Late October

The garden is still kicking, turnips harder than algebra, cabbage holding on despite the hounds taking a bite, leeks and sunflowers.

It’s been a sunny fall. Now things are changing. The leaves are being blown off the trees in bushelfuls.

***

CBC reported the Civil Service has bloated by another 35,000 government jobs since Covid. More defined pensions to pay out. Everyone is happy, especially if you work for the government. These employees had three paid statutory holidays in September. Nice work if you can get it.

***

Until I was forty I worked for myself. Since then I’ve worked shoulder to shoulder with a supervisor who was a white supremacist, a lazy cuss, who would take his following, mostly from Alberta, up Findlay Creek to shoot their guns while praying for a breakdown in society so they could shoot the mud people. He was a Nazi supporter and holocaust denier and Pentecostal Minister. None of that hampered him from succeeding in the shit hole town he landed in.

***

Another guy I worked with, at the School District, beat his wife and kids. He told me they deserved it and he had to sleep in his van, during the day, because it took it out of him.

***

Even another guy at the School District, a manager, had a crush on a custodian with fake tits. He was useless in every way, so was she, even the boob job was bad. They deserved each other. His claim to fame was collecting generous government severance packages when it was determined he wasn’t fit for government. This is very difficult to do. Once let go another branch of government rehired him. Nice work if you can get it.

***

I remember those three fuckers whenever I get frustrated with my job.

Morning Creek

Lisa and I headed up the creek with Lola and Willow. It was chilly with frost on the windows. It would have suited me to go towards the sun on the west side, instead we went east where the mountains get bigger, taking the sun longer to rise.

Not much water in the creek up high, plenty of rose hips and cones on the spruce, the winter birds will take advantage.

Lola stayed on leash because she is a puppy and we haven’t quite have her figured. If she went after something I don’t trust my ability to chase her down.

We watched the sun rise through the low spots in the mountains, lighting the shadows and turning the trees colour.

Deep Fall

All the up and down, older its harder to keep track. Been told things are good and bad. Haven’t been able to tell the difference. Now older, I don’t care as much. It’s hell on the writing and photo taking, also making love suffers. Is it age, no longer have the want to fight like in the old days. Lovemaking and fighting, nobody can tell me they aren’t connected.

Still, if truth be known, it’s good not to be a slave to fighting and sex. Cripes, before long I’ll be sitting to pee. Drinking lite beer. Less calories and low alcohol. I’ll start birdwatching, not unusual, but will go out with the group. Start wearing a sweater in the fall regardless that it’s still goddamn hot. Start limping to let everyone know my advanced age. Swear off whisky. Refuse spicy stuff because, ‘it will keep me up at night’. Take my boots off every time I enter the house. Keep the slippers beside the door. Wash my dentures every night. Religiously, brush my remaining teeth. Teach the hounds English instead of learning dog. Pull out the flowers before they go to seed, saying, ‘I’ll never smoke all that shit.’

It doesn’t sound good but old age does have its advantages.

Thanksgiving Hike

Bree, Tiara, Hunter with Ash and Pedley.

Hunter organized a fantastic fall hike up Pedley Pass. We started out early and were on the trail by 8:30. Bree, Hunter, Tiara, Bree’s Dad Dave, Mike, Dave and me cut through the bush to Bumpy Meadows and then higher to the crossroads. We were accompanied by the good dogs Willow, Ash and Pedley damned and determined to explore her namesake.

Dad Dave bathing in the mornings first sliver of light.

We choose to cut across to the small lake instead of the ridge. Our pace was good and the sun was still down at 11:00 at the lake. After a bite to eat we had some time to explore and take some photos.

Dad Dave and Mike shot the shit at the lake. Bree walked Pedley around the lake, Hunter and Tiara headed for higher ground through the rocks and Dave and I looked for fossils.

Dave cracking shale to reveal a small sea creature.

We all gave thanks for family, good friends, health and the wonderful natural vistas that met us at every bend on the trail. I can think of no better way to spend a weekend.

Beautiful Bree running Pedley along the trail.

Very fine day.

Mike, a man who makes everyone feel special, while having kicked the ass of cancer in his spare time.

Welsh Lakes

Absolutely brilliant weather. Blue skies; warm temperatures in the day, around freezing at night. The garden is still waiting for some hard frosts to sweeten the turnips and cabbage.

Knowing it can’t last I booked a day off for a hike. The idea was to take a coworker from the United Kingdom out, so he could see some Canadian high country. I always feel a little sorry for the kids who come and work at the resort from other parts of Canada or overseas. The area is sold to them as scenic, but unless they have a vehicle they are not able to leave the valley bottom.

Accompanied by good friends Dave and Matt, we picked up UK Jack at 6:30 am and we were off for Forster Creek. A leisurely drive and we were at the trailhead and hiking by daylight.

UK Jack from a lookout above the bottom lake. He has promised me this photo will make it back to his parents in England.

Jack is a tremendous worker at the resort. He works hard and never complains. He is very personable, in my experience, like all the workers we have had from the UK.

The hike up was great through the forest, along Welsh Creek, picking through the moraine to the first lake. The entire area at one time covered by glaciers. I always imagine what it looked like back in time. Now the remaining glaciers are on the highest points of the mountains.

Only a small part of a remaining glacier. The rocks below show where the glacier once occupied churning and breaking the mountain rock.

This is the latest I’ve hiked Welsh. The mountains which show snow in summer is completely gone revealing how small the remaining glaciers have become. The wonderful day we were enjoying, even blessed with, is partially responsible. If the length of warm weather swapped with the cold those glaciers would grow back in no time. Perhaps it will happen sometime filling those empty basins above and below the lakes, keeping ice on the lakes year round, until their blue water freezes straight to the bottom.

Once at the first lake it was decided before I barely had my camera out that we would head up to the highest lake. Matt quickly found a route and we were off. Another hour, after a scramble, we were having lunch at Aberystwyth Lake. Jack was able to tell us the proper Welsh pronunciation, although, he didn’t know the meaning saying, he didn’t speak Welsh.

Iphone photo on the hike down, didn’t have time to grab the Nikon.

The way back down was trying as we took another route through the talus that required me to carry Willow. I cradle her in my outside arm allowing me to fall into the mountain if I lost my footing. Willow is an amazing little dog but has trouble with big loose boulders that move. By the time I was down to the first lake I was sucking hind tit and my arm was aching. We did it right with our spacing, however, not rolling boulders onto each other.

The sun was directly above, lighting the turning tamaracks. It’s a perfect world when the gold is opposite the blue green mountain lakes. That was the last I had my camera out as we were heading down. I thought we must be late for something.

Dave, in shape at the ripe age of 63, my good friend who’s intelligence always knocks me off my horse if I ain’t paying attention.

I’m getting old and hiking with three men, in shape, with a combined body fat percentage about 10% of mine can be trying. Still I did my best. Matt kept me company, knowing you never leave the weakest behind. Cripes that pissed me off.

There aren’t many days like this. Very fine walk.

Winter Stars

Starting from the top; Cassiopeia, Andromeda, The Andromeda Galaxy, Perseus and its two star clusters, also Pleiades, Taurus and Mars just coming over the mountain Ridge.

To look at the stars is to be amazed. In this day and age we know the science of astronomy. We know distances and the difference between planets and stars. You can steer a ship, plant a garden and set our calendar by them. If we have something in common with every generation going back to the beginning of man it is the stars. To look at the stars among the trees and mountains on a dark night, to feel those pin pricks of light flow through, as they have done and will continue, is to feel lucky.

memory walk

A quiet morning walk. Orion is up. Mars is red between the red giants Aldebaran and Betelgeuse. To set your eyes on them is to get your bearings. To realize the biggest and fastest is only because it’s closest. An optical illusion.

Orion, Taurus, Pleiades, Mars and four satellites.

The cemetery is dark. I know my way around. The tourists still haven’t blocked Mom and Dad’s view. They used to dig the graves here, a chore given to them by my Grandfather, for extra money after the war. They will be the last of us buried here. Lake view even for the dead has skyrocketed.

It’s an easy walk under the stars.

Starlings

Summer is about to shut the door. I’ll miss the women in shorts, it was worth the long way home, down main by the tourist shops.

Still, the coolness is a gentle salve. Much more important at my age.

Cooling Back

Damn it feels good. The cooler weather has been a welcome reprieve. It’s still warm for this time of year. Waking to cool air has been nice. Pretty soon we will be ‘fighting for warmth’. That’s what my son Hunter calls it, when you pull the covers over your head, and flex your muscles to keep warm. Probably why many families in the old days had so many kids before central heating.

The summers are trying, heat and tourists. Lisa and I thought it would be funny if fifty years from now, people looked at the large second homes and thought, ‘Damn, what were these folks thinking? Global warming and not an inkling of thought to try and cut back. Can you imagine the energy used to heat that monstrosity?’

Tough to run through, but you can do it if scared enough.

It will probably never happen. The final answer to the pickle we are in will have to protect the richest. Otherwise it would have been solved long ago. It’s not that hard really.

We had breakfast behind Swansea. We took a spur away from the ruck. Plenty of bear shit on the road, they are also trying to avoid the crowds.

Even wondering cutblocks, climbing logging roads, looking for dead snags, a chicken or two crossing the road, washouts, Lisa and I looking at each other in glances, her saying, ‘you should put it in 4 wheel drive,’ and me saying, ‘I’ll put it in four wheel when we’re stuck.’

Fetch me a switch. Dark night and shadows. Good thing we don’t live back then.

Huckleberry Jam

Dear Ma,

I used your old recipe tonight. Do you remember Dad hiding the Huckleberry Grand Marnier Preserves in the stair well? He hid it so you wouldn’t give it away. Thats good jam!

I put in more berries and less sugar, you know it, I doubled the Grand Marnier.

It was a good berry year. Lisa and I were up hell-and-gone filling buckets.

When you said 5 and a half cups of huckleberries I figured you meant six.

I know you weren’t much for following recipes.

The place is different now. Dad would have gone crazy, crazier, I mean.

You might like it. Plenty more people. Just as many scrambling as there used to be.

Just like back then, it is almost impossible to help them no matter how hard you try. Now it is more evident. Not that you would have quit trying.

My writing doesn’t try to save, It fights a losing battle. I try to remember, what you said, about the reason to write at all, to mend. To come half way.

I imagine you giving up your painting and photography for that half way promise you gave to your distracted partner, your daughters and sons.

Your favourite died last fall. Ron passed, he was ready, he’d lived several lifetimes.

I opened a bag of sugar, stored in the basement, it was full of ants. Little ones. If I was making the jam for just me I would have cooked them up, Instead I threw the sugar away. Such waste.

Luckily the sugar upstairs was ant free, It’s still good here ants or not.

I don’t want to tell you about all the changes, some would make you sad. The huckleberries still grow on the slides and cutblocks. Invermere still holds council but no one cares they line their own pockets. It’s little fish now.

Times don’t matter like they used to. The past is gone. The future is hazy, dependant on what we can’t control.

I boiled the huckleberries, hard, for a good minute. I don’t want stiff jam or syrup.

It’s hard to know how it will turn out regardless of attention.

I should tell you about your great grandchildren. You have a slew of them:

Grace, a beautiful young women who looks like you and Wynanne.

April, a free spirit who holds her head up regardless of company.

Kyler, passionate, still trying to figure out right from wrong.

Bellle, named after you, she has a soul you are probably talking to right now.

Cooper, a tender, gifted young boy that loves hard. You may have to help me with him

Scarlett, an artist, who loves to laugh, and when she laughs it fills the room.

Koehyn, the youngest of your great grandchildren, I am told he is a rambunctious little guy.

The jam is cooling. I followed some of the recipe.

Love, Bob

Palliser Pass

Primary Menu

Tag: photography