Oh My Deer!

My blog titles seem to be getting cheesier as the month goes on, but hey, I am an elementary school teacher after all, and after spending a day hanging with kids my mind can get a little silly by the time I sit down to write.

Today I had one student, so we threw the usual schedule to the wind and randomly mixed our subjects. It was awesome! Snowshoeing with Sanford for PE, sewing christmas presents for art, some one-on-one math tutoring, and a shared reading of Zlata's Diary, which is a book consisting of actual diary entries by an 11-year-old girl living in war-shocked Sarajevo (Bosnia) in the early 90s. Very eye-opening material for all of us who have spent our childhoods growing up in a peaceful country.

The grizz was still here this morning. I eagerly looked out all the windows as my water boiled for my morning oatmeal and I didn't see him. Good! Cool while it lasted but I'm glad he's gone I thought as I started getting dressed for work. A quick second glance out my bedroom window and some movement caught my eye. He had climbed a tree and was mauling the branches with his claws and teeth, scraping the tiny berries into his mouth. Great. At least with him in this position I could move my garbage. We have to take our trash to the dump here, no curb-side pickup for this tiny town--although we don't even have curbs or sidewalks--and living alone I have about a month of garbage build-up stored in my little shed. The door is SUPER easy to push open, and buddy bear was camping out right behind the shed over the past couple of days. I moved the pail to the sturdy red barn shed, collected another armful of wood, stoked up the fire, and off I went to school.

Bear in tree...

Not sure how I missed this overly large tree ornament on the first look.

Hahahaha... for you, PB.

I arrived home this afternoon to a message from the Conservation Officer saying that he is aware of the bear and that he has sent some rubber bullets up with a resident in town to deter the animal from spending its time in the area. Hopefully it is old enough to know how to hibernate! If I see the bear again I'll give another ring to Bob to see what the protocol is if the rubber bullet trick goes unsuccessfully. Fingers crossed that this little guy was eating his last breakfast on the road before searching out a cozy winter den.

My student's Mom caught her first doe on her hunting trip today. Today is the last day of doe season, with four-point buck season lasting until Dec. 15 ("points" refer to the number of points or tips on the antlers of a buck). She was with a couple of experienced hunters, and they shot a four-point buck the size of a small horse and another large doe in addition to the doe she got. They were hanging them at my neighbour's place (although everyone is basically my neighbour) and I am going to help them skin the animals tomorrow after school. My student kept asking me if I was okay while we touched the deer and watched them hang their gutted bodies. They had to saw off part of the buck's leg so it would fit in the shed. I suppose I looked a little worried. It was just that the deer looked so alive still, like they would blink at me at any moment.

We are so far removed from the preparation of our food when we enter a grocery store that it's interesting to finally be involved in helping prepare some food that has been organically raised and caught in the mountains. A much better situation for the animal and for our bodies than the factory farm scenario, in my opinion.

Scroll for pics of the deer.








WARNING... The following pictures are of dead and hanging animals... not for the faint of heart...

Doesn't she look like she is going to blink?

The third deer is hanging in the back...

I just had a very intelligent thought. Perhaps my pet bear is camping out with the fresh meat selection at my neighbour's place! Let's just hope he is out deep in the forest searching out a cave for the winter...

Grizzly Sleepover

There's a bear living in my yard. A grizzly bear.

I went from never having seen one, to having one camp out in my yard over the last two days. Today he was digging in the snow and eating leaves between my front door and my car, so I had to phone my principal and the student's parents to tell them I would be a bit late. Sanford figured out where I live last night, and this morning he was barking up a storm at this bear to no avail.

This little guy has been all around town, climbing onto people's porches and seeming quite content to munch on leaves while dogs bark at it. I suppose I can't blame the bear for having such great taste, as I do have one of the nicest spots in town :) My yard has a pond for him to drink from and a bunch of trees with little berries left on them.

He looks pretty scraggly and skinny so perhaps he is trying to get what food he can before hibernation. That or he has no idea how to hibernate because he has never been shown.

A one-ton grizz was poached off the Hurley a couple of weeks ago, and all that was taken from the carcass were the paws. I hope this wasn't his/her Mom. I left a message for the Conservation Officer this afternoon, Bob Butcher, so hopefully they are able to trap it and relocate it. It would be a shame if they have to put the little guy down. I'll be sure to keep you updated on the situation.

Look at those claws!

In other news, this past weekend I went to Whistler for an avalanche course. I took it through Whistler Alpine Guides Bureau. A very necessary thing to have when I will be spending so much time in the backcountry, skiing in avalanche terrain. The course was awesome. We learned about avalanche rescue, as well as proper techniques for transceiver searches (a transceiver is the beacon worn before entering the backcountry that emits a signal and can be switched to "search" to pick up the signals of other beacons). We learned how to probe for a missing person once a beacon is pinpointed. Lots of scenarios to practice our skills. We dug a snow pit to examine the various "weak layers" of snow, specifically a layer of "surface hoar" that fell early in the year and is quite unstable and prone to failure, producing slab avalanches. The weekend had extreme avalanche conditions, so we had to do our work inside the bounds of Whistler mountain, because travelling in the backcountry would have been way too dangerous. I was the only woman on the course, other than one of the other guides who was "shadowing" our course before starting to guide her own.

I learned lots about attending to weather patterns and about paying attention to snow crystal formations in layers that can be "persistently weak" throughout the ski season. All the stuff we take for granted when we travel to a resort where the avalanche risk is controlled.

The Duffy Lake road, the alternate route to Lillooet before taking Highway 40 on to Gold Bridge, was closed on Sunday because of a controlled avalanche, so I didn't make it home on Sunday until 11 pm. Highway 40 was itself quite rough, with giant boulders strewn across the road, fog so thick I had to drive 30 km/h to see anything in front of me, and a couple of spots where the road has completely washed away. Thank goodness for my trusty RAV4. Certainly not a dull moment living in this corner of the world. I love it!!!

Here are a couple of pictures that I took on Friday during my drive on highway 40 towards Lillooet on my way to Whistler. They were all taken from a single spot on the road.

A stream of mist over the river.

Looking back towards Gold Bridge. The humped mountain on the right is Green Mountain, and Sloan is further to the right, just out of the shot. We are overlooking the Bridge River, which flows into Carpenter Lake which is made by a dam about an hour's drive away from Gold Bridge.

A picture with my car on the road on the right, to give you an idea of the perspective.

The next corner...

Winter Begins

I'm sure glad I dealt with my wood pile when I did. The snow has been falling relentlessly for days, and this morning the tips of Sloan were finally visible again,  painted orange in the sun's light. A beautiful sunny day illuminating the fresh feet of snow.

Today I took the students cross country skiing for PE. The school, being in such a mountainous location, has a whole bucket of skis, enough for ten kids! There was even a pair of boots, skis and poles that fit me perfectly. A parent who runs the preschool on Mondays and Thursdays brought his skis and set out a track for us around the field, and then we finished the hour by playing ski tag. It was so much fun, and I am looking forward to getting out with the kids onto some of the trails around town.

I am constantly amazed by the solitary moments out in nature here. I spend so many of my hours outside, more than I ever have in my life. There is a lot of physical work to be done, from splitting and stacking wood to shoveling through the feet of heavy early-season snow to create paths to my sheds and out of my driveway. I enjoy the work. It's repetitive, and because of that it becomes almost meditative, like walking in the woods. Each evening after I arrive home from the school I take Sanford out on a long walk in the turning night. We bound through the snow, and now it is deep enough to warrant snowshoes, although Sanford doesn't make it nearly as far with his sinking paws.

The other night I was out excavating my driveway under the clear starry sky. There was not a single car that passed, even though it took me over two hours to dig out my car and clear paths to my sheds. Many moments to stare at the stars, to feel in nature, to feel a part of something larger than the self. A place to expand, to pause and watch the breath linger in the air. The city contracts me, presses down on my soul. I realise this now. Here I feel free to grow, to let my roots get down deep, to feel what it is like to exist without the constraints of the city. Now that I am through the adjustment phase I am absolutely loving it here, loving the solitude, the quiet reflection.

After shovelling all night and splitting wood under the stars I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of what I at first thought was a highways plough. They are one of the few vehicles that regularly occupy the roads here, with their flashing orange lights a beacon of their passing. It sounded like the same dull roar, and then it was gone as suddenly as it began. It came back a second time, and my brain tried to catch the noise, to pin it down to something that I know. I soon realised it was a wind coming in howling gusts between the cracks in my windows and doors, so strong it was haunting. I listened to it whistle through the trees and through my house like a spirit from the mountain itself, the voice of winter calling out from her midnight slumber, calling out to those listening in the night, to those living in the shadow of the mountain.

Moose Tracks and Wood

Last night I went for a walk at dusk with Sanford. This was after spending four hours splitting and stacking wood with Harry Dick, who lives in a trailer down the street from me. He used a gas-powered splitter, on loan from Neill, who is Tracy's father (her mother and step-dad built the beautiful house I now rent). Tracy and her family, husband Scott, their two kids and Neill brought me a HUGE HUGE HUGE load of wood yesterday in thanks for walking Sanford. The last batch they even dropped off with an excavator!

Harry and I worked until the machine ran out of fuel, and plan to finish the rest of the pile this afternoon. He is an interesting fellow, and was born here at the hospital in Bralorne, which is now in the slow, small-town speed process of being torn down. Bralorne is a town ten kilometres up the road from Gold Bridge, with a population of about 60. Those who live there tend to be younger than the mostly retirement-aged folks who live here in Gold Bridge, and the main industry is the Bralorne Gold Mine, which opened again this May after twenty or so years of hiatus. The Mineshaft Pub also employs a number of people, and there is even the Lone Goat Coffee Shop up there, although the two times I tried to go it was closed.

Back to the walk last night. What a beautiful place this is! I headed out fully clothed for the -9 outside, picked up Sanford, and we walked through the snow into the woods. I could not believe that one of our usual trails was still completely unmarked by traffic, even though the snow had fallen days ago. We set off along the old road that leads to a now-abandoned mine shaft, and the bare tree branches let in a complete view of Mount Sloan and the dammed Downton Lake to our right. After about a hundred yards we started to see the animal tracks. Deer big and small traipsing across the road and up the bank, the impressions of rabbit and grouse. And then... MOOSE TRACKS!!! A moose was on the path that we wander down all the time! How cool is that!? We followed the tracks down the road for quite a while  before I lost it. Sanford had beaten me there and walked all over it and in circles where it left the road, and the light of my headlamp was too dim to see which tracks were his and which belonged to the moose. I'll have to check it out again in the next couple of days.

Well, I must go stoke up my stove and get back to some wood-splitting. Happy Sunday :)

Virtual Tour #1, Gold Bridge, BC

I am back. Being sick is pretty depressing, but being sick ALONE is even worse! I have been cooped up for the last couple of days with a fever while the snow was snowing and then the sun was shining. Very happy to be feeling better today. It went from bare ground to a foot of snow in less than 24-hours this Wednesday, and then the sun came out and lit up the ground. Hopefully this snow-and-sun combo happens often around here :)

I've finally taken some pictures of the town to share with you all, so you can get an idea of the kind of space my life occupies these days.

Here's a view of the General Store in the daytime. The dramatic peak is Mt. Sloan. It is the backdrop to most of the views in town, as you may notice, although this evening it was shrouded in some cloud.

This is around the block at about 5 pm.

The Gold Dust Motel, the parking lot of which doubles as one of my routes to the school. It is run by a wonderful woman named Darlene; she and I spend lots of time chatting and I get throw lots of balls around for her dog Timber during my back-and-forths. One thing about this town is that almost everyone here has a dog (or two). We all also have lots of time to stop and chat with each other.

After the motel we reach the school! There is actually two separate rooms. My class is in the front room, with an attached library, and the parent-run preschool is in the other room twice a week. Behind the building is a playground, and down the hill to the left is a grass field.

View of Sloan and Green Mountain to its left from the parking lot of the school. Lovely to watch in the morning over the first cup of green tea.

View down the street from the school, just above the motel parking lot. My other route to the building.

View of school on the left and the tourist info centre on the right as I walk towards home.

Walking down the hill from the school one finds the Post Office/Library building. Post Office is run by Mary, and is open weekdays except Wednesday. The Library is run by Jean and is open Mon., Thurs. and Sat. for a couple of hours each day. Pretty impressive for a town of this size! In the area, if one includes Gun Lake, Tyaughton Lake, Bralorne and the surrounds, there are about 200 people living spread out over the Bridge River Valley area.

The Hotel (and did you notice... there is a hotel AND a motel!), and the General Store again on the right.

Just up from the General Store we have the old bakery building. The sign says: The Model Bakery. Operated 1937-1964 by Kay Bean and her late husband, Bill. First batch bread: 50 loaves, 5 cents each, or 6 for 25 cents. Baked all types of bread, buns, donuts, and cakes. Highest output of bread 6,000 loaves per week in 1950s.

Doreen Bean still lives here for most of the year. She was born here and her parents used to run the bakery. She had me over for a lovely dinner with some local ladies one night, and all the old bakery equipment, the mixers and ovens and such, are still in the building!!! She said that the mixer used to be able to take 50 pounds of flour at a time! She also has a ton of cats which I tried to befriend over the summer as they were frequent visitors to the pond in my backyard. The attempts were unsuccessful, but while the kittens and cats were cuddling by her stove I was able to pet some. I counted 15 of them while I was there.

This cabin next to the store was built by the guy who infamously cut down the Golden Spruce on Haida Gwaii. His name was Grant Hadwin, and his story is told in The Golden Spruce by John Vaillent. I need to read this book someday soon :)

This is looking down my street towards the old bakery on the right and the Hadwin cabin on the left.

Looking down the same street in the direction towards the school.

More photos to come, much more to say. It is a beautiful life. Spent lots of time trying to get the snow off the tarp covering my wood pile today, and also went on a walk down by the river. Note for future: covered wood piles are a must when living somewhere that uses wood for heat!

There is more to be seen in town, like a graveyard and some more buildings and houses. There will be time for another tour soon. For those of you wondering where I am, I have included a map link just below this post. Click on the hypertext (blue text) that says "Squamish-Lillooet" and a map will pop up that you can use to zoom in and check the area out. Enjoy!

Routine

Leave the city in the same frantic hurry that is sustained through all visits "out", following pinking clouds into the mountains. Let the mind wander back and forth between past, future, present, the clouds and peaks occasionally summoning it back to the now, calling it back to the beauty of this landscape. Drive over the Hurley, quickly, cautiously rounding corners. Check to make sure high-beams are on, twice; the black eats them so hungrily, here they don't travel far. Avoid the largest potholes where possible. Drive up into the snow line as it begins to thicken and sparkle in the high-beam light. Pass a few trucks, a logging truck descending without a load, pass a guy just finishing up his shift manning a gigantic yellow plough with tires taller than a person and chained. The logging just off the Hurley has kept it cleared for early-winter driving for people like me.

Stop to look at the tracks along the edge of the road, their trails just shy of the snowbank--rabbit, deer, some type of cat, palm-sized prints without claw dimples. It becomes obvious that the cat didn't walk the road for long before leaping over the bank. I saw a lynx on my way over the Hurley this past Friday. Headlights met its grey body crossing the road as I rounded a corner, its movement like a smooth band of light across my vision.

Keep driving. Think past, future, the present beauty of the landscape, the snow, the brand new skis in the back of the car, which would be back to future again. How beautiful the trees look with boughs waxed with snow. Snow becoming thinner until the ground, the trees are bare grey in my headlights.

Four hours after leaving Vancouver and the dimly lit sight of Gold Bridge. Pull into darkened driveway. Crumple newspaper and light wood stove. Start to unpack car in four trips--suitcase, empty recycling bin since I have to pack it out to recycle anything, refilled prescriptions, guitar, other odds and ends that are easily collected in the city, new skis ready for backcountry travel. Check on fire as I start to put two weeks worth of groceries in the fridge and freezer. Add more wood. Outside to re-cover wood pile; tarp has blown off in the weekend wind. Turn on kettle. Move plants back to their usual spots throughout the house, out of the kitchen where the heat was kept on to keep pipes and leaves from freezing. Run hot bath. Stoke stove with maximum-sized wood pieces, almost burn wrist.

Get into bath, think of past and future. Think of how nice warm water feels on cold feet.

Get dressed in layers: long john's under pajama pants, just until the recesses of the house are satiated with heat. The hardwood floor is last to warm.

Start list for next city trip: need slippers.

Windsor House School: Room to Grow and Be Yourself

On Monday this week I decided to do something a little unique for my Professional Development Day: I visited another school. As working teachers we rarely have such opportunities, so I jumped at the chance to visit Windsor House School, a "democratic, parent-participation" school in North Vancouver that I have been curious about for some time. If you have never heard of it before, a quick visit to their site and a watch of their video will surely pique your interest. What I saw was utterly amazing, kids free to be kids while learning what they are passionate about, interacting with material and topics of their choosing, mingling with other kids both older and younger then themselves. I saw kids free to "grow and be [themselves]", something that is not often the case in the one-size-fits approach that has been characteristic of the "traditional" schooling system.

As soon as I parked my car in the lot it became apparent that this school was different. There were a couple pairs of kids outside on their own, full hockey pads and helmets, having what appeared to be a spontaneous game of two-on-two hockey. I watched them battle it out for a few minutes before going inside. I was immediately greeted with smiles from students, staff, parents. I stood in the hallway waiting to meet the principal while kids excitedly filtered in and out of the front door, some signing in their arrival time beside their name on sheets that hung on the wall.

Before noon I had watched a group of enthusiastic kids participating in a morning Taekwondo lesson in the BMR (Big Muscle Room), a room with enough costumes to clothe the whole school in multiple-era fashions and enough cushions to built a three-storey fort! I had already walked down the hallway and had seen an impromptu theatrical performance unfold before my eyes, where young ladies were dressed up and posed frozen in the hall as a group of mannequins. I had entered a room of mostly primary kids and joined them in their exploration of pirates: they were painting a picture of a gigantic ship, had already made hats, and later in the afternoon were working on making flags, a compass, and clues to a pirate treasure hunt. I had watched a group of boys building the most amazing and intricate Lego creations I had ever seen, with very imaginitive storylines when asked about their structures, and had witnessed some of the teenagers playing guitars and pianos with such intricate skill my breath was taken away. I had even watched the start of a stop-motion video created by a group of boys on one of their new ipads; this place was certainly different. Kids engaged in activities of their choosing, all day!

According to the principal, mess is a perpetual problem, as is the level of noise in the building with all the excited kids running around, but in my experience the most fruitful learning environments are often messy and noisy because learning itself is messy and noisy!

As I microwaved my lunch (there is no set lunchtime here, everyone eats when they feel hungry) a young girl that I had met earlier came in.

"Can you help me?" she asked.

"Yes of course."

"Can you carry my soup down the hall?" After a brief pause, she continued on: "it may look like there are no rules here, but there are. You just don't see them if it is your first day. I have been here a while so I know the rules, and kids are not allowed to carry hot things in the hall."

Kids can choose whether or not to go to classes, although once they enter high school if they don't go, they don't get credit and therefore don't graduate. Also if they choose not to go they are expected to take the initiative by communicating with the teacher beforehand and organizing a way to make up the missed work. This truly is a place where self-directed learning is practiced and thriving. Throughout the day teachers may be assigned to walk around the school interviewing kids about their activities and documenting learning, as most of the learning here occurs in organically-evolving, out-of-classroom experiences like the ones I witnessed during my visit.

Out on the field I met a man who was my age who had gone there since he was 8 or so and was back now as an employee. In our conversation I mentioned that I had dropped out in grade 10. He asked how old I was, and it turns out that we are both the same age.

"While you were dropping out of school," he said, "I was here spending half the year planning a one-month camping trip to Wyoming [or somewhere else cool, I can't remember the exact place, but it's not the place that matters]. We were planning the ininerary, how to travel there, we were fundraising, mapping, planning accommodation, gathering equipment. It was a huge undertaking. That's what I was doing in grade 10."

Wow, I thought. How different my life would be if I had known about this alternative school at 16. Then, as I finally pulled into my driveway in this tiny town in the mountains, I thought, perhaps not.