Photos lately

For all my world-class whinging, I truly have been fabulous places this summer.  Places that facilitated campfires early into the northern twilight, places that have yielded estimated 8-10 pound lake and bull trout, places more spooky than graveyards, places that unite and segregate simultaneously.  

It's a beguiling sensation to be places surrounded by people yet feel so isolated.  In such close physical proximity to one another with none of the intimacy or expected closeness.  

The woods truly are an unforgiving place for contemplating losses and longings.  

Munching moose

                                       
                                      Red Columbine                                                 Toilet bowl cleaner

 Usilika Lake

 Yup, I work here

 Oh, here too

 Even here

 Monkshood

Fireweedy

Boreal buddy

Mackenzie, vol II

The super team strikes again.  While pleased to be leaving Mackenzie earlier than projected (exactly on time by our 10 day shift standards) I was bummed that meant our shift wouldn't reset with some weekends off.

Lack of weekends off with friends gifted the coveted Saturday and Sunday off accompanied by raised eyebrow decisions, frustratingly long hours, swarms of mozzies invading our trailer and more-than-expected time away from Chetwynd is souring my summer and raising urgent personal questions about future summer employment plans.  I don't live here in the home owning sense yet I'm constantly homesick for it.

It's a classic case of wanting what I don't have.  I love not having a fixed address that I pay for in any real or imagined sense, having post sent to a work address or the box of wherever I happen to be resting my head lately.  The freedom to move around at my leisure/where my wallet demands I go to fill it coupled with the desire to (temporarily) settle.

Fellow wanderer Jen maintains the home is where her feet are.  I'm tempted to agree.  Out in the bush, let's go home means let's go back to our trailers in the moz breeding depression.  When hitching up those trailers, home is Jaana's house in Chetwynd.  Returning from an international foray, home is Calgary where I tend to fly back to and have smiling family that picks me up on delayed flights from the airport. Home has been Edmonton, Red Deer, Meekatharra, Bimini, a beach hut in half a dozen countries. I continue to wrestle with this reoccurring theme of who, what and, less importantly, where home is.

Fleur de Peace

It's odd to pack my bag and be displeased about the destination.

As I prepare for another foray to Mackenzie, I'm disappointed to be leaving Chetwynd at the height of summer.  Teachers friends are off school, wildflowers are doing their thing, late days call for lingering, the rivers are clearing up and I'm off to bushcamp under the guise of making money

I continue to confront "what the H am I doing with myself?" whether on a recent heli show, up the reservoir days and days from Mackenzie or seated in my backyard enjoying a novel.  While I wait for a lightening bolt moment and not overly concerned to be questioning my life's path, meaning, meandering journeys, I've taken to enjoying those who do this every year - the flowers.

  This one is new to me.  

                                    

                                                  Poisonous                                           Pokey

A personal and perennial favourite

I adore this flowering arrangement

 Such delicate flowers

 More often seen as an ornamental than in the frorest

Waiting for our pickup, it rained, sunned and I found these rain drenched gems

Trout trials

Trout are tricky, Dan, Warren and I learned yesterday as we tried our luck at Heart and Azouzetta Lakes in the Pine Le Moray Provincial Park.

After a botched attempt with all three of us in the canoe that almost had us swimming fully clothed alongside the children, Warren and I paddled off leaving Dan to try his luck with his fly rod from shore.

 
Popular with day trippers and long weekend campers, Heart Lake was crowded by northern lake standards as children searched for shoreline frogs, fished from sinking docks and floated on tubes while the adults wisely stayed out of the chilly lake in favour of the lakeside picnic tables.

 Skunked there even after seeing a wee fry, we lunched, packed up and moved on to Azouetta.  A private lodge dominates the lake and restricts access.  We managed to find a Civic sized launch.

Learning our lesson that the Clipper has a weight/occupant restriction at Heart Lake, Dan and I had first go.







Flanked by stunning mountains and sandwiched between the highway and railline, it was gorgeous but hardly peaceful as transports and cargo laden railcars plodded past.

Tempting us with their acrobatics, the trout continued to elude us as we eventually accepted defeat and vowed to return another day.

Wondering where the fishies are

 Ahh, Azouetta

Stern man Dan 

 The Clipper precariously balanced on a dodgy launch

 Dan and Warren returning

Big Lake yields namesake pike

While eating locally in the north has its own trials, nature's bounty and long growing days offset some of these challenges.  Hillsides pregnant with saskatoons in August, competing with the black bears on sandy pine flats for blueberries, shooing the neighbourhood cats (yes, plural) out the the garden/litter box like it's a sport.

Home to world-class hunting and fishing, it's unusual that a Chetwynd summer BBQ passes without game meat or freshly caught fish making it on to the grill.

A misread slopitch schedule left last night open for an evening fish on  Big Lake, 45 minutes northeast of Chetwynd.  I hooked up with my found-on-the-road rod into a 56 cm pike.  Eyeballing it bigger than previous catches on Jackfish, Dan bonked it on the head with a paddle and slung it behind the boat through-the-gills-and-out-the-mouth style.  A botched filleting left us with bones to pick out of our teeth, but the work was worth the prize.  

 Pretend this isn't blurry

 A bald iggle keeping watch 

 I dehooked my second one

Released for another day

 Pre-gutting

Season score, btw is Sheri: 7  Dan: 0

Williston's wilds

There's something spooky about Mackenzie.  Not the town proper, a purpose-built forestry community so much, but the now flooded valley that waxes and wanes under the guise of a reservoir throughout the year.

Created in 1968 by the impoundment of the Peace River in the Peace Canyon near Hudson’s Hope, British Columbia, for the purpose of hydroelectric generation, this fresh (fresh in the most generous of terms) water scar dominates the landscape.


An eeriness as prevalent as the oft low lying clouds lingers in the valley.  Flooded ghosts are everywhere and an unnerving sense of their presence is everywhere.  Combined with soured relations with the first nations, it's uncomfortable, but remarkably not unpleasant, working up there.

"Up there" was truly that this previous shift.  On the same latitude as Pink Mountain, but just over the range, more than 1000 liters of fuel, three flat tires and 1.5 days of driving hauling trailers eventually delivered us back to Chetwynd after a cruisy handful of days hanging ribbons for the manual brushers.

Highlights included seeing two lynxs on back-to-back days, marveling at the volume of water coming into the reservoir from various arms and savouring the numerous flowering plants.

                   

                                 Smilacina racemosa                                       Corallorhiza trifida

Strawberry fields forever

Shaun found beach access!

Looking down the valley on our last block

Pine making their babies

Moose dipping

Only 140 km to our campsite for the night on shitty, potholed roads

One of Williston's contributors

 Shaun: Let's hire this barge so we don't have to do that horrific drive again!

One of the reservoir's scenic spots

Weekend fishing soured by motors

Alert, alert Fish Cops of Region 7B: there's poachers/cheaters zooming around on powered boats on Jackfish Lake northeast of Chetwynd, British Columbia.

Looking south down Jackfish

Whether these rogue fishermen zoomed to the far end of the lake, their wake pouring over the gunnels of a people powered canoe, to avoid the scarce enforcement officers or off to a known booner habitat on Saturday I'll never know as the unpredictable winds kept Dan and I harboured in sheltered bays and close to the launch.

Back on the fresh water after a four year hiatus, I was surprised when I hooked up after only an hour on the lake.  Used to fighting Bimini's13-pound barracudas, the northern pike offered comparatively little of a struggle.  Shrieks of excitement as the fish was landed, dehooked and photos snapped, I released it for another day.

Four more hours on the water under glorious sunshine and another four fish followed, my second hooked deeply in the guts.  Accustomed to staying with a shark doing poorly, we stayed with and swam the pike til it was sufficiently moving under its own power.

Content to paddle and keep the canoe from turning into a submarine, Dan experienced fishing on Jackfish vicariously through silence shattering squeals when I hooked up.  Not nearly as pervasive as the constant, full-on serenity wrecking motors about the lake, I was thrilled to be back on the water.  A fishing rod and reel I found on the Bearhole Lake FSR north of Tumbler Ridge last summer will be my instrument of choice this season as I hope to explore the many lakes and streams B.C. has to offer.

First pike 

 Second one, hooked deeply and bleeding.  We stayed with it til it satisfactorily swam off.  

 Prime bow location

 Stern man Dan having a go with his fly rod

Lovely loon 

Whoops!  Fish are slippery!