A Smorgasbord Update

The third annual Winterfest happened at Little Gun Lake over the Family Day long weekend. It was a beautifully sunny Saturday out at the lake, and temperatures, although very warm in the week leading up to the event, cooled off enough in the nights before to leave the ice of the skating and curling rinks in good shape. My neck was still quite sore, so I refrained from skating, but did walk around the lake to collect numbers for a poker run, in addition to touring slowly around the crowd to say hello to all the people that I now know. By the time the sun went down it felt as though I had spoken to basically everyone, even some friends of my youngest sister, and a group of people I met out at Marshall Lake at the start of last summer.

Snow angel painted by one of the many children at Winterfest. Spray bottles with water and food colouring: thanks to Shirley for the great idea!

At the peak of the event there were a solid 250 people there—very impressive for a town of our small size, as there is probably about 130 local full-time, year-round residents in the entire Bridge River Valley. Community spirit was alive and well amongst the crowd, and it was nice to see all the Gun Lakers, Bralorne residents, people from Marshall Lake and Gold Bridge folk out at the same event together. Although we are small in numbers, the geography that separates the towns can lend itself to some dissociation between people and their motivation to attend events that are just a short drive from their yard. Events can be labeled by locals as “up the hill” or “down the hill”, and not welcoming to them if they live in an area that is far from the event itself. Winterfest sure brought people out though, and it was wonderful to see.

That night some teacher friends and I made a trip “up the hill” to the local Bralorne Pub for some dancing, and when I arrived home I took a long bath. I had the urge to curl my spine into a tight little ball, which I did, and things cracked and popped into place. Perhaps this acupuncture thing really works! The next morning I still felt aligned, although that was two weeks ago and the muscles in my neck and upper back still feel cramped and tense. I have been doing lots of yoga, and teaching it to the students as well. There was a time in my life when I practiced yoga religiously, and in the last year I have fallen away from this practice. Nothing like an injury to remind me of the importance of stretching and taking some time each day to practice mindful breathing.

I have been taking a bit of a break from writing and painting lately. There is unfortunately only so much time in a day, and recently I have picked the guitar back up and have been doing some reading. I’ve written and have been practicing a couple of songs, and have been taking a lesson every couple of weeks with a musician who moved to Bralorne at the start of the winter. 

A large handful of new residents have moved in lately, bringing with them some incredibly creative energy and ideas. There is also a Bridge River Valley Arts Festival in the works set to take place over the August long weekend, and the students and I have been attending bake sales at the library where the guitar guy and another new local musician set up their amps and speakers and plugged-in gear and jam out for the afternoon as people filter into the post office-Library to pick up mail and peruse all the goodies. Local residents have been displaying their own paintings, art made from dyed wool, and woven figurines at these bake sales. There is so much artistic talent up here, I suppose partly because we all have the time and the inspiration, and it’s nice to be surprised by just how talented the local people are.

Last weekend I spent some time collecting more firewood. Even though the weather has been warm I am still burning quite a bit each day to keep the house warm. It seems like I burned a lot more than last year, but I am also spending more time here than I did last year. I had some help from Ken and Shirley who cut down a couple of dead trees on their property. We then loaded their truck up with rounds and brought it to my house before burning off all the branches in a warm afternoon bonfire. Cameron also came back for a visit before he heads to Saskatchewan for seeding season, so it made for light work.

I love big fires!

This week at school we hosted another successful Tea Party. We have now had one per month since the start of the school year, and the feedback from residents and from students and parents has been wonderful. It’s a time where students can share their learning or just a casual conversation with people who they might not otherwise get the chance to interact with on their own turf. A lovely young woman who has recently moved to Bralorne came in to help students make apple pie from scratch with the batch of apples sent to us as part of the B.C. School Fruit and Veggie Program. We get a delivery of fresh fruit or vegetable, the smallest size which is still tons for us, monthly, so we try to make something with the food to serve to guests at our tea parties. In January students made delicious rice pudding to go with the kiwis we received.

Here’s a salmon mural we made before the January tea party using our print-making skills with some fish we made out of foam paper.

Last Friday I had a professional development day that I chose to spend with a retiring tutor in Lillooet who is going through and culling some of her resources. What a wealth of information she is! We spent hours going through things as I jotted down notes and tips from a seasoned professional as we excitedly flitted from paper to paper. She also took me on a tour of her amazing, multi-level garden that stretches for about 100 metres out across the back yard of her house. She has built up the garden beds herself with river rocks and bags of cement over the years—forty years of work in progress, and she said that she cans anywhere from 500-700 cans of food from her garden each year, which lasts her though the winter months. She also has a “worm bed” in the front corner, which is literally a bed frame filled with a mound of composting dirt and worms. Such an inspiration for someone like me who hopes to have my own thriving, massive, feed-yourself-through-the-winter garden one day.

We also spent some time playing guitar and she gave me some great songs to learn which I have been working on. People seem to come into my life just when I am in need of them, if I am open and willing to make time to meet with them. One of the beautiful things about the living of life, surely.

Our own worm farm at the school is doing wonderfully. The students and I set it up back in November, and the worms are now reproducing at an incredible rate. It smells like dirt when you lift the lid to feed them food scraps, even looks like dirt in some spots, and little tiny dots of eggs and translucent, wriggling baby worms, as short as a pinky fingernail, are everywhere.

We are also participating in the “Salmonids in the Classroom” program put on by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and our salmon have hatched from eggs to the next stage of life, alevin. Students are responsible for checking the tank every few days and to suck out the dead fish with a turkey baster. We also add 3 capfuls of chemical once per week to keep the water pH balanced.

At the moment the fish are floating in a pocket of flicking tails along the gravel bottom of the tank, but when the orange yolk of the leftover egg sac is used up, they will swim to the surface of the water, breathe a gulp of air from the surface which will inflate their swimming bladder, and will be floating in the middle of the tank and ready for a daily feeding of salmon food.

The DFO guys will come back to do a salmon dissection with us, a ghost net presentation, and hope to bring an elder from this territory to talk to us about local history and to tell us stories about the salmon that once swam all the way up river past Gold Bridge before the dam was built back in the 50s.

Anyway, it's already Saturday afternoon, and I'm off to the school for a couple of hours to organize and flip through resources before heading out for a light cross-country ski in the sunshine. My back is feeling better, although still not 100 %, so trying to take it easy. Have not been out back-country skiing in ages. At least Cameron has now split all my wood, which has really helped because that was a constant chore that didn't let me rest much.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend.