May 2023 - bc-bog-trotter.com

The Pregnant Sniper

Is there less beauty in the tiny? I’ve become convinced that killing a flower to give someone as an expression of love is wrong. Let them live, take a photo.

I recently watched a documentary about a beautiful young woman in the Ukraine. She had left her lucrative jewelry business to become a sniper on the front lines. She met her future husband there and well into her third trimester of pregnancy she was still out there fulfilling a most dangerous and deadly duty as she defends her country’s future which she carries in her belly. The irony of her life was not lost. I can see a bronze statue called “motherland” or perhaps “love.”

A soldier in battle dress, her near full-term pregnacy quite obvious brandishes a sniper’s rifle and is resolved in defiance. It is an indelible image, poignant, inspiring and so very tragic. Through our history on this planet, we have learned nothing. The battles rage on.

A free apple comes with every blossom. a feral apple tree in our local park.

One of the joys of summer are the aromas. I was driving the dogs to the beach for a walk. We passed a construction site where the sun beat down and a pain and bloodfragrance of new lumber filled the air. At the shoreline it was low tide. The rank funk of drying mudflats, seaweed, shellfish and fresh leaves above the banks filled the air with a grand cloying musk. Along the pathways, through the thickets of verdant fresh flora there were heavy wafts of floral blends in the air that were bliss even for this old bush ape. In the air drifts the rattling roar of Harley Davidson mating calls which are sometimes answered by the scream of little Asian motorcycles.

“Ya want a piece of my chew? Make a move!”

World-over, the ubiquitous Blue Heron. They continue to fascinate in all phases of of their life.

The clear sky overhead holds a thin curtain of Albertan bushfire smoke. Hopefully this is not a harbinger of the summer air quality we’ve endured in previous years. BC and Washington forests have been burning prodigiously during recent past summers when breathable air and clear visibility have become a premium. Our indigenous people’s oral histories describe “summers of the red sun.” We are in one of those traditional climate blips within the regular fluctuations of our climate. Dramatizing those gasping days improves nothing. Claiming that temperatures are “record breaking” is a farce. One weather announcer in a tight skirt let it slip that the datum of their records is 2015! You fill in the blank on that one. WOT?

It’s late spring. The Christmas cacti are in bloom.

On the long weekend highways folks hurtle in opposite directions hauling bikes, motorcyles, kayaks, paddle boards, surf boards, boats, trailers and rooftop tents. I wonder how many people are injured clambering in and out of those contraptions. Certainly there must certainly be more pain and blood than all the bear encounters together. As I see the frantic race to hurry up and relax I recall a friend’s comment “ Don’t they know they’re free to go sleep on the ground all year long?” Horrified at the plight, or inconvience, of the homeless, some of us pursue a similar venture for fun. And fun it should be if you’re roughing it in a mortgaged Rv.

The Electric Chicken, outstanding in the field. Eggs are sold through a vending machine, credit cards are accepted. Now you can mortgage an egg.

Winning a lotto. Two double-yokers in one pan!

My old “Hemouth” is not a shiny, sexy beast but, it’s paid for. That’s plenty sexy to me.

The fish stone. It just sits on the beach among other rocks.

A growing number of casinos is clear evidence that someone knows that many people do not make good decisions.

Cheer Up, Whether You Like It Or Not

Spring. What a wonder! And a free tree in every nut.

I remember how I once woke up in the mornings after my feet were already on the floor. I was already in gear and racing into the possibilities which the day held. I had enthusiasm for everything. I could outwork, lift more, stand more heat and cold and noise than anyone else. I had been taught at a young age that to be a beast of burden was noble and divine. Stupid bastard! It got me nowhere. Now I am old and burned out, in constant pain in many ways.

Bleeding hearts, for looking at, not listening to.

It is a terrible thing for an old man to wake up with dark thoughts. He lays on and on in bed as the perfect morning sunrise streaks through the gap in the curtains. He contemplates that perhaps his entire life was a waste and that there is little of value to show for his existence. His passage through it all was of nuisance value only. He knows that’s not true but the thoughts are there and that is not any way to start the day. Friends and family have children producing babies lately. Perhaps that’s what has brough this on. He has none. Oh blub blub.

Three steps further, the camas are now in bloom. The bulbs of these flowers were a food staple for the indigenous folks…so long as they knew which ones were poisonous.

Grumpa, cheer up enough to swing your gnarly old feet down on to the floor, open the curtains, go let the dogs out. They’re thrilled to simply be alive. That’s why we have them in our lives. So wake up one toe at a time if that’s your best, follow the dogs out and inhale the dawn. No-one has shot at us, there have been no fires or earthquakes. You know who you are and where you are. Not a bad start! It’s Monday again. Three days until garbage day. We’ve just lost Gordon Lightfoot. All is bluebirds and rainbows.

So let’s sit a spell and have a chat. I’ve got to get this hot tub fixed but it has a lovely view.

A post from a friend this morning reminded me that as spring advances so does tick season. These nasty blood-sucking insects which burrow into your skin can also carry plagues like lyme disease which has a wide range of unpleasant symptoms. After being outdoors check behind your dog’s ears especially, but also all over their body, and then check you own corpulous delectum. The wee flax seed-shaped bugs are not fussy with their taste. I once discovered a tick had lodged itself in my armpit.The discovery came while scuba diving. I wore a neoprene wetsuit over the spot and was in ninety feet of water when the discomfort set in. Gnyum, gynum, yum. So it was grin and bear it for the rest of the dive and then wrestle out of my gear once back on the surface and remove that invasive beast which by then felt about the size of a shovel.

You can remove them by firmly pulling and twisting, preferably without breaking the little beast into bits. Any remains can become a nasty infection but broken-off heads do NOT continue eating their way inwards. That’s just a myth. There are special tick removal tools available at pet stores. Be sure to check and remove any you find as soon as possible, they do like to chew their way in and once swollen with blood are much harder to remove. An acclaimed repellant is a spray mixture of one third white vinegar and two parts water. Well now, that’s out of the way before breakfast.

Under the rhodo. A spider works the point, perhaps waiting for flies coming to the flower.

Fish do fly. This carving is on a rock beside a fish ladder at a local salmon hatchery.

It is now almost NOT news that there has been yet another mass-shooting in the US. Sadly, mass shootings are hardly the sensation they once were. Canadians are neighbours to this clearly conflict and violence loving nation. We too share the same culture and embrace entertainment which consistently has characters waving guns. The film sets run with blood. It’s expected and even taken for granted. We just don’t notice it. Gun violence in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island are now a daily fact of life and there is more going on than ever makes the news. Then there are the goons hurtling around our roads in their projectiles weighing infinitely more than any bullet. All the horrors of war, earthquake and famine just don’t register in our collective conscience. There are a lot of good things happening but before we spend more on stuff liking sending back breath-taking images of the unknown universe perhaps we should clean up our only home and make life a little more bearable for most of our global population who suffer horribly every day.

Trillium in passing. Their season ends far too soon.

I was confronted by one of those characters last week, who from his suv seat threatened me with his brass knuckles. I refuse to run from any thug. He backed down when I challenged him to discover how this old bull got to be old. He left. I do seem to find an inordinate number of confrontations but I am hard-wired against conceeding to bullies. The whole world seems to be tense and angry but running from any tyranny, no matter how small, is to endorse it.

There are other forms of foolishness we also have to deal with. I am writing this on mother’s day and the weather is now seasonally normal, in the mid to high 20s. The media is determined to place us within a heat dome and caution us with how to deal with the extreme heat. You can go back into the archives and find that this is normal late-spring weather and I suggest that hot, even to us folks, is in excess of 30 degrees. Nice and warm has been replaced with hot and dangerous. What’s with all the drama? Isn’t paying for gas and groceries exciting enough?

The sun daughters. They know how to start the day.

Verily, verily. Here’s a whole truth. Man creates his gods in HIS own image.

I don’t know how to act my age, I’ve never been this old before! anonymous

WAG

It is definitely spring. The Christmas Cacti are in bloom.

Now here’s a first. I’m writing this blog on my f.r.e.d. (Freaking ridiculous electronic device) Yep that tablet thing I was foolish enough to indulge in. I feel like a gorilla trying to order lunch on a typewriter. Ba…bana…b…na. What’s a typewriter you may well ask and if you don’t know I’m not sure how to explain. It was a writing machine. You inserted a single blank sheet of paper into it by manually winding a roller. Then you began pecking at the keyboard to produce letters and words. Each letter or symbol would fly up on a small lever as you pressed a key. It would imprint through an inked ribbon onto the sheet of paper. The ribbon advanced itself the width of a lettter each time you pressed a key.

C’mon down to my old bun wagon baby, we’ll fix it up and go see the world maybe.
Uhuh!
It actually worked for a living once.

Batman has left the alley. This very well- used bike betrays a lot of fun. No discarded capes were found.

It was a very complicated and fascinating bit of machinery. Yes, there were typewriter mechanics. There was no backing up or deleting if you made an error while typing. You could either try to erase the word or pull out the sheet, insert a new one and start the whole page over. Then you’d need to change the ink ribbon when it came to its end and if you were cheap you’d try to rewind the ribbon and use it until the letters were too faint to see clearly.

Those machines were heavy and cumbersome. They were mechanical and required a heavy touch until electric machines came along. Those were definitely NOT portable and the concept of a tiny device such as I am cursing at and poking with my bent old banana fingers would have been considered hilarious; a Dick Tracy idea. When laptop computers first became available to the general public I swore that all I’d ever need was something called a “Word Processor.” It looked like a large laptop but would only write and store documents, revolutionary at the time.

Fawn Lilies, they have a brief season, but it is breath-taking.

It is the fleeting beauty which makes them lovelier.

I thought a sasquatch was smoking a number in the bushes, it smelled like that, then I saw the skunk cabbage

Some people could type prodigiously. “Words per minute” were a prized secretarial rating. Spelling errors and other typing mistakes were inconceivable. Nobody looked at the keyboard! In some schools typing was a class taken very seriously. I chose welding instead. Enough said.

A few nights ago, in the wee hours, I sat unable to sleep in my old camper. I’d parked back in the woods. The darkness was inpenetrable as was the silence which weighed the night down.

Finally a Barred owl called and added a dimension to the void. I was trying to work out a poem on my tiny tablet. I operate on a premise that if millions of other folks can use one of these things, so can I. Bugga! It must have a ‘Beat the geezer’ mode because absolutely nothing works for me. The thing can change screens simply by me looking at it and do not make the mistake of putting your hands near the wee devil device. Pigs in space! I’ve spent labourious hours pecking out a story only to have it vanish while being transferred to the big file.

A glimpse back in time, when comforts were provided for the customers.

Outside it is the first clear, warm day day of spring. Bugger the claptrap of this nonsense. This old boy is taking his dogs to find a flower-filled meadow.

Old Soul. This dog-lover was immediately smitten by those eyes.

While watching my dog it occurred to me that if only the generals understood… all they have to do is wag their tail!