This morning I’m starting to clean the house while I wait for Marie to stop by for a farewell coffee.  I rarely really clean the house unless people are coming to stay, and Bill and the Pollocks will be living here in September.  It’s easy when you live alone to keep a place neat, but dirt builds up if given time, and this house has had lots of time.  Jay e-mailed me last night to say that he has his Visa for China and my bags are almost packed, so things are spinning as they should.  I will soon be in Mo’s car driving to the Kelowna airport and then flying to Vancouver and Incheon.  Who knows what hitches about which I can do nothing await, but I have no control over those.  I heard on the CBC news last night that support workers at the Vancouver airport are threatening to strike as soon as Friday morning.  Perhaps the new bird flew in China has taken a great leap forward from bird to human to human to human transmission.  I won’t think of these things.   Now that I’ve written them here, I see them in perspective.  As I worry such tiny bones, President Obama is preparing to speak at the Lincoln Memorial on the 50^th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a Dream’ speech.  In spite of all the progress since, will the USA ever be free of the nightmares of lax gun laws and tight voting rights?  And that’s not all he’ll be doing today.  He has to deliberate with other Western leaders about whether, when and how to respond to the gas attack on Syrian civilians.  Was it the Syrian government that used the gas?  And I will merely tend my garden and clean my house.  I am happily neither rich nor famous.  I usually deal with the here and now and those I am close to.  That is a great luxury.  I will face with equanimity whatever awaits me on the trip, I hope.  I have been known to panic and be less than understanding when dealing with service workers, but I’m really trying to practice patience under pressure.  I certainly won’t get my shirt in a knot worrying about what might never happen.

Now it’s 8:20pm and already dark.  It’s almost September.  The house is clean and the basil trimmed.  All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, for the moment.

The following are some pictures taken on Sunday’s hike to Jade Summit in Revelstoke National Park.  The gates to the park reminded me of the main statue at the entrance to Seoraksan National Park, where I went with Jay, May and the girls last March.  Seoraksan means ‘big, snowy mountain’ and Lord Revelstoke was a British banker who played a major role in the financing of the CPR, a slightly less glamorous image; although, I found his picture on a Google search and his girth is rather bearish.  

One of two identical pillars at the entrance to Revelstoke, BC

A natural Japanese garden on the hike up to Jade Summit

A view of Jade Lake from Jade Summit

The bear at the entrance to Seoraksan National Park in S. Korea