Lane MacIntosh Mindscapes
161 Greenfields Drive E3b 5l9 Fredericton, NB, Canada

The day I met the King of Redonda It is around two in the afternoon when I step into a bar not far from Nelson's Dockyard in English Harbour, Antigua. The Caribbean sun is hot, and I want to get inside. Sitting down at a table beside a large window open to the harbour, I ask the smiling woman behind the bar to bring me the coldest Red Stripe she has. Leaning back in my chair, the soothing breeze from the ceiling fan cools my face as I think about the dockyard and all that has...Continue reading

Sleeping with giants by Lane MacIntosh It’s the middle of the night and I'm lying in a tent beside Carmanah Creek on the west coast of Vancouver Island surround...ed by giant Sitka spruce and western red cedar. Soaring almost 200 feet into the moist mountain air, the trees of the Carmanah Valley are not only some of the oldest on earth, but also the biggest. The Carmanah Giant, a Sitka spruce growing in the valley, reaches to 315 feet. Ten feet in diameter, it is Canada's tallest tree. Size is one thing, but what boggles the mind is how old these trees are. When Gutenberg invented the printing press around 1440, the Giant was growing. More than 300 years later in 1778 when Captain Cook became the first European to set foot on Vancouver Island, it was a good-sized tree. There are trees in this rainforest that are even older. A thousand years ago, when the Norse explorer Leif Ericson landed at L'Anse aux Meadows at the tip of Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula, the western red cedar within sight of my tent was alive. To hike through the Carmanah Valley is to journey through centuries. To spend a night in this mysterious place is to transcend the way you view time by listening carefully to the silence. Lying here, cradled by the spirit of the giants that surround me, I realize that my journey into this valley has changed me. I’m not exactly sure how, but, when the sun comes up, I’m pretty sure I'll know. -30- Lane MacIntosh has been writing about Canada’s natural and cultural landscape for more than 25 years. ([email protected])

Over Gray Creek Pass Moments after I shift our car into park, my 27-year-old daughter is scrambling up a rock outcropping at the top of Gray Creek Pass in British Columbia’s Purcell Mountains. With one eye I watch her climb, with the other I keep an eye out for bears. Just last night in the city of Kimberley, not far from where we are now, a man shot a grizzly in the kitchen of his home. The Gray Creek Pass Road is more than 90 kilometres of gravel road that connects Kimberl...Continue reading

Along the Mending Wall Getting out of my car in front of the Robert Frost Farm in Derry, New Hampshire, drizzling rain and a soft, early morning mist surround me. Standing in front of the simple white clapboard farmhouse where once a literary giant lived is poetry itself. So is the view of the barn, the meadow and the forest of pine, maple and oak beyond. "Whose woods these are I think I know." A sign in the front yard reads: "Some of the best-loved poems in the English langu...Continue reading

With an elevation of 2,072 metres (6,800 ft.) above sea level, Gray Creek Pass is Canada's third highest mountain pass. Photo: Lane MacIntosh Mindscapes 2017 Lane MacIntosh