LET'S GO FROGGIN!

Yee-haw and howdy neighbours and welcome to another episode of Outdoor Life's latest attempt to make a TV show with absolutely no budget ... Let's Go Froggin!

This week we is gonna profile a champion frogger from south of the border .. well not the Mexican border, nor even the Mason Dixon Line .. but Nares Inlet is south of the 60th Parallel so it's still South, pardners, yee haw!

(Yes this entire post will continue in this vein so you are fair warned)

This here little lady is called Terra and she is a self taught frogger.

Legend has it that Miss Terra was out explorin the wild swamps of Springhaven Lodge when she put her paw down on a hank of grass and out pops a frog! So excited was this little lady that she instantly knew that froggin was the sport for her!

With a combination of resolve, fast paws and natural talent .. well, ok, maybe not so much talent but resolve and fast paws, this rookie dove in to the ancient art of froggin, that bein, scarin you up some little green amphibious type varmits. We call it froggin, but his here border collie may call it herding frogs

Although a rookie, our little lady came well prepared; when she was havin a hard time rustlin up them pesky frogs, she brought in her own personal trainers and her own personal imported frogs. That's a city frogger fer ya, brung her own darn entourage ... not that it seemed to help her much

Although new to the sport of froggin, Terra did demonstrate some mighty slick techniques. She was quite fond of the "SOS" technique, which involved tapping her paws staccato-like hoping to draw out the critters.

When that didn't work, she resorted to the Submarine technique, using her face periscope-like to try to find her prey

I can't say that she were real successful but you gotta give her the A for effort. Mebbe herdin frogs is different from catchin frogs; I don't really know how them foreigners do things.

Here for your viewin pleasure is an expert from what I'm sure will be an award winning episode of Let's Go Froggin, so enjoy, have fun and go froggin!

SOMETIMES ALL YOU NEED IS A DOG AND HER BEACH

It may not seem like it, but there is usually a reason for me to post something here. Stop laughing, mullet head, I'm being serious.

And I never said it had to be a good reason, or even interesting. Heaven forbid.

There is usually a reason I make a video; sometimes to tell a story, sometimes to record a memory, sometimes illustrate a piece a music that inspired me.

Sometimes I don't need a reason. Sometimes all I need is a sunny late summer day, a rocky beach in Kingston Ontario and Miss Terra, hunting driftwood.

Enjoy.

LEMOINE POINT, KINGSTON ONTARIO

This is where you come to not be some place else.

This where you come to not be driving, working, thinking ... doing.

Quiet here: the first impression. Only quiet because you've left other sounds behind. The din of the city, the hum of your life. But not really quiet, not silent: Alive. With Sounds.

The sigh of wind through high grass. The susurrus of water against shore. The breathy laugh of the breeze in the leaves. The splash of the dog's legs as she moves through the water.

The wind really is like breath. You can hear it better here, you can feel it, somehow it's easier to draw that breath into your own lungs and  hold it there, let it mix with your own air and when you exhale, your breath is different. You are different. The wind is part of you. You are part of the wind. You are quieted.

Water has its own language. Ancient, complex, a variety of accents. Oceans have their own dialect; slow and basso profundo and stately yet prone to sudden fits of anger. Rivers understand this dialect as they travel the world and they translate for the lakes that speak a rural patois; lively and quick and continually developing.

We understand these languages. We do. On a deep level an ancient level somewhere deep inside us. Lay down when it is very quiet and become very still and you will hear the echoes of the water language: It is the movement of the blood under your skin.

It is why we are drawn to water.

Water speaks in this place. And the wind in the fur of the dog and the sun on your bare shoulders and the dry whispering of the high grasses.

This is not we normally are. This is away. This is the real quiet.

It's why we come here.

The dog splashes through the water and pauses suddenly, one paw lifted; she raises her muzzle and puts her nose into the wind. Something sweeps through the fur on her face.

She closes her eyes.

And she smiles.