Finding the Balance in Retirement

My last six posts have all been about the great day we had when we decided NOT to go on a second geology hike 3 weeks ago, and instead wandered our way home stopping at various interesting places – including 3 waterfalls.  After the hike the day before we had realized we aren’t really ‘hikers’, for a variety of reasons.

This set me to reflecting on retirement and how it has changed in the 3 short years since we finished at work, moved to a new location, and set up our new life.  It’s an ongoing challenge to find the balance between ‘me time’, ‘us time’, social time, and activities (with apologies to those of you still working who probably don’t have time to think about such things)!

I think there are several givens in building an interesting and healthy retirement.  We take for granted the need to stay active, to build a social life, to make a contribution to your community, and to keep busy with whatever you choose to do.  

I also find it very useful to build some structure and routine in my life, so that I do get up and out every day, even if I don’t really ‘need’ to.  A daily walk with the dog helps that.  It’s also really important to simply put yourself out there; take the initiative and join in.

Beyond this though, you have a lot of choice.

When we retired I looked forward most to joining in on the many hikes our local Bruce Trail Club sponsors, probably over 100 per year, year-round.  But I’ve discovered that this really doesn’t work for me for several reasons – first my health (I just walk slower) and secondly my preference to go slowly, look around, identify things, stop and listen, and take pictures.  It’s taken me 3 years to accept my limitations, but I think I have.

This isn’t to say I gave up.  Instead I invented ‘Slowpoke Nature Walks’ which I volunteered to lead, and they’ve proven quite popular.  Something I’d never thought of before, but it suits me.  I also volunteer to help lead their stewardship efforts, a time-consuming commitment, but a useful one.  I have the knowledge to contribute, I can manage my own timing, and it’s mostly outdoors – the perfect volunteer job for me.

After moving to a new community there was a lot to do initially to get things settled, but after a few months we connected with several local groups besides the Bruce Trail Club.  My wife volunteers with the local Quilting Guild, and we attend a local church which provides not only a spiritual home but a rich and meaningful connection to the local community.

We also joined the Probus Club and its many activity groups.  So we enthusiastically signed up for snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, potlucks, nature walks, canoeing and photography (which I lead myself).  Here’s where the need to find a balance comes in!

Suddenly we were very busy with scheduled activities, meeting all kinds of new people, and developing a few core friendships.  In fact it was all a little overwhelming.  And in contrast to this, as we got more involved in our own hobbies, (photography and quilting respectively), we wanted more time to ourselves.  Both photography and quilting are hobbies that demand a lot of ‘alone time’.

So we shifted gears again and backed away from some of the scheduled activities to do our own thing, but then there’s less social life.  Sometimes I think I enjoy life as a hermit, but most of the time I need better balance.

So it’s a continuing matter of finding that balance, not being afraid to try new things, and accepting the changes that come along, choosing to do more of one thing and less of another, setting priorities. 

At the moment our ‘me time’ and ‘us time’ is working really well, but I’ll be joining a few of those activity groups this winter a little more often as I keep trying to find the right balance.  And we’ll be going on a few more of those expeditions like our drive home 3 weeks ago instead of joining the second geology hike, a day we really enjoyed.

This post was totally different for me, and it was a challenge to write.  Comments appreciated.

Walters Falls

Our last stop on the drive home way back in late October was Walters Falls, in the village of Walters Falls.  It's a challenging waterfall to get a picture of, as it plunges straight down into a deep gorge in two cascades, but you can only see it from the side.  But as the site of yet another old mill, it's an interesting place!

This is the waterfall at the old mill site. There's a fair number of vestiges of the old mill still visible, including the pipe sticking out from the left at the top of the falls.  I actually went back and got this picture today, as I was passing through the village anyway - hence the snow.

This is the view straight down the falls and the gorge below back in October when we stopped by.  I've put climbing down into this gorge for pictures from below on my list as a future project.

Upstream a short distance is one of the still standing mill buildings, the mill dam and smaller mill pond, along with the pipe that fed the mill machinery.  This seemed very picturesque to me; I'm going to be interested to learn about the history of this place.

 

As you walk upstream to the small bridge in the previous picture you get a better view of the mill dam and the pond beyond it.  This is another picture from today rather than late October.  I've learned that when the sun is shining and the sky is blue, you just stop to get what pictures you can, 'cause you never know how long until you'll get that chance again.
 

The dam itself was just as pretty as the waterfall, with a high flow of water over it at this stage in October.  Further upstream in the village there is a still operating grain mill.  Another future project is to stop in there and learn about it and get some pictures.

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Roots and Rocks

Waterfalls are pretty exciting, but I find I'm just fascinated with the whole natural world.  At Inglis Falls this included the roots of the cedar trees spreading over the surface of the bedrock, and somehow finding enough moisture and nutrients to survive.  It also included another interesting rock cut along the road.

               

This group of cedar trees was clinging right to the edge of the cliff, the one bridging a crevice that drops 30 feet down, the other growing sideways out of the rock.  All up and down the Niagara Escarpment you see cedars like these growing directly out of the bedrock.  Some of these (though not likely these ones at this heavily disturbed site where an old mill stood) are the oldest trees in eastern North America, having been cored and aged at 500 - 1000 years old!

More trees growing on the edge of the cliff, their roots clinging directly to the bedrock, accentuated here somewhat because of the heavy pedestrian traffic as visitors come to view the falls.

Meanwhile, down the road a short distance is this rock cut.  On the geology hike we did the day before I learned that this is the best local exposure of the Fossil Hill Formation and the underlying Cabot Head Formation.  The difference in the two rock layers really stands out in this picture of the rock cut.

The Fossil Hill Formation is the sold dolostone upper section in this picture, forming a very short cliff.  The Cabot Head Formation in contrast is a blue shale, made up of densely packed clay particles.  Water runs through the dolostone readily, but won't penetrate the shale.  As a result groundwater emerges as springs along the contact between the two very different layers.

I've seen this spring for years along the road here; it's a popular place to stop and get spring water for drinking.  But now I understand the geology that creates it. 

Inglis Falls

We've already had a great day on our ongoing drive home, but we've still got two more waterfalls to stop at on the way.  Water levels are so high we just had to stop in and see them.
 

 

And we were right!  Inglis Falls was thundering like we had never seen before, and I've been stopping by here for decades.  When you got out of the car (above the falls, on the right in this picture) you could feel the spray on your face, something I've never experienced here.  I've clambered over the rocks below the falls when it's much drier, so this amount of water was spectacular to see.
 

 

A close comparison with a photo taken a year ago in the summer will show you the huge difference.  Note the shape of the waterfall here and then check it against the photo below, which is a normal mid-summer low flow level.

At low water levels you can clamber all over the waterfall, and some people do.  Look closely and you'll see someone right near the brink of the falls.

I prefer taking waterfall pictures at a slower speed, but I didn't have my tripod, and it was drizzling a bit, so I had trouble getting the right light settings for what I wanted.  This picture was the best I managed - I'll just have to come back sometime, that's all.

The amount of water charging down the gorge below the falls was perhaps even more surprising than the falls itself.  In mid summer you can cross this channel in the middle of the picture fairly easily.  The view in the distance is over Owen Sound, a town surrounded by the Niagara Escarpment.

Just for fun, I love this view of the Sydenham River as it reaches the brink of the falls.  You can barely see it, but on the left behind the trees is the large old pipe that carried water over and down to the various mills that stood here in the past.

And looking upstream from the same spot you see the mill dam; behind it is a substantial mill pond.  Several generations of my family lived a few kilometres from here, pioneering on a farm near Kilsyth.  I'm told that my great-grandfather brought his grain to the Inglis Mill to get it ground into flour.

Perhaps these were the very millstones which ground his grain!  A small remnant of the old gristmill can still be seen below the falls.  Both gristmills and sawmills operated here for 100 years, ending in 1945.

Watching the Trout!

We had gone to Harrison Park to see if the fish were swimming upstream to spawn, as I'd been told they do.  The Sydenham River flows through the park, and a shallow separate channel was put in decades ago to create a wading area around a playground and picnic tables - I was taken there to play as a child, longer ago than I'd like to mention.  That's where we found the fish.

I understood that both salmon and trout migrate upstream here, but a fellow fish-watcher who seemed to know a lot more than I did said these were brown trout.  Apparently the salmon migrate up earlier.

This is the main Sydenham River they swim up from Georgian Bay.  The Sydenham Sportsmen's Association has done a great deal of work to improve spawning habitat, as well as stock fish.  With the river flowing through it, Harrison Park is a particularly nice urban park.

Between the bay and the park the fish have to negotiate a major fish ladder past a dam, absolutely churning with water at this time of year.  Watching it I don't know how they can do it, but they obviously know how to twist and turn their way upstream.  I need to put the dam and fish ladder on my list of places to go and get pictures.

 

Most of the time though, the fish were just floating in the channel, always facing straight upstream into the current.  It was a pretty fast current too, so they must exert a fair amount of energy just staying still, resting for their next dash upstream.  All the fish were between 2 and 3 feet long.

I can't resist posting another picture of this monument to the Kemble Women's Institute - now the oldest operating Women's Institute in the world!  I posted several pictures in July, but I just think it's the neatest monument - a table set for tea.

It sits on the edge of a lookout over Georgian Bay, and this time there was a herd of mostly Aberdeen Angus cattle down below.  I liked the reflections of the three cows, as well as the Niagara Escarpment bluff in the far distant upper left.

Weaver Creek Falls

We left the pebble beach of Big Bay on Georgian Bay and headed around the shoreline to Owen Sound.  Since we'd planned to be all day on a hike, we had lots of time so we stopped in Harrison Park, one of my favourite spots there.  I had heard you could see salmon and trout headed upstream to spawn - but that's tomorrow's story.  First, I walked the short trail to Weaver Creek Falls, which I had never seen before.

Weaver Creek Falls is a small waterfall inside Owen Sound, and on private land.  But the trail from the park gets you close enough to get a good view of it and it turns out to be a short walk, a good portion of it on an easy boardwalk.

              

 
              

First I forgot to mention yesterday that we saw numerous interesting fossils on the pebble beach - though all were washed and rounded by the waves and ice.  I certainly can't tell you what these ones are, but they added a lot of interest to the rocks we picked up - I just hesitate to skip a flat stone with a nice fossil in it back into deeper water!.

In Harrison Park we parked beside the summer swimming pool, fed by this little stream and I headed up the boardwalk into the small ravine, beneath the dark green hemlock trees.  Lots of fallen leaves here; this was two weeks ago.

The stream itself was running very high and wide, overflowing its normal small channel.  You can see more boardwalk in the distance, a short easy family-friendly trail.

By the time I went around two bends in the valley I could see the falls in the distance.  The combination of a few yellow leaves left on trees with the dark green hemlock was picture-perfect to me.

The trail was right beside the stream, so you could get good pictures of the water tumbling down over rocky ledges and fallen logs.

In some ways, although it's not close up, I think this picture is the best - not just the waterfalls, but the falls in the context of the little ravine through which the stream flows.

This was as close as I got, but I look forward to going back in different seasons to do more exploring.  Our county actually has an advertised waterfall tour featuring 8 waterfalls; this one was number 7 checked off the list.

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A Nice Drive

Well I have to admit something - even though we enjoyed the geology hike, the scenery and the habitats were spectacular, and I got to see the Fossil Hill Formation, we were exhausted by the end.  I think the uneven footing, the rain, and the steady pace, just did us in.

We were staying in a B&B that night, thinking that we might also join  the second geology hike the next day, but when morning dawned and we still felt tired, and it was spitting snow outside, we decided not to.  Instead we enjoyed a leisurely drive home, stopping at several places to enjoy the view over Georgian Bay.  The snow stopped within a few miles and we made a great day of it.

These pictures are along the south shore of Colpoy's Bay, the first one looking back up the bay to the town of Wiarton in the west.  The second picture is the cliffs directly across the bay from us.  A large tract of land here was purchased in a public fund-raising drive three years ago, by a group of non-profit conservation organizations.  The Bruce Trail runs all along the top of these cliffs.

Here you can see the escarpment bluffs on the left, and the outlines of Hay and White Cloud Islands on the right.  The low bit of land in between is Cape Croker, near where we hiked the previous day.  But it was the foreground that struck me in this picture.  Someone had left a handful of small stones on top of the larger rock, and I wondered how long they'd last til a storm washes them off.

Our next stop was a little further around the bay, at Big Bay, where Keppel Croft Garden is.  I posted some pictures of both the bay and the garden back on July 12 - 16 - quite a different impression today on a gray November day compared to a sunny summer day!

This is the spot that advertises itself as the 'Skipping Stone Capital of Canada', and it's easy to see why when you're on the beach.

The entire beach here is small rounded but flat rocks, perfect for skipping across the surface of the water.  These are old beach deposits, pieces of rock broken off the escarpment a few 100 yards to the south of us here.  Keppel Croft garden is actually built on these old beach deposits, and uses rocks like this for mulch!

Looking down the beach the skipping rocks extended as far as the beach itself, and I did try a few, just to be sure they worked properly!

No patterns in the sand here, but some interesting patterns in the rocks.