Billy

I met my son for lunch yesterday in Coombs, near Nanaimo. The restaurant is called, "Goats on a Roof". And yes, there are goats on the roof.

"Hello, down there!"

No fences!

Flatlands

The Fraser River splits into two arms as it enters the delta. Between them lies Richmond, with another split in the northern arm making a separate island for the airport and Iona Beach. It's flat, low-lying land, as befits a delta. Half of it, more or less, is residential and business; the other half is farmland, growing mostly blueberries and cranberries.

Across the river to the south, is the municipality of Delta, stretching from the Fraser to Boundary Bay to the south. It's the largest municipality in the Greater Vancouver Regional District, flat and boggy like Richmond, but sparsely populated. North Delta, where we live, is off the delta proper, up on the hillsides; most of the people live up here. Below are farmlands, Burns Bog, and a lot of empty space.

I measured the flats on Google; from Reifel Island at the northwest corner to Burns Bog to the Nicomekl River on the south, and back along Mud Bay to Tsawwassen, then up to Reifel again for the fifth side of a kid's drawing of a house; as the crow flies, about 40 miles. Following the roads, it's about 60.

We criss-cross this area on our way to most of our favourite shores. We don't usually stop; it's a long drive already. Often, we take photos from the car windows. Blurry photos, mostly. Not all.

Taken as I drove; soggy field in the rain.

I stopped for this one, along Colebrook Road, just off Mud Bay. The only fishing spot handy was the ditch.

There are fish in this water, see?

Farmhouse and fog. 104th Street, near Burns Bog. This area is prone to fogs and wet mists, even when the sun is shining on the beach.

Grazing goats with the hills of South Surrey in the background.

Sheep on a spit of land between the Nicomekl and the Serpentine rivers.

Why do they leave this coat on the sheep's back? There must be a reason; quite a few were wearing these.

Leeks. 104th Street again. The next field over grew brussel sprouts.

Reflections in a ditch. Tsawwassen.

Last bit of wasteland before the hills and residential area of Tsawwassen. Where we stop to watch hawks.

Something different.

Since the weather is still behaving miserably, Laurie and I have continued cleaning out old files and boxes. He's been looking at old black-and-white photos; I've cleaned out my grandkids' toy box and re-arranged my bedroom dresser drawers. And we've filled the storage area with stuff to take to the MCC thrift store.

Since I'm now in the mood for "oldies", I am posting some very old photos from my Bella Coola album. They are not the best quality; I took them with one of those ancient Instamatic cameras, back in the early 1980s, but one of these was "favourited" on Flickr, so I have hopes that you may enjoy them, too.

Bella Coola, for those who didn't see my series on it last year, is some 300 miles north of Vancouver, as the crow flies (600 miles by road: we drive north 300 miles, turn left, and drive west, back to the coast, for another 300). We lived there from the late 70s until the fall of '85. For most of those years, we lived in a snug log cabin and raised kids, animals, and most of our own veggies.

One of the geese, at the barn door.

Back of our cabin. An extremely faded photo. The part with siding at the end is the "new" addition, probably only about 30 years old. Kitchen, dining room, and bathroom.


My youngest son rototilling the "bottom" garden, an area we were reclaiming from the swamp. A good area for cabbages and other brassicas, and a warm spot for a greenhouse, where we grew enough tomatoes for the entire winter.

It wasn't all work. Fishing off the wharf.

Wild mountain goats come down to the roadside in the early morning for salt. Just after this, my first shot, they shied away and went racing up a vertical mountain face, all stone with tiny ledges; they leapt upwards as if they were running on flat fields. One mother was lame in one leg. It didn't slow her down. At the top, they looked to me like birds, so high up they were.

Goofing off, down at the river delta.

We hiked through Tweedsmuir Park, out to Lonesome Lake and beyond, to Turner Lake. This is Hunlen Falls, the third highest waterfall in Canada, dropping 260 metres, from Turner Lake to the river that runs into Lonesome. (The Tweedsmuir Park site tells me that our trail was 36 miles return, and "strenuous". I knew that last bit; I counted over 100 switchbacks on one uphill stretch. But we did it with that kid in the foreground, 4 years old, and backpacking all our supplies for a week. Don't have that kind of energy these days!)


Canoeing in the rain on Turner Lake. We spent hours trying to get close enough to the loons to get a photo, without luck, but I did get a distant shot of a moose up to his belly in waterlilies.

"The road" is famous; tourists wear shirts proclaiming, "I survived the Bella Coola highway". What earns it its reputation is "the hill". It climbs 4000 feet in an 11-mile stretch, snaking back and forth on precarious footing up the slope, with nary a guard rail in sight. The joke runs that many of the new residents of the Valley are only there because they came to visit and were too frightened by the hill to brave it going up. But, as far as I know, there have been no fatalities, even though a couple of cars have gone off the edge. The drivers jumped out in time. One left his shoe behind and it went down with the car.


Looking down valley from the first (or last, depending if you're going down or up) resting spot. (Coming down, we cool our brakes here; going up, our motors.)


On my way out of the valley, in 1985. The resting spot. I liked to watch eagles far overhead while I waited for the motor to cool. I have seen them here teaching the young ones to fly, circling around while they fluttered, calling to them encouragingly.

I love this country, even the dust and fatigue of the road. Does it show?