Okay, here�s the whole story.

As part of this mid-life crisis which Hubby has been having over the past several years (and he agrees that that�s what it is, if a mid-life crisis can be described as the realization that there are parts of you you let fall off in your youth, and now want to pick up and reincorporate into your character), he has started taking an interest in the music he played as a teenager (rock and roll) and a new interest in jazz (although he has always enjoyed jazz heretofore in a passive way). This explains the acquisition of fake books and our project to learn a new jazz tune a day (we�ll get back to that, I promise!). It also explains his desire to obtain an instrument better suited to this purpose. To that end, he started investigating archtop guitars, and found that there is a luthier in Canada, not too far away, who crafts beautiful guitars, and has actually made such an instrument. This particular archtop is the property of a jazz musician-cum-chef-cum-fly fisherman who has bought himself a charming place in rural Ontario. A stream runs through his backyard (the house is actually situated on an island) with trout ponds, and he made us go outside onto his deck in our stocking feet to see the rainbow trout in the bottom pool and the brown trout in the upper. His plan is to run a bed-and-breakfast, starting with a one-room cottage on the property and renovating the �master� bedroom in his house (his culinary skills would come in handy here), as well as start up some kind of centre for musical activity. He was very hospitable, very pleasant, and not upset at all that the luthier was sending people his way to see his guitar. In fact, I think he was rather amazed that we drove all that way just for that purpose.

The next morning, after leaving my sister- and brother-in-law�s, we drove for five hours homeward to visit the guitar maker himself. We were supposed to have brought the chequebook, so as to make a deposit, but had not, and we ended up going to an ATM and taking out as much money at a time as it would give us, meaning we were walking (or driving) around with $1,500 in cash. It was a relief to finally get rid of it. The drive took us through a part of Ontario that I had not seen for a very long time (more than 30 years, in fact), Canadian Shield, a part of North American owing its appearance directly to the actions of the last glaciation. We drove past drumlins, I recognized eskers snaking across farmer�s fields, and everywhere along the sides of the highway were open cross-sections of pre-historic ocean bottoms, the strata of rock exposed, roots of scraggly pines finding purchase in cracks and thriving on a minimum of topsoil. Because the trees are still bare and there is still snow on the ground, visibility for viewing these phemonena was good. I used to go to a summer camp in Cloyne (gotta love the name) from age 11 to 14, and I remember the exposed bedrock and the lakes dotting the Shield, like water-filled potholes in a poorly-maintained road.

The visit with the luthier himself was wonderful. He is such a warm, friendly person, as well as being a master craftsman, and as soon as we arrived he was making coffee and serving us apple pie. We talked for a while about this and that before getting down to the business of actual guitars (you could tell he was loathe to do �business�, preferring the social end of the transaction to any talk about money), but gladly showed us his workshop and happily discussed plans for personalizing this new instrument. He has already completed the body for it (he�s building two at the same time, twins if you will) out of German spruce and maple. The grains of the different woods are stunning, and he uses ebony around the edges, not plastic as many luthiers do nowadays. Hubby also sat and played some of his other guitars, a classical which he fell in love with, and an acoustic steel-string, with a classical-size body, which would actually be perfect for me, but which I did not play because I was embarassed to do so (I cited my too-long nails as reason not to). We paid our deposit, said our goodbyes, and went on our merry way.

We took Highway 7 directly towards Ottawa, seeing many deer feeding on the freshly exposed grass of the fields by the road. The moon rose very round and very yellow and, just as it had for Harold with his purple crayon, it accompanied us the whole way. We stopped for supper just before hitting the Quebec border and once more at Dorion to coffee up. I was getting very sleepy and was sorely tempted to stop at a motel for the night even though it wasn�t that late and we were only a few hours from home. But Hubby somehow did all the driving yesterday (we shared equally the day before) and was willing to keep going after a jolt of caffeine. We arrived home at 11:00, Buddy Boy was playing his guitar, Little Princess was off somewhere (I didn�t hear her come in) and after putting my laundry in the basket, I trundled off to bed.

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