hard brake

RCE_0870 Venus going down through smoke.

I saw something today that bothered me. I was following a school district truck hauling a trailer with an industrial mower. Every time the driver touched the brakes the trailer brakes locked up. As he went around a corner the brakes locked and pushed him towards the cement barricade on the side of the road. Luckily the trailer wasn’t heavy enough to push him into the barricade and he was able to pull out.

I worked for the school district a few years ago. I cut grass and did just about every other thing I could to stay busy.

One of the men I worked with regularly was a real treat to work with. He was an angry individual, abusive to his wife and children. Working with him for several years I heard all his stories, about how hard done by he was, men’s rights, blaming feminism and all the ways he had been slighted in his life. It was certainly true he had a shitty upbringing. I heard all about it. At work he was mostly passive aggressive. He was a coward. Most people knew to stay away from him and only worked with him if they absolutely had to. Unfortunately I had to work with him often.

He would run to the union anytime he felt snubbed. He was only barely competent, doing the very least to get by. On occasions he would sleep during work hours in the operations van he was assigned. In short he was the perfect public union worker. His co-workers and management tried to stay clear of him. He built a nice secure job for himself.

While working at the school district I noticed the equipment I used was often tampered with. It was usually little things, like fuel valves being shut off or blade height being changed, air out of tires, nothing serious. I got in the habit of checking the equipment thoroughly before a shift and after lunch.

Even though I was the only one using the truck and trailer, the brakes would often lock on the trailer. That doesn’t happen very often and you start checking them every single time you get in the truck.

One day we were working together and he told me, in his previous job, working in the oil field on job sites, he would sneak into competing companies trucks and change the trailer brakes so they would lock.

It was his way of telling me what I already knew.

I knew there was nothing to be done, so said nothing and moved on. I took a lower paying job cleaning toilets in a primary school. I often joke, with pride, I am the only one who moved down the ladder in a union job at the school district.

***

That guy is still employed at the school district and always will be. Once folks like him find their place they stick. Public unions are like fly paper for incompetence, apathy and his kind of veiled antagonistic bullshit.

When I saw those trailer brakes lock in front of me today. It made me wonder if he was up to his old tricks.

early august

RCE_0855 Walking logs to escape the ruck.

A storm hit tonight. Wind, far off thunder, a few flashes of lightning and very few raindrops. Exactly what we don’t need.

We have a few fires burning around us now. Still the smoke is no where near as bad as last year. . . yet.

A fire is burning in Kootenay National Park. The highway is closed due to smoke. Kelsie, Tom and the kids are coming out this weekend. They will have to take one of two other routes. Either will ad at least a couple hours to the trip.

The province may close the bush down. They do it in increments, first they ban campfires, then ATV’s which they have done. Then they will close access to all the backroads. It drives me crazy but it is necessary.

RCE_0818 The sun going down in smoke.

Is it worse now than when I was younger? Is it hotter? It is hard to say. My father always talked about the drought years during the thirties and the importance of keeping a trickle going in the irrigation ditches.

There is so many more people recreating in the mountains. They bring along their own hazards.

RCE_0830 Daisies and the sunset in the creek.

Fifty years ago the Forest Service stopped fires promptly, whenever possible, that made matters worse by letting fuel build up.

Studies and explorer David Thompson’s written accounts show the valley bottom as a different place two-hundred years ago. Back then the valley bottom burned.

RCE_0827 Smoke filled sky.

The fires started as they do now, by lightening, on the benches or low mountains, and burn towards the creeks and rivers.

The terrain it leaves behind, natural grasslands, is perfect habitat for deer and elk. Also perfect for hunting for the first people who roamed the area and called it home.

Have things changed that much? Damn right they have! But has the wind got hotter, is the sun closer, does lightening strike more often?

Being an environmentalist is like being a priest a hundred years ago. It is somebody with the answers. They know who to blame. Instead of a cross they wear hemp and beads. They know the sinners. David Suzuki has his own channel, Just like before, they blame everybody but themselves. And just like before there is a lot of followers that regularly sin and go to church on the weekend.

RCE_0851 Willow getting her swim.

I am getting too old to hunt in the valley bottom. Willow and I crossed some shaky logs and bad swamp to get to the water hole. If nature was true I’d be dead by now. Somehow I’m still kicking and grateful.

summer garden

RCE_0812 Willow watches over the bounty. She got a carrot for posing nice.

It is hard to believe summer is on the downslide. I gave the garden a serious look today. Lots of vegetables ready. I picked Hunter and Bree a basketful to take home. The garden is doing good considering neglect on my part. The weeds need some serious plucking.

Cooper is coming out next weekend and I better get it under control by then. I don’t want him having trouble finding his carrots.

The peas are about done. The garlic is as big as the palm of my hand and needs digging before the thin papers start to deteriorate. The onions need thinning. The cabbage looks pissed off being behind the sunflowers. The cosmo flowers, that self seeded and foolishly left, have taken over the kale. They don’t know it yet but I’m going to be showing some tough love. The chard, also self seeded, has been wonderful, but know it’s starting to bolt. Damn, I hate pulling plants out.

RCE_0816 Not a blood moon from an eclipse. The moon coming up through smoke on the horizon.

The heat has been extreme. The moon came up red tonight. The mountains are hazy from fires. The government has issued a campfire ban. I hate it but it’s necessary. I’ll miss my small fires by the creek, smudges to keep the bugs at bay.

Tourists build large fires on dry bluffs without a drop of water within a mile. They run off road vehicles through dry brush. Set off fireworks. It’s a recipe for disaster. They don’t know better. Not that they are the biggest man made forest fire culprit. That goes to the logging companies. If they aren’t mowing down the forest with massive clearcuts they are littering it with discarded fuel containers and setting it on fire.

In the valley, we were taught long ago to never say a cross word about industry or tourism, in case we forgot where our bread was buttered. I’ve always fucking hated teachers with that message.

Often, during this kind of heat, storms are accompanied by lightening striking dry spikes. By the time the blaze is spotted it can be out of control.

The garden needs water. Everyone but the District of Invermere, the School District and new and old real estate developments, depending on who’s palms are being greased, are under strict water restrictions.

Taking the weeds out will dry it out more. Do you see the way I’m justifying not weeding?

visiter appreciation day

RCE_0517

We escaped the ruck of the crowd and disappeared down the Kootenay, then later followed Rock Creek up a ways. We were on the look out for firewood and a few rocks for the garden border.

The firewood came easy. Deadfalls from last summer. Pine off the ground, tangled from a mighty windstorm. It was a simple cut and march to the truck.

Up the creek we picked rocks. Flat and long. It is extraordinary how nature places them perfectly, so pleasing to the eye, beside the running water. Not a single one out of place.

The stars, creeks and rocks remind us of something greater. To be without them for long is difficult.

We returned in the afternoon with a full load. The town had calmed down. Everyone was well fed and shopped out. The plan worked perfectly.

Palliser

RCE_0479 Yellow Columbine.

Lisa and I were kindly invited to the 15th Anniversary gathering of a business we once owned.

We started Palliser Printing & Publishing in 1986. Lisa and I were in our early twenties with a baby on the way.

We sold the company in the summer of ’03 to Dee and Rod Conklin from Calgary.

Their 15th Anniversary has made me reminisce about the early days of the company.

I remember it being a lot of long hours and hard work.

The print shop was a mess of paper, presses, photocopiers, computers, an old arc plate burner, a darkroom complete with vertical camera for composing film, to later, be stripped on one of the several light tables. The smell of ink was always in the air. We survived a fire and a flash flood. Not unscathed, but we survived.

Later we moved to better quarters. For every step forward we made, we were never sure how we were going to pay for it. It is like the old saying, ‘build your parachute while falling to earth.’

Often we had bills at the end of the month that exceeded our bank account. The poorest we ever were was when we were the busiest. We juggled.

Yet, our children came to work with us. They had a place to play in the back shop. A cozy couch. They helped out. Built forts in the broken down cardboard.

The business was lucrative enough to allow us to buy a house. Our kids were in figure skating, dance and hockey. We were able to afford dental care for them.

Sometimes it was a balancing act. Lisa often worked the front with a baby on her hip. I always felt bad about that. There is no maternity leave when you own the business.

We were lucky. Since then I’ve worked at a few places. We have never made what it would take to raise a family at todays prices. Not even close.

Everything we have is because of that first business we started when Kelsie was in Lisa’s belly. When things seemed to be changing in a flash. When I had plenty of youth, energy and anger to see any job through.

Now it’s different. Those were good days. Now I’m glad to be a Grandpa making minimum wage, crossing logs gingerly, tilting glasses and nodding head to read the fine type.

Congratulations to Dee and Rod on their 15th Anniversary owning Palliser.

mid July

lake_sm Above the lake.

It seems these last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of activity. Lisa and I still make time to get out in the bush regularly. The weather has been clear and hot. The garden is chugging right along.

Our children have been out to visit. It has been nice to have them with plenty of laughter filling the house. We helped move Lisa’s parents into a new home. Their old place was getting too large for them. Now they live just a stone’s throw from us. This is a relief for Lisa. It was so nice to see our kids taking time away from their schedules in the city to come home and make their grandparents welcome. They think the world of their Grandparents, and know how hard they have worked for everything. Lisa and I are very proud of our children.

RCE_0397 Glacier Lillies. Maddy and Lisa telling Chad to pay attention,
while he takes a photo of the large peaks.

The photos in this post are from a place I find very special. Lisa, Maddy, Chad, Willow and I hiked in yesterday. It has been several years since we have been there, due to roads and bridges washed out. There was a time I would hike from wherever the road ended. But I was young and stubborn then. My Father and I even had some long hikes into Leman Lake.

Alpine Forget-Me-Not.

Back then the trail crossed several slides with tall skunk cabbage and elder bushes. It was closed in thick. You never knew if a bear or moose was going to be waiting for you around the next corner.

We all looked in vain for a way to cross the swift creek. While Lisa, Chad and I were looking for a deadfall across, we noticed Maddy on the other side putting her boots back on. That ended the search. We all took off our boots rolled up our pant legs and subjected our feet to freezing cold water and sharp rocks. Willow crossed enthusiastically, got caught in the current, and came out about twenty yards downstream.

RCE_0412 Scorpion Weed.

We took time to rest, along the trail. It was still steep and in some places overgrown. Lisa reminisced about hiking here while pregnant with Kelsie. Being pregnant never slowed her down. We wondered around marvelling at the sights and smells.

The hike reminded me to try to stay in good enough shape to be able to show these places to Cooper and Scarlett when they are old enough to hike the mountains on their own. That will be sooner than a blink of an eye. Yet that same, seemingly small, time will start taking a toll on my hips and knees. No doubt, just as my father, my balance will be tested on logs over the creek and I’ll curse the rain for making the rocks slippery.

willow_sm Willow takes a dip.

We looked for wild flowers and porcupine quills. Maddy and Lisa alerted Chad to pay attention, because, if I pointed out a ‘Glacier Lily’ on the way up, I may ask him what it was on the way down and he better know the answer.

RCE_0511 Sky, rock, bush and water.

To experience these places with loved ones is a gift. The colour of the lake, the sky and large mountains, the smell of spring slides bringing down old spruce, the ice and snow and how I cheer it now, thinking if we could only get a few cold years the glaciers could build up again, how I am a fool to think such things are up to me, the fish and bears and all the wild flowers, the overgrown trail with so many ghosts and so much yet to show.

I always try to look extra hard before I leave, because I never know when I will see it all again.

July 5th

_LME7786-Pano_sm The Big Dipper is up there among the stars.

Someone once asked me if I’ve ever seen things that go bump in the night. They knew I spent time in the dark. I told them about the time one November it dropped down to minus 30 and the birch and spruce started going off like gunshots. That wasn’t what they were looking for.

I look for ghosts all over. Usually they show up in the rivers and streams. They don’t say much. I listen to the babble of the creek, but I can’t make heads or tails out of it. Still I know they are trying to tell me something. I appreciate the effort but I don’t get it.

_LME7782-Pano_sm Mars, Saturn and Jupiter.

My good dog Willow would bark if something was threatening. That’s why I like dark nights down by the water. The only sound she makes is snorting through the long grass.

_LME7791-Pano_sm

***

It was my Mother’s birthday yesterday. I visited her early this morning. I wonder about her everyday. How hard she had to work. She was born into a world where women were subservient. Yet she became a respected women that didn’t back down from men who tried to bully. She didn’t even blame them for it. She considered them pitiful.

She accomplished it after growing up poor and hard, without education. There wasn’t a book she hadn’t read or couldn’t discuss. She saw a lot. She kept the hardship to herself.

unnamed-2 Isabelle and Wynanne.

My Mother was a smart beautiful women. I wonder sometimes if she ever looked at the bearded man across from her who seemed happy with the long hours and not much, the broken washing machine and the ragged kids scooting about, and thought, cripes what did I do to deserve this?

She would laugh at that. She used to laugh at everything.

getting on

RCE_1929

in this world
you get teeth knocked out
for no reason
or they go bad as you get old
your dink gets shorter
your balls hang lower
the cold makes your chin quiver
you start thinking
it s a young man s world
your joints swell
and give you grief
especially when the
sky spells rain
or in dry weather
the dog comes through
the hole in the screen
after rolling in something
it s a lot further down
to your laces
and a lot less further
down to everything else
girls smile at you because
you remind them of their
dear old dead dad
people ask you for advice
say you look wise
with florescent lighting
on white whiskers
adorning your jowls
everything s been broke
at least once before
what s to do
the coffee ain t hot
the beer s woodshed warm
and somewhere along the line
whiskey started upsetting
your stomach.

a rainy start to summer

_LME7756sm Willow’s smile.

Very fine day to wrap up the long weekend. Most of it was spent in the shop/studio wrapping up loose ends. Because it’s a holiday there wasn’t many texts coming in. Nowadays, everybody expects texts to be answered right away. I try my best to oblige, but it takes me away from actual work. Today I made some progress.

It rained most of the day. I kept the door open, so Willow and I could enjoy it. With luck it will help minimize the forest fire danger. It was especially welcome this weekend when the bush is filled with revellers lighting large camp fires and setting off fireworks. Not that they are the biggest threat, the only forest fires this year have been started by loggers.

***

_LME7730 Babies Breath above the graves.

In the evening Willow and I set off for the bush. There is a special calm after a raucous long weekend. First we went to Windermere to the old graveyard. I promised I would say hi to Mom and Dad.

Windermere is a strange town now. It was one of the first communities in the Valley. The few historical sites that remain are surrounded by huge second homes (cabins they are called by their owners) that are occupied only six weeks a year. The town is 80% populated by second home owners. The school has remained open only by offering special programs that appeal to families throughout the valley. Otherwise it would have been closed long ago.

This is one of the weekends the second homes are occupied. I got some dirty looks driving toward the graveyard. My pick up didn’t fit in with the Cadillac SUV’s and Beamers. Plus my licence plate was the wrong colour. For all they knew I could have been casing the place.

Walking the rows between the old names. There was the Fishers, Crooks, Tegarts, Kimptons, Youngs and plenty others dating back to the 1800’s. There was also Bingo, the Best Darn Dog in the Land. Dug recently.

My Grandfather once owned a strip of land from the highway all the way down to the graveyard. It didn’t have a drop of water. The land wasn’t worth spit. They had a ditch from Windermere Creek they got their water and irrigated the gardens. It must have only been a trickle during summer. They raised turkeys and chickens and sold vegetables. It wasn’t easy. Long after my Grandfather sold, the land was bought and subdivided by a developer. It is now covered in large houses overlooking Lake Windermere. People that never have a thought of what came before.

***

_LME7743 Indian Paintbrush.

After that Willow and I headed for the hills. The looks we got leaving were not as bad.

Once in the bush, the rain falling, we finally felt ourselves.

_LME7761 Wood Lily.

late June

RCE_0106

There is only two things to do on Canada Day weekend. You can either get out of town, deep into the bush, or stay hunkered down at home, don’t even try to go out and get a coffee, or beer or groceries or anything else. All the locals know it. The area is taken over by revellers from the city. We’re told we need them. I certainly can’t blame them for trying to escape the city. Most have manners, but some are hell bent on partying and tearing the shit out of the countryside and waterways. The latter all have big toys, four wheel drives, ATV’s and loud motorboats. The business people jack up the prices on everything from a loaf of bread to a litre of gas. This is the good time, they say.

We have elected to stay hunkered down. The garden needs weeding. Lisa is going to pickle the garlic scapes. I am looking forward to cracking a jar in the winter. They are going to be good. So good I probably won’t be able to stand myself.

RCE_8357

Willow will miss the bush this weekend but she will have plenty to bark about around here. Yesterday, she caught a young bird in the garden. She killed it, of course. Once I clued in to what was going on I stopped her from eating the small bird. She wasn’t happy with me. My old Wire-Haired, Slinky, was a master hunter, unlike rodents birds never agreed with her upsetting her stomach until she purged herself and vomited feathers. Willow is much more delicate than Slinky so I didn’t want to take a chance. There is nothing worse waking up to the sound of a dog trying to get something up.

RCE_8370

Thinking of Slinky, this was her least favourite weekend. All the Canada Day fireworks scared her. We would try to spend most of these weekends in the bush, so she wouldn’t have to put up with it. Willow on the other hand can sleep through thunderstorms and fireworks.

slink Slinky. Scraped or not never slowed down.

A good rain today. The garden is coming. I got the foot long grass mowed before the skies opened up. I am hoping all the moisture will be good for the huckleberry crop. Cooper loves huckleberry jam and he is depending on me.

Palliser Pass

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