The bear didn't know me, nor did the skunk, nor did the deer; but I knew them. Or did I? Do I know myself?
A few weeks ago, a black bear walked across the highway about 500 metres ahead of where I was driving east, 60 kilometres west of Williams Lake. Last week, driving west not east on that same highway, I picked up a hitchhiker fresh out of jail. He said that we're in the bears' territory.
While we drove west, a skunk walked across the highway a couple hundred metres ahead of us. It was the first skunk I saw in this area. Where I come from, hundreds of kilometres and a couple mountain ranges east of here, I regularly saw skunks. My passenger, his hitchhiking companion asleep in the back seat, said he was glad the skunk did not spray us. I knew that such a spray would not affect us, rolling along at 90-100 kilometres per hour in a vehicle. I said that washing with tomato juice helped those sprayed by skunks: the things one hears, and remembers decades later.
This afternoon at Scout Island,. a nature preserve in the namesake lake of this city of 10 000, I sat at a picnic table and to read for awhile. I aim to read and discard decades of accumulated books, an enticing burden. Today's book was an Englishman's description of touring Canada during the mid-1980s. His tour goes from east to west. We've left Newfoundland and are in the Maritimes.
A scuffle in the nearby grass, sprinkled with fall leaves, alerted me to a doe, less than ten metres away. She and I looked at each other for a few seconds. Then she walked in front of me amid the big, sparse trees, and started nibbling the grass below. A few minutes later, another scuffle showed a young deer, hers I thought, coming to join her. For a half hour, they nibbled and wandered, 10-20 metres from me. They only looked up after noises, such as crows or the breeze made in the trees. They nibbled at each other's head, neck, and ears some, too: grooming, bonding. As I got up and walked my bike to the road, the deer peacefully kept doing what they were doing.
Three geese honked overhead as I rode away. Later, a sparrow got into my daughter's apartment via the air conditioner badly sealed into a window every summer. Next summer, she doesn't plan to install this contraption our landlord offers each year. Long live fresh air, blowing into a window, or against one's body riding a bicycle. May geese and sparrows be in your life, but not necessarily in your home. Instead, share their home, the Earth.
Riding my bicycle the three kilometres home, under that soft, beautiful light of early evening, I thought about the deer. And I thought about myself. And I thought about John Livingston's book Rogue Primate: An Exploration of Human Domestication. I borrowed a Vancouver library copy when I was there in 2014, read it, returned it to my library to forward back there, and noticed a copy in my library's book sale a few months later. It was not the first book sale book there that was superior to most of what the library retains. Livingston's quote of the phrase from Percy Shelley's poem Queen Mab is the title for this story I write, patient reader.
We lost our link to nature, the famed Canadian ecologist and broadcaster Livingston argues. He narrated Hinterland Who's Who, was a Nature of Things host, that show's title from Lucretius's Ancient Roman book, of course, and Livingston led The Canadian Audubon Society and its successor, the Canadian Wildlife Federation.
The bear, skunk, and deer know none of this; but as I rode home today, I realized that the deer and I live and die in the same world. I'm conscious of this and the deer aren't. Livingston argues that rabbits and their predators are so linked to nature that they're unaware of it. Human delusions of being separate and above nature, however, have weakened our link to nature and therefore our joy of existence; but there's hope, Livingston argues.
This is a relevant part of what I wrote after I read Livingston's book:
"What then must we do? Livingston asks. Try to love nature, respect it, link to it, regain
our wildness inculcated out of us as children. See a predator fix on prey, its whole being
alive, in an intense moment, un-selfconscious, merely but profoundly being, in its world,
linked to all around it. See prey perhaps escaping, perhaps succumbing, accepting its
state without self-objectification, without a burden of ethics, morals, judgmental dreck,
add-ons that cloak and distort wildness."
See bears, skunks, and deer, full of life. Fill yourself with life. My reflection on Livingston's book ends, "Ah, sweet existence, precious, brief, wild!"
Percy Shelley knew.
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Skating on Memories
Today I cycled, skated, and swam for free, but what I later paid re-kindled memories.
The annual Tour de Cariboo, a 75-kilometre ride from Williams Lake, up into the Cariboo Mountains, to Gavin Lake Resort, was today. The local branch of Big Brothers and Big Sisters organizes this fundraiser. Sponsored riders, singly or in teams, get a meal at the resort, stay the night, and trucks bring their bicycles back to Williams Lake the next day.
The 60th anniversary celebration of West Fraser, a local sawmill and plywood company, was also today. The company sponsored a free skate and free swim in the local recplex, to whose upcoming renovation it has donated a half million dollars. There were free hamburgers, hot dogs, pop, chips, and cupcakes in the nearby park. Musicians played, people painted children's faces, and the September sun shone on all. A film in the recplex auditorium narrated the company's history.
The bike ride began at 9:00 AM. The free food and music was from noon until 4:00 PM. The free skate was from 12:15-1:45 PM. The free swim was from 1:30-5:00 PM. I attended all, but paid, but my payment kindled memories.
About 50 riders began the ride at 9:15. I planned to ride until 10:30, then turn around to attend the other events. At 10:30, after riding mostly uphill, I was happy to coast down the hills to the main highway back to Williams Lake. The last hill was a rush: don't get a flat tire or other breakdown at that speed. The last kilometre in the city was a sore-bummed walk. I learned that I need a softer seat for my bike. I had reached the 25-kilometre rest station, actually a few kilometres beyond it.
I got home, stored my bike, took my skates, swimsuit, and towel, and walked 300 metres back to the park for a free hamburger, pop, and chips. The volunteer guitarist, his fingers having survived his woodworking job until retirement, played "Gunga Din" and "The Boxer" while I ate at one of many tables set up under a big awning. Then I went to the rink.
Skating for an hour was a good stretch for my cycle-complaining muscles. The pool, hot tub, steam room, and sauna added to the relief. My skates, which I put under a bench by the shelves on the pool deck, were gone when I got out of the pool.
These are not just any skates, as those who know me know.
My mom bought them for me during my last year of minor ice hockey, 1975-76, when my teenage feet hadn't quite finished growing. Still, the skates stretched enough to fit for the next 40 years. Whoever stole the skates will have little chance of accumulating memories as golden as the skates have given me.
As I walked to the local thrift shops looking to look for another pair of skates, I thought of the places these skates and I have been. I found no skates, but I hope to find some soon.
That last year of ice hockey was a prelude to an adulthood of skating in many exotic places.
First, the skates and I were on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, the city where I spent three years in university in the 1980s. I remember skating alone on the canal one January when the air temperature was -35 Celsius. I remember skating to University of Ottawa graduate English classes with Charlotte, a Toronto-born student friend with hair blond like the sun, and eyes blue like the sky.
I remember Winterlude, Ottawa's winter festival, beaver tails sold in this shack, maple syrup on snow in that shack, skaters pushing buggies and wheelchairs, the late-winter sun melting the ice and snow sculptures.
Second, the skates and I were in Whitecourt, where I was a newspaper reporter in 1982-83. The sports reporter had volunteered for the annual local skate-athon. My skates had done skate-athons in Edson, 100 km away, where I had grown up. Joe had never played hockey and was shaky on skates. He wanted to practice before the skate-athon. I offered to skate along to help. Joe later completed the skate-athon. Joe was from Ste. Catherines, close to Toronto.
Third, the skates were with me in Denendeh, a few years later. I worked for Hudson's Bay Northern Stores. I spent the 1986-87 winter in Nahecho Keh, Fort Providence, where Deh Cho, the Mackenzie River, leaves Great Slave Lake, Canada's deepest, to flow north to the Arctic Ocean, more than 1000 km away. Near the dock, where barges stopped in summer, there was a snye, a still body of water perpendicular to the river. The snye froze smooth and clear that winter. My skates and I were there, and on the outdoor rink in the main community.
Fourth, during the 1990s I taught school in rural places, two of them with outdoor rinks. More than once, I herded my charges to the rink, sometimes to skate, sometimes to play hockey.
Fifth, my skates and I glided on Lac Beauvert, by Jasper Park Lodge in the 2000s. My younger sister had invited my little family there. She says I taught her to skate when she was little. I forget, but I believe her.
Sixth and last, those skates were on me during the handful of free skates each year at the smaller of two indoor rinks in the local recplex. Today I skated there, my last time on those skates; but what memories today brought back, after someone stole the skates.
I doubt that the person who stole the skates today will build memories on them of such high quality as the memories which the skates helped me build; but I hope the skates inspire him, or the person to whom he sells them. Mom probably paid $40 or so for these skates, budget but durable Daousts, a brand name long gone. What are 40-year-old pair of skates worth? It depends on who answers the question.
Less than an hour after I wrote the above, someone called from the pool to say that they had found my skates, in the men's change room. I hastened down.
"I suspected a guy, digging around in his stuff for a long time near where my skates were, while I waited for him to get out of the way so I could get my skates and swim bag," I told the pool desk clerk when I got there. I said that I had followed my suspect to the change room, where he locked himself in a toilet. "What man changes in a toilet?" I knocked and asked if he has my skates. He said no. Then he finished changing and left. I didn't think to look in the toilet, doubting that he had taken the skates.
I asked the desk clerk where she found my skates. She said she didn't find them. She sent me to a lifeguard, on deck. She sent me to another lifeguard, in the hallway by the change rooms. He confirmed that he found my skates in a toilet in the men's change room. I told him about the suspect. I returned to the desk clerk with this lifeguard's news. She said the thief probably knew I was onto him and left the skates behind.
Had I not gotten out of the pool when the thief did, had I not followed him, had he gotten the skates out of the building, I would not have them now.
Instead, now I have the skates, and the memories. Loss compels words, but so can gain.
I gave the pool desk clerk and the lost-and-found manager, who had looked for the skates, a cupcake each. I had wangled a six pack of cupcakes from the West Fraser people bringing yet more from the recplex to the park near the end of the afternoon's celebration. "Your party is almost over. It's almost four. Too many cupcakes, eh?" I asked. "Yep," one of the bearers said. "May I have one?" "Have a package of six."
Sweet, all round, today. Even my bum hurts less than it did after my 50-km bike ride up into and down out of foothills of the Cariboo Mountains. Thanks for reading my little tale.
Now lace up for "Skater's Waltz:"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV4BxDcWus8
The annual Tour de Cariboo, a 75-kilometre ride from Williams Lake, up into the Cariboo Mountains, to Gavin Lake Resort, was today. The local branch of Big Brothers and Big Sisters organizes this fundraiser. Sponsored riders, singly or in teams, get a meal at the resort, stay the night, and trucks bring their bicycles back to Williams Lake the next day.
The 60th anniversary celebration of West Fraser, a local sawmill and plywood company, was also today. The company sponsored a free skate and free swim in the local recplex, to whose upcoming renovation it has donated a half million dollars. There were free hamburgers, hot dogs, pop, chips, and cupcakes in the nearby park. Musicians played, people painted children's faces, and the September sun shone on all. A film in the recplex auditorium narrated the company's history.
The bike ride began at 9:00 AM. The free food and music was from noon until 4:00 PM. The free skate was from 12:15-1:45 PM. The free swim was from 1:30-5:00 PM. I attended all, but paid, but my payment kindled memories.
About 50 riders began the ride at 9:15. I planned to ride until 10:30, then turn around to attend the other events. At 10:30, after riding mostly uphill, I was happy to coast down the hills to the main highway back to Williams Lake. The last hill was a rush: don't get a flat tire or other breakdown at that speed. The last kilometre in the city was a sore-bummed walk. I learned that I need a softer seat for my bike. I had reached the 25-kilometre rest station, actually a few kilometres beyond it.
I got home, stored my bike, took my skates, swimsuit, and towel, and walked 300 metres back to the park for a free hamburger, pop, and chips. The volunteer guitarist, his fingers having survived his woodworking job until retirement, played "Gunga Din" and "The Boxer" while I ate at one of many tables set up under a big awning. Then I went to the rink.
Skating for an hour was a good stretch for my cycle-complaining muscles. The pool, hot tub, steam room, and sauna added to the relief. My skates, which I put under a bench by the shelves on the pool deck, were gone when I got out of the pool.
These are not just any skates, as those who know me know.
My mom bought them for me during my last year of minor ice hockey, 1975-76, when my teenage feet hadn't quite finished growing. Still, the skates stretched enough to fit for the next 40 years. Whoever stole the skates will have little chance of accumulating memories as golden as the skates have given me.
As I walked to the local thrift shops looking to look for another pair of skates, I thought of the places these skates and I have been. I found no skates, but I hope to find some soon.
That last year of ice hockey was a prelude to an adulthood of skating in many exotic places.
First, the skates and I were on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, the city where I spent three years in university in the 1980s. I remember skating alone on the canal one January when the air temperature was -35 Celsius. I remember skating to University of Ottawa graduate English classes with Charlotte, a Toronto-born student friend with hair blond like the sun, and eyes blue like the sky.
I remember Winterlude, Ottawa's winter festival, beaver tails sold in this shack, maple syrup on snow in that shack, skaters pushing buggies and wheelchairs, the late-winter sun melting the ice and snow sculptures.
Second, the skates and I were in Whitecourt, where I was a newspaper reporter in 1982-83. The sports reporter had volunteered for the annual local skate-athon. My skates had done skate-athons in Edson, 100 km away, where I had grown up. Joe had never played hockey and was shaky on skates. He wanted to practice before the skate-athon. I offered to skate along to help. Joe later completed the skate-athon. Joe was from Ste. Catherines, close to Toronto.
Third, the skates were with me in Denendeh, a few years later. I worked for Hudson's Bay Northern Stores. I spent the 1986-87 winter in Nahecho Keh, Fort Providence, where Deh Cho, the Mackenzie River, leaves Great Slave Lake, Canada's deepest, to flow north to the Arctic Ocean, more than 1000 km away. Near the dock, where barges stopped in summer, there was a snye, a still body of water perpendicular to the river. The snye froze smooth and clear that winter. My skates and I were there, and on the outdoor rink in the main community.
Fourth, during the 1990s I taught school in rural places, two of them with outdoor rinks. More than once, I herded my charges to the rink, sometimes to skate, sometimes to play hockey.
Fifth, my skates and I glided on Lac Beauvert, by Jasper Park Lodge in the 2000s. My younger sister had invited my little family there. She says I taught her to skate when she was little. I forget, but I believe her.
Sixth and last, those skates were on me during the handful of free skates each year at the smaller of two indoor rinks in the local recplex. Today I skated there, my last time on those skates; but what memories today brought back, after someone stole the skates.
I doubt that the person who stole the skates today will build memories on them of such high quality as the memories which the skates helped me build; but I hope the skates inspire him, or the person to whom he sells them. Mom probably paid $40 or so for these skates, budget but durable Daousts, a brand name long gone. What are 40-year-old pair of skates worth? It depends on who answers the question.
Less than an hour after I wrote the above, someone called from the pool to say that they had found my skates, in the men's change room. I hastened down.
"I suspected a guy, digging around in his stuff for a long time near where my skates were, while I waited for him to get out of the way so I could get my skates and swim bag," I told the pool desk clerk when I got there. I said that I had followed my suspect to the change room, where he locked himself in a toilet. "What man changes in a toilet?" I knocked and asked if he has my skates. He said no. Then he finished changing and left. I didn't think to look in the toilet, doubting that he had taken the skates.
I asked the desk clerk where she found my skates. She said she didn't find them. She sent me to a lifeguard, on deck. She sent me to another lifeguard, in the hallway by the change rooms. He confirmed that he found my skates in a toilet in the men's change room. I told him about the suspect. I returned to the desk clerk with this lifeguard's news. She said the thief probably knew I was onto him and left the skates behind.
Had I not gotten out of the pool when the thief did, had I not followed him, had he gotten the skates out of the building, I would not have them now.
Instead, now I have the skates, and the memories. Loss compels words, but so can gain.
I gave the pool desk clerk and the lost-and-found manager, who had looked for the skates, a cupcake each. I had wangled a six pack of cupcakes from the West Fraser people bringing yet more from the recplex to the park near the end of the afternoon's celebration. "Your party is almost over. It's almost four. Too many cupcakes, eh?" I asked. "Yep," one of the bearers said. "May I have one?" "Have a package of six."
Sweet, all round, today. Even my bum hurts less than it did after my 50-km bike ride up into and down out of foothills of the Cariboo Mountains. Thanks for reading my little tale.
Now lace up for "Skater's Waltz:"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV4BxDcWus8
Civlization in the Thrift Shop
Kenneth Clark's book Civilization was in the dollar book bin at the local Salvation Army Thrift Shop last week. Williams Lake is not the only place where civilization is discounted, but this book brought back memories of days when I tried to civilize myself, still a work in progress.
I was in University of Alberta Professor McCaughey's English language history course in 1980-81. He recommended a film series then showing in the biggest lecture theatre in the humanities building, a rectilinear 1960s edifice that overlooked the North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton, Canada. It still overlooks that river, but McCaughey is gone; I don't know if civilization survives in the university or city. Perhaps smaller rooms suffice these days. I watched many of the films. Decades later, I still prefer civilization to barbarism, social misfit that I am.
Kenneth Clark, an English blue blood, narrated Civilization, and opened my rural Canadian eyes to distant lands. More than one academic has told me that rural students are more versatile than urban students in academia. I remember Versatile tractors, and I hope I remember something from the films. Clark, later knighted, had written the 1970 book, Civilization. A copy is in the thrift shop.
When I find such things around here, I want to meet the people who donated them. The Brothers Karamazov, not in my local library, was in share shed a couple years ago. Virgil's Aeneid was there this year. The share shed, beside the dump and recycle bins, is where people put things too good for dumping, or recycling. Should I hope that others here have found civilization and want to spread it, recyclers, or despair that they regressed, and discarded their classics, dumpers?
One could make a film series about this.
I was in University of Alberta Professor McCaughey's English language history course in 1980-81. He recommended a film series then showing in the biggest lecture theatre in the humanities building, a rectilinear 1960s edifice that overlooked the North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton, Canada. It still overlooks that river, but McCaughey is gone; I don't know if civilization survives in the university or city. Perhaps smaller rooms suffice these days. I watched many of the films. Decades later, I still prefer civilization to barbarism, social misfit that I am.
Kenneth Clark, an English blue blood, narrated Civilization, and opened my rural Canadian eyes to distant lands. More than one academic has told me that rural students are more versatile than urban students in academia. I remember Versatile tractors, and I hope I remember something from the films. Clark, later knighted, had written the 1970 book, Civilization. A copy is in the thrift shop.
When I find such things around here, I want to meet the people who donated them. The Brothers Karamazov, not in my local library, was in share shed a couple years ago. Virgil's Aeneid was there this year. The share shed, beside the dump and recycle bins, is where people put things too good for dumping, or recycling. Should I hope that others here have found civilization and want to spread it, recyclers, or despair that they regressed, and discarded their classics, dumpers?
One could make a film series about this.
Europe 2015 Home
This spring I went to Britain and Ireland, courtesy of my two generous sisters. I didn't write about that trip yet, but I hope I will. Hope's great. Try it. I did take hundred of photographs during the trip. Perhaps I'll look at the photos to get ideas of what to write. Some days I scarce believe I was there, but I was, for five weeks, more than three months ago. Perhaps I'm waiting to write until only the most-durable memories of the trip remain. Would they be the best memories? Perhaps I dare not write for fear of understating how wonderful the trip was. Perhaps I need someone to spur me into action. Perhaps I need to go back there to refresh my memory. I could crowd-source the cost of a research tour....
August 15, 2016 Hamburg, Germany
My younger sister has me in Europe again, house sitting in Hamburg, then Brighton, then Manchester, before we return together to Canada. She paid for my plane tickets to and from Europe, my travel within Europe, and taught me better ways to blog. I then posted blog entries about my 2015 trip. This entry I retitleed from "I Didn't Write About the Britain and Ireland Trip Yet" to "Europe 2015 Home." Here follow photos of my Edmonton friend Doug, whose place I stayed at, who drove me to and from the Edmonton airport, one of Edmonton lilacs, and photos I took on the bus ride from Edmonton home to Williams Lake, 900 kilometres west.
August 15, 2016 Hamburg, Germany
My younger sister has me in Europe again, house sitting in Hamburg, then Brighton, then Manchester, before we return together to Canada. She paid for my plane tickets to and from Europe, my travel within Europe, and taught me better ways to blog. I then posted blog entries about my 2015 trip. This entry I retitleed from "I Didn't Write About the Britain and Ireland Trip Yet" to "Europe 2015 Home." Here follow photos of my Edmonton friend Doug, whose place I stayed at, who drove me to and from the Edmonton airport, one of Edmonton lilacs, and photos I took on the bus ride from Edmonton home to Williams Lake, 900 kilometres west.
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