Dear Diary. On the weekend I had a party here at the beautiful Clark estate, my hermit home in the middle of the woods.

The Saturday night sky was bright with the glow of the perigee moon, the wolf moon, the brightest full moon of the year.

A bunch of us wound up getting pretty hammered. We went out to the backyard to practise shooting at pop cans. It was minus 25 celsius but fortunately I was so blitzed I could hardly feel my face anyway.

I still managed to smoke a few pop cans. I think most of us did. Intoxication didn’t really seem to affect anyone’s aiming ability. Conclusion: shooting a rifle is not like driving a car.

Then we all slid down the snowy bank to the frozen river that runs through my back yard: the mighty Salmon River that curves from Grand Lake all the way up to the Miramichi. The girls laid down on the ice under the moonlight, right there on the snowmobile tracks, the moon throwing sharp shadows across the snow. It reminded me of something out of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

We see how the world is going. You don’t want to wait until the food has run out to start learning how to shoot.