Magic. At a last moment we decided to take our trailer to the woods for a few days. What magic led me and my lense to be at exactly this moment in exactly this place. This beauty had flown thousands of miles to be precisely here for me. WOW!
Tuesday, May 5th. Another brilliant sunrise in a cloudless Raincoast sky. There is not even one shower forecast ahead but maybe we’ll have one of those rainy summers. There are folks actually whining about the heat already. They’re probably the same ones who go south for a little of this same weather in winter. And, it’s not hot; temperatures are only in the mid-thirties! We do have forest fires already.
Fly me to the sun. A highway in the sky at sunrise.In the pink. The glories of spring, which include sinus tortures, are a surreal affirmation of life.
At the head of our driveway, where it conjoin’s the neighbour’s, sits a large, ugly cast concrete planter guarding the straggling hedge between the properties. I hate it but it belongs to the reclusive lonley soul next door and I want to respect her. Although not only an eyesore, it is a hazard to navigation and lurks ready to savage any vehicle which gets too near. It has severely gnawed my front bumper.
Eyes wide shut.
Yesterday as we were heading out my wife Jill said, “You’re getting awfully close to the urn.” I replied, “Yeah well, we both are!” And so, with laughter, we launched ourselves back out onto the road of life. As another dawn spreads I realize how true it is. Tick Tock.
Tuesday, May19th. There’s half the month gone by. Tinkering this, tinkering that, times flies whether you’re having fun or not. Spring so far has been cool and clear and very dry. There have been a few days of summer-like warmth but nothing to match the “Hot” predictions of the weather girl in the tight dress. We finally broke out the old travel trailer just to change our perspective, and partly due to the outrageous price of fuel, decided to travel briefly to a place less than an hour from home. What a dream to find an overlooked location right under our noses that meets most of our expectations. Just Google up “Nanaimo Lakes Camping” if you’re interested. No explosions, just simple in the trees escape. And best of all, few people. Enough said, the photos can do the rest.
With over a century of logging these lakes still offer a recreational beauty for folks. Second-growth timber is now being harvested. Despite one’s environmental persuasions the logger’s skill and tenacity have to be admired. Without their efforts there would be no access for the public.Nanaimo River, between First and Second lakes. This river is so clean that it hosts freshwater clams, trout, crayfish and other marine delights.
Roughing it. There was a time when if it rained a tarp and an overturned canoe provided my comfort. How the mighty are fallen!Writing this blog.No bugs. A breeze from the lake kept them away.The way it could be; everywhere. This is how underbrush should be cleared in the proximity of people. With a huge surplus of homeless folks needing a meaningful purpose in life and a dignified way of earning themselves a living, an affordable solution to a few social and environmental issues is obvious. We have an endless supply of second-growth timber to be thinned and fire-suppressed. It is not an ultimate answer but we have to start thinking of possibilities instead of excuses.Spring once more. At a higher elevation the season lags and trilliums still add their final glory in the woods.
Strange. I have never seen these fungi before and am eager to learn more about them.
There is a campfire ban in effect with which I heartily agree. “Cityots” the campground caretaker said. I concure. Most folks have no bush sense at all and on an afternoon like this, where the wind screams across the lake and into the trees, there’d soon be a nasty situation with an explosive inferno racing up the mountain. I’m content to let the wind whistle clean and free through the swaying timber. I’ve heard the now-too-rare chatter of a red squirrel, the cries of loons and geese, the sonorous duet of two barred owls. There has not been one siren. Funny what you can get used to!
For PEGGY. This image appeared outside my window just as I sat down to post this blog. Peggy left this world a few days ago at the age of 97. I never knew her as well as I’d have liked. She was the mom of a man who has been a friend of mine for over 44 years. I can honestly say that she never had a quarrel with anyone and raised some mighty fine kids. She was cherished by all who knew her. Fair winds dear soul.Does the Monarch Butterfly know its own beauty?
A morning view from my desk. It is a very much like an E.J. Hughes painting. I live here!
On Sunny mornings I look out from my desk and realize that my view is a stunning live E. J. Hughes painting. The hard morning light on sparkling water, greening leaves, several varieties of fruit blossoms, bird songs, boat traffic and a hidden water tower on the ridge that glints in the light. I think of all the poor folks who never have the luxury of even thinking of a scenic view and I wonder at my decadence with such a panorama.
Our front yard welcomes you. We’re very fortunate.As if we don’t have enough flowers outside there are a few inside as well. Our sinus’s scream.All in a long day’s work.Downtown in the evening. That’s me in the room with the plywood in the window.
Isn’t it funny how one thing leads to another? Last blog was about the new gazebo. There’s more. I can’t abide having something completely generic. I need to add something or modify things to make it uniquely mine. First I installed some overhead hanging lights. The eves of the new edifice neccesarily tuck themselves beneath the soffits of the house. You know what happens when it rains. A gazebo with runnin g water. My solution was to install rain gutters beneath two sides of the edifice to direct the runoff overboard from the deck. They had to be innocuous. That meant installing them as high as possible which in turn meant cutting down a drill bit to fit the narrow gap I had to work in.
Rain Chain. The end of a process that involved assembling a gazebo and then finding a new window. I think of the child-slave somewhere who assembled this lovely copper spirals.
That process sent the severed bit pinging off like a bullet, right through my shop window. Fortunately the old window was tempered glass and in slow motion collapsed in a heap of jagged crystal shrapnel. I had trumped myself.The gutter job slid to the back of the stove while I spent a very long time collecting all the crumpled bits of glint. It is not good for the dog’s feet, or mine.
The new doowindow. It almost looks meant to be. That extra workbench outside is a grand idea. It helped sell me on the house.
Then began a quest for a replacement glass. God forbid I spend more money! Amazingly I found a pair of sliding French doors a few blocks away free for the picking up. Git ‘er gone. Now I have the sexiest shop window in town. With all its small lead-framed glass panels it is much safer from the whirling mad blacksmith inventing stuff inside. “Like a bull in a sex shop.” Of course after all that, with the next rain, the gutter leaked. I fixed it.
There is one more anecdote about this online-ordered gazebo/shelter/pergola/pagoda. The shipment came in two awkward huge boxes weighing about two hundred pounds. One box finally arrived, sitting sadly on its own on the front step out in the rain. Days later, we finally called to inquire.The other box was out there in the ozone, we were not having an uncommon experience apparently, it would arrive. Jill employed a high charm setting and were subsequently told an entire replacement unit was going to be shipped. “No, no,” we responded “all we need is one only, box 2 of 2. Apparently that does not compute. A second order was being expedited at no extra charge, don’t worry about the missing box. Hmmmm!
Several days later, box 2 arrived, lugged to our door by a lady driver working alone. Next day, gazebo 2 arrived. Both of those boxes were each carried by two burly men. (Just making note!) To bring this story to a conclusion let me simply say that a nice lady is now the happy owner of a brand-new gazebo at a very fair price. Of course so are we! I am still waiting for an invoice for all of the entertainment.
Almost paid for. This mid-sixties Mercury even has a complete second for spare parts. Damn! They were ugly!High water slack. Both vessels are beginning to turn as the tide goes to ebb.
Spring is indeed in the air. The lilacs are producing an industrial-strength perfume that tingles in my sinus cavities and leaves me gasping. The dogwood blooms are suddenly everywhere, flourescent day and night. The sun now rises almost forty five degrees further north than in winter. Each day begins with the soft chanting of morning doves, swallows pelt through the air and baby birds hop across the lawns. Still people bitch. There’s always something to find wrong but I like to point out to folks that if you’re truly unhappy here, the nicest thing about our country is that you are still free to leave. Piss off! It’s that simple. Maybe should you go spend a week in Gaza or the Ukraine or Iran. They’re not free to leave and the notion of a holiday is totally abstract, a decadence beyond imagination. Interestingly, while the price of fuel is a howler, folks still drive like demons and burn fossil fuels as quickly as they can. As Donald Trump said on a Sixty Minutes interview last night, “There’s a lot of crazy people out there.”
Knotweed. It is so a bloody weed! It is insidious, very aggressive and relentless. This a fully severed 2″ piece of root that survived the winter and then began to sprout. I swear you can watch the stuff growing and trying to strangle every other plant.Bikes and boats. Once in a while I get out on the trail. I am trying to teach myself to ride again after fifty years away from it. I’m not intrepid any more but you can’t take the boy out of me.Life is a journey. Try not to crash.Trying to prove to yourself that you still have full mojo is tough when your joints feel like this!Fawn Lilies. Beautiful but fast and fading.
God is a name we give to the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape.
