This photo from the night of the Perseids shows Taurus, Pleiades and Perseus. It also has a few stars belonging to the bow of Orion. The summer stars are surrendering the sky to the winter cosmos.
The two faint ‘scratches’ in the sky are satellites. It is difficult to get photos of the night sky without satellites showing up somewhere in the frame. Very different from when I was a kid and I would search for them among the stars, squinting to detect movement. I have read, in the future the majority of ‘stars’ in the night sky will be in motion, making them not stars at all, but satellites.
The larger streak is a meteor. Although difficult to detect in this small version of the photo, green can be seen in the streak at the beginning and end. This colour is often detected as the small grain of metal, dust from a long ago comet enters our atmosphere and burns up. I always feel lucky to see this natural phenomenon.
These days it seems we need a boat load of faith to get by. I’m not sure if any time was different.
I had a boss a few years back who was a white supremacist. He and his religious buddies used to head for Finley Creek to shoot off their guns and practice for the race wars that were surly coming.
He told me he was so short because a height of scaffolding fell on him. Like I gave a shit how tall he was.
The lesson I learned after hearing him talk to me for a half hour every morning was that these guys couldn’t even organize a BBQ.
I lasted a year before I told him, and his enlarged prostate, which he also told me about, to go fuck himself.
He had settled in a spot that accepted him, it was his world not mine.
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We had rain today and it felt good. Plenty of people locked inside came out to let it fall on them. The mountains can be seen. August didn’t disappoint with cooler temperatures. That’s the way it should be.
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People settle into their spot. Little bullies, find their spot, same as the white supremacist, the right and left, the religious and the atheists. It’s tribal now. We don’t think about ideas or compassion for our neighbours. We think about the size of our tribe. How many supporters, likes and followers we have.
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Still, goddammit, with the world burning, people dying for their beliefs, regardless, I’m hoping. It takes a boat load of faith, and luck, to get by.
Gemma walks around without purpose, she is getting old, but she loves it, like she can tell, the trees get tall for a reason and the creeks swell by the season on time.
It bothers Willow not able to give her a bark and return her to earth. She tries the same to me on occasion. So far, I listen
I guess our final wish is to run wild, jumping, getting tangled in leashes that are placed around our necks. Once they are off, it is a startled surprise there is no were to go.
Lisa and I drove the backroads we were so familiar with when we were younger. There is a lot more roads now. We managed to find our way to our old spot. Willow ran this way and that, even going for a swim in the starlight. The Meteors were falling all around. To see it is to believe.
Wasn’t sure if I could see through the smoke, but gave it a try. The Perseids are flying. Willow and I stumbled through the bush at 3 inn the morning trying to catch a glimpse. Not the best conditions, but you’ll never catch a fish if you don’t put a line in the water.
I saw satellites. I have a feeling we will be seeing more and more of them as space becomes commercialized under the influence of Earth’s egotistical billionaires like Musk, Branson and Bezos.
On the other hand the Perseids were hard to come by. True I could be a night early, still a bite would have been nice.
I set the camera to open for 30 seconds every 32 seconds and aimed it at Cassiopea. Willow and I wondered and went for a nap in the truck. It was a poor effort, but we were just practicing for tonight.
A wonderful Friday hiking with my son Hunter. We were up early, Hunter had eggs and toast ready for me. After just about hitting a deer we turned off the pavement onto a rough steep road. We reached the trail head by 7am and started through the bush on foot. We had planned it so we would spend the cool morning in the bush and rocks and be back to the truck in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day.
I point the camera towards Chisel. Photo by Hunter.
The hike we choose was a tough one. Uphill all the way and then back down legs burning from holding back from tumbling down the steep pitch.
A helicopter flies, below our perch, looking for fires.
By 10:30 we were above tree line and on the ridge of Chisel. Now I’m not as young as I used to be, I have to remember anything I go up I have to come down. Hunter was patient waiting for my sorry ass. We gained elevation. A helicopter flew by well below us. Scouting for fires no doubt.
Willow the route finder.
Chisel Peak is also known as Indian Head. The Ktunaxa Nation calls it Naⱡmuqȼin from the Great Chief in their creation story who bumps his head on the sky and falls backward to be forever looking skyward.
Nutmuqcin on a clearer day. Can you make out the Chief lying on his back, his face looking skyward to the right, his breast plate in the centre, and his knees slightly raised to to the left?
I found an Eagle feather just below the summit. I took it as a sign to stop or I may need wings to get down. Willow and I stayed put admiring the view while Hunter, without me holding him back, dashed ahead to the crown.
How am I supposed to keep up?
The walk down was the same route going down, slipping here and there, riding sections on my arse. It was a day to remember spent with my son Hunter with the knowledge days like these are few and far between.
The smoke in the valley has been crushing. I think about my father in his later years how difficult this would have been for him.
Forest fires are raging all over BC. I expect skies won’t clear for awhile yet. Last year was clear. The largest fire in BC was burning close to us, about 60km to the south. It was almost like forest fires took the summer off due to Covid. This summer is a return to summers previous.
The valley is exceptionally busy with tourists, going hell bent this way and that, dragging boats, ATV’s and other expensive noisy toys in tow. Alberta keeps bitching about how hard done by they are, but you couldn’t tell it from the white and red plates polluting the valley air and waterways on this side of the provincial border.
It is hard to recognize the valley bottom in times like these.
Of course, valley business owners and small town politicians (the same folks in many instances) are rubbing their hands together while chanting into the grey skies, ‘more, more, more’, while their staff, paid minimum wage are crowded into run down staff houses.
I read the valley newspaper, The Columbia Valley Pioneer, this morning. It is the newspaper Lisa and I started 16 years ago. The look of the paper hasn’t changed much in that time, the picture I took of the wetlands still adorns the masthead. It is odd to see it week after week. Reading the paper I often think, do I live in the same town this newspaper claims to cover? True, the newspaper is now owned by a chain notorious for poor coverage of the communities it serves, however, it does occur to me, with some irony, it’s me that no longer fits in.
There was a time I had the bruises on the other side of my hands.
Out early to beat the heat. . . and tourists. Headed into the mountains. It’s early for huckleberries, but with this weather who knows. Took off for #2 creek. The road was rough with washboard, folks yanking trailers behind them, bouncing along, dust in clouds. Luckily we were early enough to miss them, but cursed them just the same when I hit the pot holes or sliced sideways over washboard. Lisa and Willow suggested maybe I should just slow down.
Once off the main road it was cool sailing, cedar, small creeks, fireweed lining the roads, dips and dangles instead of dust and ruts.
I’ll be your Huckleberry.
It takes awhile but then you finally arrive! It wasn’t long and we were looking up the slides for berries. The mountains were shrouded in smoke. We headed higher.
It’s early. We tried anyway and found a grove of huckleberries. We picked. I told Lisa if anyone should come up, we should pretend to make love, instead of disclosing we were picking huckleberries. In other words, get rid of them.
Fireweed.
Fortunately we were far enough away to be out of contact.
The berries were plentiful, but not large due to the hot spell. I’m holding out hope for a touch of rain. Lisa and I picked and ended up with plenty to make a few batches of jam.
It’s been over a week since a young man drowned jumping into Windermere Wells.
Much of my youth was spent trailing behind my father or on my own through thick brush, following creeks and trails to small water holes.
One of the places we spent a great deal of time was Twin Lakes, now renamed Windermere Wells. As the name suggests it was two lakes joined by a narrow area that had a bridge. I often fished the deep lake surrounded by cliffs, where as, my Father fished the bigger shallower lake.
Photo by Lisa, taken from the road passing by the lake. Notice the young man doing a backflip off the rocks. This was taken a day before a 28 yr old drowned in Twin.
The advantage to fishing the deep lake was the fish could be seen around your hook. Some would swim by, some would nudge and often they would bite.
The Lakes had to be walked into. The road leading to a mine was above the lake. Later a logging road was put in below the lake, but was nearly impassable due to mud and the creek flooding over it’s banks.
My son Hunter jumping the lower rocks when he was a youngster. I wanted him to know how to do it, because I knew he was going to do it anyway.
It was only when the gypsum mine moved and commissioned and improved the logging road that the walk to Twin was visible, allowing a shorter walk.
During the eighties off roaders pushed roads over creeks and through the brush to the shores of the lake.
It became a party spot. We stopped going. Now it is an area tourists and locals go to jump the cliffs and swim.
When we were kids we described the deep lake as bottomless. A trail ran past the lake to deliver hunters and trappers to the Kootenay Valley. My Grandfather was one who often used the trail.
Natural science labels the lake a gypsum sinkhole. There is many on the backside of Swansea, this is one of the few filled with water from Windermere Creek.
A story was told, when I was a youngster, how a pack horse fell from the bridge into the deep water never to be seen again.
Although the water is clear, once swimmers start pulling themselves up the clay/gypsum sides the water turns murky, not allowing visibility past the surface of the lake.
If a diver hits the surface awkwardly and looses their breath their friends can not rescue them in the cloudy water. Trained divers almost always have to be brought in to recover the body.
Windermere Wells is becoming increasingly popular, however care should be taken, as it is known for more than a few deaths. One every few years now.
cruel the moon and sun are the same size from where I stand. the sun is bigger of course, it’s a mathematical anomaly. space tends to put things into perspective. still, what are the chances.
Palliser Pass 