meanspath presses on, and ventures further into the frigid snowscape of the vast forest that lies before him. His feet fall in front of him as he walks; each step punching an ice-crusted boot-shaped mouth into the snow. He stomps, trudges, and wades through drifts. His thighs burn with each lift. His toes freeze. And the wind whips his face with impunity, striking it, lashing it with a cold and brutish force.
He long ago left the trail, long ago veered westward, into the brush, the alder thickets, over the ditch, detoured at a beaver dam, the ice too thin, up and down granite outcrops, slick with ice, through a mostly frozen bog, through empty puddles, like a lost soul, a phantom from the world beyond, like a ghost, wandering, searching, grasping at shadows of life, at echoes, at voices beckoning him to walk deeper and deeper into the forest.
When each step forward is a strain, time seems to grind to a halt. It elongates, as if stretched, as if pulled in opposite directions, one end to the future, the other to the past, two infinities to either side of a fleeting, momentary present; its howling, biting winds, shifting, swirling, blinding.
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To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
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Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
