A Separate Place

Hi Folks
Highway 400 is the main route north from Toronto. It connects Ontario’s capital city to the province’s vast northern section. When I was young, as soon as we’d take the ramp off of the 401 and merged onto the 400, it was as if I had entered a place where it was okay to leave my problems behind. Not gone, more like stuffed in a locker to get picked up when I returned. 
It meant Muskoka, where my Uncle Joe had a cottage on the rocks above a peaceful lake. It meant camping and hiking in Algonquin Park. Later, it meant a break from the frantic pace of the city.
I still get a twinge of that feeling to this day, even when I’m heading towards work of some kind rather than a vacation. 
On Thursday, July 16, I was on my way to Barrie, an hour and a quarter drive from my house, for a show with The Lightfoot Band. As soon as I got on Hwy 400, where that nostalgic carefree feeling usually occurs, it was bumper-to-bumper traffic amidst a haze of smoke from the forest fires in Northern Ontario. 

The traffic thinned out eventually, but the smoke got thicker. It wasn’t as bad as the day before when an eerie orange glow had coloured the sky, and everyone was advised to stay indoors; still, it felt ominous today, like a dystopian science fiction movie.
It could have affected my mood right up until show time, but that world I go into when I’m at the gig and particularly when I’m onstage has a firewall. That world has no smoke or traffic. It can have its own terrors and anxieties (there were a couple on Thursday), but the usual day-to-day concerns still get stuffed in that locker.
When the band sounds great (which it did), the audience is appreciative (which it was), for a while, life is nothing but good.