Goodbye to D'Arcy

I am staying at Sam's place in D'Arcy before heading east for the winter.

Doesn't that sound backwards? Shouldn't I be heading west or south? Silly me!

On Tuesday night I slept in the truck. It was cold but fine in my warm sleeping bag.

On Wednesday night, knowing that it would be colder than Tuesday, I thought I'd sleep in Sam's guest room, the attic. But the place is absolutely infested with stink bugs. I started out killing a bunch of them, they are slow-moving and easy targets, but it didn't stop the tide. I read in bed for awhile, occasionally smashing a stink bug, but when one crawled up onto my chest I gave up. Shaking out all my bedding and clothes I beat a retreat to the truck.

Sam has closed off his attic in hopes that the cold will do in the miserable creatures, but at the very least the closed trapdoor should keep them up in the attic rather than downstairs in his living space.

They're fairly harmless, just disgusting. Sam tells me they are not native to North America, so they have no predators here. They are vegetarian and cause problems for some farmers, but do not bite humans or carry disease. They are large and slow-moving and when they fly they seem incapable of landing, they just crash into things. Also they emit a bad smell, hence their name.

Nights are getting cold, in the truck it dropped to +3C. By the time I reach northern Ontario it should be closer to -3C.

I am debating whether to take the Duffy Lake Road (the switchback road from hell) from here, or retrace my steps to Vancouver and take the Coquihalla. Apparently there is construction on the Duffy Lake with one lane of traffic for almost 50 km. On those switchbacks that means a good hour or more, so if you get to the flag point at the wrong time you could be waiting for up to 2 hours to go through. Normally that road would cut hundreds of kilometers and a couple of hours off the trip east, so it's a dilemma. Also it's very scenic when driven during the daytime with no snow on the road.

I have friends in Edmonton that I will stay with and visit, a night on the road in Saskatchewan---hopefully I will make it back to Buffalo Pound Lake Provincial Park for that night---and another night with my niece in Winnipeg. Then two nights on the road in northern Ontario and a visit with my brother in Kirkland Lake. Another dilemma. Take the colder northern route or the slightly warmer but considerably longer southern route? I will have to play it by ear, it will depend on just how cold. I think I can handle -5C, but I am not sure about -10C.

Yesterday I went walking on the mountain with the dogs, and they took off on me. There was no hope of finding them, they move a lot faster than I can. I didn't know if they had found some shortcut home or if they were off hunting (they do that sometimes). I called them a bunch of times and then started walking back to Sam's place. The lousy buggers caught up with me about 15 minutes away from the cabin. Hapi (the female) is the instigator, Hiro (the male) is more inclined to return when called than she is, but he gets anxious when she doesn't come too so he tends to stay with her.


While walking home without them I was thinking bad thoughts about them. They don't like to abandon each other in the mountains, but they sure don't care about abandoning me. However they did stick close to me after they returned, waiting for me to catch up whenever they got just out of sight. And they were completely beat for the rest of the day when we got back to the cabin.


This will probably be the last time I visit this place, I will most likely not return before Sam moves to Windsong.

What's he doing?

Pine beetle damage

(Sorry, couldn't resist one more pic of the dogs)

The land that Sam lives on is owned by his boss, and has many large pines on it. Over the last couple of years he has tried to save his pines from the Pine Beetle that has been ravaging the interior of BC. I wrote about some of the methods he is using on my visit here last year.

Unfortunately it does not look like he is having much success, many pines near Sam's cabin are showing the telltale red needles of pine beetle damage. By next year most of these trees will be dead.

One of the methods he uses is to tack packets of beetle pheromones on the trunks of pine trees he wants to save; these packets are supposed to tell beetles that this tree is already full of beetles, move on.


It is not working for this tree, healthy green needles are falling off the trees and dying red needles are remaining on the branches.



It is sad to see these trees go, they really make the beauty of this property. This is an effect of climate change; winters here are no longer cold enough to kill off overwintering beetles. This is also the tail end of the infestation in this province, most of the interior of the province has already been ravaged and the beetles have moved on to Alberta in the east and places like D'arcy in the west.

Life, dogs and everything

I came to D'arcy this weekend to collect my kayak from Sam's barn, and of course to visit with Sam and the dogs. The weather has become very fall-like, wet and gray. Nevertheless I always love the D'arcy area.

Friday was a half decent warm and sunny day, I left late because I did not want to spend a sunny afternoon in the car. Johanna and I went to the plaza to do a few errands and ended up shopping for clothes at Winners. I think we spent well over an hour in the fitting rooms there, not really a good use of a sunny day either.

I stopped in Whistler to do some grocery shopping for Sam, so by the time I got to D'arcy it was almost 9.00 pm. The first part of that drive, from Horseshoe Bay to Squamish, is absolutely spectacular. They did a lot of work on that highway in preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler, and turned it into one of the most scenic drives in North America. The vistas of Howe Sound, the mountains, the islands in the Sound and the big trees bordering the highway are breath-taking; each vista is followed by another even more spectacular.

Of course there is no way to take photos of it unless you are a passenger, because the winding fast-moving highway requires constant driver attention.

Upon arrival, I was greeted warmly by the dogs, Hapi and Hiro.



I slept that night in the truck because I really enjoy the feeling of being cozily warm in my sleeping bag in the cold night air. The river runs close to the cabin and the sound of it in the night is most relaxing.

In the morning I could see the two dogs sitting patiently outside my truck waiting for me to emerge, Sam was still asleep. When I got up they then moved on to the door of the cabin, Hiro leaped up against the door and barked. Sam says Malemutes don't bark, they talk. Any sound they make is intended to communicate a specific message. In this case Hiro was saying, Wake up and feed me!

It rained lightly most of the morning. When the rain finally cleared we took the dogs for a long walk up the trail to the logging road on the mountain. On our way back, we saw a bear ahead of us on the trail. It look young, it was just lying in the middle of the trail facing away from us. Quickly Sam and I grabbed the dogs' collars and continued to walk toward the bear. The bear turned and saw us, he got up and watched us for a few seconds before deciding to go away. Sam said that if the bear had decided not to leave he would have set the dogs loose. Better them than us, he said.

After lunch we got the kayak out of the barn and mounted it on the truck.


Sam had a nap and I played with Hiro. Hapi likes to play with Hiro but not with people, Hiro likes to play with anyone who will play with him.

We stayed up late watching a movie, I think I got to bed around 2.00 am and Sam was up considerably longer. It rained during the night and much of the next morning, I talked to my brother in Victoria and my son Josh in Vancouver and they both reported torrential downpours where they were. D'arcy tends to be drier so we saw rain but not torrential rain.

Again we took the dogs for a walk on the mountain, this time we got a little wet. Sam says he has been pre-occupied with rather morbid thoughts lately. He has come to the conclusion that there is no afterlife, he loves being alive, and he doesn't want to die. This bothers him. He is also concerned that his father died in his late 50 and, this might not bode well for his own longevity. Consequently he is very concerned about staying healthy.

I have no argument with his logic or concerns, I tell him that the age at which one's parents die does not automatically mean anything. My father feared he would not live beyond 65 because his own father died at that age (within weeks of retiring), but he managed almost 12 years beyond that age. I said I understood his fear, I had the same fear about the age at which my parents died. But it isn't necessarily a valid fear. I said the best one can do is really take note of and enjoy what is in front of you right now. The fact that one day it will all be gone just makes it precious.



We were walking along a logging road halfway up a mountainside with amazing vistas of the valley below and the mountains on the other side. This day it was cloudy and wet, some of the trees were starting to turn yellow. These mountains are spectacular in the sunshine, but today they are shrouded in cloud and mist and that is beautiful too.


I love the way the mist rises from the wet forests, creating clouds right before your eyes.


And the long billowy worm-clouds that thread along the sides of the mountains, between and over ridges.


The peek-a-boo views of peaks in the heavy clouds above. We can hear the rushing of the swollen river hidden in the trees below us.


Far ahead of us on the trail are the two dogs, trotting along side by side with their tails curled on their backs in that classic Malemute way.


Being big dogs their lifespans will not be particularly long, but I am sure this thought does not cross their minds.

Mayhem in D'arcy

Yes I did attend the Mayhem in D'arcy last week. The weather on Friday was cold and wet and the only accommodation was field space for tents, so a lot of guests bailed. I don't blame them, it didn't look good then. But Saturday and Sunday were very fine days.

There were five of us who did arrive in the rain; Dan and Aimee got the guest bed in the attic, Pascal and I slept in our respective trucks, and Shane decided not to put up his tent in the rain and the dark but sleep on the couch instead. Good plan.

Dan, Pascal and Shane are very old friends of Sam's, they have at various times lived together and share some common interests. If anybody was going to show up in spite of the weather, it would be them.

The Mayhem was basically a gamers' heaven, Pascal brought a truckload of strange card games, there were lots of munchies and barbecue foods and soft drinks, and the wide outdoors for taking breaks from the main activity of the weekend, which was the card games.

We played Munchkins, Killer Bunnies and Chrononauts. Munchkins is a kind of role-playing game with a lot of silly adventures and actions, "munchkin" is a nickname for a role-playing gamer. Killer Bunnies involves collecting "killer" bunnies and other objects as if you were trying to win by accumulating stuff, but the winner is actually pre-determined and has very little to do with the actual playing of the game. Chrononauts involves changing historic events, as represented by certain cards, to get a particular historic outcome described in "Mission" cards. There was another game we didn't play called Flex, in that game you get to change the rules of the game in mid-game.

Not being a gamer I had never heard of any of these games, let alone played any of them, but they were sufficiently simple enough to learn and at the same time complex enough to maintain interest.

The dogs of course were not impressed by all this indoor activity.


We got out for one fairly good walk with them though.





On Saturday night Sam got a campfire going and we sat around into the night poking at the burning logs and discussing a variety of topics. Shane was a bottomless well of information on every topic we managed to cover, he reads pretty broadly. Pascal is a very imaginative "what if..." kind of guy, proposing all sorts of oddball topics and projects. So the conversation ranged widely and was never boring. We got out Sam's star charts and looked for various stars and constellations, and we watched Jupiter rise above the trees.

There's a configuration called the Summer Triangle, a fairly obvious triangle of stars located fairly high in the sky roughly in the south. The triangle is made up of Vega, Altair and Deneb, in the constellations of Lyra the harp, Aquila the eagle and Cygnus the swan respectively. I was looking for Arcturus as well (you find it by following the arc of the Big Dipper handle, arc to Arcturus), but the moon was too bright or the trees too tall, I couldn't find it.

On Sunday the swords came out and there was a bit of sword and knife play. On previous Mayhems there has been archery, but the bows and arrows were left at home this time.


What impressed me was that this was a crowd of young people that manages to have great fun together without any drugs or alcohol involved. None of them appear to have any particular objection to the use of such things, they just don't bother with it. Mind you, they are not so young, all of them being in their early 30s. But I think this is a long standing habit with them, they were never great indulgers in mind-altering substances.

I know this doesn't sound like much mayhem, but it was fun and we did manage to leave Sam's place in a pretty good mess.

From D'arcy to Gambier and points in between

I arrived in D'arcy very late on Friday, and while I intended to head to Gambier Island the very next day, it just seemed a little too rushed and I was tired. So I stayed put for a day, walking the dogs and watching videos and just hanging out in one of the prettier parts of the province of BC.

Getting to Gambier Island was complicated. I had to drive to Horseshoe Bay, park my truck in longterm parking and then haul my stuff to the ferry terminal to catch the Langdale ferry. Sam and I stopped for lunch in Pemberton and that kind of made me a bit late---catching the ferry is always a hurry up and wait affair---and so I ended up trying to run from the underground parkade in Horseshoe Bay to the ferry terminal with a heavy backpack, a dufflebag, a shopping bag and my shoulder bag full of stuff for fear of not catching the ferry in time.

But I made it to the ferry and almost an hour later I was in Langdale, where I had to wait another hour for the New Brighton ferry, a little walk-on ferryboat called the Stormaway.


There were five of us and an ambulance waiting for that ferry. It turned out that a young man on Gambier had broken his ankle while hiking, so the ambulance had come to pick him up, but the ambulance could not go on a walk-on ferry, they had to wait for the unfortunate young man to be ferried from the island to Langdale.

One lady waiting for the ferry approached me to find out who I was and who I was staying with on the island; it's a small island and everybody knows everybody so I guess I kind of stuck out as a stranger. In return for that information she proceeded to tell me that she and her husband, who lived year-round on the island, were en route from a hospital in Vancouver to a hospital in Sechelt, but were stopping at their home on Gambier to pick up the necessaries for an overnight stay in the Sechelt hospital. Turns out her husband had been feeling poorly last week so they had gone to his doctor in the big city and he had ordered up a colonoscopy and the colonoscopy had revealed colon cancer. So lickety split they were off to the Sechelt hospital for surgery. Thank goodness the process for diagnosing the problem and getting it treated was so fast (less than a week), but surely worrisome for being such a serious matter.

After telling me all this, she then points to another waiting passenger and confides that that woman had also had cancer. I guess island people have no secrets.

In short order the Stormaway arrived and we all boarded and paid our fares. Ten minutes later we were at the dock on the island, where the young man with the broken ankle was lying on a stretcher on the dock. Apparently the ambulance people had decided that they would not take him after all, but rather ordered up a hovercraft to go get him and take him directly from the island to the big city. But that meant that he had to wait a little longer for the hovercraft to get there. I suppose in the long run that was faster and easier, but at the time it didn't seem so. He was getting lots of attention from folks coming and going though.

My friends were waiting there for me and we packed all my stuff into their island car to head back to their place. I was only staying overnight, but it was equally beautiful there (as D'arcy) and very relaxing. We had a lovely supper out on the deck and then later went for a stroll down to the wharf to see the sunset. We also saw a deer in their yard and a seal off the wharf.


The next day we went for a walk with the dog in the woods, puttered around the house and later in the afternoon headed back to the ferry dock to go back to the mainland. The plan was to spend a couple of days in town and then go back to the island, but life got complicated and we ended up not returning to the island at all. We will probably go back for the long weekend coming up.

So in town I have managed to make all the financial arrangements for buying the house in Nova Scotia and had a brief visit with Josh and Kim who are expecting their baby imminently.


I'll also be going back to D'arcy for the Mayhem, an annual event amongst Sam and his friends. Not having ever attended before I can't tell you much more about it. But I am guessing that when a young man invites his mother to a weekend-long party, it must not be anything he wouldn't want his mother to witness.

Night walk

Last night I tried to take Hiro for a solo walk after dark, he just went crazy with joy to be out on the trail, running, leaping, jumping, even twirling in mid-air. It was great to see him so happy, but it did some damage to his wound so he doesn't get to go out off-leash any more. If you look closely you can just make Hiro out at the edge of the darkness. He's wearing a T-shirt to protect his wound.

While he was leaping for joy and tearing his wound apart, I was taking night photos...

The moon was only half full, but it was enough light to see quite clearly by, and there were sharp shadows on the bright snow.

Downed in D'Arcy

The Teeny Tiny computer went belly up last night. It's been just over six weeks since I bought it and it appears to be kaput.

Wow. Probably the shortest lived computer I've ever had.

I called the store where I bought it and they said bring it in to the nearest outlet and they'd see what they could do for me. Because I bought the extended warranty the fellow I talked to said they would attempt to go the extra mile for me. Technically it's still under manufacturer's warranty so I'm supposed to deal with the manufacturer.

I have not backed up this computer since I left Toronto, but I don't think I've lost a lot. All my photos are still on my camera memory card, and my email on a Yahoo server. A few small files that I have downloaded might be lost but the fellow I talked to seemed to think they could recover the data from my hard drive at a reasonable cost. In the meantime Sam is loaning me the use of his laptop while I am at his place. After I leave here I'll be netbook-less until I get back to Toronto as I really don't have time to drop in at the nearest computer store outlet to have them look at my computer. And this still being the Christmas season I imagine they are terribly busy right now anyway.

It does feel weird though, not having my little netbook. You know you're an addict when a brief period of no access sends you into a tailspin! Really should do something about that, but I am at a loss as to what.

Aside from that setback things are fine here, we're just hanging out with the dogs.

Hiro is wounded and although he is feeling fine any rambunctious behaviour stresses the stitches and the wound is not healing properly. So we are trying to keep him more or less immobilized. Might be do-able if it were just him, but Hapi really really wants to play with him, so we have two very big, very frustrated dogs here.

This afternoon Hiro got loose just when I was trying to bring Hapi in from a walk; the two dogs took off in a great play fight all over the field in front of the cabin. I spent several minutes chasing them and yelling at them to quit that, which of course they had no intention of doing. I finally managed to collar Hiro but Hapi kept trying to attack him anyway.

I think it's going to take another couple of weeks for Hiro's wound to heal enough for him to be free to play again, I am sorry I will not be able to witness that.

It's Christmas Day, so this must be D'Arcy

Merry Christmas to everybody. I am at my son Sam's place in D'Arcy for a week, enjoying a winter wonderland in the mountains.


We celebrated Christmas a little early, a couple of days ago at Josh and Kim's place in New Westminster. It was a bit of a comedy of errors, Josh planned to have the turkey in the oven by 2pm, but with traffic delays and whatnot, we did not manage the trick until 4pm. However all turned out well, it was a great turkey and a great dinner. We took a break between the turkey and the apple pie to walk Brewster (the resident shih tzu) around the neighbourhood and look at Christmas lights.
'
I'll be in Whistler for New Year's, and if my stamina holds out, I'll be visiting Seattle briefly before heading home to Toronto. Am thoroughly missing my little truck for getting around!

D'Arcy expedition

Josh and I drove up to Sam's place in D'Arcy last week, and I have only just now had a chance to write about it. Josh beat me to the punch, you can read his version of the trip at his blog. We photographed some of the same stuff, although I didn't photograph the Noxious Weed. Or the CC-177.




It was just an overnight trip, a three hour drive and arriving early afternoon, then leaving early afternoon the following day. We drove into town to see Sam's house and the D'Arcy waterfront (Sam lives in a rental cabin, and rents out his house), then walked back in the bush to see the now abandoned runway.


I had to laugh, Sam invited us to make sandwiches when we arrived, and Josh had to clean Sam's kitchen before attempting to prepare food in it. Usually that's what I do, clean up the kitchen as soon as I arrive there, but this time Josh did it. Since the last time I was there Sam has acquired a dishwasher, so at least the sink wasn't piled high with dirty dishes.


Then there's the dogs, Hapi and Hiro. Very sweet dogs. Huge, but sweet. Their fur is thoroughly matted with burrs from their daily walks in the bush, and it must be over four inches thick. It will have to be cut off before it can be brushed or combed, it is quite badly matted. They are used to sleeping outdoors, Sam has a very good kennel setup for them.



We went for quite a long walk the next morning up a logging road to a viewpoint and then back again in a large loop. It was cold and frosty with snow on the mountains but not in the valley.



The pine beetle is a huge problem in BC, I don't know how much pine forest has been lost to it, but it's a lot. The land where Sam lives has a lot of beautiful old ponderosa pine on it, the owner is trying to save it. This involves cutting down and destroying infected trees, and using pheromones to keep beetles away from healthy trees. They look like little white paper packets stapled to the tree trunks; they are supposed to convince the beetles that these trees are already occupied and they should look elsewhere for a pine tree to infest.

Trees that have to be cut down are debarked so that the cold winter will kill any beetles remaining in the tree.


Beetle traps are also attached to downed trees.


The beetles don't actually kill the tree themselves, but they carry a fungus that clogs the tree phloem and chokes the tree. All the needles turn red and fall off. An infested forest turns red, then grey.

When an infested tree is cut down, you can see the fungus stained wood just under the bark. It turns the wood blue.


They are attempting to market this blue-stained wood as interesting building material; it is still perfectly good pine wood but with a mix of the normal and blue colours.

The drive to and from D'Arcy is magnificent. We had lovely clear sunny weather for it, and Josh was driving so I got to enjoy the scenery. Many mountain vistas, views across Howe Sound to the mountains beyond, the ski hills of Whistler (mountains, not hills), the tall trees, and more.



There was snow on the ground in Whistler and the snow-making machines were very busy there preparing for the Winter Olympics. Josh tells me they imported hundreds of snow making machines for the occasion. Usually Whistler gets more than enough snow, but there has been the occasional winter when nature just didn't come through with the white stuff, so they're not taking any chances.

Security has flipped into high gear here, all the stories I heard about how China allowed no nonsense to occur there during the Olympics is no different from what is happening here. The place is turning into a police state for the occasion.

But I love the time I get to spend in D'Arcy, it is a wonderful place.