I enjoy ambling or galumping (depending on what state my aging bones and muscles are in) on long summer evenings. I’m determined to suck up the warm evening experience while I still can. In winter, at 8pm, it’s cold, slippery and dark.

When winter comes I will have to go back on the treadmill to exercise.

I am not really a treadmill person. You just can’t step off a moving mechanism to pick flowers, peer at a bird in a tree, or see whether the highbush cranberries are at the right stage for jelly making.

You have to press Stop on the machine to stop slowly, or pull the Emergency cord to stop fast (very fast) before disembarking from the treadmill. I learned that the hard way.

Last evening, for some reason, I was full of energy. This morning I’m half dead (That’s the way it works when you get old, you win some and then you lose some) I tooled along the sidewalk past the Clinic, heading north at full 87-year-old speed, toward the highway. I love that the Village Works crew have maintained beautiful pathways with newly planted trees on both sides of the highway. There is a nice bench on the corner where I sometimes rest, panting and aching, before carrying on.

But last night I was full of energy. I ambled along the gravelled path, thinking about what a lovely little town it is that I live in. The shopping mall across the highway could use a bit of redecorating I thought, to catch the eye of passing tourists. Something friendly and perhaps even a little cheesie.

A large brown plastic bear presides in a space beside the tall archway advertising the mall businesses. Why not paint it up prettily, with perhaps a bow around it’s neck. Have it holding a sign: SIMON? FRASER?…. Sarrah? BEAR WELCOMES YOU TO FRASER LAKE

Better yet, ask our local chainsaw carver to carve a moose and paint it white. There are fewer swans than there used to be, but there are still a few white moose. FRASER LAKE THE WHITE MOOSE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!