Evacuation Legacy

     Sadly summers in BC now mean wildfires, and at present there is a horrific one going on in the southern third of the province.  In Summerland, BC twenty-two thousand people have been evacuated: forced to leave their homes without knowing if there homes will still be there once the fire has ended.

    Hearing about those fires, is a constant reminder for me of the forest fire hazard that surround our house.  Luckily so far this year, we have been blessed with periodic rain and showers, so our fire hazard isn’t very high, but who knows what the future will hold.

    When we had to evacuate in 2023 because of a forest fire that swept across the mountain slope across the road, we scrambled to pack up our valued possessions.  I am reminded of that daily, because a lot of those things still sit in crates, because we never put them back where they were.   Above you can see the crates that hold my diaries and old papers from my life.  In the blue container, I have old videos of family and trips we had taken.

    In the photo below are more containers of photos that still sit behind our couch in the living room.  They are ready to go in case of another evacuation call.  

    All this reminds me that I have taken the canopy off of my pickup truck in order to haul big chunks of unwanted willow chunks to the dump.  I really should get that job done, so I can put the canopy back onto the truck, just in case we need to load up all of our important things again in case of another  evacuation.

    

Take a look at my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

The Packaging Seemed A Bit Excessive

      This blog is about something that happened in 2016.  I had forgotten all about it, but I think it deserves another blog posting:

   The other day when I went to the post office to pick up the mail, I found a card in our post office box that said I had a parcel.  The previous week I had ordered a new electric toothbrush so I figured that must be what had arrived.  I gave the card to the postmistress and she walked into the back room and came out carrying a huge big cardboard box (see photo above).

     I wracked my brain trying to figure out what it could be in the big box.  It wasn’t heavy.  I couldn’t think of anything that I had ordered and I couldn’t imagine anything that anyone would send me that that could be so big.  I put the box in the back of the car and drove home.  At home I quickly opened it to see what was in it.

    Amazingly, it was my electric toothbrush.  Talk about excessive packaging. 

    Below is what was in the giant cardboard box, beside a lot of stuffing to protect it.

My paintings can be seen at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Grave Robbery

    As a youngster, I developed a deep fascination and interest in American Indian culture.  I dreamed of being an archeologist discovering and digging up artifacts of ancient civilizations.  Of course, none of that ever happened, but even today that interest remains. 

    In 1982, I was told that my brother-in-law at the time, knew of a Native American gravesite.  If I remember correctly, some relative and his friends were over in Kentucky fishing in a river and a bone came sliding down the slope beside the river.  They investigated and found a hole dug in the hillside and more bones.  James had later gone out there with his relative and saw the site.

    My imagination was fired upon hearing the story, so the next time I went down to Indiana for a visit I asked if a trip out to the burial site could be arranged, and Jim took my mother and I over to see it.  We drove across the bridge to Kentucky, then down some country roads, walked through some old fields and woodlands, and got to the grave site.

    It seemed like a wonderful site to bury a loved one.  The slope of the hill overlooked a river below and in the distance, through the trees, you could see the Ohio River sprawling out in the west.

    But I was appalled at what I saw in the present day.   A small chunk of the slope had been carved away, and strewn around the area were human bones.  The grave robbers were only interested in the Indian artifacts which they could sell on the black market, and cared not at all for the human remains.

    My reaction to the Indian burial site was not at all what I had expected.  I thought it would be so interesting, but instead I found it depressing and disgusting, thanks to the tomb robbers, who cared nothing about the history or culture, only of money.

    I urged my brother-in-law to contact someone involved with Native American history to make them aware of the location of the grave, but I don’t know if he did or not.  Certainly, there wasn’t anything left of cultural or historical value on the hillside.

    I recently discovered some of my lost slides and these were among them.  They still generate a feeling of disgust after all these years.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Firewood Envy

     I was never an envious person.  I saw things that other people had, but I just accepted the fact that they had stuff and I didn’t.  I really didn’t spend time being envious of their possessions.  There was however, one exception-- Firewood.

    Back in 1977 when we bought our house and property, it was heated entirely by a wood stove and the BC winters were cold and long.  It was always a major priority of mine to cut, split, and stack enough firewood to get us through the winter.  That was a big time-consuming job that required a lot of physical exertion.  I was constantly on the lookout for trees that had blown down or left after logging, that I could get for firewood.

    I was always envious when I saw the huge stack of cut, split, and dried firewood that some of my neighbors had and wished that I could be in such a condition, instead of hunting wood, getting it to our house, splitting it by swinging a splitting maul, then stacking it.  It was always such a big operation that I had to carry out every year in preparation for winter.

    Lately getting firewood has not been such a major chore, and that’s a good thing, because at my age, I no longer have the strength and endurance that I had when I was a young man.   One of the reasons that getting firewood is not such a big job now, is that our winters have not been as cold as they used to be, and every spring I still have firewood, that I didn’t need for heat, left over from the winter.  

    I now have access to an electric wood splitter that is on loan from a friend, so splitting wood is now quicker and a lot easier than swinging a maul.    Another reason is that we now also use electric baseboard heaters in the house to keep us warm, so we don’t have to use so much firewood.

    This all came to mind yesterday, when I noticed just how much firewood I have stacked and ready to use this winter.  It is nice to be in the situation where I no longer envy those people with their big ready supply of firewood for the winter.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

God Speaks

     I think it must be because I saw so many religious movies when I was a kid, that now, whenever I see a break in the clouds, with with the sunlight beaming down toward earth, my first thought is that God must be speaking to someone.  The beaming light thing is a phenomenon that I notice quite often in the Robson Valley, so this part of the country must keep God pretty busy.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

A Birch Seedling: A Satisfying Discovery

     Although you can’t really make it out in the photo, this pot of flowers is sitting on the big stump of a birch tree that once stood by our house.  Years ago the tree died and I had it felled.  The wide dark object with the whitish rim is a large conk (fungus) growing out of the nutrients in the old stump.  The top of the stump is now covered with moss and small plants.

    The other day when I was watering the flowering pot, I discovered something that made me feel really good.  Among the mosses and small plants on the top of the stump, there were some bigger leaves that looks like a birch seedling that has sprouted and is growing in the mosses on top of the old birch stump.      

    Seeing that was very satisfying to me.  I loved that big old original birch tree that grew there, and to see young birch tree growing in the same spot was uplifting, like life was regenerating itself.

    There are of course, no guarantees that the seedling will be able to survive in this climate-changing world to become another large birch tree, but right now, it gives me hope.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Wow, A Mother Deer With Three Fawns

     First thing this morning, I walked out to the raspberry patch to pick some raspberries to put on our bowl of oats.  When I rounded the woodpile, I was a bit surprised to see a deer standing by the raspberries.  I had seen the deer there a couple of times before, eating the raspberries so that was not a total surprise.  As I continued to calmly walk toward the raspberries, the deer slowly walked away a bit, keeping her eyes on me, but then she just stood there watching me.

    It was then that I noticed, over by our satellite dish, there were three fawns.  I was amazed, I had never seen a deer with three fawns.  I have seen deer with two, and deer with one, but never a mother deer with three of them.  No wonder she was had been busy stuffing herself with raspberries.  

    I had forgotten my phone, so I wasn’t able to take a photo, but I wanted one, so I walked slowly back to the house and got my camcorder.  When I returned back out to the raspberries, I was happy to see the deer family still there, so I was able to take some photos.  

    Eventually, the mother deer saw that I was busy hogging the raspberry patch as I was picking them, and so she wandered over to be with her three fawns.  

Take a look at my paintings by going to:  davidmarchant2.ca