Riders on the storm : a Jim Morrison moment on HWY 395. Wordless Wednesday

Big sky autumn dawn with moon: land(es)cape eloquence

Twenty years ago, on Cradock Road, Robert the Incomparable taught that familiarity breeds love. Stingy Lane and Cotton Creek Road on the eastern edge of Chewelah valley could just prove him right. Again

Wilting Poison Ivy rescued by Plum Flower

It has been one of those weeks. I had a date with a whole bunch of little superhero wannabees on Saturday.

Then Thursday the dreaded lurgi gets me by the throat, sets my sinuses on fire. By Friday, every joint, muscle and bone in my body is aching. Yeah, that kind of lurgi.

By chance, stumbling blind to the mail Friday, I noticed Sago Naturals two doors up from the Post Office. I explained my predicament. Sago Naturals Sylvia was unphased: she gestured with the bottle in her hand as I walked in.

"Take sixteen of these tonight and sixteen in the morning. You will be fine. It works. When I was studying Chinese medicine, my teacher, a little old Chinaman in San Francisco told me this. "

A somewhat fevered Poison Ivy saw the lill' Superheroes through their party, though it was a couple of other real life everyday heroes who actually carried the day. Ancestral winds with me. Again.

Them and Chinese herbs. Plum Flower brand with no sugar coating when Poison Ivy needed it most.Who would have thought this little Western town would have a certified Chinese Traditional herbalist? And don't ask me to explain why Sago Naturals Sylvia had just the herbs I needed in her hand as I walked in. That mysterious river again.

Victoria a hui hou

My last night in Victoria, at the end of the conference last month, I wandered the downtown streets with two friends and former colleagues, amidst throngs of tourists.We admired buildings, window shopped, watched the light changing, ate in Fan Tan Cafe at the head of Fan Tan Alley in Chinatown, topped the meal off later with gelato for my friends from another store.As the sun set, a crescent moon hung magnificent over the city lights. I had an early start ahead of me (return journey documented in an earlier post) so I made my way back to my hotel while the crowds still flowed, Darth Vadar played violin on a street corner, horse carriages clip clopped by.
My feet were sore and tired. A hui hou beautiful, multicultural, vibrant Victoria.[another 72 pics of the evening on flikr]

Hello harvest!

It is that northern time again when a brief and beautiful flare of colour brightens and warms before the fall into the long dark bare winter. Suddenly, overnight as it were, I am seeing the brilliance turning: yellows, reds and a ripeness of berries everywhere.

I have also noticed a great busyness of laying up for winter recently. Preserving, canning, drying and freezing. And of course little Wood Rat fattening up for hibernation under the house.

Hmmm. Note to self: pay more attention next year to growing MORE than daily needs in that garden.

The season turns about six weeks earlier here than over the mountains, just as, at the other end, spring was six weeks later arriving. Even while I admire the beauty, the reality is slowly dawning on me: in coming over the mountains I have lost three months of gardening time.

The gain: indoor contemplative, creative time? Something has to be in there in that looming long, cold, dark and me in a house without a fireplace even.

Glorious, victorious: huy ch q'u

A librarianship conference in August eventually got me to the Canadian city I have been intending to visit for 9 years: Victoria on Vancouver Island.
I found it to be a place of frothy flowers, totem poles and grandiose Imperial colonial buildings. Simultaneously a seaport and a tourist destination which throbs at night with flowing crowds.
In brief times between conferencing I explored a Chinatown and some parks. I conveniently had to walk through a magnificent gallery of totem poles in the museum grounds to get to the conference every day. Up a side street I found a speciality tea shop for aged Pu'erh and dined at whim in random ethnic restuarants: Greek, Middle Eastern, Mexican, Thai, Chinese - hey, there was even that Seattle designer coffee company which has gone so commonly viral the world over....
Mostly it was these soaring stories carved in wood which enraptured me. That and the homecoming of being in Pacific Northwest Coast tribal territory once more. Huy ch q'u
[there are 88 pics on flickr and that's only a half of them]

Rodents in the architecture. Again

To celebrate Hobbit day and Bilbo and Frodo's birthdays, I have a small brown mammal story. No fantasy either.

Is it a squirrel? Is it a chinchilla? No wait it's (probably) a bushy tailed wood rat.

I am talking about my newly revealed housemate: a fluffy 11 inch or so ball of the longest whiskers ever on the other end of a bushy tipped tail.

Drinking tea in the first weak early morning sunshine outback last week , I realised someone was rustling in the undergrowth alongside me. Looking down, I found Madame X/Y (gender as yet unspecified) delicately nibbling on the last succulent morsels of a little green cloverlike groundcover which has naturalized everywhere I let it.
Several photoshoots later and much cross continent correspondence with my favourite veterinarian in the Bronx, we have a vague id. I do now also know that Mme X/Y likes to snack on maple tree seeds and does not seem very much afraid of me. Rather, like Lionheart and the FTE, s/he endures my photography with a kind of pained and determined "I am getting on with what I am doing and ignoring you" air about it. Yup, I swear the three are from the same school where cameras and myself are concerned.

This week my housemate has been scarce, hopefully hibernating under the house since this morning the garden is crystalline with sunlight sparkling off ice, after last night's clear skies and huge moon sent temperatures plummeting, freezing the the puddles, edging all in frost.

This isn't the first time I have roomed with a rat. I am reminded of Knysna in the eighties and the crumbling little house shared with metal rat Ian and Genghis the Great Dane. Those were the days, my friend: simple, pure and focused with time all my own to watch the light change and Isis emerge from the deep recesses of chaos.

Maybe this little wood rat brings me the gift of a time of the same kind of scrutiny and creative vision?

And maybe too, Skunk House never was Skunk House (oh we humans: always making assumptions) and always was Rat House. Bushy Tailed Wood Rat House, that is. Yup: bright eyed and bushytailed, that's the full moon, equinox message this morning. Readiness. Now I better get moving before my porridge burns.

Harvest moon/ rise up and follow me, sons of Hawaii

Come a little bit closer
Hear what I have to say
Just like children sleepin'
We could dream this night away.

But there's a full moon risin'
Let's go dancin' in the light
We know where the music's playin'
Let's go out and feel the night.

Because I'm still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I'm still in love with you
On this harvest moon.

When we were strangers
I watched you from afar
When we were lovers
I loved you with all my heart.

But now it's gettin' late
And the moon is climbin' high
I want to celebrate
See it shinin' in your eye.

Because I'm still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I'm still in love with you
On this harvest moon.

Bring back the light!

Hanging in balance again today, preparing for the northern descent into darkness, in the misty morning calm after rose, gold and liquorice storm purity of prism light show magnificence last evening.

Equinoctial greetings on this International Day of Peace. A double heaping of rainbows all around, thankyou!

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.” (The Dalai Lama)

Painted ladies (and gentlemen too)

Last month, while on Vancounver Island, I took a slight detour off Canadian HWY 1 for an early morning drive-by visit of Chemainus. It was the billboards on the highway enticed me; "Chemainus, home of the world famous murals." So, yes, billboard advertising works.
The little Canadian seaside town, founded on mining, fishing and forestry is indeed a painted town. Every building has a mural. Painted yellow footprints on the pavement tell one which direction to walk to take them in. In the early morning, couples and tour bus groups were already following the footprints.
There are are slight variations in style. From what I could see, the theme seems to be consistently history. The town's website tells more in sweetly innocent language.I have encountered some US towns that are following suit, using a theme to market themselves, reinvent themselves to draw tourist dollars and get by. Leavenworth the Bavarian village in the Alps uuuuh make that Cascades here in Washington is one which comes to mind. Good stainless steel public toilets are what make that town a great place for me to stop on a HWY 2 road trip. Not sure if I will feel the same in winter.

Then of course, if you are on HWY 20 (North cascades highway) there is Western themed Winthrop in the Okonagon area of far north eastern Washington state which goes way beyond murals into the whole artifice of architectural facades and props. One coffee shop/open air bar we stopped at last year has beautiful old Western saddles and tractor seat-milk can seats. More recently I have noticed that Republic, also on HWY 20, is moving towards the fake facade Western gold mining town style.

All these developments spell good times for mural artists even as I ponder whether an urge to live more simply and leave the cities might not be another chance for new life for these small rural towns. Faking it, painting oneself up like yesterday and re-living your past ad infinitum to draw the money isn't necessarily the only way to go. While there are some small galleries and shops in these communities which do nurture the specific artists of the area, too often, in all of these towns, I have wandered into stores which all smell of the same synthetic scented candle and carry the same lines of Made in China tourist goods, tweaked slightly for the specific niche.

Of course my current town also has its share of genuine Western facades above empty buildings on Main street and a mural. A "shaman" greeting the sunrise and mammoths. It kinda grows on me, especially now with change of season and the morning light so magnificent.

Chicken to change: I remember a time...

Hey it is Thursday everybody. I completely spaced out Wordless Wednesday but not so completely that the little six month anniversary of my trek over the mountains went by unnoticed.

Let's hear it for carpe-ing the hell out of the diem. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and all those inbetween, I bring you "Freshly Ground" home grown in South Africa, freshly banned in Zimbabwe....



i remember a time when you were noble
conqueror
a supernova

so resplendent!
out of this world, you were shiny as a revelation!

we makorokoto utshintsha ma kutheni?
(oh Congratulations, when will you ever change?)

you are chicken to change!
you are chicken to change!

tshintsha!
(change!)

now
and ever
be one with our beauty
shine for all the world over
an iridescent example of honour for the coming generation

we makorokoto utshintsha ma kutheni?

you are too chicken to change!

ye phithi phithi ingqondo yakho?
le tyibiliki ithongo lakho?
korokoto wasoloko wathembisa ukusivulela amasango
kodwa nguwe olala nesitshixo
(did you lose sight of the visions in your head?
did you lose grip of the dreams that you once held?
you promised always to open the doors for us
indeed it is you and only you who sleeps with the key)

you are chicken to change!

tshintsha!

A rocky horror kind of day

There's a light over at the Frankenstein place

Petroglyph Park, Nanaimo: a belated travel story

When I knew I was going to Vancouver Island last month, I went to that great big online bookstore, bought a Fodors guidebook to the island. It's a librarian kind of thing to do: research and buy a book. I generally do not like Fodors. They do not travel in my kind of way, but it seemed to be the best on offer. I could not find the existence of editions by my travel companions of choice: Rough Guide, Lonely Planet or Footprint Handbooks.

Turns out that the only purpose the Fodors guide served was to alert me to the Petroglyph Park just south of Nanaimo. Though the sign on the side of the TransCanada HWY1 might have done that just as well, you never know.

Fodors did, however, also play a part in a bit of a muddle on my first day on Vancouver Island. One of my travel number 1 rules is: always have a bed arranged for the first night in a new land. This allows one to sleep off any travel confusion, bath, log onto internet, report one's adventures so far, download pictures, generally make everyone who knows you, especially those with whom you work, sick with envy at the wild and adventurous life you are leading, get orientated, check out which way the water swirls down the plughole and thereby work out what hemisphere you are in, change clothes to suit the local weather, repack bags if necessary and maybe learn enough of the local lingo and hand gestures to order tea, find a toilet or best local food which does not involve eating any animals, alive or dead, or infiltrating one's digestive tract with hordes of parasites or organisms which are going to take 10 or 12 years to get rid of.

Enter a new rule; do not make decisions about where one is staying that first night in a strange land after only an hour's sleep in the past 36 and whilst waiting in a ferry line in the very early morning. Recipe for Bad Decision.
Sitting in the ferry line at Port Angles, waiting to cross to Vancouver Island last month, I passed the time flipping through my new Fodors. In the accommodations section for Nanaimo, the phrase: Painted Turtle Backpackers caught my sleep crazed eyes.

The words conjured up images of hot tropical Baz Bus rides through Southern Africa, those amazing Kwa Zulu Natal and Swaziland backpackers hostels, not to mention the imagined but yet unexplored (thanks Tropical Storm Billy) Moz ones. Heaven sent. Painted Turtle and Backpackers in the same phrase in a town I am heading for! It must be Meant To Be. A sign, man! Destiny calling from the guidebook. I don't wear the turtle totem lightly.

Sleep deprivation does interesting things.

Out came the trusty cellphone. Within minutes I had a booking for two (? yeah don't ask where that came from) nights in the Painted Turtle Backpackers in Nanaimo. Actually as the story unfolds you will discover that I do not ever sleep in the Painted Turtle. To their credit they refunded me the second night even though it was against their policy because my cancellation request was less than 24 hours before my booking...I did shower, do laundry, repack my bags and get frustrated because the promised wireless internet was not working there, so felt I owed them the first night's fee.

Painted Turtle Backpackers Hostel, though cheaper than a hotel, is not real low budget for a private room (dorms are very reasonable at $20 Canadian) and is not a place you want to go to if you have a vehicle full of camping gear with a beloved and valuable kayak on top. There is no secure parking. One competes with local business for the onstreet parking, limited to 1 hour at a time during the day. There are a fair number of inner city kind of panhandlers hanging out on street corners in the vicinity. Not something which made me feel comfortable. I am from the dark continent after all. No amount of washing gets the stain of anxiety about possessions out.

It didn't take me long, even through my sleep deprived haze, to work out that this was not the camping and kayaking Vancouver island visit I had envisioned.In an attempt to regroup, (I still had a conference paper to write) I found wireless internet in a local speciality tea shop where I also stocked up on an eight year old Pu'erh and decided, since I was in the area, to at least visit Petroglyph Park. I had seen the signs driving north into Nanaimo.

I headed out south, mysteriously didn't find the Park, but was enticed off the highway by a sign for Mermaid Cove. I fell in love. A little bay with cedars to camp under. Fairy lights. $25 Canadian per night. I set up my tent. On the east coast of the island. I smelled dawn kayaking.

I returned the 10 kilometers or so to Nanaimo, confessed my change of plan to the receptionist at Painted Turtle, collected my bags and checked out at 8 pm at night to spend a beautiful, restful night in Mermaid Cove on the edge of the softly sighing salt water.

Next morning, after a dawn kayak, documented in another post, and breaking camp to head further north, I discovered that one can only access the Petroglyph Park going north on Transcanada 1.I spent a dreamy hour or so in light drizzle with swirling mist setting just the right mood for a visit to the mysterious petroglyphs. Yes, the cars on the highway whizz past in the background, but once in the trees all that fades away. A very short walk up a hill and along a path brings one to a sandstone slope with wondrous rock art. They didn't photograph well - one really needs to be in their presence to appreciate the magic. Nevertheless there's a full set of pics on Flickr.

Morning raga: blue power

Like a bird on a wire

Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free

Ancestral winds: giving thanks where thanks is due.

My dear friend ML, with qualifications in industrial interior design and experience in libraries to boot, volunteered her time and expertize to do an interior remodel plan for my library. Long distance and remotely since she lives in another state maybe 800 miles away from me.

Things have been slow coming together for a multitude of reasons but eventually, at 6 am on a Monday morning, after I had driven some 16 hours the day before, without a clutch pedal, all the way back from Vancouver Island, over the Cascades and the Kettle mountain ranges, the good men and woman of Public Works Dept arrived to straighten the bookstacks.

With great good humor and commendable strength, the job was over by about 11 am - proving only a little disruptive to library patrons who gained entry to the mayhem at 10.

It has been a librarian's nightmare ever since. Public Works have great combined muscle but were not much concerned about books being in any particular order. Their job was to move the stacks and move the stacks they did. With the books still in them. Well those that didn't succumb to gravity on the journey. Books fell off on heads or other parts of anatomy. Books were returned randomly to a shelf. Any shelf. Or counter sometimes way across the room. I couldn't help giggling. The books acted like mice around these people: skittering and darting all over the place.

Then the painting, the REAL part, could begin. It is widely known that I am a colour junkie. ML gave me a wonderful palette to work with. At night or on Sundays, until of course I lucked out and we have a two day closure because of the Labor Day weekend, I have been slowly beavering away.

My helper so far with the painting has been L, who arrived Sunday morning complete with her own ladder and brushes. On her 77th birthday. She chose helping to paint the library as what she wanted to do with her day. Hurrah! for volunteers. Or at least this particular one. L even brought a vegan lunch of vegetables from her garden, brown rice and grilled tofu. No she isn't vegetarian, but she knows I am. Then she proceeded to apologize for nuking it in the microwave before laying it out on blue glass plates on a Russian linen cloth amidst the painting chaos. We dined in what will one day be the Teen Space. Double Hurrah for volunteers!Between ML and L I have really had ancestral winds behind me with this library interior. The place is beginning to sing and settle down to being peaceful and content with itself. And I haven't even got to red and blue yet. A few more days of painting still.

[Full set of pictures of the Library Story So Far on flickr]

Pow-wow highway not. A Turtle Lake story and a case of the blues

At the beginning of summer, I marked the Wellpinit pow wow in my diary. Labour Day weekend. It seemed so far away, then, at the beginning of the long golden days.

But Labour day weekend it is. Long golden days are used up for another year and yesterday I set off for Spokane Indian Reservation, strangely reluctant, paddling against a strong current. A great exhaustion came over me on the road. A real sleepiness coupled with a bone weariness. I rolled down the windows, drank some water, blinked, swallowed, breathed.

The Wellpinit pow wow grounds are just outside the town, about 40 miles or so from where I live. I saw the gathering of tipis, tents, suvs, rez runners and rv's. I kept driving.At Turtle Lake, the other side of Wellpinit, I pulled over when a blue sign on the side of the road caught my eye. It looked old and weathered, but I don't remember it being there last time I drove through. A strong north wind rippled the water. North is ancestral wind. Sunlight danced blinding, mesmerizing diamonds off the deep blue water. I read the story painted on the blue board, dabbled my feet in the shallows, and watched cobalt blue dragonflies amongst the bullrushes.The place was abandoned of course: just me, the wind and the strange Turtle Lake story. Everyone was down the road at the pow wow I guess.

I passed the pow wow grounds again on my way home. I slept the rest of the afternoon, getting up from my bed at 5 pm as the sun was angling low to go to my library to paint.

I stood there wondering about everything. That is all. A Turtle Lake Story.

The sky's the limit

After a dream of subduing wild horses, (you behave yourself now, Earl) a perfect pink and blue dawn of restoration.