I’ve been writing newspaper and magazine columns for nearly 30 years and really enjoy doing them. My column Open Range has been appearing in the print version of Ontario Out of Doors for close to a decade, and I have truly loved covering all sorts of outdoor related subjects in that space.
When OOD Editor-in-Chief Lezlie Goodwin approached me about writing a blog, I had my fear moment. Could I do this? The blogs I like to read often feel like diaries and can be amazingly random. Would I allow myself to be that free wheeling? My hope is that with this new blog, Free Range, I’ll explore areas about the outdoors — and myself — that might not always fit into the magazine.
Whether it be what songs remind me of fishing, to how the outdoors often feels like a holy place. Like church without pews. I want Free Range to be something different, but ultimately always connected to hunting, fishing and the outdoors because at the end of the day, those are the things that bind us all together.
The holy place comment rings home with me. This calming, closer to the Creator feeling is why I added hunting in 1997 to my outdoors activities. My occupation was high pressure selling in the GTA and my fall time in the bush helped me stay sane.