Homes Sweet Homes

I was fortunate enough to be born and raised in a beautiful place. My hometown is built on the shores and hillsides by Kootenay Lake. Once a major center of trade and mining in my province of British Columbia, Nelson boasts many beautiful stone buildings constructed around the turn of the last century. Golden sand beaches dot the shore all along the lake and densely forested mountains rise above it. My winters were spent skiing and sledding, summers spent swimming and sunning. A haven for artists and students, my town fostered a uniquely vibrant cultural scene. People still flock there from all over in search of a kind of Utopia. 

I left my hometown at nineteen to attend university. I met my husband and never lived in my hometown again, save a stint of a few months after I was finished with my studies. I pined for Nelson for a few years, always desiring to return and make it my home once again. In the meantime, my husband and I moved for his career from Vancouver to the East Kootenays, then to Vancouver Island, and finally to the Fraser Valley where we have now lived for twenty-three years. I soon learned that my hometown is not the only beautiful place in the world, let alone in my province of BC. 

I remember going for walks in the East Kootenay town of Kimberley, where we spent a couple of very happy years as a young family. There was one spot down the hill from our house (Kimberley is built on a steep hill with three plateaus) with a wide view that highlighted the distant Rocky Mountains. I would regularly stop there on my walks and gaze admiringly at that fiercely dramatic mountain range. Before we left for Vancouver Island where my husband had been offered a transfer, I walked to my spot to say farewell to that special view, hoping it would not be too long before I could return to visit it again. 

I had for a long while secretly longed to live on Vancouver Island. An island life seemed a romantic idea to me. We moved at the start of winter, and I could not believe how mild the climate was. Kimberley's temperatures regularly dipped into the double digits celcius in winter and my little boys loved to watch the snow removal machines do their seemingly constant job in front of our house. We were lucky to see any snow on the Island. Moss and lichen grew rampantly on the north sides of buildings, and we could often visit a nearby beach in January, not necessarily to swim, although our younger son did have a talent for getting wet every time we neared the water. We have a lovely family photo taken during the winter after our older daughter was born. We are sitting on a beach in January, in jeans and fleece jackets, squinting in the sunshine. We lived a few blocks above the Courtenay air park which was built on the flats of the Courtenay river. My husband worked from home, so the kids and I would give him some quiet by taking daily walks down to the air park. We could watch the small planes take off and land, and enjoy the vibrant bird life and aquatic antics of seals and salmon. On weekends our little family would visit local beaches or drive up into the mountains for hikes. Life was indeed good. 

After the non-profit my husband worked for lost their core funding, we were on the move again - up Island to an off-grid lodge in the mountains west of Campbell River. The place felt like my Nelson home in that it was built on the shore and hillsides above a wide lake, but much more remote. The winters were milder, too. When we did get snow, it was generally wet and packable. The kids had a great time playing year round, no matter the weather. They rode their bikes, paddled in little river kayaks, hiked up trails built into the hillsides, swam to the dock, played in the sand, and climbed trees. I soaked in the views - the layered mountains across the lake were an ever-changing pallette of hues I never tired of gazing at. Campbell River provided everything else we needed. Many hours were spent at soccer fields and parks in the beautiful waterfront community. Discovery Passage provided endless hours of whale and seal watching. Once when we were having a meal at the Beehive Cafe, which was basically built on the dock at Foreshore Park, I watched silently as a grey whale rose and dove repeatedly right in front of me.

After five years of off-grid living we were on the move again. Our family of six had outgrown, not the beauty, but the living and working situation, of The Lodge. Saying goodbye to The Island was one of the hardest decisions I had ever had to make. I loved it so much. I still do. I get excited every time I board a ferry to visit our daughter in Victoria where she has chosen to make her home - an Island girl through and through . We were excited to start a new family chapter, but the temptation to flip the pages back was strong. We persevered, however, and began to plant roots in the Fraser Valley. Those roots are fairly deep now, after twenty-three years of making the Upper Fraser our home. 

What struck me first about the Upper Fraser were the mountain views. Mt. Cheam towers over the community of Agassiz, but is still a feature of the landscape in the city we call home now, west of there. How I have grown to love that mountain, and her neighbour, Lady Peak! I have been fortunate enough to climb to the top of Mt. Cheam and admire the long, wide views in each direction. The Valley has much to recommend it. I admire the farmers who work so hard to provide locally grown food. I enjoy the cities being broken up by fields of productive lands and a myriad of rivers intersecting them. The landscape in The Valley is open and generous and encircled with stunning mountain peaks. I also enjoy the fact that within an hour or two of driving, we can be at the ocean in beautiful Vancouver or White Rock. 

I am also incredibly fortunate to spend much time in the Cascade mountains just over the mountain pass from the Fraser Valley and into the Okanagan/Similkameen. The Resort my husband works at (and lives at most of the week) benefits from both the moisture of the Coast and the aridity of the Okanagan. Again, I feel at home. In some ways I have come full circle. I was born and raised at an elevation of 1700-odd feet, which is basically the same elevation as the top of the resort's ski hill. The resort is located near the Eastern border of a huge provincial park, the beauty of which is renowned and loved dearly by many in all four distinct seasons. 

If home is where the heart is, then my home is forever British Columbia. I'm not sure I could live anywhere else. If I can never get on a plane again, I am fairly sure I would be happy continuing to simply explore this incredible province. 

'til next time, 

Rebecca

Dancing, Waiting for the Dam to Break

I was reading something humorous recently that said choosing where to live in our country should be based on which natural disasters one is most comfortable dealing with. Are you relatively okay with tornadoes and hail storms? Move to the prairies. Content with cleaning up after the tail end of a hurricane? Live on the East Coast. Good with forest fires and flooding? Alberta and the Interior of British Columbia are your best bet (although, the East Coast has had some share in the forest fire phenomenon in recent years). Feeling calm about the ever present threat of a major earthquake? Hightail it to the West Coast. I live between the Interior of BC and the West Coast. The potential for disaster is as varied as my province is geographically dynamic. Before you roll your eyes at me for calling my province 'geographically dynamic' I got this off the trusty internet just now: 

"Geography is a study of the earth and phenomena related to it. The earth is dynamic with variations in its physical and cultural environments. These geographical phenomena, whether physical or human, are not static but highly dynamic. They change over time."

If you need proof, Google what just happened on the Chilcotin River about 450 kms north of where I sit. A massive slide (or more accurately, a slump) dammed the river, creating a lake 11 kilometers long. Experts predicted the water to start moving across the top of the landslide, and while hoping for the best outcome downstream, communities along the Chilcotin and the Fraser Rivers braced for the worst. The damage downstream was held off by the debris emptying into the much wider Fraser River and then being purposefully trapped close to the town of Hope. The look of the area in the Chilcotin will be changed forever. Until the next event comes along, that is.

The earth has always been dynamic, from plate tectonics and volcanoes, to river levels constantly changing, etc., etc., but lately, it seems the planet has been a little too dynamic. Temperatures are more extreme as the planet warms, causing a veritable 'Clash of the Climate Titans'. The Jasper fire was paired with fierce and forceful winds that pushed the fire rapidly towards the town, doing major damage to human property and animal habitat.  From where I sit today, there is a forest fire 20 kms to the east, and one 150 kms to the north. We have had a lot of lightning in the past seventy-two hours and the potential for further fires well into the autumn is ever-present despite the intermittent rain showers.  Summers are getting hotter and longer. Thousands of trees where I live in the mountains are infected with spruce bud worm and for weeks I looked out the window at hundreds of the spruce bud moths flying around. We'll need a couple of weeks of well below freezing temperatures to eliminate these infestations, but last winter was barely cold enough for snow. I have to believe that Mother Nature knows what she's doing, and I really hope we humans are prepared to work with her. So far, we've not been terribly good at that. Our efforts have been more on the 'taking from her' side of things.

Before colonization, Indigenous peoples moved around. They had their territories, but plenty of space within them. If an area flooded, they would move to higher ground. They had their summer and their winter hunting grounds, fishing grounds, and areas to gather berries and plants. We settlers like our little, permanent plots of land. We buy insurance against anything changing about that plot of land. The insurance rates have been skyrocketing in the last few years as a reaction to climate-related disasters (Our condo complex's rates tripled since 2017), and I am left wondering how sustainable the whole industry is. What if we could just pick up our houses and move them? For obvious reasons, I see all kinds of problems with that idea. I suppose the alternative is to move to another little plot of land in a different community, country, or even a different planet as some are proposing. Can we really escape, though? Or are we just buying time? The answer lies within ourselves. We need to get used to change, and we need to get used to downsizing our consumptive natures and sometimes dangerous habits. We mostly need to accept how in denial most of us are. Can we stem the tide of disasters? Experts say yes, but without us each also saying yes with our actions, the situation doesn't look promising.

Not every disaster is related to climate. Some are decades, centuries, or even millennia in the making. A crack widens and the proverbial dam breaks. Many are made worse by climate, though. The slump in the Chilcotin may have been lessened if the trees on the slope were not killed by fire, contributing to destabilization of the slope. The good news is, scientists and engineers are working constantly to find new ways for us to deal with and even lessen the effects of disaster. First Nations and Government are teaming up to tackle forest fire mitigation using traditional techniques. Climate anxiety is a genuine issue these days, especially among young people. The remedy partially lies in doing what we can, when and how we can, and leaving the rest to Nature herself. She's actually a pretty smart cookie. I personally believe we can still live with joy and humour in a constantly changing world. We cannot control the dynamic nature of our planet, but we can control our contribution to it. We have choices we get to make every day to make our world and our climate healthier and happier for all of us. So, as my sister-in-law says, let's "make good choices!" 

Chasing the Light along the Mighty Fraser

When the sun is shining, January can be a beautiful month around here. The skeletal trees open up the landscape instead of filling it in as they do so lushly in the warmer months. This past Saturday, my daughters and I went to do some shopping in the mid-sized city which is about a twenty minute drive from our town if you go via the freeway, about twenty-five minutes if you go by the pretty old country road. My older daughter is learning to drive, so we went by the old country road, had a successful day in the city and then came home the same way. We were crossing the railroad tracks just before the roundabout which takes us over the bridge to our little town, when I made a mental note to come back sometime soon and take some photos in the area. The very next afternoon, my younger daughter and I took our cameras - she got a shiny new red one for Christmas - and set off to catch the light in the later part of the day. We drove back over the bridge, through the roundabout, across the tracks and then found a place to park. Then, walking back up the road to the train tracks we started our little adventure. We had to wait for a train to pass. Several of the cars were skillfully decorated with grafitti art:

Once the train had passed we ventured down the track a little, but not too far because the sides were dense with brambles. If another train came we would have to jump into them. No, thank-you.

A beautiful, unobstructed-by-wires view of Mt. Cheam across someone's backyard was one of my objectives for going down the tracks. It's a wonderful feeling knowing we were way up on the top of that mountain just this past summer.

I was sidetracked by this scene and the collection of old tin washtubs hanging on a shed in the backyard. I began to take a photo of it when a friendly man and his dog called out to me, hoping I was not an employee from the city finding fault with his property or something like that. I assured him I was just admiring his washtubs and I hoped he did not mind. His wife and baby came across the property to greet us as well. We introduced ourselves and had a great little chat, but we had to cut it short if we were going to keep on chasing the last light of the day. 

We left the tracks just before we saw another train coming along in the distance. We walked back to the car and noticed this modern house behind some hedges near where we had parked. The house was quite a contrast to the century old one with the washtubs. My daughter liked the green door. I wished I could tresspass and see the house from the front, but no. Walking down the railroad tracks was enough law-breaking for one afternoon, for the pair of us anyway.

We got back in the car and drove down a side road towards the river. We found these mirrored views along the way.

We parked again down by the Fraser River and walked across the hard-packed silt to the water, the sun laying streaks across the ground and gilding the bridge in the distance.

This bridge across the Fraser was built in the late 1950's. Before that, people were transported across by a ferry on cables which stretched from shore to shore. Earlier in the century, travellers could take a trip down the river to New Westminster on a paddlewheeled ship, making stops in other riverside communities along the way.

Back toward the West, the sun was hanging lower and lower in the sky.

And in the meantime, my daughter was finding a subject to capture with her camera. I captured her.

Then, I turned my attention to her subject, a bald eagle far up in a tree.

It was time to go home, but we had a delivery to make first. After we made it, I took some photos in a hazelnut plantation, while my daughter video'd a squirrel jumping around looking for last year's nuts. The light was falling fast and the effect was gloomy in the grove of trees.

We got back in the car for the short drive home. "We sure live in a beautiful place," remarked my daughter. I agreed. All of the scenery we had enjoyed on our little light-chasing adventure was within just eight kilometers of our house.

In our twenty years as a family, we have lived in five places. In each of them we have found 'our' spots, the places we felt at home. In all of them we found mountains and water. In all of them we found light, even if we had to chase it sometimes.

"There's no place like home," said the girl in the new red shoes.

Please click on the photos if you would like to seem them enlarged. Wishing you a good, light-filled week!