North Island spring

It was a beautiful day. I got out early and drove north and north and north, seeing the bright spring colours; all those green glowing lights on the winter's bare branches. The pink catkins of the alders have been eclipsed by the shiny neon-green leaves; the maples have hung out their yellow-flowered racemes; new elderberry and salmonberry leaves brighten the edge of the forest. Snowy mountain peaks play peek-a-boo behind the lower hills, seeming to advance and retreat as the road winds, following the rivers in the valleys.

Down a gravel road, off the main highway, at every turn several robins fly off into the bush to wait until I'm out of sight again.  A squirrel dashes across the road; something chitters at me when I roll down the windows. Where the road ends, in Zeballos, the robins are joined by swallows and crows, maybe a raven.

I turn and head home again, stopping here and there to look at rocks or chase butterflies. Or to balance over a steep bank to look at green, roaring water.

Gravel road. The peaks are in the Haihte range.

Heading west.

Warm day, with ice.

End of the road. Looking back at Zeballos town from the pier.

Really the end of the road. Rock underwater, from the pier.

Double falls, near Fault Creek bridge.

Long view just above the falls, where blue water turns green.

Just a creek, any creek. The road runs alongside.

Next: I stop to look at rocks.

A Skywatch post.

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Era un dia hermosa. Salí del pueblo en la mañana y me dirigí al norte, más al norte, siempre hacia el norte, mirando los colores vibrantes de la primavera; todas esas lucecitas verdes, resplandescientes sobre las ramas desnudas del invierno. Las candelillas color de rosa de los alisos han dado lugar a las nuevas hojas, verdes neón; de las ramas de los arces cuelgan rácimos de flores amarillas; nuevas hojas de  saúco rojo y salmonberry alegran los bordes del bosque. Cumbres de montañas nevadas juegan a "ahora me ves, ahora no" tras los cerros más bajos, parecen avanzar y retroceder con las curvas del camino, siguiendo los rios a sus pies.

Saliendo de la carretera principal, siguiendo un camino de grava, en cada vuelta varios petirrojos se levantan y van a esconderse entre los arbustos. Una ardilla corre, cruzando mi camino; algo en el bosque está haciendo comentarios cuando bajo la ventana. Donde termina la ruta, en Zeballos, golondrinas y cuervos vuelan, mirando desde arriba a los petirrojos picando la tierra en busca de lombrices.

Finalmente, doy la vuelta y tomo el camino a casa, pero deteniéndome frecuentemente para observar unas rocas o tratar de sacar fotos de mariposas. O para balancearme encima de una roca para mirar aguas verdes, violentas, allá abajo.

1. Camino de grava. Las montañas pertenecen al grupo Haihte.
2. Dirigiéndome hacia el oeste.
3. Un dia caluroso, pero con vistas de hielo.
4. Donde termina la ruta, en el muelle de Zeballos. Miro hacia atrás, hacia el pueblo.
5. De veras el final del camino. Una roca debajo del muelle.
6. Una catarata doble. Cerca del puente Fault Creek.
7. Extendiéndo la vista más allá del puente, donde el agua azul se torna verde.
8. Un riachuelo cualquiera. El camino se ve a la izquierda.

Mañana; me detengo para mirar unas rocas.

Un post de Skywatch.

A ghost unmet

 Lurching off-topic for a moment:

Four years ago (Was it that long? Time just flashes by!) I wrote a series of posts about summers spent on Ferrer Point, in an abandoned WWII radar station, back in the early 1950s.

Here's a list:

• Out on the edge of the world.
• Sand delvers.
• And there was no coffee.
• View from the tower and burnt bras.
• And a bit of background history: Some old photos and personal history.

Today, someone working on a history of the area asked me for some more information, and wondered if I had any other photos of the site. (Yes, a few.) And digging through old file boxes, I found something else; a black, fuzzy paper album page, torn and falling out of an album I'd carried around since I was little, with an old, faded newspaper photo of Zeballos glued on it. (Population, these days: 107, back then, a few more, not many.)

Zeballos Hotel and Hammond Grocery, Zeballos

I cut this out of the newspaper in 1986, but the photo dates back to the 1940s or maybe '50s. It's a bit newer-looking than the way I remember it, in 1955. And check out that cool car! Brought in by boat; there were no roads to Zeballos in those days. Even today, it's 40 kilometres of gravel off the paved highway.

About Zeballos: I wrote about this, too: View from the Zeballos dock.

Oh, the ghost? She was still around when I was there. Susie Woo was a laundress for the hotel, and died in her room there, in the 1940s. People said she kept coming back and moving things around. I never met her, though. 

Zeballos is still on the list of BC's Haunted Spots. There's a more recent story, here: "A Haunted Tale ..."

Must. Go. Back.

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Cambiando de tema por un momento:

Hace cuatro años — y parece que fue ayer — escribí una serie de posts hablando de los veranos que pasaba en los años de mediados de la década de medio siglo 19, en un campamento en lo que había sido un puesto de vigilancia de radar durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, ya abandonado. 

Aquí hay una lista de la serie:

• Out on the edge of the world. (En la orilla del mundo)
• Sand delvers. (Los que excavan en la arena.)
• And there was no coffee. (Y no había café.)
• View from the tower and burnt bras. (Vista desde la torre, y brassieres quemados.)
• Y un poco de historia de fondo: Some old photos and personal history. (Fotos viejas e historia personal.)

Hoy un arqueólogo que estudia la historia de este rumbo, me pidió más información y preguntó si tenía otras fotos del sitio. (Si algunas.) Pero buscando entre papeles viejos, encontré algo más; una página de un album viejo, que he guardado desde que era niña, una página de papel grueso, negro, con los bordes desbaratados. Y pegado en esa página, una foto vieja, cortada de un periódico, mostrando el hotel y una tienda en el "pueblo" de Zeballos. (Población ahora: 107 almas, en aquel entonces, algunos pocos más.)

Foto: la página del album, con la foto de Zeballos; el hotel y una tienda de comestibles. La leyenda dice — Una foto vieja del hotel Zeballos, el hogar del espectro que siempre regresa, Susie Woo.

Había cortado esta foto del periódico en 1986, pero la foto viene de los años entre 1940 y 1950 más o menos. Se ve un poco más nuevecito que cuando yo lo veía, en 1955. ¡Y mira ese coche modernísimo! Lo trajeron en barco; en esos años no había ruta sobre tierra para llegar al pueblo. Aun hoy, el camino es de grava; 40 kilómetros de grava a partir de la carretera pavimentada. 

Acerca de Zeballos: describí algo de su historia: View from the Zeballos dock. (Vista desde el muelle de Zeballos)

Y el espectro? Seguía en el pueblo cuando yo visitaba. Susie Woo fue una lavandera que trabajaba en el hotel, muriendo allí en su cuarto, en la década 1940-50. La gente decía que seguía allí, moviendo cosas en la noche. Yo nunca la ví.

Zeballos sigue en la lista de los sitios embrujados de Colombia Británica. Y hay una historia más reciente, aquí: "A Haunted Tale ..."

View from the Zeballos dock

Vancouver Island's small coastal communities grow, boom, shrink, rally, dwindle, grow, and dwindle again; the terrain is challenging, access limited, the weather mostly wet, and the hazards (fire, flood, earthquakes, landslides) unpredictable. Zeballos is a good example.

I drove in to Zeballos last Sunday. The last time I was there was about 45 years ago; we drove in on a logging road from Woss, also on a Sunday; Dad had to get permission from the logging company. It was slow going. At one point the road was so steep that the car's motor boiled over, and we all had to get out and walk to the top of the hill, and the next steep hill after that, picking and eating huckleberries as we went. There were 9 of us in that car, mostly kids. In those days, there were no seat belts, and kids sat on adults' laps.

Before that, it was 1955 when I was a regular visitor. Every Sunday; Dad was preaching in a store-front church there.

Zeballos dock, as I saw it last Sunday, on a rainy afternoon.

To take this photo, I went to the spot where my brothers and I would go down on Sunday afternoons to the log dump; the end of the wharf where logging trucks would dump their loads into the ocean to be boomed and hauled away. It was a bit different back then. The road was gravel, but mostly covered several inches deep with chips of bark and shredded wood. There were no railings on the dock; it was not meant for people. Here and there rusty old pieces of machinery waited until they were wanted. We climbed on some of them. There was a small float dock on the far side, where we tied up our boat.

Zeballos was a small settlement until gold was discovered, in the 1930's. The mine was extremely productive, and the town grew to around 1500 people. Then WWII came, and the men went away to war. When they came back, the price of gold had dropped, and the mines never recovered.

In the beginning, the miners carried the sacks of ore out on their backs down the narrow, slippery trails, through the mud and windfalls to the Zeballos River. From there the ore was transported downstream in a flat bottom boat to the mouth of the river where it was again backpacked over land to the beach. (Zeballos: Golden Gate to the West Coast)

The hotel, thriving in the gold rush days, closed in 1948. The population shrunk to 35. That's how I remember it, in 1955; I rarely saw any people on the street; there were only a few inhabited houses. I remember setting up chairs for Sunday service; a dozen or fifteen chairs were enough, even including our family of 5. We would have a morning service, then lunch (Spam, canned peas, instant potatoes, canned fruit, tea) heated on the wood stove, then go back to our boat and home, an hour's ride away. There was no other way, except by float plane, to reach the town. Food and mail were brought in on the Princess Maquinna weekly, to this town and to us, back on Nootka Island.

By then, logging was providing an income. The town grew again. There was a school. The hotel re-opened. And closed again. In 1964, the Alaska earthquake shook the town, and the ensuing tsunami flooded it. (There are still signs along the road near the docks warning visitors of tsunami hazards.)

In 1970, Tahsis Company (logging) built the road we drove in on a few years later, "... eliminating Zeballos' outport status ..." (Vanishing BC)

The hotel burned down in 2008. Last year, an out of control forest fire on the mountain overlooking the town forced an evacuation order. Wikipedia gives the 2016 population as 107 people. But there is a school, a clinic, a museum, a library, well cared for nature trails, one (1) store, a few B&Bs, fishing and ecotourism guides: the town is far from dead.

I"ll go back someday, on a sunny day; I'd like to explore the estuary nature trail.