The Way Home, Days 6 and 7

We left on Monday. I organized the trip so that we would have 3 travel free days in Smithers. Driving out of Telkwa toward Quick where my mother lived is emotional. I miss my mother in this world, more than anything. It's such a huge weight to carry, longing for the person you loved most in the world. We carry on. The sky opens up and rains on us as we pass her turn-off and we wind gently toward Hungry Hill. I stare out the window trying to remember everything as it whips past me. Our lives in the sacred Bulkley Valley. The road is my whole life stretching out ahead of me. In the video Mark refers to it as the highway that has become our home.

Scattered along the highway there are the little houses, homesteads, left by the first white settlers to the area. Hopeful. In clearings. The hay grows up around them and eventually the ground will reclaim them in much the same way it has claimed their owners. I can't imagine what it was like for the first non-native people to this region.

 

Simple barns and rail fences dot the landscape and are weak attempts to to tame the wild landscape. Civilization on the inside, the natural world on the outside. A line separating this, from that.
 

The train follows the highway we have been living on. My eldest brother has worked for the CN Railway since he was 18. I naturally admired him so it made sense to admire trains as well. We rode them east to Jasper and then west to Vancouver. We climbed the Rockies slowly and waited in sidings without complaint. We rode them west to a place call Pacific. The train took me places and felt familiar doing so. The first time I went away for Christmas after my parents split up, I rode the train home from Saskatchewan on New Year's Eve, where my dad was living. We rolled past frozen Canadian landscapes, filled with remote crossings in sleeping towns. It was 4am when we came through Telkwa as the only Hotel in that small town burned silently down as we passed, speechless, headed west to Smithers.

Vanderhoof. The center of British Columbia. Not much else going on there besides Glen's Drive-In, the local Sino-Canadian restaurant. Some smart person moved all these heritage type buildings into one highway-close-locale. We stopped and snooped but ultimately ate our lunch of sandwiches at a picnic table under a green umbrella. We did little to support the local economy beyond a few words of encouragement to the local shop owners,

The Loon. I heard them calling in the night at the lake. It's a sorrowful sound. The end of day floats over the lake at dusk, the loon calls us to bed, and the lake air flows through the cabin pulling away the fog of the past creating whole new memories, good adult memories in place of the fantasy of childhood.

Nearing Quesnel, there are so many logging trucks on the road we feel puny in size and purpose. Our mission to return to my childhood home seems superfluous in comparison to the whole lumber industry. The local towns are driven by mills. Train tracks loop into sawmill yards and back out. Trucks, massive trucks, low slung, super long, populate the highway and we are submissive, hanging back to let them proceed. Swaying trailers, threatening to crush us, their logs poised to  impale us should the load shift, the trailer tip. They are like missiles traveling the roads, let loose on gravel, proceeding to pavement, headed to the next mill-town. We hang back, we brake, we count our blessings. The harvest is enormous, an unintended consequence of the Mountain Pine Beetle plague. I am witnessing the forests with their dead trees, and it doesn't look good. The future of these forests hangs in the balance. We are inconsequential and get out of the way to let these monsters of progress and sustainability pass.

The Caribou. Rolling hills and pasture land.The omnipresent river flows south to the Fraser Canyon, the landscape gets drier the farther south we go.

Williams Lake, B.C.

South of Williams Lake headed to 100 Mile House for the night. I had wanted to make the drive in one day but ultimately it just wasn't possible or advisable. The Fraser Canyon lies at the end of the drive and as treacherous as it seems in daylight it's potentially deadly at night for a tired driver in a car with malfunctioning headlights. We stayed in the Red Coach Inn as we had as kids when we drove to Vancouver for summer vacation. It was pleasant and slightly surreal to be there with my dad and older sister as well as my own family.

Day 7. We slept poorly in the hotel despite being tired. I turned the AC off to keep it from blowing on my kid who had developed a terrible dry cough, the cause of which would not become clear for another week. It was hot and still and Mark and I were anxious about getting home, getting back to life post travel. We had a light breakfast and hit the road, the sun at our left as we drove south to the face the canyon. I'm glad I made this trip with my family. I feel a little more whole than I did when we set out. I feel a little more Canadian and a little more connected to the people and places I grew up around. I feel more deeply connected to the landscape of the province and to that road that connects me to where my cognizant life began.

The Food Thing

We are what we eat. Crap in crap out. My kid has been sick this year, nothing devastating but concerning in its persistence. We sought medical attention and she ended up taking 3 rounds of antibiotics and most recently she has been fighting something that was a direct result of the cure. Don't get me wrong. I like antibiotics but not too often. I take full responsibility for my kids health and last year with her entrance to high school I eased up on my death grip of what she was eating. I let her choose what she ate at school and at home somewhat, and I began to notice that she was slowly eating more and more simple carbs in the form of noodles, bread, pasta, crackers. The final straw was a few weeks ago, I have made a stir-fry and rice and I watched as she heaped on the rice and took a few carrots from the mix and that was it. A huge light bulb went on and I suddenly realized what had probably caused all the health issues we'd had in the winter that had crept into the summer and were now present in the fall. Her immune system had become compromised due to her diet. Too much sugar in her system was creating a perfect environment for bacterial infection and then the antibiotics killed off what she had left leaving her with a condition called Thrush. This is a really boring post but I need to outline this more for myself than anything. We are what we eat. Crap in crap out. This is my mantra. Right now I am working on rebuilding my daughters bacterial system. One of the main ways of doing this is to eat loads of fresh and cooked vegetables, some fermented foods and lots of yogurt. Juice is forbidden, for now. Donuts and cakes and cookies and noodles and pasta are all off the table. Whole grains are in. Sodas are out. Herbal tea with honey is in. It's a tough road but I feel strongly that one of the values I must pass on to my kid is how to eat properly for now and for life.

Her lunch today:
Roasted Turkey Sandwich on whole grain bread
Mixed veggies: tomatoes, cuke, carrots
Nut mix: almonds, raisins, a few chocolate chips
Peanut butter cookies: made with maple syrup and almond meal
Yogurt cup
Cheese and rice crackers

Housekeeping

We spent the weekend at my dad's. Summer is almost over and we have to finish up the work we started, painting some trim on his house. While he's capable of doing the work himself he is not naturally inclined in that direction. I am pretty sure my stepmother took care of all these things, doing some of the fix-it stuff herself, directing him on some jobs and hiring the rest out. She was conscious of how the house should look, he seemed oblivious but willing to do what she implored him to do. She has been away physically for over year but she stopped being able to care about these domestic details a few years before that. In some ways those last years before her stroke and fall were pleasant. She was more relaxed, less critical. Alzheimers took her need to have things just so. We were not always close. There were difficult years but I understood her and she knew it. We had a bond, ultimately she was a good mother and she and dad had a good relationship. She's everywhere in the house and I feel by helping him we are helping her too, carrying out her wishes, considering her preferences, keeping her present in a home in which she is absent. When we arrived Saturday dad was home eating his light lunch. He was wearing a huge pair of cargo pants, filthy and cinched around his waist, his now narrow hips no longer a match for a widening waist-band. I asked him if he maybe needed me to go with him to get some new pants for fall. I made a joke about back to school shopping but he's wary of me and my helpful hints about appearance and grooming practices. I have to tread lightly. I think of my stepmother and how she would have handled him and his over-sized pants. They would have simply disappeared in the laundry one day, gone to the poor, or the compost if they had no trace of wear left in them. She felt strongly that even the poor had standards. He wore shorts the next day and assured me that he has clothes to wear and we discussed wearing a greater percentage of them. This seemed to please him. Mark did some painting and I washed dishes and wiped up crumbs. I could go crazy cleaning the house but the cleaning woman had just been there so it felt pretty okay, considering. On Sunday we took a long walk punctuated with pie and coffee. We walked to Pt Grey Road and watched a race of Lasers in the bay. The single sails were so pretty moving together as a group gently changing shape as their sailors adjusted their trim and direction as they passed the race markers. It was hot and the dogs panted as we sat on a little knoll and watched the boats finish their heats and then begin again.

Up the Mountain, Day 5

 Our ski-cabin is the light spec at the middle of this photo to the left of the lift-line.

Legend has it that my dad moved us to Smithers in 1965 because of the mountains. He had other reasons but they were lost on me. We skied on Sundays, as a family. Other families went to church, we skied. We ate pancakes in the morning and then we all piled into the VW Bus and after he had yelled his head off at us to get our boots, poles, and skis together, we were off. It was exciting and terrifying. My father at the wheel, hunched over, willing the underpowered vehicle up up up, around switchbacks lined by snowbanks just waiting to suck you in. He was a mountain climber but had given it up by the time I was born. Skiing was his next passion. So we skied.

He built us a ski cabin. It was a PanAbode number and the pieces got dropped by helicopter onto the mountain like bundles of Lincoln-Logs. The area that was the mountain was on Crown land, owned ostensibly by the government and we were all squatters. People built little basic cabins to huddle in after a long day of skiing, there was no power and we melted snow for water. There was a Ski-Club cabin as well where you could eat your bag lunch. I spent a lot of time there drinking cocoa and amusing the other skiers. Our cabin materials got dropped in the wrong spot so the cabin got built closer to the main run than it should have. Our outhouse ended up in the meadow where the cabin should have been. In winter I remember the deep path dug into the snow behind the cabin to the outhouse. As a child it felt like walking a long blue white corridor to the little wood hut. Scary and magical and slightly stinky.

 

Crater Lake beyond the trees. The alpine flowers were sparse due to the dry summer. Elevation is about 5000ft.

The Green-T hut. This was near the site of the original rope tow. As you rode up you could see our cabin and an optical illusion was created, the cabin appeared to sit tilted back into the hill, I imagined cups and saucers sliding off the crude table inside. In years of heavy snow my eldest brother and his friends made a snow-bridge onto the roof of the cabin and skied down the hill and over the roof, launching themselves into the ether. Spread eagles all of them, landing mostly softly below. We sold the cabin when my mother was dying, I am not sure who owns it now.

Many of the original ramshackle cabins still exist as well as many newer better ones. Everywhere progress and change even on the mountain.

 

The original ski-club cabin.

The Bulkley Valley, Day 2 and 3

Coming into Houston. It's been raining on and off since Burns Lake where we bought Okanagon fruit from an idling delivery truck in a Husky parking lot. It had been hot and dusty in Prince George 4 hours earlier, I was glad the dog didn't come. Lakes, little or long line the highway through Fort Fraser. The landscape gets prettier and more gentle as you near the Bulkley Valley off in the distance at the base of Hudson Bay Mountain.

We were lucky enough to stay with dear family friends at a lake west of town. The mountain follows you everywhere. It's at the foot of main street and all the way out here at the Lake. I've told this story a thousand times but it's very true. When I was a kid our house faced the mountain and whenever someone came to visit who was not accustomed to living with a huge mountain topped with a glacier in their backyard all sorts of fanciful adjectives got tossed around. I found their shrieks of glee ridiculous and over done. A mountain. Who swoons at a mountain that way. I do, that's who. It was good to see the mountain again.

Bathers at the Lake. My siblings and I, our hosts and my daughter and husband. The mountain looks on. At 4 o'clock the kids from next door appear for ice cream and trudge up the hill where they are served their daily ration. We stay by the lake too relaxed to move imaging how we can do this again tomorrow.

The lovely cottage where we stayed. I slept well here knowing that my family was happy they had come along on this journey with me. I thought I might cry at some inopportune moment but the tears never quite came, my sleep was active instead.

The Fraser Canyon Day 1

Driving north of Hope. The trees are replaced with sage.

The Thompson River meets the Fraser River, I think. The signage is poor along the road. The road conditions are sub-par considering the volume of traffic on the road.

 Dry, dry hills. 99 degrees out. Too hot to ride a horse. We have no stamina in the heat.

The reappearance of trees, small and scraggly clinging to the hillside, grass comes later, further up the road.

Road Trip to the Past

 Big sky and supplies at Lac La Hache

I wanted to go to Smithers. I didn't want to go to Smithers. All summer long we were allegedly going to Smithers. The drive is scary to me, it's long and the highway is undivided most of the way. It's lonely and empty and dusty and it can be hot or very cold and sometimes icy and always bumpy and under construction. The logging trucks and transport trucks are plentiful, huge and vicious. The first several hours of the drive seems to be straight uphill with the river below you on one side and a crumbling rock face above you on the other side. My head hurt, we couldn't listen to music, I was worried about the car making the trip, I was worried about being stranded in a hostile landscape in a country that has become foreign to me. I worried about my dog back at home in the kennel. In the video clips of our first night at Lac La Hache I can see how I have my hand over my mouth surveying the scene, trying to sort out what to do first. The next scene is of the tent set-up and I know by then I had had a beer and was feeling better. The clips of the following morning I look more relaxed, by the time we reached Smithers, 9 hours later, the video shows me warmly embracing my family members who had also come for the Centennial of our little town. We had made it, alive.

One of many roadside shrines to those who have died along the Yellowhead 16

Something Nice

This came in the mail yesterday. It was sent to me via artist Jeanne Williamson Ostroff from another artist, Danielle Dimston. I first encountered Jeanne in a book called Uncommon Quilter. She was ostensibly a quilter but over the past few years I have watched her make the transition from craft to fine art. In the Uncommon Quilter she makes 52, 12 x 12 quilt blocks out of a variety of materials, one per week. It's fascinating to go through the book and see the artist emerge through the process of making studies on a common theme. Eventually Jeanne moved away from sewing and has been painting and printing images on fabric. What began as studies based around construction fence patterns has evolved into in a diverse body of work including painting, prints, installations and now garments. I began following Jeanne on Facebook and she's been a real inspiration to me. She shows her work a lot and continues to make books on craft. I am astounded by her energy but I have a theory. I think women gain more energy and clarity after 50.

I had an amazing dream last night about being pregnant. In the dream and when I woke up I felt exhilarated and positive. I felt powerful, something I have not felt in some time. I am two days away from my period starting and although I have that heaviness in my legs, I am also trying to listen to what other messages my body is giving my brain and how my brain is answering back. These dream images must rise up for a reason. For months I have not remembered anything from the murkiness of sleep and then there is this clear shining image of creative potential (I am of course speaking metaphorically here, I have no interest in a baby at my age).

I found painter,  Danielle Dimston via Jeanne's blog. She makes postcards as part of her practice and sends them off here and there. I like the simplicity of her paintings and her dedication to exploration. Jeanne asked her if she could send me a card and here it is. I am looking forward to sending her one in return, here is an example of one of the postcards I sent some time ago.

Our sunny streak ended last night with a modest thunder storm and it rained in the night. The sky was gray all day, the air felt slightly crisp and there are dry leaves accumulating at the side of my blessed road. I wore jeans for the first time in 6 weeks. The air was heavy where the road dips down at the creek and I got a few whiffs of something dead. It was a distinct scent just hanging there above the ditch. Today it rained hard and I didn't walk. I took my daughter on an outing and avoided work which has been feeling a little forced with so many projects to produce. I needed a down day and wanted to spend some time with her beyond the time we spend locked in domestic routine together.