Dividing the waters. Strathcona Dam.

I was born under a wanderin' star*.**  I can't resist a poorly travelled side road, curving out of sight under the trees. The Strathcona Dam was down one of these, about 30 km. out of Campbell River.

View over Upper Campbell Lake, from the top of the dam.

The dam is a wide earth-mound dam built by BC Hydro, dividing the Upper Campbell Lake from the smaller Campbell Lake. With two other local dams, they produce 11% of the electricity used on Vancouver Island. Below the dam, Hydro has provided a free campsite, open year-round. I didn't go down to it, and I don't think I could stay there; I watched a smaller dam disintegrate and take out a bridge that I'd just crossed when I was a teenager, and the memory sticks. I drove out onto the dam itself, took a few photos and went back to the safe road alongside the reservoir.

Through a gap in the trees. The distant mountain may be Victoria Peak, 2100 m.

Another view of that mountain.

Weak sunshine behind the clouds, reflected on the water.

I drove slowly, checking the bush on either side of the road as I went. When I saw a deer on the shore, I stopped the car, hoping it would ignore me. But it ran out of sight, and as I sat there, watching, five deer dashed out of the forest ahead of me, leaped across the road, and sprang up the hillside into deeper cover. There's nothing more beautiful than a half-flying deer. Except, maybe, five of them.

A slight foot trail led down the hillside to the water. I got out, now that there were no deer to startle, and walked down. This was where I found yesterday's cup mushrooms.

The area has been cleared. There's a fire pit down on the shore. And my car, hiding behind a tree up on the road.

This was strange. About 4 feet above ground, a dense clump of something grew from the bottom of a branch, curving upward. The stalks are not like the branches around them; darker, more solid-looking, newer (no lichen). Does anyone know what this is?

Water, water, everywhere. In the lakes, in pools, in ditches running along the roads. Dripping from the trees. And pouring down the hillsides around every curve. A zillion creeks with no name.

On the way home, I stopped to watch common goldeneyes in one of the small, green pools beside the highway. (They swam out of sight before I turned on the camera.)

The road was gravelled, muddy in spots, and pot-holed. Now I need more water. With soap.

*(Lee Marvin, YouTube)
** I came by it honestly. Dad used to say he had "itchy feet." I inherited them.

The weather forecast said, "Heavy rain".

It was raining enthusiastically yesterday morning. We went out to vote for our local councillors, and came home soaked. I dug out my umbrella. It didn't look good for the drive out to Chilliwack, on a highway subject to cross winds and in the throes of lane additions. My granddaughter arrived, bundled up in jacket and scarf and tuque; we had a bite of lunch and set out for the baby shower.

The sun was shining! I left the umbrella behind and put on sunglasses instead.

Chilliwack basked under a blue, blue sky. It was hot, even. The hooks at the door were heavy with discarded sweaters.

And the baby shower was fun, as all baby showers are.

A bag big enough (almost) for a rambunctious two-year-old.

Afterwards, I took the long way home, meandering through the rich farmland of the Fraser Valley. It's flood country; barely above the usual water level of the Vedder Canal, which tends to jump its dikes in the spring and fall. The Fraser, Sumas, and Chilliwack rivers, the outfall from Cultus Lake, up in the hills, and a maze of creeks and irrigation ditches help to keep everything green.

Pasture land, hazelnut trees, and Vedder Mountain in the background.

I lived out in this area for a while when I was a kid; we used to invent silly reasons for the name, Chilliwack. (A spanking in the winter?) I just found the root of it on Wikipedia;

The name Chilliwack comes from the Halkomelem word Tcil'Qe'uk, meaning "valley of many streams".

Contented cows.

I drove past fields of large cabbages, groves of hazelnut trees, a brilliant yellow square of rapeseed, grape vines, apple trees heavy with fruit. And corn; field after field of corn tall enough to block the view. I stopped to see how big the cobs were.

High mountains to the east, upstaged by corn well above my head.

Ears and tassels in the slanting afternoon sun.

A spider enjoys a taco at the edge of the field.

Looking west to Sumas Mountain. 5 o'clock shadows.

And not a cloud in that sky!  But it started to rain again, shortly after I got home. It's still pouring down, 6 hours later.

They say it's going to rain today, too. And maybe Monday. Our weather people have it easy.

"Grand, awe-inspiring" insanity

What do you do on a windy Saturday when it threatens to snow -- again! --? We went to the Surrey Art Gallery. The exhibition that drew us was Edward Burtysnky's "An Uneasy Beauty - Photographs of Western Canada". From Wikipedia:

Burtynsky's most famous photographs are sweeping views of landscapes altered by industry: mine tailings, quarries, scrap piles. The grand, awe-inspiring beauty of his images is often in tension with the compromised environments they depict.

"Sweeping views" doesn't do justice to the photographs. These were huge, detailed photos, maybe 3 or 4 feet long. Railway and road cuttings (some locations I recognized; a wire net holding the rock face on the Hope-Princeton highway, for example), homesteads, in all their grunginess, a copper mine. These were from the 1980s. Peaceful, and at the same time, disturbing; the stark beauty of our interior cluttered with our machinery.

The display is laid out in a U. The second leg is dedicated to Alberta's oil sands. An online gallery includes the ones we saw, and a few more. (Click on "Oil", then on "Oil Sands".)

The photos are heartbreaking, horrifying. Look at this one. Imagine yourself a waterfowl, on your way North, looking for a place to get a bite to eat, spend the night. Imagine seeing this shiny lake and landing, only to find that the water is poisonous. I read just last week about a flock of 500 ducks dying this way last May. (Story on CTV, stoptarsands, The Star ...) From the Star story:

And they warn the number of bird deaths will jump dramatically as more heavy oil plants are built unless governments bring in tougher environmental rules, including how to deal with billions of litres of poisonous sludge the plants produce.

I was planning to post some cheerful photos of spring flowers from the Art Gallery courtyard, but I don't have the heart for it after looking at the oil sands photos again, even the small versions on the web.

Burtynsky's webpage has more, much more; Eastern Canada, Australia, the US, China, India, Spain, etc. Go see. But be warned; it's not easy viewing.

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Some Ten-Year-Old Photos

These were photos taken with the old camera, and with lower-quality film, in 1997.
The difference is noticeable, mostly in lack of definition.
First one here: "Ghost Town" Across from the New Westminster Quay.
2: "River Gods" Looking across the river towards the Quay.
3. "Yellow Tug" Port Royal.
4. "Geese and Wildflowers" Stillcreek, Burnaby, where it joins Burnaby Lake.