September 27th

We were due to set out from the Precipice today, beginning the long journey south. The aspen leaves are a bright gold-yellow carpet, softly spoken beneath our feet, and it’s the right time to be leaving – the restlessness of autumn, before the snow, the tipping in every fibre. Then, last night, we gather up at Rosemary and Dave’s, Klaus chugging his way over from the ranch in the middle of the valley, Fred and Monica from their farm at the Western extreme, before it falls on down toward the Hotnarko Trench, solitary, massive tear in the Coast Range Mountains, still shrunk beneath them, home to Bella Coola. So all the current valley gang are there. Only Lee is missing, gone three or four days with a bunch of cattle fresh off the range for the Williams Lake sale.

It’s home-baked pizza on a grand scale, moose mince and all, and it’s billed as a farewell after the month we’ve spent here in this extraordinary spot (more of which we will write of later). But just as we arrive the news begins to trickle through on the satellite phone, from friends and contacts East and West - The road has gone.


Precipice Valley is a good 1½ hours from Anahim Lake, a mix of rough and very rough track. Anahim Lake is on Highway 20, only artery from William’s Lake to the East and Bella Coola to the West, last stretches only opened in the ‘50s, big chunks still unpaved. And, after three days of rain like no-one can remember, great lumps of that Highway are now downriver. And we’re cut off to both the East (where we were due to be heading) and the West.

We don’t yet have a clue about the track. The rain took breath yesterday, before we heard what was up with the Highway, and the four of us climbed toward the ‘rim rock’ that fringes the north edge of the valley, aiming for Joseph’s Lake, in fresh sunshine and relishing what we thought was our last day. We didn’t get there – the Precipice ‘creek’ bridge washed out, and the torrent too dangerous to risk fording again and again (once with Kai enough). Then the rain started up once more last night, and all night, drumming on the cabin roof. And right the way through, until mid afternoon, when at long last the thin sun elbowed a little space and the sodden valley began to steam.

So tomorrow, if the heavens hold, Dave and I will set out on ATVs to check out the track. The Granny White Dragon is an hour down it, parked as far in as we could safely get her. And she may well have to live up to her name in the day’s to come. But not for a while – any which way there is no way that we’ll be leaving this wild and wonderful neck of the woods for some time to come. There are photos on the web of hunky highwaymen in chunky lumberjackets beside fancy helicopters beside some very large holes, more like vanishings, and they haven’t got a clue as yet as to how long it will take them to conjure them back.


Today we were a bit anxious. The rain kept on and on relentless, and we had movement in our boots, and good plans made, re-unions with kind folk en-route south, some time to catch breath in Wallowa County at Rick’s before meeting up with Mum and Dad on the distant stretches of the Imnaha River, even a cinema visit, popcorn spilling, in Vancouver as Arcteryx kindly fixed-up my trusty, age-old companion of a rucksack. Then suddenly caught, held back just as we step forward, worried that things might not be as we’d hoped. But tonight our mood has shifted. You read the first few pages of Cliff Kopas’ account of his 1930s packhorse trek to Bella Coola, stuffed with tales of 19th century adventures, trappers, red-haired packers, of families trapped by snow searching for mythical trails, babies born as wolves attacked the stock, and you know that this place has nothing to do with schedules. Sure you might have dreams, and know the trees you need to fall today and tomorrow for the cabin you dream of just here next year, beside the creek. But hold them gingerly. Don’t play with expectation. Don’t for a moment assume. For the wind or rain or snow or fire hold the cards, or the grizzly you forgot to make damn sure you kept an eye on, or the pack rat that nicks your tea.

There’s an account by the Marquis of Lorne, Governor General in the 1880s, of his travels through the Canadian West, and his opening sketch is of his wagon wending a way along a narrow trail through towering firs. The forest dwarfs his wagon, it’s a humble splinter in the midst of giants. It is enough to make you cry. First growth as they call it. Like First Nations. Framing that picture I have this jagged edge - the old-time saw, antique, rusty, massive, across the broad wall of Bonnie’s barn; the photos of rough-necked lumberjacks on jerry-built scaffolds, about the towering life-force they’re about to fall, five to each end, oddly humble in their moustaches and sweat and moment.

Where does our desire to tame come from? How foolish are we when we begin to believe we do so? Here, even now, the rain just keeps on falling and the rivers move mountains.

Dave's Precipice Bread

3 cups unbleached white flour
2 cups wholemeal flour
1 tsp dried yeast
1 tsp salt

Stir the lot

Take 2.5 cups warmish water, maybe a little more, and stir in a quarter at a time. Until the whole bundle comes together, nice and doughy.

Cover with something impervious to keep the moisture in, and a towel, and leave at room temperature overnight.

At break of day, spread out dough over sprinkling of flour, and push flat. Fold it in upon itself. Turn over and tuck in at the fold. Leave fold-down for an hour at room temp, covered with a towel.

Pre-heat oven to 500 F, with dutch oven inside. Then lower to 450 and tip dough into dutch oven, fold-up.

Cook for 50 mins. Test temp at centre if you’ve got the gizmo – should be at least 195 F.

Enjoy (delicious anytime, very particularly good on long hikes; lasts well)

PS Dave Neads' bread needs no kneading

Enterprise


They called him Thunder in the Mountain
he wore a hide of ponderosa pine
and in the pinch between his fingers,
about his ankles wrapped within his
hair the rivers flowed, you could have
cupped your hands beneath him, you’re on your
knees and the water spills, ricochets
drums across your eyes ‘til the mist
rises and you cannot see.

But I smell him, he’s made of ponderosa
after all, his stench has not been laundered
or spun or sprayed, it hangs from
petals laces puddles like an oil
a slick of perfume rising
within rain. I am a snake
curled in the smoothness of rock
I feel his heartbeat,
raw drum upon the earth, I don’t forget
the throb of death, the rattle of pebbles
the ginger shifting of position
on an old street bench.

That’s where I found him, he was
rooted his limbs had sprouted yet
could stretch to catch the sun,
between his teeth he’d made a home
for twenty creatures and as I
paused to pass the time of day
a raven rose from one, black
as the river, and a damsel fly
snatching life between its wings.

Shoulders broad as the Wallowas
catch even the wind, and he
brought those limbs together
bark cracked and fell about his feet
in piles of jewels and tales and times
long gone, and he cupped those
hands. We walked away in search
of entertainment, a flat street
behind us far off
a great horned owl sings.

Meditation some months in

Been doing ‘standing meditation’ for some time now, probably a couple of years off and on. I was introduced to it by Donald, up at Anam Cara above Inverness. I was the one who said before we got going on the introduction that I pretty much doubted I’d get into a meditation rhythm, that walking and hiking were my ways of meditating, shaking myself loose of the clutter, feeling the ground. Not sitting or standing still and focusing.

And here I am, still doing it!

Lasqueti, out on the paddock late, shooting stars, odd flashes of light, no moon, silent. Focus on the raven’s eye. Black. Blue. Open. Vast. Spiral. Deep. Aged. Stone. Echo. Reflection. Sink. Fall.

Fly – as in the vastness of the ocean as I swim here, way out, cavern of space about me. It sets me free and terrifies, so small and insignificant am I. Lost in the rock and churn of the never-ending whole. So small and alone within it. Consumed. And so outwith myself. I am the sea and the sky, held between, all my atoms have spilled, they are too small, the sea too big to hold them like a wrapped-up chocolate bar.

So, in meditation, last couple of nights, within the raven’s eye, begin to feel the air about me holding me like water, no need to fight it (as I say to Freya as she reaches out to swim …. ‘it’s there to be your friend, it will hold you, help you, if you let it. Welcome it, don’t fight, open to it, spread within it, and it will hold you high’). I feel its buoyancy, feel how solid the air about me is, a substance. I won’t slip through for it’s crammed with substance. The breath within me meshes with it. Within the raven’s eye I begin to fly.

Haphazard at first, not certain enough, like the bat caught within the barn. I fling the high doors wide open, part the curtains like a welcoming, and after a few more lost flutters it feels that opening and is free.

A traveller and a princess

One of the mountain tales for one of the kids as we head up into Strathcona, from the heart, with a touch of reflection on what this year is bringing me and Becs as we learn more about ourselves and each other and what might be possible.

The traveller and the princess meet and talk of marriage and what they hope it will bring to the world. They sound each other out. A force of good. Good will. Beauty. Openness. Generosity. Strength. Growth.

For them themselves, for those closest around them, their children, beyond, beyond the palace walls.

They share this vision.

All about them are open-faced-hearted children. They’ve been playing some beautiful make-believe amongst the rocks, and they return to lie with parents, one cheek on rock beside the stove, face rid of its vigor for the world, as parents battle, niggle, crotchet, attack, counter, endlessly.

But they don’t really see that.

Much later they are old and wise and they have learned that it’s good to re-imagine our lives as seen through other’s eyes. Maybe strangers. Maybe someone young who you care about greatly, who you want to see the beauty of the world.

What do they make of their union, that giving of each other’s life?

The wasabi pea that likes to hike

Phillips Ridge, Strathcona, Vancouver Island. 23 August to 27 August

Goodbye to Lasqueti, hello to the hills once again. We’d sought advice from Tom Carter (hiker, Nepalese explorer) before leaving, looking for good spots on Vancouver Island, and he came up trumps. Vancouver Island is massive, something like 25 watersheds (most trashed with logging), and at its heart is the Strathcona wilderness area, and the jagged, crumbling peak of the Golden Hinde. Luce and Amelie were well up for an adventure, as long as no grizzlies were involved, so we told them the cougars were really friendly in this neck of the woods, stocked up on hot baths at our first motel-stop so far, and headed north-west.

A day’s hike takes us steeply up, through thick forest, and into the alpine. Amelie tough and determined, her big rucksack strapped tight to her small back. By the end of this adventure she looks complete, same sack, but in her element, like you can see the way the mountains have touched her spirit.

The second day takes us higher still, up some tricky rock scrambles, all the kids somehow keeping those short pistons moving, fed on yet more interwoven tales (mustang, king of the wild, a current favourite) and in and about the mountain tops, threading our way through broad banks of snow. No other soul to be seen. We’re a little band, celebrating being together in such beauty, and that night we find two precious little spots of almost even ground and camp perched amongst steep chutes. We’re just below a rim, a crossing point, and on the other side a broad glacier falls away, abrupt, as if surprised gravity hasn’t yet got the better of it. The kids are careful about where and where not to muck about in the snow, made wise to the dangers of a poo on ice. Wherever we are these days, on a farm, across a meadow from a bunch of grizzlies, out on a hike, it’s become a little ritual to get the kids to identify for themselves what the risks might be, what they need to be aware of. And they do it well.

Our campspot just below, across an ice-fed thread of a waterfall, we eat our pasta on the col, a breathtaking series of jagged peaks against a thin whisp of the vanished sun. The Golden Hinde turns black. It’s cold, and we spice up our basic grub with Annie’s dried marvels, the chillies now coming into their own as the nights lengthen and temperatures drop. So too those wasabi peas.

Lasqueti was brilliant. It gave us so much. But there’s a feeling of exhilaration rising as we climb and feel the space and begin to shake loose. And with the cold, mist blooming from our mouths, there’s strength returning to our bones and thighs and hearts. I sleep out, just the sleeping bag, the burn trickling beside me and the wind ruffling my feathers. I’m toasty as anything – thanks be to Fort William and that chance purchase of a really good sleeping bag in a sale years back – but when I wake the bag actually crackles from its thin veil of ice.

It’s also very special to be alone, just the six of us. I am a lucky man indeed to come from a family where we actually all like to spend time together, and get on, and really care about each other. And I’ve known Lucy for 36 years. But sharing this little journey feels like it takes the two of us someplace new.

Day three, and Becs hikes off alone toward the Golden Hinde. The rest of us follow more sedately along the Phillips Ridge, spotting cairns, carefully traversing snow chutes, getting the kids to really dig in, and rising to a spot where we look every which way and see only mountain tops. Stretching in layers, peaks behind peaks, just as when you think you see the stars and then your eyes adjust and you suddenly see what lies beyond. And then we swim! Of course. In fact right on top we find two pools of ice melt, one free of ice, the other half-solid. And Amelie and Freya (along with Tommy nutcase) leap across rocks back and forth from one to the other pretending that the one without is the hot-tub. The sky’s a brilliant blue, and these children with their young strong bodies and abandon and joy are on top of the world. The whole rest of the trip they keep on leaping into water, Kai too, minutes after he’s put his clothes back on suddenly all intent on taking them off again, like it’s a real treat, oh maybe I will have another choc from that rather tempting box, why not.

As we hike back to our camp we’re joined by three strapping sailors who’ve managed over five days to get up the Hind. Two crew and the captain of the Canadian Navy’s one and only historic Tall Ship, sailing out of Victoria at the south end of the island, and chuffed as anything to have managed the climb at the second attempt. Also absolutely shattered. Captain is the sort of man who had a dream aged dot, wanted to steer that ship, and does. He uses hardly any oil, meanders about under canvas for a living, crew of 20, and now wonders about the north passage. He also once wore a bright-green-wasabi-pea-hat. Which he drops somewhere down the ridge next morning, and we spot it and now wear it, usually the kids, taking turns to be the pea. It’s a particularly good way of keeping Kai warm now that he refuses to wear his woolen number. I half-thought to post it to ‘The Captain, Tall Ship, Victoria’ but the moment’s gone. His mate also gave the kids bright little Canadian-flag badges, which they wear proudly on their thermal tops.

Over the next two days we hike out. That night, camped beside a lake, the rain comes for the first time (we’ve been so lucky), and everyone save for me and Luce retreats to the tents after supper. We light a furtive little fire. They’ve been banned for weeks now in BC, in the face of the worst forest fires in more than a decade, but it’s pretty damp this high up, lots of snow melt still about, and now rain. We’re very careful, keeping it to a small glowing pool in a cradle of rock, feeding it twigs. Wayn (Lasquetian fire-fighter extraordinaire, when he’s not easing off the sweat that comes from a good day splitting wood by wallowing in a home-dug pond and finely balancing his glass of rhubarb wine on water) will fume himself if he reads this. But the smell of the smoke getting into our hair and the little haven of warmth is wonderful, and we talk for a long time.

The day we get out is the day before Amelie’s eleventh birthday. We race down the last steep stretches, Amelie and Luce speediest of all, Kai taking flying tumbles from time to time but just picking himself up, and off again. Then we’re back in cars and on roads but with the wonderful excitement of shared adventure and achievement bright about us. And that night, our second-ever of this journey (can’t make it a habit), feasting on the hot-water and the big tub, our damp tents and sleeping bags and clothes hanging from every door and knob, we go to celebrate Amelie’s birthday. In style. The kids scrubbed and dressed up and shining, Amelie beaming, her eyes so bright, and a Thai feast (thanks Luce). The guy serving us kept on suggesting that maybe just maybe we’d ordered too much, and then we ordered more again, and then every last scrap vanished. And we rolled back to the motel for bright pink and very fancy cake, dark chocolate buttons, candles, presents, happy birthdays. All the trimmings. Next morning, very early, Freya and Kai are up with the lark, determined not to miss seeing Luce and Amelie off. We drive along silent streets to the harbour and wait. No-one wants to say goodbye, but we’ve each stashed away a good nugget from what we’ve shared. Then their very own float plane touches down, takes off, and they’re gone.

Memories of sun, sea and naked brown bodies

Early September, autumn lacing the valley mist. We’re downstairs in the cabin, perched between the meadow and the creek, dark now the black night curled against the windows and the heat like treacle from the stove. Two pale-bellied mice for company, upstairs, up the ladder-stair, the last squeaks from Freya as sleep rises log by log up the walls of our little home. Outside, somewhere very close, snug in their own spot, the rain now stopped, the grizzly sow and her two cubs. We saw them again this morning just across the way, close enough you feel you know them, maybe because you know they know you, the smell of us, the smoke rising from our chimney, the pisses we’ve been carefully placing about, our human thumps and bumps and somewhat strained somewhat merry sing-alongs as we let them know we’re heading for the outhouse. They’re not bothered, we’re just a part of their world here in Precipice Valley, British Columbia, the soopalally berries ain’t what they should be, but the grass is still good grazing in the meadow.

A handful of days, a long trundle of a trek in Granny White Dragon (purring wonder), north north up into the edges, and a far cry indeed from the fair isle of Lasqueti, tucked in the midst of the Gulf Islands of BC, which is where we floated for four weeks from mid August. Our home was with Bonnie at Mystic Ridge Farm, and time passed slow like the hot sun day after day against our necks …

Lasqueti, off-grid, dirt-tracked and without a car ferry, is the pile of glimmering necklaces, a dragon’s hoard, that Jess brings along to the beach mid-afternoon. Another party (any excuse will do, say, the sun is shining, or some logs got cut, or it’s a birthday) and folk will gather, naked kids, naked adults, the sparkle of the sea and a bunch of hand-made beautiful necklaces from which to choose one that sits against brown skin and shines with precious stones –

Friendship .... We’ve chosen to stay for good long chunks in the places we’ve travelled to, and it’s worked. Connection comes with time, and sharing. And after four weeks on the island we’ve made some special links. With Bonnie, tough yet easy-going as it comes, a farmer and an artist, up for a good tune or a shared coffee around a simple table, ageless, young-spirited witch with a house made of shakes and an open heart. With Wayn, her hunk from the other side of the track, mercurial jack of all trades riven by passion, buzzing words and hopes and despair at the state of our place, beneath it all planter of trees and giver of hugs, true hugs. With Laz and Georgia from higher up the hill, who’d bundle us all into the back of the truck for another bumpy ride is search of a party, chasing baby turkeys with a butterfly net, and leaving Kai gasping with pleasure (‘LOOK, LOOK’) at their arrival on the farm. And then, like ripples from Mystic Ridge, or the great rising whiff of the organic garlic crop that we slept above in the barn, worked upon in the morning, ate in roaring chunks whenever the urge rose, the friendship of the beach bunch that we would often meet up with in the afternoons, welcoming us into their world, even their weddings; the caring, shining kids looking out for ours, alive to the world; the holidaying doctor who takes a look at the bump that Becs got on coral, then shares his birthday cake and invites us all to supper; the second-generation Scottish clan who dig out the pipes and improvise a Ceilidh by candle-light. And Rena, in her 80s, refugee from East Germany, who sleeps atop a giant rock and merrily shares her garden with the deer.

Music .... It’s a small island, 12 miles long, a population of 300 odd, and it throbs music, bouncing from the tinder-dry arbutus every-which-way. The mermaids feel the vibrations out at sea, from the most eclectic, eccentric marching band you could dream up, complete with attendant jugglers and fine hats, or from visiting minstrels who crash in Bonnie’s barn and jam late beneath the stars. Or simply Sarah lying on hot rocks on a beach playing a guitar.

The farm ..... By the end of our stint this beautiful spot had given us its rhythm. It’s a rare open patch in the thick forest of Lasqueti, tucked in below Mystic Ridge, with orchards and meadows and deep precious ponds. When Bonnie was about, the kids would be over at her place first thing, spring to their steps, trotting about with her in the circle of tasks. And when she wasn’t, away down south for stints on art courses, that circle became ours – out the barn as the bats went to bed, through the gate to free the chickens and gather eggs, turning on that spigot for the crop, this one for the garden, getting the porridge bubbling and the coffee brewing, creeping up on mother turkey with her clutch of eggs just about due, sticking a finger in the greenhouse soil, maybe in need of another dousing, saying good morning to Bruv, the horse that later the kids would ride bareback, spotting a tree frog slight as a leaf, feeding the rabbits, shifting the sprinklers about, yanking the generator into life. Then taking breath. In the beautiful open house, windows off ready to paint, the farm spilling in. Time for breakfast, like the ones I remember from days spent on a Cornish farm as a child, a farm breakfast after the first shift, the good feeling of the day rooted, and time to plot what’s now to get done.

Bill .... Been building a boat for 20 years. First he cleared a patch of land, thick with spruce and fir. Then he built himself a huge shed, for the boat. Then, like an afterthought, a shack within the shed, a cabin of a place to live in, with a tight kitchen and a bed above. And then he began to build his boat, a ‘China Junk’, no plans but an amazing eye and a bunch of well-thumbed photos of the one that’s sailed before, famous in the Gulf seas. And a mission. Nail by nail it’s grown beside him, dwarfing his ‘home’. You see now that his surrogate living space is almost already cast adrift, like the launcher on a rocket, because the boat is near there. It’s got no masts nor a name, but the spaces wait, forward, main, mizzen, sunk deep toward the riveted keel. Bill is on the home straight, carving gorgeous stanchions from small caches of cast-off tropical hard wood boiled long in linseed oil. They’ll sail far further than he. And soon, maybe even this coming summer, he’ll board. And wait. Patiently, it’s been 20 years after all, he’s an old man now, with time. For the water to rise, for first his shack to crack and splinter, castaway. And then the beams and struts that hold his dream erect will loosen, and she will rise graceful, and the masts will be of cedar.

Or so anyone would hope. It is quite something to have a dream. And something else entirely to bridge the gulf between fearing and fulfilling it.

The ocean ….

Rib

Poets write a lot, such trails
to leave like otters
on bleached driftwood. But what
of breath and body? Sit
here, for just a moment
(it needn’t be long)
your breath falls
in flakes, layered as the rising
tide, breath deep.

A splash upon the settled ark
of ocean, this vanishing
swept back beneath again, here
is my body
(do you see the furrow)

I am not alone. My fingers
rest upon the sandstone, here
beside the water, the rock
beats and the sea
exhales. In the shape of my shadow
under the moon
my breath is close and soft and
simple. Beneath the arch
of my foot
there lives this precious space, cupped
like an egg, or an opening,
or perhaps a word. So for now

I’ll reach far as I can, ravelling
unravelling across the sea, strong
as I’ve ever been. Just
for a while
about the humming bird
held in the ribs of the world.


A trace left .... We got an email from Annie (green-fingered wonder of the Methow Valley, Washington State) just a couple of days back, saying that she thought of us every close of day, as she shut the gate in the deer fence. This whole adventure would be so different if we weren’t working in the places we’ve stopped by. It’s that sharing again, getting wedged into a spot as food and hard work and conversation round the table at the end of the day are pooled. In Lasqueti, often, with rhubarb wine. And there we leave links that some time in days to come will have a Lasquetian shouting ‘knock knock’ at our door in Wester Brae, and restored windows at Mystic Ridge that will last some more years again, and a few fewer stones in the fields that Wayn will sow, and garlic in our pot.

Luce and Amelie ..... They arrived off the ferry with the tin-pot look and the charicature grumpy captain (does he spit tobacco?) as if 8000 miles and travel through the sky and a whole other world of higgledy streets in Tufnell Park, London were nothing but a gangplank’s hike. Freya and Kai racing through the dust to greet them, and we bundled them into Bonnie’s ramshackle van and homeward to Mystic Ridge. There, Lucy’s fingers were soon stained rich with blackberry juice, the plumpest ever, (this island grows anything and everything, even a banana, easy as a triffid), getting stuck in, helping with the windows, and Amelie diving for the sea. It was a very special visit, a week on Lasqueti, then over to Vancouver Island, all together, to hike in the Strathcona wilderness area. Like a foundation stone. We’re a good band.

Make-believe ...... Freya and Kai, 2 cheetahs on a hot afternoon, mum and dad working on some fence stobs: ‘ … and all the deer were killed, no all the deer were here but if they went past this line they were killed. I killed one little deer and then I threw it here and it whizzed into your spot. I caught a fat daddy one and they’re the juciest ones. Then I jumped over the gate. And then you sneaked through the hole again ….’

Becs painting ..... Carving out some time at last, springboard in the space and comfort of the farm and the rocky coast just beyond, the hidden corners that catch the light. Measuring time by the moon not the watch. Beginning to explore.

The wedding ..... Well actually two. Both at Squitty Bay, at the south end of the island, beneath the sheltering sky, fringed by sparkle. Kirsty (yet another of Scottish descent) and Alan were married in a good sea breeze, Rena’s wreaths jostling about their heads and dreams, and the locals out in their finest tattoos, bouffant shirts, hotch-potch frocks. Colour everywhere. It was our last day on the island, Luce and Amelie and the four of us were heading for the hills again, and what a fitting farewell tubor-blast it was. The party that night had the whole bunch of us dancing our sweaty socks off to the belly-groove of Lasqueti’s very own Marimba band, the pleasure of pulling beer in a flowery apron, the greetings the connections the fierce happiness of connection and all those limitless swims in the never-ending.

And that’s how we left, early next morning, with hangovers and a flat tyre.