Coyote

This evening I went for a walk with Sanford along this area where there is all this bleached driftwood that gets caught in the dam and then bakes for years in the sun. I'm making a friend a present and I needed to find some straight pieces of worn wood to frame it. Sanford is afraid of steep descents, so I couldn't get him to join me down at the lakeside. Instead he stayed about ten meters above me up on the road and trotted alongside me as I picked over the wood specimens. Seeing Sanford, my car, but no me, a lady on her way home stopped and called out my name. I answered, and she asked if I had noticed the coyotes out on the lake looking at me. There were two of them, frozen, staring, about a football field away. Close by animal standards. 

"You better be careful out here," she cautioned. "Those coyotes'll gang up on your dog you know."

"No kidding. Look at them just staring at us," I replied.

"They're obviously out hunting, and now they're watching us."

"It's getting dark anyways," I said, "so I think I should probably get going. I've found what I needed."

"Yeah. I'd be careful. You just can't trust 'em. Especially hearing all that stuff on the news in the last few years about them attacking people. Just can't trust them out here," she said as I ambled up the steep embankment back onto the road. 

"Well, Sue, thanks for stopping to see if I was okay," I said.

"Of course. You just never know around here. Wanted to make sure you were alright. Saw Sanford here running down the road on his own and that is something strange to see at this time a night. Well, you take care," she said, shutting the door of her idling truck.

I walked the few hundred meters back to my car, my eye on the two black specks now on the other side of the lake. The only sound I could hear was their faint yipping to each other as they trotted along the opposite bank. When I got back to the car I watched them moving. Were they moving towards us now? I couldn't tell. Gentle baying, "woo OOOO, woo OOOO, woo OOO" as they strode on a diagonal from each other, the rear dog keeping perfect pace with the lead. As the night bled out into the stars and the white topped lake turned the blueish hue of twilight, my eyes began to strain, but my ears were lulled into a feeling of safety by the peaceful quiet of this mountain town, the shallow calling of the coyotes dripping my thoughts in the solitude of this very moment.

Down at Lajoie dam before the winter froze over the lake.

Almost

At the moment I am listening to "Goldmund" by Threnody over and over. It is such a starkly-played song. A few beautifully pressed piano notes, a pedal working itself up and down, the rise and fall of a simplistic melody. This has been an especially crazy week, and I am finding myself in need of extra calming activities before I try lying down to what have been fitful sleeps during these past few nights. I have never been good at the whole sleep thing; my busy thoughts, always rummaging around the packed boxes of my mind looking for some lost item, repeating the steps of the day, the conversations, the things said and not said, the swirl of the past enveloping me when I should instead be walking in a dream in some distant world.

We almost lost the school this week. On Monday morning I received a notice to send home to families: the closure of this little school would be voted on by the district trustees at a Tuesday evening board meeting in Lytton, a three hour drive away. I sent notices home and families rallied to attend the meeting.

My own plans saw me in Lillooet on Tuesday at a seminar held by Gabor Maté who is a medical doctor who now writes and speaks widely about attachment, addiction, and the importance of early relationships with available and responsive adults in the lives of children, among many other topics. He also has some very innovative and convincing theories about the rise in the diagnosis of ADD/ADHD in young people. He spoke a lot of the breakdown in family and societal systems. Where there used to be whole villages raising children, we now live in nuclear family structures and the primary caregivers of young children are often under such tremendous stress and pressure imposed by our current style of living that they are not emotionally available to their young children in the way that a child needs to develop healthy brain circuitry for dealing with his/her future emotions and interpersonal relationships. He talked about the importance of helping professionals, like teachers, to question what we ourselves bring to the relationship with our students; I think this is incredibly important, and is something I try to continually ask myself in my relationships with students and with other people in my life, although it is far from easy at times.

There was a lot more in his talk that sparked little fires in my mind, but I'll save it for another time, a time when sleep is not brushing itself across my eyelids.

Back to the school. Parents, students and local business owners attended the meeting last night, even though this meant that some of the students didn't get to bed until midnight, and THEY SAVED THE SCHOOL... for this year at least! Trustees decided not to consider the closure!!! Exciting news for a community of this size. Without a school many of the young families here would be forced to move elsewhere to provide an education for their kids, and the entire economy of the town would be impacted. It certainly came close though, and with such low enrolment numbers I'm sure the threat of closure will not retreat far for long.

Tomorrow I am headed into Vancouver on one of those whirlwind weekend trips. My boyfriend, Darin, who currently lives in Oregon, is going to be meeting me there for a few days of errand-running, people-watching and nature-scouting. I can't wait! We'll probably go on some long hikes in the woods together, and to be honest I am hoping it rains. It doesn't rain much here, and I find myself nostalgic for the sweet smell that bleeds from the pine and cedar forests after a fresh downpour, and for the springy feel of the layered needles and leaves coating the dense forest floor.

Hello coastal forest. I'm coming to visit you.

Here's the song if you would like to spend a few minutes letting a simple melody fill your ears.

"Goldmund" by Threnody

Winterfest Weekend

Another fabulous weekend of outdoor activities. Another marathon of a skate with Shirley on the pond across from her house on Friday. Good ice, but not nearly up to the perfect glassy standards we experienced back in January. The weather has been harassing us skier types with featherings of snow every couple of days, which has accumulated in a thaw-freeze cycle on the ice: bumpy skating, but still enjoyable enough for us to stay out there for hours. There were eagles and ravens watching us from the trees, and on our way back up to her place I spotted a peregrine falcon lingering on the leafless birch branches with a band of ravens. As we neared this great statue of a bird all but two of the ravens flew off. The two left on the branch were like young lovers enveloped in an intense make-out session in a darkened movie theatre; absolutely no concern for anything going on around them except for each other.

Barry has his herd of horses down by the pond, and on our way back up I tried to use some of the natural horsemanship skills I learned in Lillooet to entice Black Jack to come over to me. He is such a sweet horse. He hasn’t been ridden yet, but Barry is going to work with him this summer, hopefully with my help. Soon many of the horses were lining up to get their necks scratched and their mane de-burred, even the little donkey, who is usually quite shy.

You can see a couple of Barry's white horses in the distance. 

The dim lights of Gold Bridge from the side of the highway into town.

On Saturday I went out to Winterfest, which was held on Little Gun Lake. There were about a hundred people, locals and weekenders, a few folks that I even recognized up from Lillooet. I participated in a “poker run” where you have to find jars with numbers in them. You have to collect numbers 1-5, representing the 5 cards you get dealt once you make it back to the table with the five slips of paper in hand.

There was ice fishing and a hockey tournament, and even curling with homemade stones (pieces of wood painted and outfitted quite expertly). I also got pulled along by a snowmobile as I rode one of those skate ski things. I was pretty good at it actually; kind of like wakeboarding. One guy commented as I finished that “none of my teachers could ever do that!”

On Saturday night Ken, Shirley and I were invited to Barry’s beautiful log home for dinner, and I listened intently to his stories of life up here. He’s a great grandfather, raised his family on this land and even buried his parents in the yard of the property his son owns down the road. The place has changed a lot in his life; he has spent his lifetime up here, working with horses out on the land. So many stories. It's amazing to be at a crackling fire listening to a real old-time cowboy talk about the horses he's had, about the days working up in the mountains, out on the land for weeks at a time. No one but you and your horse and the wild, wild outside.

I’m hoping to bring the kids on a spring fieldtrip here to see Barry round penning the green horses. We can also teach them about caring for horses, how to brush and feed them, the life-cycle of a horse, and maybe we can all go out on a little trail ride. It’s going to be really cool to work with Barry and his horses over the warmer months. I’m eager to practice a bunch of the natural horsemanship skills I learned from my days in Lillooet. I have been sincerely missing my time working with Jane and the lovely Aurora!

Today I spent most of the day writing, as I have to submit a piece of work for peer-review in this writing course I’m taking. I cracked open a journal and typed out some rant about living in the darkness in the attic of one’s mind. Not exactly children’s literature, but hey, I am writing for myself first. Emotion-crazed teens might love it, but that’s not even the point at this stage. At the moment I would just like to “finish” a piece of creative writing. So yeah, that’s where I’m starting. I also worked a bunch, but that's not very exciting. Although, I do have a piece of exciting news: I am getting a new student tomorrow!!!!!! She is a wonderful young lady whom I worked with at my teaching post in Lillooet. Super excited to have her in our little school. Five kids! If I get another student I'll have to count them on two hands!

Sanford and I went for a long walk today, and we tracked a cougar all the way down to the river. Things were going smoothly while the cat was on the trail, skirting the trees to enable it to walk where the snow was thinnest. Then suddenly the prints veered off and vanished into the snowless woods, straight down a serious embankment. One thing about Sanford is that he is a bit of a wimp with going down steep hills (it’s probably my fault for dragging him slipping and sliding down hillsides to investigate the old mining equipment and abandoned shacks I find in the most peculiar placements).  It took us a few attempts to find a trail that was animal-worn enough to be up to his navigational standards.

Cougar versus Jacquie

Cougar versus Sanford

The trail we took swiftly turned into an old road, now grown in with pine trees twice my height, and I found some more pieces of mining machinery left to rust and eventually become re-absorbed by the mountains that produced the metals to manufacture them. Such unnecessary waste. If things broke down around here during the boom times, it seems they were simply left wherever it was they decided to stop.

Sanford waited for me while I poked around the crumbling foundations we stumbled across, and then we continued on our exploration of the new trail. We made it all the way down to the river before we met up with the cat tracks again. We followed the animal along the edge of the riverbank until it found a spot to leap across the river on the pods of ice built up on top of the rocks in the middle of the river. No cat sighting today, although that's next to an impossibility with a St. Bernard on my heels. I suppose that's the way I like things, although wouldn't that be SO COOL to see one lapping at the swift water across the river from us.

Cat tracks along the river.

And the trail jumps away...

Ice Capades

I put Sanford in the back of my car for the first time today. Tied his collar down to a hook in the trunk of my RAV4 with his leash so he couldn’t slobber all over my back seat. We went skating. Glorious skating, just the two of us on a lake in the sunset. (Don’t worry G&G, people drive their snowmobiles on the lake and it is TOTALLY frozen).

There are a few little cabins along the shoreline. I am shocked every time I skate up to them that no one is up here living in them; what a perfect spot!

A brush fire smoldered at the edge of the lake, around the kidney-shaped bend, but no one was there tending it, and when the darkness crept up and I went on a lake-walk with Sanford after my feet had become blocks of ice in my skates there was still no one there, and no lights on in the gorgeous old hotel that is now vacated except for the occasional function. There’s a story brewing in my thoughts, but instead of writing it down I must get busy and finish a grant application for outdoor education field trips! Yessssssss! Money for something we do all the time anyways! Wish my little school luck.

Ice art I made in the middle of the lake. There's an old woman's face in there; do you see it?

Ice art the ice made. Between the crack...

Red Balloon

With the new ski friends I’m making up in Bralorne coupled with the sunny weather and starry skies beckoning me outdoors for every spare moment, I have not had much time to collect my thoughts on the blogging front. I’m also taking an 8-week course on writing for children, which has been interesting. The online aspect is not something I’m especially thrilled with—I much prefer the interpersonal feel of actual face-to-face—but since I’m living in these parts I’ll take what I can get.

As I’m sure you may have figured out, I do a LOT of writing each day, most of which lives forlorn in the notebooks that seem to be the staple item in every room of my house. Ideas swarm in my head, make it out onto the page somewhere in a hurried unraveling, and when they have successfully flown the coup of my mind I go on with my day and don’t look back in the rearview for what gems I may have sped past. Keep on truckin’ is my motto with writing.

This is about to change. Hopefully. If I can find the scattered notebooks which are filled with, somewhere in their finished pages, the inklings of a few children’s books. I am an ideas woman, apparently, and delivery of a finished product that is reworked and edited down to a manageable manuscript that I would not cringe if others read is where the course comes to my rescue. I paid hard-earned money for it, so now the work begins, right? I’m not going to let this be akin to paying for a gym membership that I never use. Not this time. I’m going to get something done here, something edited that I could maybe let someone in my family read. Someone who already loves me and would therefore probably tell me that it is a great story “honey” but what about on the third page where you used the f-word? Oops. Forgot to edit that out. Sorry.

I’m going to write a kid’s book, for myself more than anything, just to “finish” one of these ideas. How many words could it truly be, right? It’s not like I’m writing a novel. Yet. Just a kid’s book. For myself. If only I could find that notebook from last summer, where somewhere in some city backyard there is this little girl in a frilly dress and shiny see-your-face-in-me shoes. A little girl who finds the string of a bright red balloon caught high up in a tree branch and decides to pull it loose.

Tracks

Packrat

 Grouse

 Wabbit

MOOOOSE!!!

This...

is what sprung up in my garden this weekend...

Foundations

I feel like a gardener, hard at work all winter, packing fertile soil onto my barren landscape in fistfuls gathered from the nearby forest floor. Each time I explore a new trail from my doorstep I bring back one handful more, and slowly the mound grows, spreads out a thick patch of potential. Months ago there was finally enough to begin tenderly pushing seeds into the finger holes I made in the soft bed of churned soil. The dirt under my fingernails greeted me each night under the lamplight while my calloused palms cradled the edges of books. The words, the “how-to’s” spilled into my morning tea as I watched the dawning mist cling and lift from the jagged ridges of nearby mountains, the names of which I knew not. I began to consult experts about growing seeds in this type of climate—it’s an unusual year they told me, an unusual place, and so I have prepared for what may come by taking my expectations gingerly by the hand, leading them deep into the woods in the darkness of a cloud-blown night so that they would never find their way back to me; although I can still hear them calling if I scan the horizon for the trace.

I have been a novice gardener living here, for what will be six months this Tuesday, and still in spite of my inexperience the rows have slowly formed. I have not been afraid to ask for help, and this has sped the process greatly. It seems that the tools are shouting from my email inbox, the tips and tricks from professionals pouring in. I am a new teacher, a new gardener starting to work the land in a place I am only just beginning to know. I am growing my garden here with conversation, with names, with phone calls to ask for what I need. My garden feeds itself with dialogue; discussion between my own thoughts, between the rain and the sun, between the mountains and rivers I take solace in standing beside, between my own voice and the voices of the people I have met in this community which add to the voices of the people I have met during my brief professional life as a teacher. The seeds which will feed and sustain the rest of my time here are sprouting and in their small tender shoots I see that the base of a life has been built, a solid foundation has been layered and established, and, although it is still vulnerable to a downpour, I feel that I know where to go for help. On Tuesday I will have built up the dirt in my garden with 182 tiny fistfuls, and each new day I will keep adding one more. 

Full Moon

Life is good. Just got back from a solo skate on Little Gun Lake with the full moon and my shadow as my constant companions. What a living this is! Pure, solitary, so close to the earth, the stars brighter and clearer than I have ever seen them. Amazing to be out there on the lake, the creaks and groans rippling in the deep slabs of ice as the frozen blanket shifted under my weight. It’s almost an alien sound, like someone holding a large piece of aluminum sheeting by the edge and flapping it up and down; metallic sounding from deep below the layers of ice, the sound shooting out across the lake and back to where I stand alone under the moon. I skated across the WHOLE LAKE, back and forth, did some twirling. For someone who had only skated a handful of times before moving here I seem to be progressing quickly, but I have also been getting in lots of practice. If it’s not going to get busy snowing up here, at least it’s cold enough to keep the ice in good shape.

This past weekend I was outside for hours upon hours EVERY DAY! On Friday Sanford and I went on a huge hike up to Sucker Lake, followed some fresh moose tracks for a while, peered in the windows of abandoned buildings. The usual Bridge River Valley outing. On Saturday I made a new ski-touring friend. Awesome guy. I hadn’t met him before but heard he was a trustworthy gentleman so I called him up Friday night to suggest we head out skiing the next day and he was all for it! We rode up to Sunshine (“the local ski hill”) on his sled, with me standing with both feet along the left side of the sled, my left hand on the handlebar, he on the right, his right hand on the right handlebar – tandem steering and a place to hold onto in the middle with our other hands. It was so much FUN! We chatted all day about the craziness of the world, documentaries, 2012, all the nerdy stuff I thrive on. Then on Sunday it was out for another afternoon of skating on the lake. YES!

Sanford and I on our walk.

I have been so busy with work, my little outdoor adventures, wood chopping (the shed needed to be re-stocked with burnable piles) and reading that I have not had much time to spend writing posts. I do however have a pile of pictures to share. A few for tonight, and perhaps some tomorrow, time permitting. The weather has been beautiful, and with the great outdoors literally beckoning from my doorstep I just can’t seem to stay inside long enough to type something up!