Needles and cotton puffs

On the sidehills of the Nicola Valley.

Ponderosa Pine, aka Blackjack pine, but only when it's young. The bark turns orange as it ages.

I'll probably be blogging less frequently for the next few weeks. I'm busy packing up, getting ready to move to Campbell River, where I've found a place a couple of blocks from the pier and the highway to all the amazing beaches. And all those critters! I'll have lots to show you then, so don't go away.

A Skywatch post.

Dry country

Heading for the Chilcotin, my route sticks to freeways through the Fraser Valley, over the Coquihalla summit (4,081 ft), and down into Merritt, where I turn off onto a narrow, curvy road through the Nicola valley. It's the first chance I get to slow down and really see the land.

The Nicola River. Rattlesnake Bridge on the right.

This is dry country in the best of times. This year, the river is low and the small farms along the valley floor are suffering. Cattle graze in small green patches near the river's edge. Some farmers seem to have given up; their land lies brown and empty.

The native vegetation can handle dry weather. Pines dot the slopes; coarse, scratchy grasses hold down the soil. Willows, alders and birch line the river banks. And in between, there is always sagebrush.

Hardy pines

Sagebrush in flower

Away from the hum of traffic, the first impression is of silence, but then the voices of the land begin to catch my attention. The river mutters to itself, the wind whispers in the birches; stones rattle on the hillsides or in the river bed. Unseen among the willows, small birds chatter and peep.

A flock of magpies crosses the river. one or two at a time, perching briefly in the pines while the rest catch up, then going on to disappear behind the next hilltop.

Magpie on a dead branch.

Silhouette, showing the long, long tail.

And then, there are the hoodoos. But they'll have to wait until I get home.

Hoodoo country

It's been snowing since this afternoon, sparsely but steadily. "They" say we'll have maybe 8 inches by tomorrow; it's already 4 inches deep on the rim of my birdbath.

A good time to remember warmer days. Last summer, even.

Ever since I first drove through the Nicola Valley, I have used that highway on my way north or south; I have to see the hoodoos again. I've been in awe of them since the first glance. Laurie took photos a few years ago; I had a camera with me when I went to Bella Coola this summer. I took photos going and coming.

Unfortunately, almost none of the photos were satisfactory. With the smoke from the fires to the west billowing through the valley, greying the sky and masking the contours, and the monotony of the browns and brownish greens of the hills, everything turned out smoothed and softened. Whatever the camera said, that's not the way it is.

Especially not the hoodoos.

This last week, playing with Picnik, I found a way to show their grittiness and age, their hints (false though they may be) of the statuary of a disappeared civilization.

Unmodified photo; smoke, gentle curves, green hills. All wrong.

Crowd scene: robed Klansmen, maybe, just above the highway. The best of the  "realistic" photos.

The basics.

The hills here are sedimentary sandstone, forming distinct layers, clayey, sandy, gravelly, chipped rock. Wind and rain gnaw at the stone, wearing it down, sand-blasting it. The stone is soft, more so on some layers than on others, so the wind carves fantastic, impossible shapes into it. Ogres and kings, a company of court advisors in long robes, gods and devils and condemned prisoners; they're all there, far above our heads, going about their business with never a glance at the wheeled beetles below their platforms.

A baseball-sized chunk of white stone, fallen from the heights. Soft enough to be scratched by a fingernail.

High overhead, a monumental cone tombstone ...

with a watcher seated at the peak, looking across the mountains. What is he seeing?

A troll king's head at the massive gates to his domain.

A row of cardinals in chunky birettas.

Approaching the Nicola River and the crowd scene.

It's still snowing. 5 inches now. Tomorrow; juncos in the snow, I think.

Also known as ...

In the summer, it's a Virgin's Bower, a mound of white flowers above our heads. By fall, it has aged by several decades, and changed its sex to boot, becoming Old Man's Beard; under that name, it drapes itself over local fences and trees, in a dense mat of vines and dusty "beards".

When I came across it in the Nicola Valley, sprawling along the ground at the side of the road, I didn't recognize it. I'd never seen it underfoot.

Clematis ligusticifolia, Virgin's Bower.

Without support, it's a ground cover.

This is the clematis native to western North America, growing from BC to California, east to Manitoba and points south. It is a vine that usually grows to 10 feet, although I have seen one that climbed a pine tree to at least double that height.

In the choking smoke of the Nicola Valley, normally so luscious, the plant lived up to its other common name, "Traveller's Joy".

Smoke pouring over the hills, greying the greens, clutching at throats.

(Looking at that photo, I can smell the smoke again. Memory of odors tends to persist.)

Time is good to wood

I love old wood, especially weathered, hard-working, experienced old wood. Here are a handful of samples from the trip to Bella Coola.

The old Hayden barn, Bella Coola. It was in the orchard in front that we saw the bear cubs picking apples.

Log cabin, Nicola Valley. At present used as a picnic site.

Typical Chilcotin fence. These are made using local trees, a bit of baling wire, occasionally a nail or two. Every fence builder has his own style.

Zigzag fence. A common pattern.

My storage shed, Firvale, already old when we lived here in the 1970s. The house and barn are gone, the fences have been taken down; all that remains is the shed. A new house will soon be built on the hill above.