Thoughts of WInter

    Today in the Robson Valley, the temperature is supposed to reach 32C ( 90F).  We had a warm summer and all of BC is supposed to have a warm autumn.  Despite these temperatures, my thoughts are continually thinking about the winter ahead.  I assume that is because, I have become a Canadian.  Most of the world thinks about ice and snow when they think about Canada.  That of course that does happen in the winter, but the summers can be blissfully comfortable.   Winter does make a major impression on one’s life and so thoughts of winter are present throughout the year.

    When I mow along our driveway, I think about making sure that tall grass at the edge is cut down before the snow hits, or else it will cause snow build up.  When I am working in the garden, I am always thinking about how we are going to process the things we grow, so that they can be enjoyed throughout the winter.  All summer long, I have been sawing up, splitting, and stacking firewood so that our house will be toasty during those cold dark days.  Its hard to free myself from the grip of winter.

    Over the last week, I have been working with Glen, our neighbor, on getting our water system all set for the winter.  I have mentioned before that we get our water directly from a waterfall.  Our buried waterline runs along a cliff face, and in the past year, part of that cliff has collapsed, taking with it some of the insulation we had installed to keep the frost from getting to our waterline.  Glen and I have been constructing a wall along the cliff using a wooden frame, styrofoam sheets, an old carpet, and hay to create an insulating barrier along the cliff.  That is what you can see in the photo above.

    We also had to spend time redirecting the water from the Sunbeam Creek falls into our culvert.  Weeks ago, we had to take our culvert out so we could remove a giant boulder that fell into the culvert and ever since we put the culvert back, too much water was sinking through the rocks around it and as a result our culvert was not filling completely.

    To solve this problem we had to plug up all the spaces between the rocks above the culvert with landscape cloth, so that the water would flow across, to again totally fill our culvert.  Thankfully, we were able to achieve that result, and so our waterline is now ready for winter.  The photo below is a shot of all that fresh crystal clear mountain water swirling around our full culvert.

My paintings can be viewed at:  www.davidmarchant.ca