looking out

A long weekend and the valley bottom is alive with ruck, revellers stirring it up.

Luckily I was wrestling with a nasty sewer pipe and stubborn toilet flange, protecting me from the glut of overindulgence the town has become. The trip to the hardware to pick up closet bolts was a doozy.

Still, I stuck my head out long enough to see the young Cedar Waxwings picking the berries off an Ornamental Cherry. The blue sky crowding the Sunflowers. And the weed doing its best in the lowered sun.

I’ve left out the picture of the sewer pipe and the crowds, I’ve had enough of them for a day.

Early September

Stepped out the other morning, along with Willow. From the step Orion was up, Sirus still down, the Twins were overhead, a crescent waning moon with earth glow if I squinted and a streaking falling star went right down the middle. What are the chances. It pointed back to Perseus. One left over maybe. It could only be a good day after that.

***

The Cedar Waxwings are back, eating the shrinking berries. They are careless birds and fly into windows. I put them on the window sill away from predators. Sometimes they revive themselves and fly away and sometimes they die. Willow is interested either way regardless of scold.

***

This is the last long weekend of summer. The tourists have been unrelenting to the glee of our business community and small time politicians. The rest of the people, the people on the front lines are done with them. Even the gift of earning minimum wage isn’t enough to satiate the masses. There is an aggressiveness in this year’s tourists I haven’t seen before. Things are changing. Alberta is leaderless and searching, the wealth and decadence is slipping, some executives can’t buy second homes on the lake with their yearly bonus. Times are tough. Still they want to get it all in while they can, that’s the hurry, that’s the panic and aggression. It’s contagious, running from the top down.

Two of my coworkers were assaulted, last week, by guests, in a resort that charges $400 a night.

***

September is a wonderful month. There is a chill in the air. The skies have cleared of smoke. The sun is tilted in such a way to light the mountain tops in morning and before bed. Then there are those winter stars.

varmints

I try to keep the garden free of pests. Every once and awhile one gets in. You have to watch out for deer. This time it was a rabbit. Now a rabbit can cause some damage. They can eat all the carrots, also the lettuce. This one was picking young beans and munching them.

She even made friends with my hound. I’m starting to wonder who that hound serves. After all it’s her job to keep the garden safe.

Before long they were in cahoots, burying unripe tomatoes, both with dirt on their tongues. Me sitting there wondering where I went wrong, nursing a beer, watching the garden get churned up. Counting my lucky stars.

Falling Star

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.

A little Faith

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.

***

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.

***

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.

***

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.

***

The rain has stopped short of cooling the earth.

hounds

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.

Catch a Falling Star

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.

Perseids

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.

Memory Walk

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.

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.

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.

smoke & Mirrors

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.

Palliser Pass

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