Like Driving into Hell

    I had an extraordinary experience yesterday.  When I woke up the smoke around our house was a little worse than it had been; the sky was a slight an orangish grey, the mountains had disappeared, but I could still see the trees at the far end of the pond.  I had a dental appointment in Prince George and I started off on my two hour and a half hour drive at 7:30.  

    Smoke obscured the scenery the whole way, but about 9:30 in the morning, as I was nearing Prince George I noticed that the daylight was slowly starting to disappear.  The sky began to take a more orangish hue and became darker and darker.  I was shocked when the GPS unit in my car suddenly switched to “Night Mode” and the dashboard did too.

    The further I drove the darker it became.  I was gobsmacked.  I kept shaking my head in disbelief.  What was happening?  What was I heading into?  I had never experienced such an eerie experience.  When I got to the first traffic light, up by the airport turnoff, it was totally like night driving.  All of the streetlights were on.  It seemed unreal to me that it was just 10:00 in the morning.  

    I dreaded entering the bowl in which Prince George sits, because it is generally more polluted than the surrounding area, but yesterday, as I descended, it got a bit lighter, and I began to see more and more light in the sky.  By the time I got to the dentist’s office, the sky was getting back to what has been normal for the last two weeks:  a very smoky haze that obscures everything in the distance, but the sky was lighter with a slight orangish hue.

    I was still a bit shaken from what I had driven through, and had a great urge to tell everyone I talked too, but everyone had experience the same thing, which had been caused by extremely thick smoke (thick enough to block out daylight) from the hundreds of forest fires which are burning throughout BC.  The smoke from all of those those fires has now traveled across Canada.  (See satellite photo at the bottom.)

You can see my paintings: davidmarchant.ca

Tired of Smoke

    It’s pretty petty of me to complain about the unrelenting smoke that is filling the Robson Valley, when other people in BC have lost homes and have had their property destroyed by, the now, 600 wildfires burning in our province, but while our smoke-filled skies are minor, relative to those other things, I am finding it increasingly hard to deal with.  It drags me down, just like day after day of grey skies.  I find it depressing.

    I feel sorry for all those tourists, who have saved their money for a big vacation in the mountains, and now can’t even see them due to the smoke.  Their motorhomes crowd the highways, and I wonder where they are going, because just about all of BC and Alberta are presently thickly blanketed with the grey haze.  I wish I could say that the end is in sight, but so far there is no relief on the horizon.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant.ca

Pincushion Dog

    Our dog Skye has been going through some hard times lately.  She is in a lot of pain in her hip/knee/leg.  Its hard to pinpoint exactly what is causing it.  The vet has been giving us medicine, but Skye still has days when she whimpers when she moves.  We took her to the vet again yesterday and the vet wondered if we wanted to try acupuncture on her.

    We are ready to try anything at this point (no pun intended), so the vet got out her needles and started putting them into Skye.  I was surprised Skye didn’t react to getting punctured, but I guess the needles are so thin and sharp, Skye didn’t feel them. 

    I wish I could tell you that there was a miracle cure, but there wasn’t.  Maybe Skye was a little better, it was hard to tell.  Afterward, she didn’t yelp when she walked.  It was an interesting experience watching the procedure.  

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant.ca

I've Looked at Rain From Both Sides Now

    When I was younger, I thought of rain as a negative thing, something that prevented me from being outside and doing the things I wanted to do.  When I moved to British Columbia and started growing a garden I started to look at rain differently, and now, after spending those 23 years working for the Forest Service, I have really started to be happy to see rainy days.

    Living surrounded by forests, can get pretty worrying when we get long stretches of hot, sunny, dry weather.  That anxiety increases when day after day you watch reports of all the terrible forests fires on the news, and experience the smoke from those fires in our valley.  Fortunately our area has been getting periodic showers and rain, whenever things start to dry up.

    I was happy last night when I heard raindrops begin to pound on our metal roof.  It was such a relief.  I took the photo above this morning showing the raindrops on some cherries. 

    At present there are just under 500 forest fires burning in BC.  The map below shows some of them.  We live near the orange dot, just south of where the straight border with Alberta starts to curve.cur

ve.

You can view my paintings:  davidmarchant.ca

Smoky Sunset

    Smoke from forest fires continue to saturate our skies.  This was the sunset we witnessed on Thursday night while visiting with friends.  The smoke does give a nice softness to the scene, but every breath we take we are sucking it into our lungs.

You an see my paintings at:  davidmarchant.ca

Smoky Mountains

    These photos show you what our local mountains look like, when you can actually see them.  Often they are completely obscured from all of the forest fire smoke that is choking the Robson Valley.  In the morning when I walk outside, I smell smoke and the skies have a grayish orange tint.  My eyes run throughout the day.  

    On the Canadian internet weather site I go to, they normally feature a symbol of the sun, or rain falling from a cloud to give the viewer a quick indication of what the weather is going to be.   Over the last couple of days, they have adopted a new symbol--smoke.  They don’t always get the weather right, but they sure nailed this one.

You can view my paintings:  davidmarchant.ca

My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir

    Our theme for last month’s McBride Library Book Club was “A book with the word ‘Summer’ in it’s title.  This was a tough theme for me because I had a hard time finding a theme book that I wanted to read.  Finally however, I came upon this John Muir book and and knowing that he was one of the early environmental pioneers, I  downloaded it (it was free from iBooks) and began reading it.

    Here is my review:

     In 1869, at the age of 31, John Muir had an opportunity to spend a summer in the Sierra Mountains, watching over a flock of sheep and their herder.  He was extremely interested in all of the natural world to be found in the spectacular mountain environment of what was to later become Yosemite National Park, and so this was a dream job for him.  

      Since his only responsibility to the sheep’s owner was to keep an eye on the hired shepherd and the operation, he had ample time to explore the natural mountain landscape, sketch, and keep a diary.  This book is basically the diary he kept.  He writes like a poet, full of awe at this mountain wonderland he finds himself in. He describes all he sees, all the plants and wildlife he runs into, giving the reader their description and scientific name.   

       Having only the scientific name meant I had often go to the internet to see what plant he was talking about. That wasn’t too onerous because I read the book on my iPad so all I had to do was to click on the name and then click on “Look Up” and it took me to a photo of the plant.

      I, like John Muir, am very interested in the natural environment and probably pay more attention to the natural things around me than most people, but I don’t even come close to the detailed observations that Muir makes, everything from species of ants, the kinds of rocks, to the types of clouds building above the mountains.  

        By July 4, most of the “grub” that was meant to feed the shepherd and John was gone and all they had to live on was mutton, sugar, and tea, until the herd’s owner came to resupply them.  This diet caused stomach problems, but with disgust, Muir forced it down.  He missed bread tremendously.  The severely restricted diet subdued Muir’s astonishment with the environment until they were resupplied with food once again, then John Muir’s descriptions of the mountains and plants once again began to flourish. 

       In one entry,   Muir tells of hiking up to the top edge of Yosemite Falls, to carefully peer over the 2,400 foot drop.  Although Muir said he wasn’t afraid peering over the edge, that night he had a very restless sleep as a result, with frightening dreams which kept waking him with a start. 

I enjoyed reading Muir’s description of the shepherds pants.  Every day for his lunch, the shepherd hung a cloth bag of cooked mutton on his belt, and the fat and gravy from the meat slowly dripped onto his pants as he worked and sat around.  This created a slimy film on his pants which picked up everything from small twigs, leaves, insect parts, mica and everything else they came into contact with.  The shepherd worked all day and slept in the pants at night, never changing or cleaning them.  Muir writes that instead of getting thinner with time, the pants just got thicker and thicker.

    I enjoyed not only Muir’s description of his time with the herd of sheep up in the Sierras, but also just the things he mentions about what life was like in 1869, like running into a small band of Indians living rough.

You can view my paintings at:  davidmarchant.ca