My avatar is a photo of me after digging out my house and my wife's car, after a good old fashioned January Canadian prairie blizzard a few years ago. Three days of blinding snow and high winds, and temperatures -20 to -35°C and windchill you don't ever want to experience. I figured it was about the most contrast I could have compared to African weather.
My member name is one I chose because of several reasons:
- my favourite all-time activity is to leave the house, rifle in hand, with no particular goal in mind, and go for long walks to explore, hunt, and find what's out there.
- And because one of the best huts I've had required a 32 Km hike cross country during one day in the extremely remote and trackless tundra, forest and mountains of the Yukon territory where I realized my dream of bagging a Dall ram.
- And because my wife and I ( both in our mid 50's) decided two years ago to walk the Camino Santiago pilgrimage in Spain, which is the ancient pilgrim route from St. Jean Pied du Port, France, 800 Km over the Pyrenees mountains, through the Basque country and the favourite haunts of Hemingway, the Rioja wine region, across the meseta (plains) and wheat fields of Northern Spain, through the wet and mountainous coastal region to offer a prayer and pay our respects at the burial place of St James the Apostle.
We went during March, carrying everything in our backpacks, and after 25 KM or so stopped in whatever village we were in that evening. We experienced many cherry blooms and 3 blizzards, olive groves, vineyards and alpine tundra, castles and cathedrals, huts and hovels. Dirty busy cities and wild alpine ridges and forest glades. Luxurious meals and hungry bellies, cold crowded albergue dormitories and wonderful companions from 28 different countries who we met in the bars and on the Camino. It was physically challenging, spiritually uplifting, culturally educational, and something that resembles the completely fulfilling experience I get while hunting interesting game in wonderful new and exotic country, like Africa.