September 30, 2012

 I missed the walk in a scenic spot last Sunday, because for the first time since I joined the VOC last season, I turned up at the carpooling place late.  Everyone had gone, so I walked home and had a glorious day of doing nothing but read.  I finished Jim’s novel and now face the decision of what to do with it.  Much of his writing is clear and fluid; the dialogue is especially well written.  Doug and I realized years ago that Jim could catch the accent and tone of people’s speech better than either of us.  At that time, we three were working on a play about WW2 featuring characters like our parents.  We gave up on it, but Jim carried on with a novel and short stories.  The novel is good.  The story moves through two main time periods and three different but linked narratives.  Much of it flows together well, but at moments, he seems to be trying to do too much in one novel.  The rhythm is sometimes broken by long passages of philosophical and literary contemplation and sections in which the main character recalls the past or adds descriptions; these slow the momentum. Although interesting to contemplate, they distract the reader.  It even seems to me that one section could be left out of this work entirely and turned into a separate story.  Now Albert and I have read Wearing Wings, and I must think about whether or not to do something with it.  I would like to edit it, but I’m a bit hesitant because Jim’s last words to me, when I started to answer a question the doctor had posed, were spoken very quietly but clearly, “ You speak very well, Jan, but sometimes you don’t say exactly what I would say.”  I now know, after thinking about it for a long time, that he knew the doctor was going to tell him that he was dying and ask him if he remembered that he had said earlier that he didn’t want any mechanical prolongation of the end.  He must have worried that I would ask the doctor to do something that he didn’t want done.  He was ready to die at that point and his last words to the doctor were, “ Go for it.”  If I edit his work, I will change it, and I don’t know whether he would want me to.  He didn’t ask me to edit it when he was alive, I think because he knew I would want to change things a bit.  But then he didn’t throw it out either, so he must have known I’d read it.  ???????????

We have had and are continuing to have a glorious fall.  On Tuesday, I went on a hike to an area called Rimrocks where you can climb down a narrow chimney into a basin of broken volcanic lava rock.  Once there, you are surrounded by old, cracked, grey/black columns of basalt.  They are streaked in places with red lichen that lends them an almost festive fall splash.  The only other colors were dark green and bright blue sky.  Thursday’s bike ride was quite long and exhilarating and today’s hike was an easy walk around some lakes.  There’s not a lot of fall color here, but the luminous yellow of the poplars is as breathtaking as it always is.

I met one of my Korean students at the library on Thursday.  She’s in grade 11, and I like her very much.  I think we’re going to have good tutorials.  I will start with the other 2 and my own Korean/English exchange either this week or next.

The basalt columns at Rimrocks

The broken rocks in the basin

One of the lakes we passed today

Another lake with a young pine in the foreground, arty, what?

Hiking accident

Before the Sunday hike this week, I will write about last Sunday’s because although this week’s is supposed to be harder, it will not be more eventful.  Last week there were only 16 of us going to Pinnacles Lake.  I was eager because it’s a hike I had wanted to go on last year but couldn’t.  I volunteered to be sweep because there were so few of us.  There’s a joke in the group, based on a truth as are so many jests, about my being numerically challenged.  So I was carrying the two-way radio when Dagmar fell.  She was heading up a wooded switchback with roots and rocks and fell backwards.  I was first aware of it when a vague dark shape appeared to bounce ahead of me.  I thought at first it was a rock and momentarily feared it was the beginning of a slide.  But the thud was soft and Curtis, the young man ahead of me, quickly moved forward and down into the brush.  He placed himself below Dagmar who was lying on her back, head downwards, body twisted and moaning in pain.  She was bleeding from the top of her head, there was blood under one eye and her face was the color of skim milk.  I did the only thing I know how to do, talk.  She was so afraid of falling farther.  I assured her that Curtis was firmly behind her and that another man was now on the other side of her.  Curtis, who has some St. John’s Ambulance training, slowly tried to assess if there was anything wrong with her back.  Gradually, more people gathered.  You always hear about how a community unites and its members behave admirably in an emergency.  This was the first time that I experienced it.  There were two retired doctors, a nurse and 2 ski patrols in our group and each went into action.  Dagmar was in shock, sweating, shivering and with a very weak pulse, but within 15 minutes it had been determined that she could be moved to a more comfortable position and that she would probably not be able to walk out.  Curtis and I began hiking out to call Vernon Search and Rescue.  It took us about an hour to get back to the cars.  I radioed up one last time to make sure that it was absolutely necessary to make the call and was assured that although she was feeling better after a Tylenol 3, she would never be able to walk out.  So we jumped into Curtis’ truck and began the slow 22km. drive down the decommissioned logging road to the nearest phone at the Gold Panner Restaurant; there’s no cell phone service in the area and the club does not have a satellite phone.  As I had suspected, that call started a chain of events that was irreversible.  First to arrive was a young RCMP officer in an official white truck.  It was a beautiful day, and he leaned his bare and heavily tattooed arm out the window to talk with us.  He never turned that vehicle off for the entire 51/2 hours of what followed.  Nor did he leave it much.  He was just there to supervise, which involved very little.  He had a phone he used to communicate with headquarters and a computer he could swing out of the dash to consult maps, none of which showed the South Fork Road, which is where the trailhead is.  He was followed by the ambulance, which roared past us, lights blazing, and then back, past us again, before being reined in and brought to us by dispatch.  We led them up the South Fork to the parking lot, where the driver of the ambulance jumped out of his vehicle, surveyed the damage sustained by it as he had bounced it over the fairly deep depressions left when the logging company removed the culverts as they left the area, and proceeded to ready the gear for the assent.  He put the tank of laughing gas in Curtis’ backpack, he took a big hard plastic case of equipment himself, and his partner carried another.  They left me in the parking lot awaiting Vernon Search and Rescue.  I radioed up to the gang that they were coming although I doubted they would get there let alone be of much help if they did.  Soon the Search and Rescue people began arriving in ATVs and two impressively equipped vans.  Sure enough Curtis and the ambulance guys came back about 20 minutes after leaving.  The blow-hard driver was so furious he threw the equipment into the ambulance, yelled at his buddy to get in and sped away to rip a few more strips off his poor abused ambulance. They had been called off by their dispatch because that’s the procedure once Search and Rescue takes on the task.  He’d missed another chance to be the hero that he always seems to be in his own mind.  Curtis said that he would never have made it to the site because he was breathing hard by the time they turned around and they were only beginning the real trail by then.  Some Search and Rescue people headed up in ATVs, one pulling a big sled, but it became quickly clear that Dagmar would have to be taken out by helicopter.  I was radioing all this information to the people up there with her.  The Vernon copter couldn’t find a place to land near her, so they called in the Penticton one because it could bring in a swinging basket with a trained rescuer to help her.  The last I saw of her, she was swinging overhead on her way to the hospital.  Fortunately none of her injuries was serious.  She’s black and blue all over and has a broken tailbone. The man leading the hike is an ex army officer.  This week, I, and all the others involved in the affair, have been receiving e-mails of his reports.  I have been mentioned favorably in dispatches for my part in the operation.

I’m looking forward to nothing more than a vigorous walk in a scenic spot tomorrow.

Dagmar dangling in the basket from the helicopter

Biking in the Rockies

Mount Rundle near Banff

On the trail to Banff

The gang near Canmore

Priscilla, Jan and Mo with a bike behind my car

Sept. 15, 2012

It’s Saturday, March 15, sunny and hot in the Okanagan.  I’m eating some local Concord-type grapes as I type this.  They’re my favorite.  You get a rush of sweet Welches grape jelly taste when you first bite into one and then a juicy, jelly centre squishes between the teeth and slips over the tongue followed by the tart skin that makes your eye wink.  I’m enjoying them so much I can’t remember what I was going to write about. 

I am feeling at home in the Okanagan.  I’ve returned here many times now and each time I feel better about it.  The Rockies are spectacular castles of rock, but I was happy to drive out of them and give my neck a rest.  It’s wonderful to watch the rising and setting sun slide luminously across them turning their towering grey to gold and pink and back to grey and then the dark dusty purple of the grapes I’m eating now.  Mo, Priscilla and I drove home through them and the Columbia Range, fatigued from our morning bike ride, looking up in wonder at the massive walls of rock above the tree line and the brilliant snow on the peaks, but I was happy to lower my gaze to the expanse of fields, golden grassy hills and orchards of the Okanagan. 

Our first day of biking began well, cool, into the wind, heading out of Canmore toward Banff.  We stopped early for lunch, and I was wishing we’d continued on a bit, but I soon sobered up.  As we settled on the picnic tables to eat, we could see dark cloud and grey mist moving towards us through a break in the mountains.  As we saddled up to leave, it was clear that we would be riding home in the rain.  We put on all the rain gear we had and started out.  Fortunately the wind was now at our backs because it was strong and blowing a heavy rain against us.  My glasses stayed dry behind my sun visor and bike helmet, and I felt exhilarated by the storm.  I rode faster than I ever had over such a distance.  We had to take every piece of clothing to the Laundromat in town to dry  because much of it we would need for the next days’ ride.  Fortunately, there was a hot tub in the Rocky Mountain Chalets where we were staying.  We used it every day either to warm us or relax our muscles.  All the rides were through beautiful country; I especially liked the day we ate breakfast at the Rafter 6 Ranch, rode all over and returned there for a barbecue.  The hike on Wednesday was good, and the ride on Friday was my favorite.  I tried my best to stay with the fastest riders and succeeded.  For the last few kilometers there were only 3 of us at the front, pedaling like mad with the wind at our backs.  I was so pumped that I didn’t start to feel tired until I began to unpack the car at home.  We had thought that we’d be tired and spell each other off at the wheel, but that wasn’t necessary.  It also helped that Mo, Priscilla and I get along well and rarely stopped talking.  We also ate quite a bit of chocolate which helps keep you going.

I’m getting to be a biker.  Instead of grinding up the hills saying, “ I hate this. I hate this,” over and over, I now chant, “ I can do this.  I can do this.”

A waterfall on the hike near Canmore

The man who built the stone steps on the hike

Some of the steps that Lawrence Grassi built one hundred years ago.  They are still solid.

Rock drawings seen on the hike

Me with Mo and Jane at a point on the hike that provided a long view of Canmore.

Back out west

My friends in the VOC were ready to push me back into shape when I returned to biking and hiking in Vernon.  I’m not a self starter when it comes to real physical exertion, but after two VOC bike rides, one long hike and one short one, I am ready to go for a week of biking in Canmore tomorrow.   I wouldn’t do these things without the gang, but I now realize that I can keep up with them, and that, in fact, they are not the intimidating grinders that I first took them for.  They’re just a group of fit, mostly older, people who love being outdoors as I do.  Last year, Priscilla drove to Coeur d’Alene, so this year I will drive her and Mo to Canmore.   Today I’m going to drive with Priscilla and Mo to the Art Walk in Lake Country just south of here on Lake Okanagan.  I went last year and found the art and crafts to be of very high quality and the atmosphere, a high school band playing jazz outdoors, perfect for a fall day, which today is, blue sky and temperature about 25c.  Tonight Mo and I are going to hear a local jazz and blues man play at the jazz club.  Some on the Thursday bike ride spoke disparagingly of his character and the fact that he’s not pure jazz, but Mo and I are new in town and will to give him a try.  Besides, I like the blues.

I spent Labor Day like a 21^st Century serf, working on my own small plot of land.  My neighbor was doing the same thing, but unlike me, he really does work for ‘the man’ most other days.  Anyway, I enjoyed it.  I dug and raked the ground for the path I’m making at the side of the house and chiseled the bark off the dead tree that I was going to ask someone to chop down for me but decided to leave standing and paint Tremclad red after seeing David McKenzie’s Tremclad blue fallen tree in Wakefield.  I used one of the chisels that Jim and I had bought from Lee Valley in 1979 when he was just starting up the business and still selling tools from an area he had set up at his home.  We bought two chisels; they were the first purchases we made in preparation for building our post and beam home on the Gatineau River.  It’s still sharp and took the bark off in no time.  Then I rubbed the whole tree with steel wool and swept it with a broom before brushing on the bright red, shiny paint.  When I get back from Canmore, I’ll hang the bird feeder from it, along with some sunflower heads I saved from the plants this year.  Another day I put down the newspapers and bought and placed the steppingstones for the path. Finally, Mo helped me again to get and distribute the bark, so that side of the house is quite presentable now.

Priscilla told me today that the place we are staying at in Canmore is the Canadian Rockies Chalets, and more specifically, our gang of women will be in the Cougar Chalet. So the mothers of Canmore better keep an eye on their sons next week.  What a laugh.

Lunch at the Tilley hat restaurant on Mount Nelson

A red tree in Vernon

A picture Jay sent to me from his iPhone of us on the beach at Sokcho

Jay and May

Min Hee and Gin Hee with crazy hands they bought on the street in Sokcho