My First Forest Fire Call Out

           My life took an unexpected turn when the phone rang at 9:30 on a hot and sunny August Saturday morning in 1978.  It was a phone call that had an immediate repercussion, but also had further repercussions two years later that led to a 25 year change in the direction of my life.

        The call was from Alastair, a neighbor who lived a couple of houses down the road who worked for the B.C. Forest Service. In our many visits with him and his family, I mentioned that I was available and eager for any kind of work, and fortunately Alastair remembered that, and was on the phone to tell me that there had been a lightning strike that had resulted in a forest fire up the McGregor River drainage, and the Forest Service was in need of fire fighters. Was I willing to come and help?

        “Sure”, I told him “What do I need do? 

         “Just bring some boots and gloves and come down to the ranger station as soon as you can”, Alastair  replied, then added, “You’ll probably be away from home for a few days, and this is a helicopter show, so we will be flying you in and camping.” 

        Wow, a helicopter ride!, Now, I was really excited. It was mostly the pristine mountains that had attracted us to move to the Robson Valley and the McGregor River was a totally untouched wilderness drainage, about as pristine as it comes, and now I was getting an opportunity to ride in a helicopter and see the mountains from the air. I had never been in a helicopter before, and jeez, I had never had to fight a forest fire before. My mind was racing, by this sudden opening of new opportunities. 

        I pictured myself as a fire fighter;  I stood stoically, axe in my hand, as an inferno of flames snaked up nearby trees and sparks swirled around me.  I neatly stepped aside to dodge the incendiary branches that crashed down beside me.  I paused for a few seconds, exhausted from the exertion of using the axe.  The heat was intense. I took off my hardhat and wiped the sweat from my ash smeared brow. The fire roared, my 30 seconds of rest was over, I must returned to the fire fight.

    Back to reality:  I filled my wife in on the details of my exciting phone call, then gathered some work clothes, my heavy duty hiking boots, and a pair of work gloves. A camera, I mustn’t forget to take my camera. I was ready. 

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Happy Canada Day

     We’ve got a fairly grim looking holiday going for us today.  It is coolish and raining, so I thought I would pull out a more scenic photo for the occasion.  This Is a picture taken on the way up to Kinney Lake in Mt. Robson Provincial Park.  The beautiful, but unnatural looking color of the water, is due to glacial “flour”, a mix of ground up rock carried by the river.

    Like every other country these days, Canada is suffering from the erratic, chaotic, and unstable bullying of the child-like president of the US, but it is muddling along.  

    Our weather will no doubt put a damper on the Canada Day events scheduled in McBride.  We will probably drive into town later today, to get some doughnuts from the local food truck.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Heat Dome Singed Hostas

     Three days ago I blogged about the heat dome the Interior of BC suffered under, five years ago in 2021.  Well, it wasn’t only local people that suffered, the photo above shows what happened to my hostas as a result of the heat dome.  We recorded a extraordinary temperature of 41°C (105°F), and the hostas that were growing immediately beside the walls of our house got even hotter, because of the radiated temperatures generated by the nearby walls.  The heat caused their generally vibrant leaves to curl up and die along the edges.  

    I am currently painting another image of the phenomenon.  The photo below shows how far I have gotten so far on the painting.

Leather Postcards, Who Knew?

     Remember Sadie, my grandmother who homesteaded in Montana?    My sister recently went through an old trunk of Sadie's and discovered that Grandma hoarded a lot of the postcards she received throughout her life.  Among those post cards were two very old ones that were made of leather.  Leather postcards were something neither my sister nor I, even knew were a thing, but I guess in the early days of the 1900’s, leather postcards had become a very popular fad.

    The first leather postcards started showing up in 1903.  One of those in Sadie’s old trunk was postmarked 1906.  Leather postcards were made of deer hide, and the drawings and lettering where burnt into the leather, using hot metal tools.   Making leather postcards became a popular craft with the ladies.  Some leather postcards had holes perforated along their sides, so that they could be easily stitched  together to make decorative pillows.         

    Because the buckskin was so soft, in 1909 the US Postal Service banned leather postcard from being mailed, because their flexible leather clogged up the sorting machines that were beginning to be used.

    Hey Grandma, who was this Jim character who sent you the card?

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Colorful Lupines

     Lupines are one of my favorite flowers, and over the years I have taken hundreds of photos of them.  It seems I can’t help myself.  A few evenings ago as I was walking back from closing the greenhouse, I noticed these partially shaded lupine in the yard.  The way some of them where illuminated caught my eye, and I just had to snap a couple more photos of the plant.

    Our native lupine are violet in color, but over the years I have planted some pinkish, yellowish, and white lupine, and together they have generated a lot of new hues of colors.  Lupine are hearty plants and can be a bit invasive in spreading themselves, but I don’t mind because I enjoy seeing their long colorful blooms and their wide array of color.  

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Heat Dome Anniversary

     Five years ago today, the Robson Valley experienced something I had never imagined would happen.  A stifling Heat Dome formed over BC, sending heat temperatures soaring, breaking long-held record high temperatures.  The Robson Valley was no exception.   During the summer our average daytime temperature hovers around 19°C (66°F), but in 2021 as we sweated under the Heat Dome, we got the previously unheard of temperature of 41°C (105.8°F).  

    While I was aware of heat domes forming in flat, hot areas, I never dreamed that we would suffer under one up here in the middle of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, but with climate change, nothing is normal anymore and anything seems to be possible.

    The photo above shows my what my greenhouse looked like, after I tried to cover part of it to keep the temperatures inside from becoming lethal to my tomato plants.  The inside temperature of the greenhouse did climb to 51°C (124°F) and my tomatoes did suffer, but survived.

    The extreme heat caused rapid snowmelt on our mountains, causing the Fraser River to flood into the neighboring fields.  (Photo below)

    During the 2021 Heat Dome, the town of Lytton, BC which was often the temperature hotspot in BC, broke Canada’s all time heat record, with a temperature of 49.6°C (121.3°F) then immediately the whole town burned to the ground, destroyed by a forest fire. 

    Just yesterday, I read where Evansville, Indiana my home town, will find itself sitting under a heat dome, this coming Tuesday.  I always found the hot humid summers they usually experienced, intolerable by themselves, and I hope the heat dome doesn’t linger too long over them.

You can take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

No Snake Worries In The Robson Valley

         Like our Primate cousins, humans seem to have an innate fear of snakes.  While I know most of them are harmless and not poisonous, whenever I happen suddenly come upon a snake, my first reaction is always shock, until reason takes over.   In the Robson Valley, we don’t have to worry about snakes.  The only type of snake that lives here is the Red-sided Garter snake.  

        The Red-sided garter snake is harmless reptile that eats things like slugs, insects, and in water, tadpoles, leeches, and minnows.  The Red-sided Garter snake is the most northern occurring snake in North America.  

        In the spring, I sometimes see one of these garter snakes slithering around in my greenhouse.  It is only about 18 inches (45cm) in length, and always looks for a hiding place when it sees me.  I think they overwinter in the crevasses in the boulders of the rock slide on the slope above our house.  In the spring they migrate down to the valley bottom for the summer.  I generally see one of two flattened snake corpses of these snakes who failed to get across our road during the spring.

       I have only ever seen one poisonous snake in the wild.  My wife and I were hiking along a over-grown jungle trail in Costa Rica, when we spotted this brown-patterned baby snake in the weeds.  It was the size of a pencil and had an arrowhead shaped head.  We discovered later that it was a baby Fer-de-lance, one of the most deadly snakes in the world.  We were a lot more observant about where we tread after that encounter.

    

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca