McBride Peak's Halfway Lookout Cabin

     Halfway up the switchbacking road up McBride Peak, there is a small log hut that used to be the temporary home to the Fred(?) Koeneman, the lookout man.  When the forest fire danger was high, he would sleep in the cabin at night, then travel up to the alpine of McBride Peak to the Fire Lookout building, in order to spot any smoke from forest fires in the valley below or rising from the slopes on the sides of the Valley. 

    Anyway, starting in the 1980’s hang gliding became a popular pastime for adventurous people who would launch themselves off into the air from McBride Peak, in order to have the updrafts lift them high into the sky, to soar over the Valley.

    One year there was going to be a hang gliding competition in McBride.  The gliders would launch themselves off of McBride Peak and I think the point was to see who could stay aloft the longest.  I was working at the Forest Service at the time, and I was often given jobs that had nothing to do with my map-making position.  A few days before the hang gliding event, I was told to drive up to the Halfway and paint the rather rough-looking roof of the lookout man’s cabin, so it would look nice to all of the hang gliders who would be soaring above it.

    I enjoyed those unusual jobs that got me out of the office, and was happy to drive up the mountain with a paintbrush, ladder, and paint, to spend the day.

    I didn’t attend the hang gliding competition, but I later heard of a tragic accident that occurred during it.  One hang glider who was camped in the campground across the highway from McBride Peak, broke the rules, and instead of landing in Koeneman Park just below the slope, tried to land in the camp ground.

    On his descent, he hit a tree, fell to the ground, breaking his neck.  He was rushed to the hospital, but died.  A friend who was the X-ray technician at the hospital, told me the victim’s injuries were the worse she had experienced.

    I couldn’t find any of my photos of the Halfway Cabin.  The photo above is from Google Earth.  Below is the scenic view of the Valley from the Halfway Point of McBride Peak.

    

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You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

Well, Maybe I Won't Be Wearing The Gum Boots Today

     The building I constructed to be my shop, mostly turned out to be our warehouse, where we store all those old things we might need to use again someday.  One day, I was looking for my old “gum boots” (also known as rubber boots or Wellingtons), which I figured would be upstairs in the shop.

    I saw them, but was puzzled because there seemed to be a lot of bee activity around them.  When I went to get a closer look, I discovered the reason:  The bees had built their nest in one of the boots.  Their nest came up about halfway in the leg of the boot.  

    Seeing that, I made a quick decision not to wear the boots that day.  Luckily, I did have a newer pair that I could wear.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Always Working Toward Winter

     I kept myself busy day yesterday doing various jobs.  First I loaded my pickup with big heavy rounds of willows to take to the dump.  They were all too big, heavy, or knotted, making them near impossible for me to split for fire wood.  I wanted to get rid of them out of the way so I could get to the pile of pieces that I could split.  When I got to the dump, I realized that I could have put that job off, because the large wood bin at the dump was already full, so I had to bring the load back home, to sit in the truck until the bin is empty again.

    After that, I picked another load of peas and de-podded them for freezing.  We went to the grocery and bought a nice small box of BC blueberries and froze them.  Then in the afternoon I picked another small bucketful of raspberries, also for freezing.

    As I was picking the raspberries, I suddenly realized that most of the jobs I had done, were in preparation for winter.  Of course, Canada is often associated with long, cold, winters, and for those Canadians, like us, who live in a Canadian rural setting, a lot of our summer is used preparing ourselves for those future months of winter.  Summer is our busy time, and things really slow down and give us a lot of free time, once winter is upon us.

    

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

My Fifteen Minutes of Fame-- Blown

         Back in 1977, the Cosmos seemed to be unwinding in my favor.  At the time I was very interested in nature photography, especially close-ups of flowers and any other small natural thing that caught my interest.  One day, while walking along a beach on Vancouver Island a big toad jumped to get out of my way.  I had all my camera equipment with me, so I set it all up to try to get a photo of the amphibian.

        I had a 200mm lens, which I attached to a bellows that was then latched onto my camera body, which was set on a tripod.  I had a small hand-held flash that was plugged in to an extension cable, so I could hold it close to the toad, which by this time was huddled down in some foliage.

        I pressed down on my shutter cable and the flash flashed, and my camera clicked.  I thought I had gotten a good photo, but in those days you never knew until you had sent the slide film away.  I waited for two or three weeks for it to be developed, and when I got it back, I was able to actually look at the photo that I had taken.  I was very satisfied--it was a great shot.

        The following summer is when we were looking around for a house and property to buy.  We were, for sure, going to live in BC, and we sought properties in the mountains and landscapes of the Robson Valley,  around McBride.  We found a small hobby farm with a tiny house on 5 acres of land, and bought it.

         We weren’t able to move in for a couple of months and in the mean time, we had been reading issues of a new Canadian magazine called “Harrowsmith” that was all about gardening and rural living. At the time, “Back to the Land” sort of articles were all the vogue.

        In one edition, I noticed that Harrowsmith was going to sponsor its first annual photo contest.  The categories were very garden oriented.  One category was “Garden Friends and Foes”.  I wracked my brain trying to think if I had any photos that I could enter, and decided that my toad photo just might fit.  Toads eat a lot of insects, and even though the toad in my photo wasn’t in a garden, it was sitting amongst some yarrow which is a herb, so maybe the Harrowsmith people would think it was in the garden. 

        I sent the slide in, and forgot about it.  Then, during November of 1977 a big envelope from Harrowsmith, arrived in the mail.   Inside was a letter, and the latest copy of the Harrowsmith magazine.  The letter said, ‘Congratulations, you have won the Grand Prize- a Nikon Camera, in our First Annual Photo Contest”, it went on to say they had used my photo in the centerfold of their upcoming magazine.    I was so excited, I could hardly get my fingers coordinated enough to leaf through the magazine for a look.  

        Finally, getting to the middle of the magazine, I opened it and there spread across the two pages was a big blowup of my toad photo.  

        “Wow,” I thought, “I am famous!”    My ecstasy lasted only until I happen to look down at the caption below the photo, which read:  “Grand Price Winner- Bob Marchant, McBride, BC.” 

        “BOB MARCHANT?”

         My name is David.  There it was--my 15 minutes of fame--Blown.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Look At My Willows Now

     The other day when I was in town, our neighbor Karen came up to me and told me that she couldn’t believe just how our willows were growing, after being so brutally cut off ten feet above the ground, six months ago.  I know she, and all of our other neighbors had been concerned after they saw how they had been topped, leaving just the trunks of the trees.  

    I knew willows were amazingly resilient trees because we had had them topped once before and it didn’t take them long to grow back to their same pre-topping height.  All that said, I too was surprised at just how quickly their tops were re-growing.  In fact I will have to get out there and take off some of those new branches,  just so the trees don’t get so out of hand again.  

   

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

I Guess It Wasn't Kona Squeaking

     The other night when I was fast asleep, I was awakened by my wife telling me that Kona was “squeaking”.   Sometimes when Kona urgently needs our attention, instead of barking, she makes a short, very high pitched, squeak.   It generally means she needs to go outside.

    I got out of bed, put on my pants, synching up my belt tightly, so I wouldn’t hurt my back picking up Kona to take her outside.  I lifted her and took her out into the yard.  I shown the flashlight on her to see if she did anything.   She didn’t, so after a while, I carried her back into the house.

    It was when I was carry her back in that I heard the squeaking sound.  It was coming from inside the house.  It hadn’t been Kona squeaking, it was one of our smoke detectors, telling us that its batteries needed replacing.  I unhooked the smoke detectors from the ceiling and removed the old batteries, so that it would no longer make the squeaking throughout the rest of the night.   

    Of course, getting up, carrying Kona outside, and then taking down the smoke detectors, left me wide awake, so I read a bit in a novel, hoping that would eventually get me back in the mood for sleeping.  Next morning, I replaced the batteries and put the smoke detectors back in their place on the ceiling.

            

View my paintings at:   davidmarchant2.ca

A Morphine Hit For Bees?

     I have a lot of poppies in my vegetable garden.  They come  up every year, and I never weed them out, because I enjoy all of the color they add.  

    Yesterday, I was out there picking peas and I couldn’t help but be aware of all of the bees that were busily buzzing around on the poppy flowers.  There was one particular poppy that was sporting numerous bees, seeking nectar.  There were five different bees who seemed frantically  busy on this one flower.  Since poppies are the source of morphine, I wondered if this one particular flower were giving the bees an extra “buzz” from the drug.  The bees sure seemed especially attracted to it.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca