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.

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.

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?

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.

I'm on a flight from Edmonton to Calgary where the flight attendant (Grant) has served me a thimble full of water. That's fine. That's probably enough to last me ten days anyway. Besides I don't have time to drink water. I'm too busy.

I have been saving a single peanut M&M for a special occasion, but where will I find the time to actually sit down and enjoy it?

On a completely unrelated note I did recently squeeze in an hour and a half hike through Bowmont Natural Environment Park in Calgary. My question is why do they put "Environment" in the name of this park? For that matter you could ask why the "Natural" too. I mean everything is in an environment so I don't get it. Pretty obviously its not an industrial park so why the "Natural"?

Anyway, ignore my cavilling. The park, even with it's unnecessarily long name, is lovely. It's in the west end of Calgary on the North side of the Bow River where it runs up hard against the river bluffs and in spots well into the suburbs of Varsity and Silver Springs where deep coulees remain defiantly wild and green.

One such coulee is called Waterfall Valley, so named because springs create four small falls along its steep sides. I wonder how many people in the great city that surrounds it have seen this small wonder in their midst.

It's a terrific park because though small in a sense, it remarkably diverse. At the top on the bluffs are buffalo beans, crocuses, fescue and wolf willows. Below on the river its balsam polar and aspen groves.

There is an osprey nesting box right along the main path and mom and dad osprey don't seem to mind the onlookers.

I have to go now. Grant is glaring at me because as we all know my blackberry is going to bring down the plane even though I have turned off the transmitter (Not!). Besides I'm just too busy to write. :)

What have we done in letting him escape public life? To be sure he continues to make a great difference even now, but what we miss by not having him in the political realm today.

He gave a terrific speech tonight, and once again reminds me of how lucky I was (and we all were) to drink deeply from his wise insights that gave voice to our raw reformish instincts.

How refreshing to hear his big ideas on innovation tonight. Even this chattering class crowd from Upper Canada was a bit awed by his unique take on what ails Canada.

Congratulations Preston and Sandra!

Please God, don't tell me that there is now a department of volcanoes where bureaucrats scan websites looking for volcanologists who haven't passed the volcano bar, and have haven't paid their yearly volcano fee. So unless we register, we're not official volcanologists? Seriously, I hear stuff like this and I could just erupt!!

Well, I don't care. Hear this Department of Volcanoes. I have decided to print up business cards stating that I am a volcanologist, even though my training in this area isn't perhaps "complete". Right this moment I am saying the word "magma" without proper authourization. See you in court Department of Volcanoes....or at least in the food court. Maybe we can grab some sushi.

I like CCC and have listened to it on and off over the years, and Rex is a big reason why. He is interesting and interested, which along with his gift for language make him an ideal host.

He turns phrases and weaves words like he's playing classical guitar. Comparatively I play a banjo.

Anyway, my thanks to the folks at CBC for a great time, and a very unique experience.