Remembrance Day

Can't let this end on a note of sunshine.
Wouldn't be right.

 Remembrance Day...beginning of our Winter...the end of many things...

Siberian Smoke

Forest fires rage across Siberia; the smoke is sucked into the jet stream pulling it halfway around the world to bleach our atmosphere a pale white.  We hiked along the Kitamaat Village trail today and it wasn't too bad at first, though even fairly local islands and mountains were obscured by smoke.  By late afternoon the air in town was obviously murky and all colour in the sky paled to nothing.
We joined the Sunday excursion offered by MJ's gym yesterday traveling 55 km. east of Terrace to climb up to Watson Lakes which I'd never heard about before.  It was interesting to hike a drier, rather different type of forest.  Someone noted how much smaller the plants were and The Gumboot fairy commented on how much space there was between the undergrowth and the foliage on the trees.  We are used to being enveloped by a jungle thick, impenetrable wall of green.  The massive mountains along the Skeena were so hazy that I couldn't get very good photos and this bummed me mightily.  Anytime we have a 'clear' day that isn't, I feel ripped off though the copper skies that resulted from dust storms in the Gobi desert were quite a novelty,10 or so years back.

This strange little thing is a type of saprophyte; these plants survive by drawing nutrients from decaying plant matter so can survive without chlorophyll.  I've seen white but never pink and it's much fatter as well.

 While passing through the old Haisla cemetery I noticed a monument I had never seen before, featuring a butterfly.  This marked the passing of an 80 year old man in 1902 which was a refreshing change from most of the other grave sites there that commemorate the deaths of so many children and young adults.

It will probably always be the most special place on earth to me.

The Set Painters Hutson; Mere et Fille

Missing the old accent grave on the Mere, there.  Supposed to represent the french version of Mother and Daughter.
Pronounced Mare ay fee, with a subtle draggy whisper in the throat or back of the mouth. ( I suspect these words are where the English speaking derived our words mare and filly for horses).

So what were we doing on this sudden, glorious day in May? Spending 8 hours indoors painting sets.  At least we got to see the sunshine from the cafeteria where we spent most of our time on the regular-as-clockwork last minute backdrop. You know...the one that has to be designed and painted on the last weekend before the production.  TwinB is crouched down painting a crucifix in the chapel scene for the Sound Of Music.  Turned out mighty nice and I am rather sure it will present nicely when hung and lighted on stage.  I divided my time between doing plain old house painting on the set pieces (mundane, crappola roller shit) and the stained glass windows that suddenly sprang into elaborate being following an extensive Google search last night.  I'd been resolutely plain, simple and pragmatic until I discovered several examples that inspired and ignighted me in a frenzy of near medieval level of self imposed apprenticeship in the design and implementation of church chapel  leaded and stained glass design.

We're hoping it will be Gasp-worthy or at least notable. We didn't compose the overall scene and I really hope the two fellas who did the original design don't mind that I amped up the level of finish and detail  on the stained glass windows.

But ...got to hang out with and paint and admire the efforts of my Little Girl!
A Happy pre Mother's Day and one of my favorite afternoons evah\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Wednesday's Wanderings Anew

That's TwinB bringing up the rear on our hike down to the Kitimat River via the Coho Flats trail. Still many snow patches but they're solid and easy enough to walk on apart from being slippery.  We realized we haven't been on that trail in 8 years.  I sure didn't remember it being that hard to ascend on the way back up. 

We all took a short break on the river's shore for water and snacks and enjoyed the sunshine.

Today's featured fungus were shiny little yellow cups dotting a decaying branch; TwinB dubbed them 'Gummy Bears'.

Spring Sewage

This is our Spring.
Temperatures rise abruptly and the soft tones of winter -  pearl grey, amethyst, white and every shade of ultramarine blue retreat from a ravenous tide of fungus and sludge. Oil slicks, naturally generated, line the edges of every muddy, rusty slough and the smell?! The wind stirs up an olfactory assault of sewer type gases mingled with the scent of warming mud.  What a delight!

Once we dry out I suppose real Spring will begin and I must admit it's never, ever been this disgusting...there were entire fields of this mucky brown business.   Must have been the amount of snow combined with rising temperatures which means I have to hose the dog down for 10 minutes following every walk.

Three or four weeks from now though? we'll be at our best!

Smashed Sheds

Each spring, our glaciers retreat; releasing, revealing winters' casualties. Benches, fences, sheds and outbuildings lie scattered on the dank, wet ground like the aftermath of an explosion.
Metal sheds + our climate are not a great pairing. 
Fragile ornamental shrubs and trees can really take a beating and this drives Kitimat gardeners to go to great lengths to bind and barricade prized specimens, leading to such odd sights as a globe shrub beneath its own temporary sturdy shed or the ubiquitous 'Klu Klux Cedars' all in a row sporting pointy, burlap hoods.

Down In The Holler

Down in the holler where the wind never blows and the sun rarely shines, mountains of snow lie piled on high. It's always a shock to walk around Angle St.  We're in one of the more exposed sites in Kitimat so the snow often appears twice as deep whenever I venture there.  Maybe it really is.  Despite a 3 week melt, the snow is still 1 meter deep in my backyard; bet it could be almost 2 meters deep in some spots there.

Buried

View from the front door following a weekend worth of snow.  In the past 3 days we've had 106 cm of snow and a season total of 590 cm. (19&1/2 feet)  People are complaining of avalanches in their driveways or 'avalanches on their avalanches'.

The view down Angle Street; it's protected from the wind so snow accumulates there at an even more alarming rate than in other areas.  I saw quite a few roofs covered in, conservatively, 6 feet of snow.
I'm fervently hoping we don't have to dig off the roof - that is one Sisyphean labor I'd like to avoid for the rest of my life.

Arctic Invasion

It's crisp, it's sunny and the grey is gone.  So has any shred or semblance of warmth because we are in the grip of an Arctic outflow more powerful than we've seen in years.  I was attempting to capture the snow blasting off the the roofs and down the street but my timing was poor.  It was -19 C this morning with a good solid wind to push it down even further to below -30 C.  We have about 20 cm of powder atop virtual conrete.  Snakes of dry snow slither and fly down the road as though on the Arctic tundra as frigid winds pour out of the north.
The hiking group is planning on commorating the one century anniversary of Robert Falcon Scott's arrival at the South Pole, (Jan. 17th 1912) next week by going on a 2 to 3 hour snowshoe ending at our fancy English Inn, Minnette Bay Lodge where they will dine on quiche and salads.
If they go out tomorrow maybe they can pretend they're actually AT the south pole.  Make me less sad to miss these outtings for the next few weeks as I present art workshops in the elementary schools.

The Sun Sure DO Shine...Sometimes

The hiking group has morphed into a snowshoeing club for the winter & that's how we've been motoring through the wilderness for the past 3 weeks.

Last week, which was also my first real snowshoe trip, we up then down Fire Mountain completing a round trip of 6 kilometers and crossing 18 small streams each way.  I could barely lift my feet by the time we returned to our vehicles.

Today we ventured off trail and into the woods, over uneven crunchy snow.  We covered 4 to 5 kilometers in a 2 & 3/4 hour period.  One person didn't even wear snowshoes due to how hard the snow is today.  We can get snow (white concrete) conditions so hard that one can walk across it in high heels - the heel digs in but that just gives us more traction.  How do I know we can traverse our snow in high heels?  Probably from having to check on my backyard weather station all dressed up to go somewhere.
The big issue today though was ... noise.  We made such a racket crunching over the snow that we all had to stop if anyone wanted to speak and that probably added the 45 minutes to today's adventure.

Welcome To Winter

Wow.  Haven't posted in over 2 weeks.
We've been through the season of the snow creations during those first heady days of normally wet snow that is so great for constructing anything one can imagine.

Then on to a chill.  This clearing lead to temperatures of -12 with outflow winds that knock it well into the minus 20s. Two anomolies here; mist/fog which we rarely experience and limply hanging flags.  The constant wind normally takes care of both those situations.
Today, it's the winter wonderland with probably a foot of powdery snow.  I have every light on the the house and am cooking a roast and roast potatoes.
Oh...and TwinA is currently at 92% in her studies! (graphic digital communication)

Wednesday's Wet Wanderings

I do love my alliteration, don't I??

The old gravel pit where we parked our two vehicles has, unfortunately, turned into this.
We encountered a white pick up with a business name on its side who passed by with averted eyes. One of the members of the group will contact the District with this info and a soggy mailing label that I happened to find as we sifted and sleuthed through the debris.
Finally we took off...straight up hill; quite the warm-up!

Following the climb we did a little bog stomping. I don't know how in the world our guide could tell where we were going since there was no trail through this stretch.

We reached a logging road which resulted in comments like "you mean we could have been on a road all this time??!"(they were joking) trekked along a fairly new trail through the woods that the Haisla had created then followed Cordella creek all the way back down to the beginning of the hike.
The boiling, brown, tannic waters of the creeks we encountered were especially high since there had been 31 mm of rain the night before and even though we're made for run-off they were all close to overflow.
Anyway...it was invigorating and emotionally refreshing as always!

Fall & The Freaky Fingers Of Fungus

Captured them!! Been on the lookout for a photo op with both the yellow and black fungus fingers.  I noticed the yellow ones for the first time a couple weeks ago but didn't have my camera and couldn't find them in the days following.  After a few days of slowing walking and scanning the grass behind Roy Wilcox everyone probably thinks I partake of the magic mushroom.
These black fingers are found behind the old hospital & I hadn't seen them in 5 years.  Those previous ones were bigger and purple, but maybe their form and colour varies from year to year.

The maple leaf?  Just because.

Vision Check

Okay; let's check our eyes:
Which one's better...this?

Or this:

This:

Or this?:

It's been cold and dull and miserable. We had an inch of rain yesterday, though I must admit today it's quite a bit brighter.  Why,some of the clouds are even a very light shade of grey!
Met Scarlett from Oklahoma this morning.  She and her husband just arrived on Tuesday for an 18 month stint on the smelter rebuild. 
Scarlett packed only summer clothes, therefore Scarlett is very cold.
She'll get the rest of her stuff in 2 weeks so I urged her to get over to the second hand store and grab something warm because I doubt anyone could 'tough it out' very well here with nothing but a light sweater for that many days.
As I sit here in a heavy vest over my sweater...

Outdoors Galore

In a manic effort to enjoy our six days of summer and avoid smoking, I was physically active for about five or six hours from Tuesday through Wednesday afternoon.  Tuesday evening I tried paddling in a dragon boat...though 'paddling' hardly begins to describe the exertion nor does this idylic view of Minnette Bay:

It was the most perfect of all evenings to be on the water though I had to leave my camera behind since it would have gotten thoroughly soaked.  Always nice to grab a glimpse of our sometimes bee-hee-ootiful surroundings.

Wednesday morning, I went on a 3 hour hike around upper and lower Clearwater Lakes and their connecting stream.  The light was perfection so I snapped over 80 photos hoping to find a painting composition or two in the batch.

We discovered newest Biggest Mushroom I've Ever Seen, with my bruised and wrinkled hand in there for scale.  The way this year is going I expect that record's liable to be broken weekly.

Bonus spectacle!!  When we returned to Onion Lake we noticed tadpoles the size and colour of black olives swarming by the shore.  We surmised that this was for the dual purpose of stirring up silt to feed and soak up some warmth from the sun.  They gradually gathered around any branches or rocks sticking up out of the water; the early maturers equipped with their complete set of legs perched right on top and below them, various stages of development descending into the water, looking like an evolution chart.
Those big kids with their legs, they get all the cool stuff!

Monster Mushrooms

It's been wet this year which is light years different from the past two summers where the woods became dusty and even the moss turned crispy and dry.  I find this weather far more reassuring though we're all relishing the warm sunny weather of the past 3 days, which so far represents our entire summer.
Mushroom season has arrived early and it probably shouldn't be a suprise that I encountered what may very well be the biggest mushrooms I've ever seen.

May The Fourth

...nope...not gonna go there.
But here; here we have spring creeeeping in oh so slowly. 

This is the view to the backyard at the BFF's this afternoon.  Spring comes a lot later for her than it does for me and my yard.  There are still so many places tucked away around town where winter lurks either in a sheltered band to the north of a grove of trees or in the numerous piles where white stuff was frantically gathered during those frequent days and nights of unrelenting snowfall.

The First Week of Spring

All over town people have begun dismantling their snow piles; a few get a little over enthused with it.  Our neighbor beside us commented that we might need snowshoes due the ammount of snow back on the road.
My husband looked outside and noticed the young fellow across the street going at his pile with an ATV.  At first he thought the kid was high marking his snow pile but then it became more obvious that he was chewing at the edges.
And me?  I've decided that my snow can be flung around to the side of the house where it can slow down that stinking piece of lawn that always gets a jump on everything else. 
Finally - a good application for snow pile removal.

And Piles To Go Before I Sleep ; )

 Conditions have rendered the sign above a tad redundant.

Aaaand here we find ourselves uttering the infamous 'don't touch the powerlines'. Admonitions not heard since the '70s.  We've only had 18&1/2 feet of snow this winter; the snowiest season I ever witnessed was 24 feet and the all time biggie in '72 totalled 40 feet. The difference is in having cooler days of sun rather than endless gray and ice cold rain following each snow.  The rain doesn't make the snow disappear though it does pack it down a bit.

Epic Snow

That's my house back there.  The neighbor across the street took this photo following a 105cm snowfall in 24 hours from Sunday to Monday morning.  It's not a record and all the schools were open on Monday.

We have a base of about 150 cm now in my backyard which gets a lot of wind so the more sheltered yards might be up around 2 metres.

Pretty ridiculous huh?

Just look what you can do with it though! A friend on facebook told me that she used food colouring in a spray bottle to achieve this graffiti so it's totally green.  On white.