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“You don’t take a photograph. You ask quietly to borrow it.”

Unknown

The cabin by the lake in the North Thompson to which I made reference in my last post (which body of water I will refrain from identifying any more closely) is one of my favourite places in the world (as much as I know of it anyway) to take photographs. The constantly changing light means that from one minute to the next the subjects of my eager snapping metamorphose into ever more sensational phantasms.

For evidence of this supposition – see below. I strongly recommend clicking on the images to gain the full effect.

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Log cabin

“In Canada, anything that’s not in the city is referred to as a cottage. Or a log cabin”.

Dolores O’Riordan

As detailed in my last post – having fled the wildfires in the Okanagan The Girl and I took refuge in her cousin’s cabin in the North Thompson. There was still plenty of smoke from the Adams Lake fire just a few miles away on the other side of the mountain, but the lake and its surrounds were mercifully calm.

Naturally I had the camera with me…

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid
These guys weren’t going to let a little smoke interfere with their wakeboarding.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidWe went out driving one day around Clearwater and Birch Island – this being the area from which The Girl hails. We worked our way back down the logging roads through Little Fort and Chu Chua and met this unexpected fellow traveler. Hard to tell who was more surprised…

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

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Photo by Andy Dawson ReidAs trailed in my recent post The Girl and I have been (and are still at time of writing!) traveling within British Columbia. This trip had several purposes – to attend an engagement organised by The Girl’s First Nation – to (re)visit friends and family – to explore parts of BC that I, at least, have not yet seen – and to compensate in some small measure for our disastrous venture abroad earlier in the summer…

In this latter regard I am reminded of Lloyd Bridges’ running gag as Steve McCroskey in the classic 80s film comedy – ‘Airplane’. As things veer from bad to worse McCroskey repeats the mantra:

Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up smoking/drinking/amphetamines…” etc, etc

Well – it looks like this has been the wrong year for us to go out traveling!

Now – it is clearly in poor taste to make jokes at a time that other folk have been suffering terrible loses (though mercifully not in terms of life and limb) but that is fundamentally the way that we Brits cope with such things.

A week and a half ago we headed for Kelowna in the Okanagan for The Girl’s three day engagement. Those readers who do not live in Canada may not have been following recent events in BC too closely, but that Thursday was the night that the big wildfire north of Kelowna swept down over the mountain and devoured the first of the several hundred properties in West Kelowna that have since been burned to the ground.

The image at the top of this post was taken from our hotel room shortly after we arrived. By the next morning very little could be seen at all.

The engagement was cancelled late that first evening and we were advised to retreat from Kelowna the next morning so that hotel rooms could be made available for those who had been forced to evacuate their homes. We made an early dash for Kamloops whilst the roads were yet open.

Following the engagement we had planned a few nights further south in the Okanagan – at Peachland – but by the Sunday evening travel orders had been issued to prevent tourists from driving to various critical areas of the province, the which was necessary so that the emergency vehicles would not be hampered in their operations and also so that further souls would not be put at risk, adding to the heavy burden already upon those services.

We were extremely fortunate, then, in that The Girl’s cousin – who lives in Kamloops but who has a lakeside cabin in the North Thompson which has previously been featured in these ramblings – invited us to spend a few days in that smoky but relatively safe part of the province.

This offer we most gratefully accepted. Pictures and further excursion meanderings to follow…

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Never too busy

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid“Have you noticed that even the busiest people are never too busy to take time to tell you how busy they are?”

Bob Talbert

Well, it has – of course – been busy. It was, after all, the first week of term… the first week of exclusively online teaching (for me – as I did not teach during the summer). As it happened it didn’t go too badly. Fingers crossed that this is a portent for the remainder of the course and that we will sail through it serenely – without alarums or excursions – and that everyone gets an A+ (well – all those who deserve so to do anyway).

On Friday we were also washed – and by ‘we’ in this case I mean ‘the outside of our humble abode’. I mentioned in a relatively recent post that we we finally getting the outside of the house painted; a thorough wash and brush up being the first step in that process. We now wait for a week for the dust to settle (metaphorically, I assume) before the actual business kicks off.

The crew that washed the house were all personable and strapping young chaps and it took The Girl all of about a minute to determine that they play rugby together for one of the Victoria clubs. I can’t tell you how much confidence it fills one with to know that one’s treasured property is in the safe hands of those who participate in that most excellent of sports. The Rugby ethos forefronts the core values of Teamwork, Respect, Enjoyment, Discipline and Sportsmanship – and what’s not to admire about that!

The image at the head of this post marks another development this week. Back at the start of June – in this post – I celebrated the fact that for the first time since the start of the pandemic I had been able to purchase a large container of Lysol disinfectant wipes. At the time I posited that this might indicate a change in the air with regard to the progress of the pandemic. As it turned out that was the last time that I saw the wipes, though not for want of looking. I asked one of the grocery chaps and he told me that they do come in from time to time, but that they usually arrive on a delivery at 11:00 at night and are subsequently and rapidly cleaned off the shelves by the old folk who habitually do their grocery shopping at 7:00 in the morning.

This week – finally – Thrifty (our local grocer) had a consignment that must have arrived during the hours of daylight. I scampered home with my allotted single container, to be met by The Girl who had – naturally – just found one somewhere else. We now have a pleasant surfeit of disinfectant wipes.

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidMy very recent post concerning the wildfire smoke from Oregon and California crowed somewhat prematurely at the rapid disappearance of the noxious fumes. Naturally the very next day they returned with a vengeance and have settled in for the duration. We now have no vista at all, though that does not in any way compare with having no home – which is what happened to one of The Girl’s acquaintances from Oregon.

Looks as though this unpleasant stuff is going to be with us for at least a few more days and I feel suitably humbled.

Now what do they call that? Hubris? Amour propre? Smug-bastardry getting its due comeuppance?

Take your pick…

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What a difference…

Just the other night I took this picture in the gloaming as we entertained a dear friend to a garden-based repast. It was Sunday evening and it was a good way to end the weekend. The Haro Strait obliged us – as it often does at this time of year – with a spectacular array of subtle tones and changing light – and very beautiful it was too.

We discussed the weather forecast that had been circulated during the day that had threatened the first (and really quite early) of the coming season’s fall winds. The Haro Strait seems to attract them but – as I say – not usually for another month or so.

Sure enough, the following day was blustery to a fair degree. Not a winter storm for sure, but certainly a ‘promise’ of things to come. What made it particularly unusual is that the temperatures here are still comfortably well into the twenties (Celsius) so the winds were more like those encountered in desert lands – hot and dry.

They also blew in from the South – which had another un-looked for outcome… On the Tuesday morning we awoke to a very different view.

Yes – that fuzz in the middle of the picture is smoke… wildfire smoke!

This season has been mercifully free – thus far – of serious wildfire smoke here on the Island, but these winds had blown this lot up the coast from the fires in Washington State (and elsewhere) that you may have read about on the news. Not good – and those with chest ailments were particularly unhappy.

The good things with winds, however, is that they just keep right on a-blowin’… Come this evening the view from our window had reverted to that of Sunday evening.

Thank goodness for that – say I! (With apologies – of course – to those of you who are still under the cloud!).

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Photo by Andy Dawson ReidSpeaking of Scouts (as I was in my last post) brings to mind no end of memories from way back in the 60s and 70s. No surprise there really…

There was (and indeed still is, I see) a Scout campsite but a few miles from where we grew up in (reasonably) leafy Surrey in the UK. We used to go there quite a lot for weekends throughout the year and the site was heavily used even back then. It is now billed as a ‘multi-purpose site’ and is clearly open to all manner of youth and educational organisations, rather than just to scouting boys as it was then.

I have a strong recollection of hiking to the site with a reasonably large group, carrying all of our camping gear along what was even then a busy main road on a trek cart. I don’t know how many of these splendid contrivances yet survive but I would not be surprised if it were no longer legal to take one out on the public highway.

Winter visits to the campsite were particularly interesting. We considered that sleeping in the scout tents of the day was just too brutal when there was a thick frost on the ground, but were fortunate in that the site had a cabin (it now has three!) with a big wood stove in it. Many a happy weekend was spent figuring just how much of a fug could be engendered therein by firing up a big blaze and stoking the stove as furiously as we could. Of course, we then had to try to sleep through the ensuing miasma!

As I recall the place was affectionately and unsurprisingly known as ‘Smokey Joe’s‘.

At that age I naturally simply followed the example of my peers and it didn’t occur to me to wonder as to the origin of that soubriquet until I used it as the title for this post. The InterWebNet is slightly less helpful than usual – with most references being to contemporary food joints, cigar lounges and clothing companies – not to mention the Leiber and Stoller based songbook musical, “Smokey Joe’s Cafe‘.

These references are, however, all too recent.

The Urban Dictionary offers an alternative slang definition which refers to a somewhat ‘colourful’ sexual practice that I certain would have been far too young to have understood at the time.

Probably the closest I can get is the somewhat older phrase ‘Smoking Joe‘ which – long before being applied to the legendary Joe Frazier or being adopted as slang for cigarettes – was used to refer to the steam engines that were developed in the eighteenth century to power the nascent industrial revolution.

That at least seems appropriate.

These atmospheric remembrances are particularly brought to mind just now by the fact that – somewhat later than last year but just as unwelcome – the view from our windows has vanished in a haze of smoke from the various wildfires burning not just in BC but also down through the US as far as California. I gather that this year’s smoky cloud cover is unlikely to last as long as did last year’s, but we still cannot wait to see the back of it.

In a post that already features one great heavyweight, let’s end with another:

“Generally when there’s a lot of smoke… there’s just a whole lot more smoke.”

George Foreman

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Now that the wildfire smoke has dissipated – from the coastal regions of southern BC if from nowhere else – much of the Salish Sea and its surroundings have sprung back into their normal summer focus… with bright sharp colours and sparkling vistas.

A trip with good friends on ‘Dignity’ to Sidney Spit provided an opportunity for some relaxed photographic reconnaisance:

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

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For the past twelve days the Georgia Strait and surrounding areas have been enveloped in a miasma of smoke from the wildfires (to which I made reference in this earlier post) which are still ablaze in the BC interior. The image at the head of this missive (and at the top of my last post) give an idea of the impact that this effluvium has had.

There have been mornings on which my customary first gaze out of the windows has given the rapid impression of a seriously hazy day, only for the realisation to dawn that the layer of vapour was not the result of any early morning micro-climatic condition, but rather a dense layer of smog lying immovably atop the sea.

The more northerly view from our deck normally reveals Moresby Island, with the higher Pender Island pair behind. On a clear day we can see further – all the way to the mountains behind the Sunshine Coast north of Vancouver. The more southerly view stretches out across Sidney Island to the American San Juan islands beyond – and then all the way to distant Mount Baker.

For the last several weeks it has been just about possible to make out Sidney Island, but even Moresby has occasionally disappeared into the murk, leaving only the Little Group visible in the immediate foreground.

It really has all been quite depressing.

The reason that this cloud of noxious fumes has hung low over the sea (and of course over Greater Vancouver and beyond) for so long is that a ridge of high pressure became wedged over the BC coast – depriving the region of the usual cleansing zephyrs that should have dissipated the pollutant.

Finally, yesterday (Saturday), the weather system began once again slowly to move, the winds changed direction and – as if by magic – the banks of smoke dissolved, leaving ‘not a rack behind’. The sun renewed its efforts and Mount Baker became once again illuminated by the late afternoon glow.

Then, as an evening of croquet and good cheer in the garden with our dear friends from Saanichton entered its twilight phase, the first rains for nearly two months began gently to fall.

Today the world (this part of it at least) is a different place!

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Photo by Andy Dawson Reid
Smoke from wildfires in the BC interior hangs heavily over the Malahat mountain opposite Brentwood Bay on Tuesday night.

2017 is already one of the worst years for wildfires in recent times and the situation is expected to deteriorate further as the province heads into a heatwave over the next few days, with temperatures soaring into the high 30’s Celsius in places.

More than 800 fires have been tackled since April 1st – of which some 138 are still active and currently being fought by around 3,700 firefighters. Additional firefighters from other provinces are joining the battle as well as – for the first time – more than one hundred from Mexico.

Whereas the early part of the year was marked by above average rainfall (with records for precipitation set in Metro Vancouver and Greater Victoria during March) it has not now rained in Victoria since the middle of June.

No sign of Mount Baker either…

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

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