Kona's Firewood Pile

    I have mentioned before about how Kona has become obsessed with sticks and how whenever we walk Kona around the pond, she has been picking up the pieces of kindling firewood that I had sawed up and piled on the dam.  When I saw that this behavior had turned into a habit with Kona, I decided that whenever she brought a piece of wood back, I would stack it on a separate pile so I could see just how much wood she has carried back to the house.  

    I didn’t have anything else to blog about today, so I decided to take a photo of Kona’s pile of firewood and show you how much she has carried so far.  I have been quite surprised at some of the pieces she has held in her mouth and carried.  Some seemed to big to comfortably fit in her mouth, and some were pretty heavy, but she seems determined and once she frees a piece from the snow, she picks it up, then proudly prances back up the trail carrying it.

See my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

A Fleeing Moose

    The snow on the ground has again frozen hard enough for me to walk on top of it, instead of sinking through it, so I thought I would walk Kona on our loop trail that runs through the neighbor’s woods.  We hadn’t been on the trail for months, so I wasn’t sure what kind of conditions to expect.  Happily it was quite walkable.

    At one point at the middle of the forest, Kona stopped, then stared intently toward a grove of Cottonwood trees.  I knew she was aware of something, but I couldn’t see anything.  Suddenly she erupted into a barking fit, pulling at her leash.  It was then that I saw a moose, crashing through the underbrush to escape the “fierce” dog that it had heard.

    I made a futile attempt to pull my camera out of its holder, but by the time I had freed it, the moose was gone.  It took a while to calm Kona down and then we proceeded with our walk.  When the trail veered south I came across the tracks of the tracks of the fleeing moose.  I would have preferred a photo of the moose, but a photo of the moose tracks will have to do.

    Later when we were walking through one of the fields that is situated beside the Fraser River, I came across some tracks of a coyote that must have been hunting mice.  The snow certainly records a lot of animal activity that otherwise, one would not be aware of.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

Judy Collins

     It was probably 1963 when I first heard Judy Collins sing.  I, like many others at the time, began to take an interest in Folk Music, and every Saturday Night watched a show on television called “Hootenanny” which featured various folk singers performing in front of university students.  When I first heard Judy Collins sing, I was a convert.  Her voice became the standard that I judged other female singers by.

    During my first year at university I discovered that in the Student Union building, there was what was called, “The Music Listening Room”.  Students could come in, check out records, and then play them.  They had a copy of Judy Collins’ first album, and I listened to it over and over.

    Several years later folk singer Collins had a breakthrough into the pop charts with her cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” and later “Send In The Clowns.”   By that time I had listened to many of her albums, and discovered that not only was she an extraordinary singer, but also a talented singer-songwriter.  I was not her only big fan, Crosby, Stills, and Nash wrote the song, “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” about Judy Collins.  

    Over the last 50 years, I have listened to the many albums that Judy Collins had put out, but I have always loved the ones before 1980 the best.

    I saw recently that Judy Collins had just released an album called “Spellbound” which featured just songs that she had written.  I downloaded the album and began listening to it every morning as I paint my daily square.  It is now on heavy rotation on my computer.  It is a great collection of songs that she has written as she looked back at her life.  

    So many long-time performers have continued to sing, even though their voices have deteriorated , but that is not the case with 80 year old Collins.  Her voice is a clear and beautiful as that first time I heard it on Hootenanny.  Her songs are nostalgic as she recalls the many places (Colorado, Hawaii, New York, Arizona) where she remembers her experiences.  The haunting songs are done with melodic piano runs.  It is a beautiful collection of work.

    While I find myself humming several of her songs from the album, my favorite song is “When I Was A Girl In Colorado”.  I gives me shivers every time I hear it.  You can listen to the song while reading the lyrics at this link:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbQk7V2oFDM

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant2.ca

Happy Birthday, Mom

    Today, which is International Women’s Day, is also my mother’s birthday, her 101th birthday.  That’s pretty remarkable.  Mom now lives in a care home 2000 miles away, so we won’t be able to visit her on this; her big day.  Not only is the distance an obstacle, but there are visitor restrictions on the home due to Covid.  

    I am saddened that she has had to live such an isolated life during these Covid years, but fortunately my mom has always been a trooper, who accepts reality without complaint.  My sister is trying to arrange a phone call or FaceTime chat for us and Mom today, so I hope that all works out.  Whether it does or doesn’t, I will be thinking about this woman who brought me into the world, nourished and sacrificed to give us kids a good life, something that can never be adequately repaid. 

    Happy Birthday, Mom.  We love you.

    The photo is from my Mom’s 93th birthday.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

    

 

After Snow, Mud

    The above freezing daytime temperatures we have been getting have given us a preview of what lies ahead in coming week for residents of the Robson Valley--mud.  When the ice on all those gravel roads  we have around here melts, they are going to turn into muck.  That has already happened on the road to the McBride air strip, where we have been taking Kona for a walk.  Once we make it to the runway everything is fine, but getting there and getting back home cannot be done without slipping and sliding as we go down, then up the hill.  

    I will leave the appearance of our poor car to your imagination.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

An Improvised "Wheel"

    In October of 1978 we were invited by my neighbor’s parents, who owned a cabin on Purden Lake to come for a visit and to pick up some birch firewood from trees that Severn, had fallen.    Purden Lake was a long way to travel for firewood, 152 km ( 94 miles), but it would also be a visit with Ebba and Severn, whose company we always enjoyed, and I was always eager to get Birch firewood.  I hooked up our utility trailer to the Scout, and drove through a snowstorm to get there.

After doing some visiting, sawing up and loading the wood, we were ready to haul the load back home, but Severn and Ebba insisted we stay for supper, so we didn’t get off until 5:30 which meant driving in the dark.  All went well until we pulled onto our road in McBride.   Just a few miles from our house, I heard a noise, and felt a jerk in the Scout which slowed us down, then I watched in dismay as one of the wheels from the utility trailer roll past us, to come to rest in a ditch.

I slammed on the breaks, stopped the car, got out and saw that the driver’s side trailer axil was wheel-less and sitting on the road.  Not having ever experiencing such a thing, I retrieved the runaway wheel and discovered that it’s lug bolt holes were damaged beyond use, so I would have to figure out some other means of getting the trailer home.  I was able to unhook the trailer from the car which allowed us to drive home, leaving the trailer where it was.

We endured a heavy rain overnight and into the next day, but it didn’t stop me from having to deal with my abandoned utility trailer which I had left on the side of the road.  First I emptied all of the birch from the trailer and hauled it back to our house in the Scout. 

       Luckily I came up with a novel idea for getting the trailer back to our house.   I lashed one end of a long thick pole to the front top of the utility trailer, then rested of it under the axle where the wheel had come off.  The bottom of the pole rested on the road, thus supporting the trailer on the wheel-less side.  So with the trailer supported by the good wheel on one side, and by the travois-like support on the other, I pulled/dragged the trailer back to the house.  It’s a good thing I didn’t have to go any further because the road-end of the pole was severely worn down by the gravel on the road by the time I got to my driveway.

    That trailer was the same one we had used to haul all of our possessions to Canada when we immigrated in 1973.  Of course, it had two wheels then.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca

 

My Discombobulated Night of Movie Watching

    I remember a time in my life when I would would sit down and watch a whole movie uninterrupted, but those times have long disappeared.  I cannot recall the last time watched a movie straight through.  Now it seems things are always happening that cause me to stop the film to do other things.  Luckily, with satellite TV and downloading movies from the internet, it is no problem to pause a film or save it to continue watching later.  

    Friday night is always a good time for movies, so last night I sat down for an evening to watch.  A few days ago, I had started watching “In Tranzit,” a well done film about Nazi POWs in a harsh Russian prison camp immediately after World War II.  The camp, which had originally been set up to house women prisoners, was run by women staff and they were suddenly confronted with overseeing males.  As you might expect in a Russian prison camp, conditions were brutal and bleak.  It was winter, supplies were meager and both prisoners and prison staff were suffering.

    While the film was grim,  it was well made and well acted, and in the end, showed some humanity.  I finished the film; watching the last hour and 10 minutes, last night.

    Once that had finished, I went down to the living room to sit with Kona and watch some TV.  I noticed that the movie “August Rush” was on.  It is a film I had see a couple of times before and had always enjoyed.  The story is pretty fanciful, about an orphan boy who is a musical prodigy, a real musical genius, who runs away from the orphanage in search of his parents.  His mother, a world renowned Cellist, is out there seeking her child, who had been secretly put in the orphanage by her father.  The boy’s father, a rock musician, doesn’t know he has a son, but is desperately seeking his lost love-the cellist.  

    As you can probably guess it all turns out very satisfactorily in the end.  I have always enjoyed films about musically talented people, especially those with happy endings.  When I discovered “August Rush” was on it was already half way through, so I watched the last hour and 15 minutes of the film.

    After it ended I went back to check what other things I had recorded on the satellite TV and saw that I still had the last 25 minutes of “The Graduate” to watch.  I had watched most of the movie yesterday, but had to quit because Kona was demanding to go to bed, so I just recorded the rest of the movie, which I finished watching last night.

    “The Graduate” was very popular movie when I was in university.  When I saw it back then, I related heavily with the Dustin Hoffman character, who had just gotten out of university and was stuck, because he didn’t really know what to do with his life.

    “The Graduate” was the last of the three movies I completed last night.  I enjoyed them all and was happy to “clean the slate” of films I needed to finish.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca