Stories, Excerpts, Backroads
Wind and rain signalling winter is officially over and spring is here. I feel colder in this weather than I do when it is minus thirty.
It will green things up. Some of the kids at work are wearing shorts while I still have on my long underwear.
Lisa asked today, do I wish we prayed. It is a good question.
Was up there hell and gone, cashing in on birdsong and edgy dogs. Looking for snags, firewood, fallen or standing, rocks that look like letters or shapes, like hearts, to bring home, and have someone say, I see it.
Willow sat on lookout, the young dog was more comfortable close. She is going to be a good one. Willow is good in the bush and bad everywhere else. She’ll bark at a crow at home through the window, but stay still for a Black Bear, in the bush, waiting for the right time to put it up a tree.
Together we are too much trouble for man or beast to take us on.
There is plenty of reason for the way things work out. For instance, we’re told, a person works hard and they prosper. However, the biggest reason that things work out is random. The universe is chaos. It doesn’t consider us or our feelings. It isn’t Jesus or Santa Claus or cares if we have been naughty or nice. If it was most people would live forever and a few would pay for the shit they caused.
Bad things happen to good people. Bad people prosper. Not always, like I said, it’s random.
My brother smoked and drank from the time he was 12. Instead of liver or lung cancer he died of a rare blood disease. He thought it was funny. It also killed his fear of dying. So many doing everything right and dying. He was lucky.
We’re all lucky in the end.
The stars keep time. They swarm over the mountains. Turn south and back. It takes more than a lifetime to know them, to become an expert.
Jimmy knocked himself out today. He struggled with a post of angle iron in the frozen ground. Finally it broke off and hit him in the head. He hit the ground, his radio on squelch. That’s Jimmy. If he does something he makes sure everyone notices.
Of course, once he came to, he wanted to keep working. He is small of stature, but strong as an army. That’s Jimmy.
A couple inches of wet snow overnight. It will be gone in a hurry. It seems winter is trying to hang on.
Lisa and I went for a short walk behind the mountain. We were hoping to see a few Meadowlarks. Lisa said she heard their distinct call the other day. We did see Chickadees, Siskins and Robins. Not many got close enough for a picture.
Back in the valley bottom I walked the road, but still no luck, instead I shot a few old fence-lines.
All and all a overcast black and white day. It was good to get out even if briefly.
Dad would have turned 100 today or it would have been his hundredth year. He had a distinction between the two. All I know he always said he was year older than what he was. So it is safe to say he is 100 considering he was born on March 31st, 1923.
Been looking through some old photos. Some I look at every day. Not a day goes by I don’t think of my father, usually when I hear something funny, or see something on the news. Nature as well, almost anything I know he pointed out to me when I was young.
He’d still find a lot of those things interesting in this day and age. The level of the creeks. When the berries ripen, the dryness and forest fires. The politic climate, how we are set against each other depending if you are left or right.
One thing you never asked was, how you vote. I knew that early and never asked. He despised bullies, people who punched down. That could be unions or conservative tight asses. It was hard to know where he stood. I figured it was on the side of common sense.
He could be hard, even to his own children. I never felt it, he was older by the time I came along. But I don’t doubt my brother’s rendition. Men when they are young are on an edge.They want the best and are damned and determined to achieve it even if it works counterintuitive to their goals.
His grandchildren had the best of him. He wrote poems to them that demonstrated, love, humour and wit, with always an invitation to come along.
In his final year Hunter and I would go down to the old house. I would mow the lawn or do a few chores. Hunter, sitting on his Grandfather’s wheelchair, would shoot the shit like a couple of friends on the mountain. Hunter no more than 5 and Grandpa at 79. By the time I was finished they both looked disappointed to see me interrupting the party.
We go when we go. The older go first. That’s the way it works.
Cripes I miss him. I still have an apology to give, but will only do it when we are face to face.
Happy 100th oldtimer!
Willow and I were up early a few nights ago. We decided to circle the lake on the old back roads, like a couple of drunks trying to make it home from the old roadhouses, The Royal Antler, Hunt’s, Hammond’s and the Crook and Elbow. Of course those old watering holes are long gone. Instead we imagined them. Outside of the truck we admired The Milky Way coming up parallel to the mountains and rivers. That’s a joyful coincidence I suppose. Still worth waiting for March’s weather to clear, to see it. Willow barked at owls, hooting, I tell her to not worry, but she doesn’t like them. Probably because they are better hunters and she is secretly jealous. Auroras shined on our trip. Once heading back, north, too home, they showed their colours. It was an hour from dawn, it made me wonder how spectacular they must have been when we were fast asleep. Good morning, arriving at work on time.
We live in a strange world. The news is reported to our open ears. We want to trust it. Some news gets played over more important news. It’s what’s stylish, current or in the newsaphere at that time.
It is the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/18/world/middleeast/iraq-war-reason.html
A pretty significant event in history.
The United States, George Bush, Dick Chaney and company got it wrong. Regardless of intentions or who got rich. 4000 US service men died along with 300,000 Iraqis died. Those are low estimates.
Meanwhile, on this anniversary, the news is all about Trump paying off a pornstar.
Trump is and always will be a buffoon. He gets votes because the choices aren’t any better.
Why is Bush painting shitty painting in Texas and rubbing elbows with Michelle Obama and Ellen DeGeneres, instead of in jail for war crimes?
America is this correct? America, Allen Ginsberg [1926-1997]
The body has been aching. I have the job of taking out 80 old mattresses and replacing with new. Some are up three flights of stairs. Most are king size. My main job, I keep reminding myself, is not getting hurt.
I am about half way there. I counted 40 in the underground.
About the only thing I have to offer an employer is my strength. Of course getting old is going to limit my worth. I don’t blame them. No big defined government pension awaits to soften the blow. That’s my own fault too!
I’ll hang in there as long as I can.
In the meantime the first beer tasted good. Give me another.
***
I grew up with the sound of dogs barking and trains going by. It has been replaced with the rev of motor boats and car alarms. That does something to you.
***
People walk by with dogs on leashes. They never bark. Not the dogs, not the people. Willow hates the leash and barks plenty. I let her. I think all the silent dogs scare her.
A good week, plenty of work completed, including starting on some upcoming projects and I was able to get out a few morning to take pictures. The new camera is still proving a challenge and will take more practice to get used to it.
***
The picture above is of a man who sets up off the highway on the Radium Hill. You have to admire his commitment as he has been there for about two months. He sets up each morning and takes down at night.
I’m not sure of his cause. Probably Covid and the vaccines, presenting his own demonstration, having missed the trucker debacle in Ottawa.
He has six large Canadian flags on both sides of the highway, all flying upside down, signifying distress.
I like to think someone does a wellness check on him once and awhile to make sure he isn’t getting the urge to hang grandpa’s 30-06 out the window.
The Fuck Trudeau flags are nothing new. We live beside Alberta, so we get our share of that hyperbole shoved in our faces from the most well-off, privileged, people in Canada.
My friend has a daughter entrenched in conspiracy theories. She believes them all. Especially about the government, forcing deadly vaccines on us for a made up pandemic, among many other theories, deep state, lizard people, you name it. It is a great sadness for my friend, because his daughter isolates herself and her kids, hiding behind walls, not visiting, as long as it has an internet connection.
But this is what I don’t understand; his daughter is on every kind of government assistance that is offered. If you hated the government wouldn’t you refuse the money? Don’t get me wrong, it is good they have help, but it must go against her strong convictions. Would it not be a red flag to question those convictions?
Which gets me back to the guy on the Radium Hill. He has been there for months now. He is either independently wealthy, or like my friends daughter, taking money from the very government he is protesting.
He is not hurting anybody flying his flags, but I can’t help but feel sorry for him.
***
On a lighter note. I bought Willow a new toy. It looked indestructible.
Eight minute later.
Palliser Pass 