Stories, Excerpts, Backroads
Been out a few times looking for Comet Leonard. So far no luck seeing it. The clouds and snow have made it difficult.
Here and there the stars shine through. With luck we will get a crisp cold spell and the accompanying clear skies that go along with it.
A few cold nights coming on. I am building a rink for Cooper and Scarlett.
I have never built a backyard rink. No need because we live so close to the lake.
However, kids are not allowed to wander like they used to, plus it might be nice to watch the kids skate while I get supper ready.
The problem is the land isn’t level. There is going to be 10″ of ice on one side and an inch on the other.
Copper and Scarlett have a lot of energy. This will do them well.
It has been demoralizing to read all the sky-is-falling news that has become the norm these days. Agreed the world is in peril, or should I say humankind is in a tight spot. Never-the-less news sources seem intent on making it worse. Blame the 24 hour news cycle. Trump (still), overpopulation, pandemic and climate crisis, it’s enough to make you want to jump ship. No wonder Musk, Bezos and the rest of the rich guys are trying to rocket off this burning, freezing, flooding planet.
This month the Fraser River delta flooded due to something called an atmospheric river, or in layman’s terms, a lot of rain in a narrow band. Of course, the news cried climate change from every rooftop. We have done it to ourselves, they exclaimed, the time to repent is nigh.
The difference this played with the people affected by this disaster is mute. Farms, livestock, livelihoods and property was lost. It is heartbreaking.
No-one is excluding climate change and the roll humans have played in it’s advancement. Be that as it may, the flooding around Abbotsford happened on a natural flood plane, a river delta, a place where lakes and wetlands were drained to make way for towns, developments, and fertile farmland.
Unfortunately, large storms runoff and nature is going to reclaim these areas, especially when tides are surging, rain is falling on concrete and can’t be soaked up.
It’s a disaster whichever way we look at it. Naturally we blame others, something we can’t control.
***
When I was young I used to walk my Grandfather’s trail along the canyon of the Palliser River to where Albert River joins the flow. Centuries old fir and rock walls everywhere, still I found routes here and there down to the river to toss a line.
On one of these trips as a young adult, I followed the trail until an entire chunk of the mountain had sloughed off and rolled into the river. It more than obliterated the trail. There is no saying when it had happened as I hadn’t been on the trail for several years. It frightened me to think what it would have been like to have witnessed it or been in it’s path! If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear it started to make sense.
It settled across the river and changed its path. The water still has to flow after all. One of my Grandfather’s fishing holes he prized for fish to make into trapping bait was no longer.
This by no means is an unusual occurrence the mountains and rivers are continually reshaping themselves with and without our help.
This area has now been heavily logged, following the old trail, blazed on the fir and spruce, would be all but impossible now. The runoff from the mountains creates even more slides into the river without the trees to hold the earth from slipping. It is still remote and rarely does anyone witness the ground slipping, mountains rolling and the river cutting. It’s nature.
We can exclude ourselves from it or be part of it.
***
Part of my hometown is built on an alluvium. Toby Creek runs down from the mountains spreading out before entering the Columbia River and Lake Windermere. The entire area known as Athalmer would regularly flood in the spring. One of my friends families houses was built on stilts. Residents sewer systems which were often no more than a hole would mix with their shallow wells making the water undrinkable.
The solution, as population grew, was to dyke Toby Creek and change its course so it entered the Columbia below Athalmer. It mostly worked.
I still get a kick when it backs up into Lake Windermere, turning it muddy and log bound during seasons with heavy runoff, making the tourists in their motorboats having to pick their way into the lake. For now the dyke has held saving businesses and real estate. Will it forever?
***
Piliated Woodpeckers will hammer on live trees. Some think the woodpeckers are killing the trees. Some think it’s the bugs under the bark that the woodpeckers are after killing the trees. Maybe it is the decay from age that has brought on the bugs and woodpeckers that are killing the trees. Maybe it’s the warmer temperatures caused by climate change that has allowed bugs like the Pine Beetle to flourish that is killing the tree. Perhaps it is part of a larger cycle that accounts for the tree to die. The same cycle that may one day put humanity directly in its crosshairs, regardless of how smart and separate we consider ourselves from nature the future may prove our match.
Does it mean we should give up trying? The answer is no.
There is happiness in less waste and consumption, in the endeavour to find peace in the current of creeks, in the rolling of rivers, the oceans’ ebb and flow and the clouds and sky revealing gifts lost but not forgotten, forever ingrained in our DNA.
To blame every weather event and natural disaster on human caused climate change, although may make a compelling news story, in the long run, is not helping matters. It makes us think we are more important to the earth than we are, second, it makes people think all is lost. Bezos and Musk may be hellbent to call it a day, but we’re really just getting started on a better path, we just have to be smart about it.
Spent the day working at the resort. With it being an extended long weekend the valley is busy with tourists.
I can remember when Remembrance Day was not a statutory holiday. Some of the veterans would march in the parade and then go back to work. Fitting for that generation.
My Father and Grandfather would march on this day. I never saw it having come along later. By then my father had quit marching, although he still went to the Remembrance Day Service. My brother, sisters and I stood through many with him.
Did my Father quit marching because his Father couldn’t and then passed away? Was it his way of keeping his Father happy. They both were committed to service. They both experienced pain, physical and mental. None of it was talked about.
It’s a complicated world, if this day reminds us of anything, it should be that war is wrong. Not that it will stop us from getting into it. We have been on the winning side, and lately, on the losing side. Our fight for freedom, against domination and genicide in WWII was successful. Our fight for control over the Middle East was not.
My Father is gone now going on twenty years, I feel closer to him than ever as I reach the age that I really got to know him. We do things for people, because it means more to them than not doing it will to us.
Last year I didn’t renew my Legion membership after 30 years a member. It was through the encouragement of my Father that I joined. I shovelled sidewalks at the Branch and organized games for the members. I drank on Fridays and won my share of meat draws.
At that time the Legion was full of Veterans and it was good to talk to them. I learned plenty.
A picture of my Grandfather Dapper, a founding member of Branch #71 still hangs on the way to the pissers.
But somewhere for me it changed. The old guard died off, replaced by members with racist beliefs, and folks in it for themselves, siphoning funds for their own benefit.
It just didn’t seem something to continue worth supporting or being a member of.
Maybe it’s the same reason my Father quit marching and started singing Pete Seeger songs in the car.
The best war is antiwar any day of the week.
My brother Ron was laid to rest today. He passed away a couple weeks ago. It has thankfully been busy to keep my mind occupied. My bones have hurt, head, joints, I haven’t been able to think proper. Last night I wrote his eulogy. Not really a eulogy but a few stories. It wasn’t hard to come up with stories as we shared plenty of times together. My Sister Wynanne spoke wonderfully and said so much, things I wanted to say. Our Sister Deb with Kurt sang a beautiful rendition of Go Rest High On The Mountain.
Ron was eight years older than me and kept me from plenty. Times were not easy when we grew up. The truth is they were harder for him than I. Plenty was expected from him. That goes with the territory when your father gives you his name.
We fit in some good times and I learned a lot from Ron. I was always welcome to go through his records and magazines. They were a treasure trove of information for the young me. I swear I learned to read reading Penthouse Forum.
When I was sixteen he took me down to Montana where we went from one down and out bar to another. We were always one step away from getting into fights. It was probably the size of his arms, the jagged scar across his chin and his gregarious nature that kept us out of them.
One of those nights, at a topless bar, we stayed until closing. We found ourselves on the street at 3am with nowhere to go. Another patron with the same problem as us started in on me verbally. Of course he was older and bigger. Ron thought it was funny. The guy said he’d just been released from prison and I didn’t doubt it. I figured I’d get in the first shot and I’d make it a good one. While the guy blabbed on trying to rile me, I reached into my pocket and arranged the coins into my closed fist into a column. The guy didn’t see me but Ron did. Ron stepped in and put the run on the guy without lifting a finger. The guy was never a threat, I just didn’t see it. Ron said he wasn’t worried about me, he just didn’t want to spend the rest of the night in jail. He also said, if you are smart you don’t have to fight. That advice probably came at the right time in my life.
When you are born in 1956 you could go on to be a modern man or you could live a life similar to your Father and Grandfather. Men who’s only way was to push feelings down. I think Ron did this and like his father and grandfather it caught up with him. Some people inherit feelings. I believe Ron inherited his Grandfather and Father’s horror of war and their mental anguish.
About ten years ago Ron with the help of his wife Leslie, who has always been by his side, quit drinking. I never asked, but I suspect he had to lay some of those inherited demons to rest. His Grandfather and Father would have been proud.
When Ron was diagnosed with cancer he faced it with determination, grace and never felt sorry for himself. He always said, he should have been dead long ago from liver or lung cancer, the rare form of blood cancer he caught seemed like a joke to him.
The past two weeks since Ron has passed many people have expressed their condolences to me. Some have said how unfair his death has been, because he was able to put away the alcohol, perhaps a longer life should have been promised. I don’t think Ron felt his cancer was unfair. I don’t think he thought fairness had anything to do with it. He told me, it is hard to feel sorry for yourself when he saw people much younger, in the clinics and hospitals, facing their own battles with cancer.
I’ve spent a lifetime learning from my brother. I’ve followed him around all these years and am going to miss him paving the way.
I don’t see any weakness when I look at birds. They drop seeds for others and stash them for later. Sometimes the woodpeckers and starlings show up, sure there can be a ruckus. It’s just seeds however, at this time of year. They will fight to death in spring over nests housing young ones, but not over seeds in fall.
Been listening and reading a lot of stuff, done by smart people, that is supposed to explain things, why we have ended up the way we are. I’m not sure if I understand it or buy into it. I’ve always had fear about people with all the answers. I’ve even listened to folks with supposedly the same problems as me, and I can’t relate. I just find it dull. Don’t get me wrong I’m dull too.
I found my grandparents graves today. I looked all over. I remember when they were laid to rest. I thought it was more in the middle of the Cemetery. Goes to show memory can play some tricks, then again it was the early 70’s and from what I was told I was distraught. This is the first time I’ve looked since.
Those birds though on a brilliant day, without sentimentality, testing the trellis branches, not a worry of winter, knowing cold is on the way, they’ve got it figured out.
The backside of Swansea was wet this morning with snow falling at higher elevations.
It was a good weekend with our kids. Maddy, Hunter and Bree came in from Calgary. With Kelsie, Tom, Cooper and Scarlett, now living here, it made for a lively house. Hunter and Maddy even argued about which beds they were to sleep in.
Thanksgiving has always meant a lot to Lisa and I. Now even more so. It is a wonderful time of year and with the garden coming in there is always plenty to go around.
When I was younger we would hunt and fish on this weekend. My Dad and brother Ron would fish below Wilder’s Old Camp. They were good fishermen while I seemed to always be untangling some birds nest.
It has been a difficult time this past week, but with everyone around it has made it better.
We are having a turkey at Tom and Kelsie’s tonight. Our contribution will be a bottle of Chardonnay from Sonoma. . . and the carrots, potatoes, beets and turnip, but I don’t think Lisa and I can solely claim those as a donation, because Cooper and Scarlett helped me dig them.
Lisa and I decided to have coffee on the backside of Swansea. It was up an old steep road we haven’t travelled in some time. Before long we were on our perch, Willow chasing her nose, the clouds lifting and descending, depending on the direction.
Fall is here, colours are deep from the rain. We walked the ridge. Without rain we could have seen Baldy Mountain.
The mushrooms have popped up and gone inky. Solomons Seal has turned rouge in the cooling air.
Both Lisa and I commented that it is such a relief the fall season is upon us. We are both looking forward to the slowness and quiet that accompanies winter.
A few more photos of the garden taken about an hour and a half after the hail storm. Fortunately, it sounds like the hail storm cut a narrow path through the valley. Communities to the south and north of Invermere were not hit as hard.
Talked to a few gardeners and it sounds like everybody pretty much is in the same boat with smashed plants. I was lucky because I don’t spend much money on plants nor rely on it for a living and sell produce like some.
Plenty of videos on Facebook of a river running down main street. My neighbours experienced some flooding. Our basement started to flood due to the outside stairwell filling with hail, fortunately I saw it early and was able to shovel out the stairwell before it melted.
I won’t replant anything, I’m interested to see what will make a recovery and what won’t. There will also be plants that may live but be too far behind to produce, I suspect the tomatoes will be in this category.
This is definitely an unusual event for this area. We do regularly get hail, but not that big and the storms don’t usually last that long. Luckily the damage seems minimal, although heartbreaking for people who love their gardens, and not wide spread. What can you do?
There is two gay guys at work. They don’t trust me, because I’m an old motherfucker. I try to strike up conversation, but they won’t have it. I want to ask them if they like the mountains and rivers. I’m one of the ones they have had to watch out for.
They have plenty of tattoos, I wonder how they will weather, or if they’ve thought about it.
They obviously like the sun, awesome haircuts, I’ve never seen such tanned heads.
They are young and I’m up there. I’ve got nothing to teach. The rivers and bush is long gone and I’m too old for learning.
Palliser Pass 