Twp. of Grey Highlands, Grey County ON

In his book, Harvest of a Quiet Eye ~ the cabin as a sanctuary, Lawrence Scanlan describes the solitude and silence that he was able to attain by building a cabin in the country.  He quotes author and physicist, Alan Lightman, "We have grown accustomed to a constant background of machine noise wherever we are:  cars, radios, televisions, fax machines, telephones and cell phones ~ buzzes, hums, beeps, clatters and whines."  Lightman remembers as a boy "wasting" the better part of a day watching tadpoles in the shallows of a pond or water grasses swaying in the wind.

"The sunlight and soil that nourish my inner self,"  he now says, "are solitude and personal reflection.  We are "plugged in and connected to the outer world twenty-four hours a day."

~ Viking Canada, 2004.  (L. Scanlan worked in radio with the national program, Morningside, with Peter Gzowski.)