Anderson Lake Paddle

Last weekend I went to visit a teacher colleague and friend who lives in Shalath, in a quaint cabin right on Anderson Lake. I was originally going to go skiing here in the mountains around home, but my neck had been sore for a week and I thought it better to take it easy, as well as wanted to seize the opportunity for some collaboration to connect our intermediate students online.

The first night we had a fire down on the beach out front of his place, watching the occasional train snake its lights like a stream of lanterns wandering over the land on the opposite shore. I am always struck by the foreignness, yet comfort I find in the mechanized sound of a train, of the squeal of metal across the tracks, of the shifting and groaning of ricketing carts clicking along through the perfect blackness. I could listen for hours. 

A scout truck drives the tracks first to make sure they are clear of debris, flashing orange, siren lights hitting the rocky banks, bouncing off the glassy dark water. And then the train, small white lights blinking from between trees off at the far end of the lake, noiseless at first, and then finally, after about an hour, passing us. How hypnotizing and mysterious the sound. Almost relaxing to me, like I could fall asleep listening to it just as I could the rush of a mountain stream. Pair that with the alluring qualities of an outdoor fire made with dry driftwood along the lakeshore and it makes for a pretty amazing (and cost-efficient) way to spend a Saturday night.

The next morning we were up packing a lunch to take on a canoe ride down the lake. A friend stopped by who lives with his wife up in what sounds to be a remarkable dwelling off the High Line Road, connecting Shalath and Seton to Pemberton through D’arcy. The more time I spend exploring this area of the world, the more people I come into contact with who live an alternative lifestyle somewhat like the one I would one day imagine for myself: self-sufficient, huge garden with the ability to save food year-round, off the grid, dwelling self-made of local materials. 

The more I think of the possibilities, the clearer my direction is becoming, and the more people I am meeting who are already living like this or who hope to soon. For now I am working to save and save and save, but with land prices as high as they are, this save and save and save is going to take me a while. But it’s nice to become clear about just what it is that I am working towards. At least I will not be paying city prices for a piece of land, but still, I am starting from scratch as a single income person living on a teacher’s salary. 

Luckily my tastes are simple, and staying up to date on fashion trends or vacationing in lavish accommodation does not even make it onto my list of priorities. I’d rather spend time making my own bread than shopping, would rather sleep in a tent or a hostel than a private hotel room, and this gives me hope that one day I really will have enough for a substantial down payment. But hey, we’ve all got to start somewhere. And there are people living in this way all over the place here. It is truly possible, and that realization makes me even more dedicated to one day making it a reality regardless of how it is viewed by others. (I find paying $800,000 for a tiny snippet of land in the city much more crazy, but hey, "luckily we are not all the same or the world would be a dull place", as Barry always says).

Anyway, this wonderful man stopped by and the three of us had a marvelously enlightening conversation about the fragmented parts of reality and how we need to work to put them back into a whole, about how science has tried to take things apart, to look at reality in pieces, to look closer and closer and closer at things until we start to forget that all these small things are a part of a larger, working whole. That everything is a part of everything else and that nothing exists in isolation. Just my type of banter. We sat there sipping our tea and coffee, chatting as we watched bald eagles dip and dive as they caught small fish from the lake and then fought over the catches. Juveniles with their mottled feathers sharing trees with their white-headed parents, while a flock of white and black ducks swam out in the middle of the lake.

What an amazing place. And it was nice to get a little break from winter since I am less able to participate in all the winter sports here due to my sore neck. But canoeing, a light paddle down the lake, should be fine.

So we head out, lunch packed, tea pot for making tea on the beach fire we would later start, wind sending small ripples over the surface of the lake, eagles high in the trees all along the shoreline.

We stopped at a beach along the way and I walked up to a large Douglass Fir to sit and think with it a little before continuing our paddle on to our destination.

We are now walking to a waterfall, and cougar tracks greet us from the snow in the trail we follow into the forest. Old ones, as the edges are melted out. There was much beaver activity on the shore where we landed; gnawed-down trees, a trough pushed into the sand and rock of the beach where the trees were dragged into the water. How many people are inside today, how many of our students are online, playing video games, instead of having an experience like this that is FREE if one just has a canoe and paddle, or alternatively has access to two-legged propulsion. How calming for the spirit to be outside, to be asking questions of prints in the snow, to be witnessing the constant evolution of life at play and feeling a part of it.

We too were on the beach, and we too will leave our footprints in the snow and sand, evidence of our time there.

We walked to the old cabin where this man whom I mentioned earlier lived when he first moved to the area from Germany, I think over fifty years ago. We walked to a waterfall where a prospector once spent many months searching for gold and possibly finding it.

The waterfall.

The cabin.

Once back at the lakeshore we built a fire atop a couple of logs to keep it away from the damp ground. We set our tea to boil, ate homemade bread and cheese and chocolate. And we felt more at home in this place, the only two people around, sitting on a rocky beach with the sky overhead reflected on the canvas of lake stretched out before us. 

I also went back to the cabin on my own to take some pictures and to just be there in the quiet of it. At one point I heard some noise, which ended up being just the drips of snow leaking through the hole in the roof, but I like a little jolt out of life now and again.

To me such a day is the living of life, and this is why I choose to live here. I choose to stay here more and more instead of fighting the highway down to the city. It’s days like this that remind me of how I hope to spend much of my time in this life: as a participant in simple actions—in the paddling of a canoe, in the making of a fire, in the walking through the woods—with only the sounds of an upcoming waterfall, a steady river running beside, and my breath leaving and returning to my lungs again and again.