Survival Strategy

The Huckleberries have been tremendous this year. We have picked plenty. Lisa has made delicious squares and other desserts.

The crop could be attributed to a wet spring and summer. Much different than we have experienced in recent years. The bushes may have produced a mast year, similar the way trees produce large number of cones some years.

This is an evolution strategy to overwhelm predators from consumption, and also catch up for years of bad weather. Humans may also have these cycles for similar reasons. The only difference is our enemy is often ourselves. For instance we have population spikes after wars. Natures way of replacing the species perhaps.

Right now population is in decline due to the state of the environment and humanities action towards ourselves. It is interesting, if the trend continues, population growth will stop and quickly decline. The earth may need a rest. Hopefully we won’t destroy ourselves completely, but it is possible. It is also possible, something else may come along to do the job, such as a virus or cataclysmic event. Nature has a way of evening the score and restoring balance.

***

The garden has been good. The garlic has been harvested and dried. I have set aside the largest heads for seed to be planted in the fall. The kids have enjoyed the peas and Lisa pulled the vines today. There is plenty of beans and at least a few ripe tomatoes everyday. The carrots are delicious, the cabbage is forming large heads and will do it’s best growing once it starts to cool.

The weeds have been hell to keep up to this year. Probably due to the rain. The best year for lack of weeds was a few years ago when the grasshoppers ate everything down to the ground. Of course they did the same with the vegetables except a few that they seemed to dislike, including peas, tomatoes, zucchini and spuds.

***

I’ve noticed the loggers cutting new roads into the bush in a spot we frequent. They are even building a bridge across the creek and heading straight up a mountain that had been spared until now. It is a mountain I’m well acquainted with having roamed it’s side since I was a kid. I’ve even walked it in the dark looking for stars, my ears cocked for voices talking in cyphers, while spirits stole my breath.

Long ago, when I was a youngster, I picked out a rocky bluff and cliffs, half way up, with overhanging trees, figuring if things ever got bad enough I could toss a rope around one and swing out never to return.

The view would be good with the high cedars and creek below. It was a spot I always kept in my back pocket. I think everyone has a spot whether they know it or not.

Now there will be a road below leading to massive clear cuts. I would have never guessed, when I was a young wanderer, it would go before I did.

Back Country

Breaking through the trees for the first sight of the lake.

It was good to leave the valley where everyone is trying to separate tourists from their money. It is a scourge, troubling watching the lake and town gasp at it descends into overconsumption.

We were off into the mountains to a place my father and I hiked until his legs ached. I didn’t then but I appreciate it now. He let me go following the dry creek runoff all leading up.

Dave and I hadn’t hiked together for awhile. My fault as work has consumed me the past two years.

Once we turned towards the Palliser, the people were gone. The trail head was deserted. I slipped off a boulder at the creek crossing and had one wet foot that lasted the hike. Certainly not as sure footed as I once was.

The old skid trail was overgrown. We both carried bear spray. We remarked at the amount of bear sign. Dad used to attach bells to me a long time ago. I also carried granddads 30 30 rifle so often dad said I had one arm longer than the other.

The trail gained elevation through the alders and skunk cabbage. It has been wet and Dave stopped to take pictures of various plants and mushrooms. The spruce had new dark blue pitch covered cones at their tops. The nuthatches and grosbeaks will be plentiful come November.

A Rocky Mountain peak rising above the trail.

Strata once layered horizontally, under a sea of prehistoric shell fish, is pushed vertical in the highest spots. Millions of years work which we can’t fathom, thinking a lifetime is a long time. That these mountains don’t consider us is peaceful. We are of little significance in the hands of time. Even our damage will one day be undone the same as the trail we followed was grown over and hard to follow.

Mountain asters blooming and abundant along the trail and slides.

Once off the rise we stopped for a bite. I scoped the old trail across the slides north for grizzlies and moose. The trail we were on was much better than the one my father and I followed.

The remaining trail was flat with only a few deadfalls across the trail. The lake was right where we left it. It still takes my breath away as we clamoured out of the spruce and soft footing onto its rocky shore.

The slides on all sides of the lake were overgrown. On rounding a corner a large brown hump appeared. I started reaching for the bear spray and realized it was a cow moose. A moose can be as dangerous if it decides to charge. Since we had no where to go we took a few pictures before it turned our way and trotted not fifteen feet from us into a small pond leading to the lake. A fine encounter.

Tadpoles swimming in the shallow pools.

We found a flat rock to have another bite and look around. I took some directions measuring where the stars would align during the night at this time of year. Dave pointed out thousands of tadpoles swimming the shallows. Fish jumped in the middle and around the shores. I had caught some big fish here long ago. I found the old camping spot completely grown over.

Dave picks his way over the trail roughed up with bear sign.

After lunch we picked up the trail and headed above the lake to get a good look at the emerald water. We stopped as long as we could before we turned to follow the trail back as we were due back at the bottom three valleys over.

When ever I leave this place, even when I was a boy, I always wondered when or if I would ever see it again. To be here on this tiny sliver of time sharing the earth with these large spruce, rocks, flowing water and animals is a gift.

Sometimes you get lucky.

Fence Post Holes

I was out working in the yard the other day and an old friend stopped by. Bobby and I played a lot of sports together when we were younger. He was a tenacious competitor and although small of stature played hockey, ball and rugby like a man twice his size. He was somebody you hated playing against but enjoyed having on your team. He also had a mouth that never stopped.

He told me he was working at one of the vacation properties down the road putting in a fence. Being in his 70’s, I asked him if he wasn’t getting a little long in the tooth for digging fencepost holes. He admitted he was. He said the contractor he was working for couldn’t find anyone younger. He said they even had a guy on the crew that had dementia. Bobby said, they had to get him to and from work, but at the job he was fine. A good worker a matter of fact.

***

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard how older people keep working while businesses can’t find young people to employ. I have experienced the same in my position as a manager at a resort.

The unemployment rate for young workers in Canada is high. It is even higher in tourist areas. There are many reasons for this. Covid, for one, which these kids suffered the worst wounds due to the lockdowns. During and after Covid school became optional. I know many parents, to this day, who do not send their children to school regularly. It makes no difference as kids get passed through.

This gets carried through to their work life. Where I work, writing up tickets and sending emails is something we all must do. I am often amazed at the lack of ability to write the simplest of messages by some young people who have graduated high school and in some cases gone on to college.

The exception is young immigrants who seem able to communicate, written or verbally in their second language.

I asked a young man from India about this. Although he says nothing, I know he finds it sometimes difficult working with young Canadians as he is shouldered with most of the work while they do as little as possible to get by. He said he had to learn how to write in English as it was expected and everyone he knew was able to. To not have this skill was to be at a disadvantage. I jokingly asked him if we should import teachers from India or send young Canadians to his home country for schooling. He said, neither was necessary. He said what was needed was a little pressure.

Pressure, my goodness, to even suggest it be put on our younger generation is blasphemous!

Canada’s economy would collapse without the workforce immigration provides.

From everything I’ve read about managing, it is said, young adults in Canada have different priorities. Many will never own a house of their own, nor do they want children, as such they have different values. Above all they value their leisure time.

That means managers must be creative with scheduling and tasking these workers. They are not going to change so that means the jobs and managers must.

Meanwhile fence post holes still need to be dug. Luckily we have a country full of old folks with dementia that need the money.

Late July

Each day has had a little rain. Plenty of blue sky between. Cool at nights. Almost a perfect summer compared to what we have had the past few years.

The berries are raging on into August. Lisa and I could get used to this time off wondering the mountains with the grandkids. Picking our fill to take home. They are proud and, of course, turned it into a competition with Scarlett and me picking against Copper and Grandma. Luckily it is evenly matched.

It is good to be up there sharing the sky and tree tops, watching for wild flowers and hummingbirds, pointing out the big berries, showing them how to plink, plink at tins, wishing time could stand still or at least slow down.

Rain

A Mule Deer doe and fawn get ready to bed-down for the night beside the shed.

It is refreshing to have rain in July. The land is still green, unlike in recent years where it was yellowing and tinder dry at this time of year.

Lisa and I avoided the valley bottom yesterday opting for the higher country. The berries were abundant with the excess moisture. We could smell them on the cool mountain breeze.

We came across a new batch of huckleberries that deserves a better look. It could be a good year for this delicious fruit. We picked a few handfuls that we enjoyed on the spot, letting Willow also have a few.

The garden has taken off with giant heads of broccoli and lettuce. The garlic is just about ready to harvest. Peas and beans are developing pods. Raspberries are ripe. Carrots are fingerling. All and all it’s looking good.

Thank goodness for the coolness.

Notice the fawns camo spots between its eyes.

Botanical

Up the creek early, before the sun, the tourists still asleep after tearing it up.

Osprey

The river is full reaching almost to the top of the banks. Flowing quickly to the north. Catching the red willows, straight as arrows, flicking them forward until the spring back in a gracious whip. Green mud that mixes perfectly with the sky. Colours you only see at this time of year. A calendar without dates only sounds, bird calls, trickles and thunder. Smells like heat and moisture, the service berry ripening, some call Saskatoons, sweet, and the river running with high country snow and last nights rain.

The osprey doesn’t recognize me. It leaves its nest and circles above. Sizing, evaluating threat. I try to let it know we are old friends, but feel its distrust.

So often they would follow above as I walked the paths of bush to the lake. Back then it watched as my mind was on fish, railroad tracks, the spring in poplars, the wind putting a ripple on the water, just enough to obscure the weeds and fish swishing shadows, languid almost undetectable during calm, as I wondered how they saw their prey during a storm with a chop on the lake. Other than that I was oblivious most of the time, happy to roam the shore. A whistle would make me turn skyward or to a snag then back above to the railway and someone approaching. My signal to move along, to avoid the day being interrupted by the crudeness of conversation or worse, a scolding or beating. Once further down the shore or back under the canopy of bush the osprey would have followed. But I didn’t keep track back then.

The mosquitoes had me. Lifting me among the clouds. They buzz in my ears and around my nose, I shut my eyes and try not to swat, in case I am to fall from such a height. Above the river I can’t see the fish through the summer murk. The osprey still holds me in its eye, assessing, wary. Its wingspan and hooked beak, turbulent, knowing honour can put it at risk. I hope it can see through the chop on the surface, through time and hurt, even if I can’t.

Wet

Willow, low to the ground, soaks up the rain enthusiastically running the bush.

Lisa makes me keep my boots outside. She says they stink. Sometimes she makes me put a blanket over my socked feet when I am sitting inside for the same reason. If I let her have her way the socks have to live outside as well.

We have been getting some rain lately. On the weekend I failed to move my good boots into a sheltered area outside and they got rained on soaking them thoroughly during the night.

I had to wear on old pair of boots that had holes in them. My feet got soaked on my weekend hikes with Willow. Lisa didn’t seem to be sympathetic to the problem. Meanwhile my good boots still aren’t dry 3 days later and my feet keep getting wet in my old boots.

I realize these aren’t much for problems in this day and age. I’m just happy Lisa thinks it is the socks and boots that stink. If she ever figures out who the real stinker is I’ll be locked outside in the rain.

An old pair of my boots Lisa has repurposed.

Scatter

Noticed a big waning gibbous moon a couple mornings ago. It stayed well into light, hanging around till damn near noon. I used to be up on these things. Moons, birds, when the orchids would bloom to the day. Now it is lucky to get out.

It could be age taking the energy, or the job. Can’t work like I used to. It takes a bit to recuperate. No sense bitching. It’s not my invention. There is only bone on my shoulders these days and it ain’t coming back.

Good sense cackling in fury and ranker, or high in spirit like the Redwings in the marshes dashing between the cattails, leading hither and yon, it is hard to tell, regardless there it goes, fluttering jumping in the breeze getting smaller between clouds of mosquitos, still a marvel, one day gone for good.

Calypso Bulbosa

Like the old saying, been up to my ass in alligators. Was able to step away from the grind a few evenings ago to lay on my belly on the forest floor and study the first orchids of the season.

They were abundant, small fairies hovering above the moss and crumbled deadfalls.

***

Lisa and I took our grandkids for a walk in the bush today. We unfortunately came across the carcass of a black bear, shot and skinned. The kids didn’t see it and we changed our route.

They are in season right now. I am amazed there are any bears left considering the pressure from hunting and poaching. Parts of the bear are valued in traditional Chinese medicine. The gall bladder, liver, testicles, fur, paws and head are highly valued.

I have found dead bears cut open with head and paws missing.

***

It is warming up. The grass is already burning. The garden is coming along with the weeds. The garlic has scapes and they are damn spicy!

Palliser Pass

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