Back To The Bears

 By Maryanna Gabriel 

"It is no good telling yourself that one day you will wish

you had never made the change; it is no good anticipating regrets.

Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday."
                    - Beryl Markham West With The Night

Anarchist Lookout, Lake Osoyoos

    Love the traverse through pine and sage that is the interior of British Columbia. Home. Sort of. Back to the bears. Trust me, I have learned and am hoddling the garbage under the kitchen sink. Drove through two snow storms to get here. Good thing I just had my summer tires put on. Isn't it spring? I was so sure. Mornings in the Kootenies are below zero and I am not in the mood - further confirmation I am not a mountain woman. This fortifies my resolve to return to the coast. Besides, two young black bears have just been spotted in the city park right above me. 

    A walk by the "lakeside", and I watch as a thick shouldered dog yanks on an older man. The older man somersaults down a hill and slides on his back across the road, still clutching the leash. Ow.

    I stop and offer my hand. He is dazed and winded and the dog, part Pit Bull, who was so intent on eating a little Spaniel moments earlier, greets me with enthusiasm. Lucky me. 

    I take the gentleman by the arm and talk gently. It becomes apparent he cannot remember where he parked the car - normal, but then I realize he is unable to recall the make or colour. He tells me he is not sure how long he has been in the park and it is then I understand he lives alone. A lump the size of a baseball starts to emerge on his balding head. With growing concern, I tell him I believe he has a concussion and ask if there is someone we can phone. 

    His son comes quickly. He leaps out of the pickup and growls angrily at the dog. They immediately rush off to emergency. I wonder how long the gentelman would have wandered the park, dazed and confused. I was glad I could be there for him. 

    And such is life. Without a second's notice, it can turn on a dime. 

Mayne Island Calm

 

by Maryanna Gabriel

Dawn from my room on Mayne Island. 

Each island has it's own personality and Mayne Island, smack dab in the middle of the Southern Gulf Islands has revealed a calming aspect. The quiet

Old Arbutus - wide as outspread arms. 

 walks and just being, as I think about things, while the world has been going a little crazy, has been vastly appreciated. Compared to Salt Spring Island, it feels very quiet with a population of under 1,500.

This photo of an Arbutus tree was an unexpected friend that I made. The base was as wide as both my arms outstretched so I can't imagine how old it must be.
  

Japaneses Gardens, Dinner Bay, Mayne Island. 

The Japanese Gardens were very beautiful but still I felt so much sadness that radiated off the grass as I walked the land where the Japanese used to farm in Dinner Bay befored the war. No matter how nicely one phrases the plaque, and how many azaleas one plants, it still does not capture the profound injustice and sense of loss that is one's home and business built from scratch that has been forcibly impounded without compensation.  

I also walked to the lighthouse that protects the ships in Active Pass and was impressed by a brave apple tree that had survived a lightening strike. The trunk was split. It barely had an interior yet still it thrived and blossomed with bursting life although much of the base was burned out.

Hmm. Seemed to be a metaphor,
if only I could be more eloquent
as to what that might be. 

In blossom. Split and hollowed by lightening.

Last night I watched a movie where every scene was a rich tableau and was so visually rich it felt like a painting in motion. Then there were the silences that were equally as mesmerizing as one took in the set and mood of the set. Juliette Binoche was featured. She was courted with courses by a French chef in "The Taste of Things". 

It was a perfect and peaceful night, after a perfect and peaceful day, the energy of which I hope to carry forward as I travel. 

Heartening Visit To The Coast

 By Maryanna Gabriel

With a friend in West Vancouver and walking in the rain.

Me on sunny Salt Spring Island.

April is a good time for a road trip I am discovering. Most places are open and not at all busy. I have made my way to West Vancouver where I visited and reveled in the beauty of the plum blossoms and the happiness of being once again by the ocean. Much of my youth is wrapped around such places that I was overjoyed to walk once again. Continuity of place seemed important. And people.

On Vancouver Island, I had more inspiring visits with old souls and then dealt with the winter tires being replaced for summer ones. After the snow and cold of a long winter, it has warmed my heart to connect with those who have known me since forever. Sincere and intimate conversation, fun walks, meals, and general appreciation of the onset of spring in the lush biome of the west coast has been heartening. 
 

A friend buys after dinner drinks and we sit
by the fire at genteel Hastings House.

In the town of Sidney, I got my hair cut and stopped in Tanner's Books and checked to see if the book I wrote was there. It was. I offered to autograph it for the store and they were happy about this. The lady at the reference desk said,"I read it. It's very well written." That was such a compliment. She certainly has a basis for comparison.

A special and delicious dinner on Salt Spring Island
at the genteel, Hastings House, has topped the visit off. Sometimes a person has to live a little. 

As I write, I am able to see little buttons of land that are wee islands which dot the sea beyond my window. The phone thinks I am in the States but I am actually on the southeastern side of Mayne Island. Orcas Island in the San Juans is very close. One day I will go there but not today. It is time to say goodbye to the ocean and return to the Kootenies where my plants are slowly expiring in the kitchen sink. 

Button of land off Mayne Island. 

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Nakusp

 By Maryanna Gabriel 

Lovely Nakusp.

Was glad to hear that Nakusp had no large groups of people to inter. With a sweeping lake views, surrounded by mountains it has an open feeling. It struck me as a pretty place with a population of about 1,600. It was founded in 1892 as a consequence of gold and silver mining. The first thing I noticed was the strangely high embankment to the lake and then I remembered. This area was traumatized by the building of the Keenleyside Dam in 1968.

I talked to varying locals. Some remembered what happened to their parents and grandparents. At the time, there had been no discussion from the government. People were given the amount designated for the purchase of their property, their homes were burned, and then razed by bulldozers. End of story. During this period, many ranches disappeared forever that were up and down the lakes, as did homesteads, and parts of other historic towns in numerous sites such as Ranata, Deer Park, Farquier, Needles Edgewood, Burton, along with hundreds of summer houses and fishing holes. 

Today as I walk the steep embankment that surrounds Nakusp, I am struck by how low the water levels

Exposed shoreline and falling lake level in Nakusp.

are. I was informed at the Visitor Center, the Arrow Lakes are now a "reservoir" from Castlegar to Revelstoke. Last summer, the gate that allows flow into the United States was "stuck" as we provided to our southern neighbours. (Canadians are so nice.) There was no communication about the event with the lake communities affected. Commercial enterprises such as logging came to a complete halt in Nakusp because the booms could not land. Boaters and swimmers were compromised. As I drove north, I was shocked by how low the water is in comparison to my memory of it when I kayaked the area with an old boyfriend in the 1990s. 

Another hot spring swim. Very pleasant. Interesting to note that the natural hot pool above the Nakusp Hot Springs was mysteriously dynamited and the road to it made impassible by fallen trees so that people have no choice but to use the commercialized pool. No charges laid.

Passing white tailed deer, and arresting waterfalls, I was onto the Galena Crossing for the free ferry. It felt as though I was leaving one world for another as I departed the Kootenies and headed towards the coast. 

Nakusp Hot Springs

Arresting waterfall, Arrow Lakes.

Low lake level from Galena Bay Ferry.

Leaving a beautiful and historic area. 

Ghost Towns On My Mind

 By Maryanna Gabriel 

I remember the newspaper articles. Picking up from my last blog, the Freedom Fighters were one sect of Doukhobors. Millions of dollars worth of land was confiscated by the British Columbia government and sold off. Desperate to protect their children that were forcibly removed, the mothers stripped to protest. How did we deal with it? We changed the law so that the mothers would be jailed for three years. To paraphrase what I was told, they were saying with their actions: "You have taken everything, so take my underclothes too."

Oh my. Given the history, I admit I was holding it against New Denver when I chose not to stop, 

My destination was the ghost town of Sandon. It used to be a silver mine. It had all the marking for tourism except the road was embanked with snow to either side and the car slipped precariously on an ungraded slick. Roaring Carpenter Creek snaked alongside, more river than creek and at times a steep decline. Slowly, I made my way, admiring the entrepreneurial spirit of the miners of yore, seeking to make their fortune, who came in with pack horses.

Two railroads once served the place. Hard to believe, let alone picture. Sandon was incorporated in 1898 with 24 hotels, an opera house, saloons, stores, mining broker's offices, newspapers, banks etc and was called the soul of "Silvery Slocan". Tragedy followed. In the 1900s a fire decimated the town. Then there was a landslide that killed miners. Another that killed families. Unbelievably the Japanese were interred during the war in some of the abandoned houses. That must have been fun for them. In 1955, a flood undermined what was left. Mother nature rules. 

Talk about a heritage. Nothing romantic about it. Hear the wind blow. Are those the cries of the dead I am hearing? 

I was totally creeped out by the place. Noone was around except for a couple of other bewildered tourists with out of province license plates. I couldn't get out fast enough.

Next destination? Naksup. 

Silver mine in Sandon. Intermittently active. 

Sandon city hall, 1900 date on building.

Doukhobors

 By Maryanna Gabriel

At four in the morning I heard a rattling outside my bedroom window and upon lifting the blind, I was greeted by the dark silouette of a fuzzy head and two, not-so-little, ears. He was after the rubbish bin, and rolling it around in his paws as if trying to sort out the lock-on lid. I was having none of it.

"Hey! Get outta here!" I flicked the light. This is not a snack station, for goodness sakes.

Fortunately for me, he took off. A young fellow - maybe a yearling. Then, feeling terribly brave, I packed for my trip. I was visiting a cousin I have not seen in ages, and hoping to take in some Kootenay sights. Ghost towns were on my mind. 

I stopped at the Doukhobor Center in Castlegar. Did you know they are peace loving, much like the Quakers? They came to Canada, escaping Russian persecution for burning their guns in a stand for pacifism. I am ashamed to say that in Canada, their lands were confiscated, more than once, for not swearing allegiance to Her Royal Majesty etc.Their children were also forcibly removed and sent to New Denver which is in the Kootenies on Arrow Lake, close to where the Japanese were interned in the second world war. We put them in an old tuberculosis sanitorium. I learned the children were not given enough food and were fed scrambled eggs three meals a day. Oh, we can be such a nice bunch here in Canada. Have no idea where the First Nations Residential School in the area might be. I am headed to the Arrow Lakes, next.

Doukhobor Discovery Center, Castlegar, BC

Beautiful hand-woven rugs.

A platok - carefully crafted head scarf, 

Bread, salt, and water symbolizing peace and "will not raise their hands in violence".