Our firs danced last night.  Not their usual stately swaying motion, but crazy sinuous writhing hip hop club dancing, snapping their twigs and hurling their cones into the wind.  A night long orgy of energy.

Our  house sits on the snout of an esker which rises 125 feet above the Hotnarko River.  From this vantage point we look across Precipice Valley, over the other rim and into the throat of the Coast Mountains.  The great gyre of the northern Pacific spawns pressure differentials which crash into the mountains with global energy. I’ve seen whirlwinds stir trees like a milkshake, leaving hundreds twisted and torn from the ground in a creaking, cracking roar lasting just a couple of minutes.

Last night you could hear the gusts coming for several seconds before they hit;  our normally implacable house shook and the feeling of sheer force was palpable.  When I went outside to get into the frame, I was reminded of the line from The Highwayman “The moon was a ghostly galleon..”  That’s what it was like, only much worse. The clouds were ripping by so fast that the moon was in stacatto mode, giving a flashdance performance.

But the firs!  Whipping from side to side, their branch ends were part of the maelstrom,  needle-cloaked fingers snapping time to the primal beat of the elements.  Dark brown cones were hurled sideways, bouncing off the walls and windows, cracking and banging into the night.  Small branches tumbled through the air, rising higher and higher until they finally disappeared into the darkness beyond

The storm blew itself out in the small dark hours before dawn, and we awoke to a still and calm morning, so benign in its denial of the violence of last night’s escapade.  Such is life on the Ridge of the Dancing Firs, frenzy one minute and calm the next.

It was just after 4 on a  -25 degree C afternoon. I had  come in from outside, taken my boots off and put my feet up on the stool, warming myself by the heater when the phone rang.

“Have you got a hammer and a sharp knife?” said the hurried voice on the other end of the line.  “Well… yesssss,” I replied.  “Good, then I come right over and you can cut my finger off”.  Click, the phone went dead and I stared at it for a long moment, letting all this sink in.

The call had come from my neighbour,Klaus,  who runs the ranch in our valley.  Although he usually is a man of few words, this conversation set a new benchmark for brevity.

I put my boots and jacket back on and went outside to wait anxiously for his arrival, while Rosemary collected first aid materials and prepared for the worst.  Within five minutes I could hear the whine of his snomachine.   Up the hill and into the driveway he came, stiff backed and glassy eyed.  With no coat, shirttail streaming behind, his full beard frosty white and hair straight back he looked more like a wraith than my neighbour.  Somehow he had managed to work the throttle and steer the machine with his right hand even though it was wrapped in a big glob of blood-soaked paper towels.

I led him into the kitchen where Rosemary unwrapped the paper towels to expose what used to be a finger, but now was a piece of white bone with ragged pieces of flesh hanging to the side from the middle knuckle to the end.  The nail was  still attached but at a weird angle, the whole finger curled in the fetal position.

“Whiskey ,” breathed Kklaus.  He slugged it back. “Cut it off” , he demanded.

We figured he was in shock.  “No way, ” I said.

Rosemary dressed the finger in gauze and bandages and called the about-to-close clinic to see if someone would wait there, while I went outside, fired up our snow machine and got it ready for the trip to Anahim Lake.  By the time I  got back, Rosemary had dressed our Klaus in some of my heavy snow machine gear complete with down coveralls and jacket,  extra large mitts to accommodate the bandage, and her warm blue toque.  Klaus is  many pounds and several sizes smaller than me so he looked for all the world like a little kid dressed up in his dad’s clothes, although the humour didn’t surface at the time.

The trail was  rough and bumpy  but he stoically hung on.  Forty-five minutes later we were at the car, which is parked at the end of the logging road, in the turnaround where they stop ploughing.   After a nervous few minutes while the car decided if it would start in this cold weather, we drove another twenty five minutes to the clinic in Anahim Lake where the nurse took one look at the blood soaked bandages and after hearing the description of the finger/router encounter said “You guys have to go to Williams Lake.”

It was now after 7pm.  The finger had been mangled 3 over hours ago, but my Klaus still insisted he didn’t need any pain killers.   So, after a coffee at Mort’s place, off to Williams Lake we went.

After three hours and forty five minutes of icy driving on  dark deserted Highway 20,  we were in emergency, the doctor shaking his head and trying to provide options.  All this took a few more hours, and we were both exhausted.

After the trip and the trauma, it was not the time to make a decision so we went to a helpful friend’s home for the night.  It wasn’t much of a night.  We arrived just after one am and left at six thirty, so we could be back to emergency before the doctor’s shift ended at eight am.  By then, my oh-so-practical neighbour had made the final decision: to have the top half of his index finger amputated. Since he is right-handed, the decision was not easy.  But with the spectre of numerous trips to Kamloops or Vancouver for the surgery, to see a plastic surgeon, rehab, and no guarantee that the finger would ever be really useful again, removal seemed the best solution.

It was quickly accomplished and we were back in the car by ten thirty, grabbed a drive-through lunch, and then drove the endless four hours to the snomachine and then another 45 minutes back into the Precipice.  And finally, pain pills were accepted.   Talk about a high pain tolerance!  But the day wasn’t over yet; the cows needed to be fed; huge round bales of hay to be delivered by tractor.  Klaus  insisted he drive the tractor while I cut the strings, kept stuck bales rolling and acted as gateman/ cattle shooer.

Once that was done, we went back up to our place, a couple of kilometers away,  for the good hot meal Rosemary had waiting and a debrief.

And so it goes, one of those little things that can happen when you’re running power tools.  Traumatic anywhere, just much more complicated here in the wilderness.
In any case, the next time someone phones you and opens with “Do you have a hammer?”, be prepared….

Dave.

We all watched it. President Obama’s acceptance speech was remarkable on many levels, with his flawless delivery from memory to the huge number of topics covered.

More than anything though, I am impressed with the way he threw the challenge to the American people, and by extension, to Canadians as well. The challenge is to “pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off” and become reinvolved in making this world a better place.

A few minutes here, a few minutes there, it doesn’t take much to be part of the action. Maybe a donation to a charity, maybe one more day a month volunteering, little things done by millions of people add up to a big action.

Especially in the dead of winter, when the days are short and the mood is solemn, it is difficult to get the positive juices flowing. Here in the Precipice we are rather limited by deep snow, cold weather and the daily routines of keeping the fire going, the house running and the myriad little things needed to keep a wilderness lifestyle viable.

But, I’m an old hippy at heart, one who has the eternal belief that we can make changes, one who still believes that underneath all the overburden, we are simply just people trying to make the best of who and what we are.

That is why President Obama’s message is so clear. The world has shifted, it is time to move beyond the old worldviews, the old politics of power and oppression, time to move into a new co-operation, not just here but world wide, bridging cultures, religions and races.

It won’t happen overnight and it won’t happen easily. There are still many, especially of my generation, who feel that the old ways are best and will continue to move as if nothing is changing. Alas, these actions will cause conflict and grief, but like a thunderstorm that is passing, the lightening bolts will be fewer, the damage will lessen and the clouds will move away.

We only have one home, one tiny speck of warmth in the vastness of the cosmos. As a species this is our time to mature into co-operation. To keep alive the adolescent, tribal internecine rivalries which kill and maim will only lessen the chance that we will be here for generations to come.

Perilous times need great leaders, and I think President Obama is the man of this time. I hope we all get behind the vision and the spirit. I will do my little bit here in the wilderness and I trust you will do the same in your own special part of the world, wherever that may be.

Dave.

The longer the time away the more difficult it is to get home again; especially from a place  like New Zealand. Endlessly varied  beaches, volcanoes, hot springs, impossibly turquoise lakes, the magnificent southern alps, pastoral landscapes, friendly people; every day a new day as we puttered down the road in our feisty little camper van, cozy, contained and contented.

Beyond this, I can’t begin to convey the experience of the last couple of months in any meaningful way with a few short sentences.  Suffice it to say that New Zealand with  all its special nooks and crannies cloaked in chorus after chorus of exotic bird song is a wonderful place to visit

A different reality is so easy to settle into.  New routines soon become habits, new scenes become the expectation of the day, the constant shift of landscape and energy becomes the norm.  That is why there is a jolt when reentry happens.  The free fall of open space  changes into the gravity of regular existence.

So here we are back in the Precipice, lots of snow on the ground, a Townsend’s Solitaire gobbling juniper berries outside my window.  The snow machine greased, oiled and ready to go, the wood heater is blasting out the heat and I’m on my second cup of coffee, trying to figure out where to go from here.

In the meantime here are a few pics…..

Dave

I need a holiday.  I can always tell when my perspective starts to  get too jaded, too sharp to be useful.

For example, this morning listening to the news, I caught a piece about carving pumpkins.  Now, in the “old days”, we just got a paring knife, some common sense, a  lot of imagination and we started in on the project.

Not now.  Now we are advised to go to the store and buy a pumpkin carving kit.  You got it–a pumpkin carving kit.  No longer the purview of the family realm, we need to buy something from the supermarket, get instructions and be protected.

The next piece was even better.  If you have fireworks on the sacred All Hallow’s Day, then first you need a permit; not just to have the fireworks, but you must also  purchase them from an accredited supplier.  If the police or patrolling firemen see you with fireworks that are unauthorized or if you don’t have a permit, fines, and possibly jail time are  in the offing.

All of these measures are in place, be assured fellow citizen, for your safety and health.  After all, the system–Big Brother–is just taking care of you, so don’t fret.

But then, just a minute.  I go on the web and see that Exxon has “smashed” its previous record quarterly profits, earning over 30 billion in profits this quarter, making it the richest company in U.S. History

Then I think about the pollution from oil, things like the tar sands, which is the most polluting oil development on the planet.   I think about the millions and millions of people who are put at risk, who will suffer from pollution of the oil business, and I wonder: “Where is the public safety concern here?”.  Why are not the police, the firemen, the keepers of the public well being and safety not going after these people?  The people who can and do cause so much harm?

You better not send up fireworks with out a permit, but you can destroy whole ecosystems and spew record amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere with impunity, all with the blessing of the fireworks control government.  Huh?

We all know the world is insane, but sometimes the full weight of it smothers my mind, makes it impossible to find the energy for action.

Thus the need for a holiday.  And the ultimate irony?  I’m flying to New Zealand.  Yep.  The  most polluting form of travel yet devised, here I am making full use of it. I’m going to drink fine wine while suspended 35,000 feet in the air moving at 565 miles per hour over the biggest ocean on the globe.  This is beyond science fiction, this is truly surreal.

I may or may not post from down under, we’ll see, but one thing for sure – I need a holiday, or as they say in the business, “I’m on leave…” (back in the office January 5)

Sometimes I wonder where the time goes.  The older I get the faster it flies away.  Just the other day I was at the beach, swimming, enjoying the hot sun, caressed by the  warm breezes as they dried my skin.  There is no feeling like being air dried on a hot August day after playing in the water for a few hours.

That was yesterday.  Today I woke to minus 8, frost everywhere, new snow on the mountains, needing to fire up the heater, how did that happen?

The more precious life is the more it seems to slip away, the more it seems to be a chimera, hurtling past the window of my mind, teasing the soul, tantalizing the spirit.

Such a beautiful day today, clear cobalt sky, crystalline air, crisper than any Photoshop surreality.  What to do on a day like this?

Go for that last fishing trip up to the lake?   Take a hike up the ridge?  Wander along the stream bank, smelling fall in the air, watching the leaves spiral down into the clear blackcold waters of the creek?  Catch a glimpse of the harried beaver, rushing  to get as many trees felled as possible before the ice puts a lid on his world?

So much to see, to do, to experience in this marvelous miracle we live in.  To hell with stock markets, the doom and gloom of capitalism, today is a day for freedom, a day to set the soul free, like a dove rising into the ocean of energy surrounding all.

See ya later……….

After watching John McCain’s acceptance speech,  I couldn’t help thinking about the politics of fear.  The fear of real change, the fear of admitting that we are in serious trouble as a civilization.

The fear the Russia will rise, the fear that science and intellect , not God, will direct public policy, will direct education, will direct the judiciary.  And, most of all,  the fear that America will not regain its pre-eminence on the world stage if it does not fight for the American way, if it does not fight for the old values.

Nothing exemplifies this more than the cry to “Drill, drill, drill!”  More oil, that is what we need!   Then we can protect the American way, protect the good life from the terrorists, the world economy, climate change, all those fearful things out there.  We can go back to 1955, no problem.  Just let the people, with divine help, run things.   Bring on the drill rigs, let corporations have more tax breaks so they can employ more workers, make sure health care is run by big business, not government and most of all, make sure that education is set by local communities, with new teachers so the old “bad ” ones can be given jobs better suited to their skill sets.

The choices are more stark now than they were in the last election.  We have seen enough to know climate change is real, that global economies are in control, that science, not dogma, is needed to give us a chance for now and future generations, yet dogma is precisely where John McCain wants to look for guidance.

Fear or hope?  It really is that simple.  I am dismayed that the politics of fear may win the day, that smokestacks will win over windmills.  As we all know, Canada generally goes where the U.S. goes, so the way the November elections play out will have a huge impact on our policies, especially around climate change and new, clean energy production.

This is not a time to be afraid, not a time to cower under the illusory umbrella of times past, of glories shredded and dreams evaporated.  This is a time to move boldly forward, a time to manifest hope over dogma.

To paraphrase a great American president   “We have nothing to fear but the politics of fear itself”

So it’s summer time, lots of company, even got some time swimming in our local lake, just trying to kick back a little.

On the way there we had to make a side trip to the “Land fill site”.  And that got me thinking.

First, what is this euphemism, “Landfill site” to describe a hole in the ground dug by a front end loader?  This big hole is a garbage dump where things are burned including plastics, and all kinds of other lethal stuff.  It is a garbage burning pit.  So let’s call it that, not invent some fancy name.

This second issue stems from the first.  The regional district, in a effort to save money, closed  garbage pits in two communities and dug a new one, part way between the two towns.  This way maintenance costs were halved,  only one contractor is needed and there is a big new electric fence to keep the bears out and the garbage in.  The Ravens and Eagles don’t respect the fence, but then they are really free spirits.  Makes a lot of sense, right?

Wrong.  This cost saving move on the part of the regional district is a classic case of old style, non-integrated thinking. Now everybody in both towns has to drive out onto the highway and  head for the dump several kms away.  Not only does that result in garbage along the roadside, as some stuff inevitably falls out of the back of the pick-up truck, the extra driving hugely increases the CO2 emissions for this activity.

So, the location of this new dump has downloaded the driving time to the people of the local communities and caused a huge increase in CO2 emissions.  In a post carbon world, such actions will be judged as unacceptable.  What we needed was a place to recycle, a refurbished local garbage pit and a government system that looks at all costs, not just the narrow bottom line.  Did I mention that the nearest recycling depot is a 3 1/2 hour drive, one way?

Yeah, I know, I was on my way to kick back, which I eventually did, but I just had  get this out there.

COTTONWOOD CONNECTIONS

My last post talked about the beauty of a July snowstorm provided by our magnificent cottonwood grove, so I was interested when I recently read that people in the mid-western states used to cut down cottonwoods along river banks and riparian zones, leaving them to rot. They weren’t good for lumber and they didn’t make good firewood, so why cut them down?

These wetland protectors were cut down simply because the cotton released in the spring or early summer clogged up screen doors and collected in little piles on porches and corners here and there.

With no thought other than “My screen door is clogged!”, people would cut down whole groves of these trees.

Of course, that has all changed. Cottonwoods are actually being restored to wetlands. Their fundamental importance for nesting habitat, stream bank holding capabilities and wetland function are now widely recognized. Cottonwoods are a keystone tree species in many wetland ecosystems and their removal destroys the balances required to maintain these places as functional plant communities.

So, it’s all in what you do or don’t see; it’s all in the way your understanding of the world manifests itself on your mental stage.

The cottonwood connections were always there, we just weren’t aware of them. Now it’s the same with burning forests for electricity. Most people still don’t see the importance of beetle altered forests as functioning ecosystems, as carbon sinks greater than clearcuts, as part of the global warming scenario.

Now we are talking of burning these trees, the worst thing you can do for CO2 emissions, the worst thing you can do for habitat.

In a very few short years people will be wondering what we were thinking as a society. Just like the idea of cutting down a cottonwood because the cotton fluff clogged up your screen door, the idea of burning forests in these times of rapid, massive climate change will be seen as an idea so outrageous as to be barely understandable.

July snowstorms are special.  At the end of a hot, sunny day millions of cotton flakes explode into the air with a majesty and grace unmatched by their frosty winter cousins.  Big, fluffy and delicate they float through the sky, parachutes of life drifting in the warm evening currents.

Those of us who live near the wetlands and rivers of the Chilcotin ARK  are fortunate to have the Northern Black Cottonwood as one of our neighbours.  Topping out at over one hundred feet, these trees have two distinct phases.  Young trees are smooth barked, rather conical in shape, while older ones develop a  ragged look with deeply furrowed bark several inches thick.  Just like people, smooth when young, furrowed when old.

The bears love these trees.  Their sweetly perfumed buds are a favourite treat for cubs and moms alike.  There is nothing more entertaining than spending a warm July afternoon watching a black bear cub slowly creeping out on a limb, several  feet above the ground, licking the buds off the branch tips.  Sometimes this pleasant treat can end in near disaster as the limb cracks and the squealing youngster crashes to the ground.  No harm done, the  little bear stares up at the tree, shakes his pudgy head and moves on.

Lining the steam banks, these riparian soldiers love nothing better than having their roots in  water.  If a pipe is driven into the base of an old tree, water will flow from the hollow heart in copious quantities.  A real treat on a hot summer day, especially when you are not sure of the quality of the water in the creek, the water from the living tree is well filtered and good to drink.  Better than bottled water and much more organic.

The cottonwood also has a dark side.  Known as the ‘widow-maker’, it can drop its limbs unexpectedly,  huge clubs crashing from the sky.  More than one rancher or horse has been killed by this random event.

Even so, horses spend day after day huddled under the great trees, nose to tail, hoping to lessen the torment of mosquitoes, black flies, horseflies and chiggers.  The little puffs of brown dust they kick up as they stamp their feet and swish their tails are a sure sign that early summer is here.  When back lit by the rays of a slanting sun, this sparkling dust mixed with the cotton snow flakes is  swept  up hill in a late afternoon gust,  flowing over the contours, defining the form of the hillside.

Just one tree species, just one little event, just one tiny precious image, fleeting yet recurring for eons.  The July snowstorms are a treat that we look forward to each year. More than that, they remind us of the beauty, the strength, the absolute creativity that abounds in the world around us.  They remind us of the vibrancy, the variety, the sheer force of life in our forests.  They remind us again just how special life in the ARK really is.