. The goal is 10,000 steps a day. Today I hit 12,221, but how did this get to be about me?

4:38 a.m. I bound from my bed to confront the day. The first faint rays of light find their way over the great ridge to the north and reveal snow on my deck. For reasons that I can’t explain this makes me feel proud. I briefly consider cooling my intermittently but chronically hot feet in the snow (a weird family trait), but opt to make coffee instead and read.

I am reading and admiring G.K. Chesterton’s A Short History of England.I commend it to you gentle reader for it’s surprising insights and elegant and mirthful prose, a Chesterton trademark. It is short because it assumes that the reader has an easy familiarity with all of the most important events in the long and event filled history of England. In my case this is a stretch, but stretching is good for us and I am having great fun reading my favourite writer.

I have plans to traverse Bowmont Park this morning as I expect it will be especially pretty today in the snow; green on a white background and adorned by red dogwood and yellow buffalo bean. The snow still falls here, even as the sun strengthens, in these high heights 3300 feet above sea level in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.