Rouge Valley Park

April 22, 2018...too lovely a day to spend indoors after the long winter. Went to Rouge Valley Park, despite warnings that the ground would be slushy or too slippery with ice to walk. Had a lovely time. The temperature was perfect... not warm enough for mosquitos to have arrived and not so cold that  we couldn't enjoy. 

 Had taken our new Kelly Kettle stove to try outdoor cooking. Boiled noodles on the stove with  firewood gathered from nearby. The smell of smoke from the fire reminded me of visits to my village in India where my granny cooked on firewood.

 I loved the atmosphere here...the smell of smoke from our cooking, the roar of the Rouge river flowing by, the blue blue blue sky, the perfect temperature despite the snow on the ground.

Torontonians are unbelievably lucky to be living here...a modern urban city...with plenty of nature WITHIN  this urban area... rivers, forests, hills and valleys, wildlife, a lake the size of an ocean, beaches, nature trails. 

Hope we have more such days this year. Maybe I will try out the Humber river banks next week.

Above...I saw three kayakers fly by on the river ....so fast!

I suppose people toboggan down this when there's snow.

My husband's latest hobby is wood-carving or wood-work since the last few months. He's been glued to U-Tube videos of men who single-handedly build log cabins, wood houses, make furniture, and so on. Some of his favorite UTube builders/ bushcraft men or whatever they call themselves are: Dick Proenneke, Shawn James, Mors Kochanski.  He even bought a couple of knives and a saw. Before cooking, he carved a piece of wood into the wood spoon you see in this vessel. It actually looked more like a stick with the bark shaved off than a spoon! 
I gathered the firewood...there's tons of it anywhere in the wild in Toronto. 
We had got the chopped vegetables, cooking oil, water and noodles from home. This Kelly Kettle stove stove is great. Lots of heat and in no time, our noodles were ready. The vessel  above  is part of the Kelly set. I think it  looks bigger than it is. The Kelly kettle stove comes with stainless steel stove, a big container to boil water, vessels for cooking and even mugs to drink. 
My husband loves this stove. I don't think I have what-it-takes to lug this around in a back-pack on hikes. It's too heavy for me. 

Above is a dead tree disintegrating. I love the texture or rectangular shapes of the wood, crumbling.
It looks way better in reality than this photo.