Crows

The Blue Mule was a 1971 Ford F-150 4X4 lovingly cared for by our next door neighbour in The Sticks, Challs.

Challs was a lot like Dad in that he was... and probably still is... and avid Outdoorsman. They hunted and fished together a lot. I went with them a lot, too.

He also kept his house, yard, and equipment very well. Very handy,  organized and energetic - and young. Things Dad really wasn't.

The Blue Mule was in absolutely showroom condition from the day we moved to the Sticks, to the day I left for the Army, 11 years later. Challs was always puttering with it, wheel off doing the brakes, or painting the undercarriage, or just washing it.

It was summertime in the Sticks, and, since I have to guess, I'd say I was about 10. My older sister Kat and I were playing aggravation out on the front lawn.

In the late 70s, aggravation was a board game for 2 to 4 people consisting of a set of four marbles for each player. The object was to get you marbles to your home setting using moves around the board from a roll of the dice - wilst your opponent sent you back to your start by landing on you.. It's rather a lot like the Trouble® board game my youngest loves to play with us - except for the clicky-poppy-dice-dome thing.

It was probably the precursor to that, as a matter of fact, but I, as usual, digress.

Challs rolled up during the game, and shouted out the window of the Blue Mule "You guys want a coupla crows?"

Well, Kat and I just looked at each other and dropped everything.

Kat loved animals. Pretty much more than people. That would become more obvious as time wore on.

I suspect it was she knew were she stood with animals, and they didn't disappoint her very often.

In reasonably short order we had the crows set up in a portable pen fashioned out of milk crates, complete with nesting materiel, water and food dishes, and the usual newspaper liner for waste disposal. Kat had come up with the names Po and Blue for them. She claimed the names were a literary reference - but a reference to what... well, I've never figured that out.

The names worked tho. Po was the older of the siblings; just about ready to fly, much more stand-offish and really good at faking self-reliance. Blue, not so much. it took a couple weeks to coax him...

Um. Parenthetical point. To this day I don't know what sex those birds were, and at age 10 I had no way of knowing. I'm pretty sure we just assumed they were males and went with it.

Anyway, it took weeks to coax Blue into the air, and then only for short distances. We had a pretty big back yard, and we started teaching them to fly as soon as they'd regained some strength... and some trust.

Every day Po would watch us teaching Blue. He'd watch from 12 feet up one of our pine trees.

And every night he'd fly back down to sleep in the crate, safely tucked away from the neighbourhood cats.

We had them until around mid August. It may have been later in the summer than that, but it doesn't really matter. They'd just about outgrown their milk crates when we took them to Wasa Lake. We took them to set them free.

Having set up our camp, I took the crates and opened them, and just left the crows to make their own decisions. They both flew up to the same tree. Typically, Po was up several feet higher. We left the crates in view for them during our stay.

One of the cool things about B.C. Provincial parks was that the larger ones had amphitheaters and Interpretive services, where summer students would be employed by BC Parks to lead campers on guided hikes through a given Park.

A couple days in to our camping trip one of theses hikes came by the campsite. I was sitting at the rough-hewn picnic table. The guide pointed out the crows low in the tree, and stated that it was unusual for them to be so close to people.

Couldn't help myself.

I had to.

I stood up and walked toward the tree and held up my hand.

Blue flew right to it and landed on my palm.

The Parks Guide's eyes nearly fell out of her head.

Yes, yes. We eventually let them know.

By the end of 6 days of camping, the crows had got the idea, deserted the tree, and made off to start their proper lives.

After at least four hours of confusion, building, and resourcing, and scrambling around after Challs had handed us a pair of crows, Kat looked at me, and said "It's your turn."

She hadn't forgotten we were in the middle of a game. She was like that.

Road Apples

One of the great secret places of my youth was Top of the World Provincial Park.

It's a little remote.

If you have a look at an aerial view, you'll note that there are sort of roads kind of near it... but not too near it.

Interestingly, it's nearly exactly between the Sticks and another of the great camping spots of my Childhood, Wasa Lake.

I may have mentioned that it is the nature of travel in the interior of British Columbia that locations that are not very far apart as the crow flies, are some distance to drive. Wasa was like that; It was a pleasant drive, but 90 minutes from home. And it was close to Gramma Jay's.

And we could swim, with a sand beach and everything. And it had a fantastic little Ice Cream shop/Candy/General store that kids just loved.

But today, we're talking about Fish Lake.

Wasa was a drive, but Fish Lake, the main feature of Top-of-the-World as far as I was concerned, was an excursion.

It required rather serious preparation, both in gear and psychology... because, to paraphrase Boromir, One merely walks into Fish Lake.

For about 2 and a half hours, on average.

So, it isn't exactly a day trip. You usually plan for at least one overnight, so you have to carry in a tent.

And a bedroll. And food.

You get the Idea.

Naturally, the first time we went in, Dad and Uncle Crazy Legs planned it as a day trip.

The clans had gathered, as we frequently did in the summer. Uncle Crazy Legs, also a teacher, had exposed my cousins to the same sort of youth I had, with the only real difference being location. They ended up in Dawson Creek in 1979 or so.

Yes, it's a real place. No, it was there before the TV show. No, it has nothing to do with the TV show. And, yet again, I digress.

As a matter of fact, the clans had gathered in a marvelous clearing just under the bridge across the Lussier River - the same Camp spot Dad, the Artist, and I would later eat peaches. We were to be there the better part of a week. As it turns out, it's about 20 minutes from the parking area at the trail head to Fish Lake.

That's right; Parking Area. At the time it was a rough-hewn rail fence abutting the Primordial Forest, with a wide track of gravel to park on, just off the Whiteswan Forest Service road.

I recall that the day trip had been part of the plan all along; Dad had made some arrangements. The greatest of these were apples.

To this day, I don't know where the idea came from. He had Mom pack a couple dozen large Red Delicious apples, several tubs of peanut butter, and bags of mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, and trail mix in the tent trailer.

The day before Fish Lakes, camped en masse on the Lussier River, we all went to work. Under the direction of Dad and Uncle Crazy Legs, we cut the tops off the apples like one would a Jack-o-lantern, slanting in so that the top could be re-installed later. Then we spooned out the apple cores. You had to be pretty careful not to scrape too deep, or you'd break the skin of the apple. That would ruin it.

Once the cores were out, Mom had mixed the other ingredients together in a large bowl, and we spooned the mix of peanut butter, mini-marshmallows, chocolate chips, and trail mix into the apples, and pushed the tops back on. The peanut butter makes them stick.

Usually.

What you get is a highly portable, ridiculously highly energy- and protein-packed snack suitable for eating while hiking.

And no trash. The whole thing is biodegradable. It's about as perfect a Back-Country hiking snack as you can get. Fills you right up, too.

I was ten at the time. I don't recall which of us coined them Road Apples - so I won't take the credit. And yes, we all thought the Irony was pretty funny, too.

Tragically, my Beautiful Wife is deathly allergic to nuts. So is my niece. Subsequently my opportunities for making them again are pretty thin. That... and I live in Ontario now.

See, I only ever made Road Apples for the hike into Top of the World. The two seemed to just go together, like London Fogs on Christmas Eve. Ask Lange. She knows what I mean.

Late one summer in my 20th year, my friend The Angry Scientist wanted to do some High-Altitude Hiking and Photography, and, since the plateau is at about 2200 metres (that's about 6700 feet for you southerners),  we decided we should trek in to Fish Lake. I'm pretty sure that's the last time I made Road Apples. I don't recall his feelings about them.

I'm also pretty sure that's the last time I saw Top of the World. I think that was after the one where Mr. Bill couldn't resist a 4 am taste of Porcupine... But THAT is a story for another time.

Red in the Ledger

I don't remember when Dad taught me to fish.

There are a couple ways to take that statement. SomePeople might take it to mean that the actual event was so traumatic that I've put it out of my mind. That may be true; as stated, I don't remember. I prefer to think it the more benign of the possibilities, of course... that I had been fishing with Dad since I could stand up.

So we're clear, my memory is shockingly good for someone of my evidently advanced age; I can name all of my teachers and most of my classmates all the way back to grade one, nearly 40 years ago.

My lovely wife, of course, would disagree, given my propensity to misplace things. But - this is about Fishing, not Recall.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I went fishing alone - or, better said - "without Dad."

I have stories. Lots of them: the time I hooked the gigantic cutthroat trout and fought him at long hole for 40 minutes before we pulled him in; jumping in to the Elk River in February (hey, it was only 8 inches of water, relax) to scoop Dad's even-bigger-than-my-cutthroat Dolly Varden on to the bank; Dogs chasing down wildlife, trying to eat porcupines, and stirring up hornets, and long, lazy summer afternoons thigh-deep in a mountain stream, fly fishing.

I even fished a hundred-pound kid out of the Elk River one October... but that's his story to tell, not mine.

I feel like I've done my boys a disservice in that I have not yet passed along the knowledge and pure joy of spending a day on the river, and leaving your prized Schrade Old-Timer on a rock somewhere about five meanders back...

Well, okay, that part sucks, but it's all part of the experience.

The biggest thrill I ever got fishing was seeing the one skirt around the shore under the rocks above the Rock Creek rest area - and then i just dropped my bobber where he was, and Bang! I was eight - and caught the only fish that day.


Truth be told, I haven't cast a fly in fifteen years. The last trip I went on was with Dad... up the Bull River headwaters, fly fishing for Labour Day in 1997. It was an annual thing for us.

I just haven't really had the desire to go since.

I think it's time though; It's been more than long enough. I have knowledge, lore, and a love for the pastime - I know some boys who need that passed along, and I certainly Owe that to Dad. All things considered, I better get cracking.

Hm. I better start collecting some gear.

Good Judgement

I may have mentioned that I traveled with Dad a lot in my youth.

Day trips at any time of year, camping... also at any time of year in random sets of accommodations from tents to pop-up trailers to Grandma's place in Kimberley on any sort of errand or intent you can think of.

We even slept in the back of a '59 Land Rover in October in the mountains. And believe me, that isn't even possible. The last straw for Dad was the night we spent in a tent on opening day of Elk season. We'd packed the tent in - but he'd figured our hunting clothes were such that we didn't actually need sleeping bags.

At that point Dad had about 35 years experience in the bush. Nevertheless it turns out he could still have Very Bad Ideas. That was the longest, coldest night I've ever spent - including working midnights as a security guard over Christmas Holidays some years later.

But, that pretty much killed the tenting in winter for Dad, too. His solution?

Build a Cabin.

He even had the perfect spot picked out - just up the hill a little from where we froze ourselves the prior autumn in the tent with no sleeping bags. We called the little draw up that valley Rum Junction - how that name came about is a story for another time.

He'd decided on a simple A-frame wood construction at about 14 X 10, with the 10 foot axis on the downslope. We would use heavy-grade plastic sheeting to roof it with; and plywood for the walls. Eventually the first 6 feet of the roof slope would sport spiked plywood too - to keep out the porcupines.

All of this stuff would have to be packed in; the road you see on that link wasn't there yet. It wasn't really all that far from the Highway - but the SomePeople that have been there will tell you it's a 20 minute hike... mostly Up.

Yes, it was on Crown land, and yes, technically that made it an illegal structure, but Dad liked to say "No Sweat for a Big Operation (like this)." the Like This was optional, of course. Dad was really good at pressing on through adversity and good judgement.

He did, however, let the guy who had the trap line up there know what we were up to - just so he'd know we weren't up there trapping. The Trapper was cool with that - it actually worked to his advantage to have an extra shelter in the neighbourhood in winter - just in case.

Speaking of good judgement - that was the same year Dad and the fellas from the Old Country decided to go in on a bunch of used oak barrels from a Rum Distillery. The principle was you partially fill a used rum barrel with water, then you set it back on its side - sealed - and rotate it periodically. After some months of this you would have soaked all the residual alcohol out of the barrel into the water, which you could then bottle.

The product was called Swish - and it was actually a lot more potent that you'd think. But it didn't taste as good as you'd think. It was okay with Coke, though.

Right. Building a cabin.

The worst part of building the cabin above Rum Junction on Robert's Creek was not having to pack in what amounted to an awful lot of lumber, nails, plastic, and other hardware. That we did over several trips across a month or so in Mid Summer.

The worst part was that we built it in Mid Summer, in the bush at about 30 degrees Centigrade (that's 85ish F)... and had to cut in to the side of the mountain location with shovels - digging down about 6 feet on the high side due to the slope.

I did most of that, working with Dad's oldest, closest friend. It was exhausting and horrid due to the temperature, terrain, and bugs.

It was nearly 30 years ago, but the memory is as fresh as yesterday. I was roasting, and had probably lost five pounds to sweat. I reached into a backpack and grabbed an ice-cold 2 liter Sprite bottle, and took a long pull off it.

Did I mention Dad liked to bottle his Swish in old 2 liter Sprite bottles?

Let's Rethink That...

I have a tendency to over-complicate things. I'm pretty sure it's genetic.

It's not like I try, of course. Usually the first solution I see to a given problem is elegant, and takes into account most, if not all possible contingencies. And that's the problem. My initial stab at a resolution tends to be overly contingified, and bogs down disastrously in implementation.

Having learned from this, I do try to set aside the first response thought, and try to find the easy way. I was better at this in my youth. The mind clutters with experience.

By the same token, I don't know why I'm what They call "mechanically inclined." I don't exactly come by it honestly; I've watched Dad plan brilliant household projects only to have them fail in a titanic series of compounding disasters - usually culminating in more damage than the original project would have repaired.

Different sort of disaster, but disaster nonetheless.

I suspect my inclination can be sourced to the bicycle my grandparents gave me for my seventh birthday. It disappeared within a month; right after we moved to the town I would grow up in. Welcome to the sticks.

I spent the rest of my youth putting bikes together out of spare parts, and maintaining them myself. If I couldn't fix it, I was walking. As it happens, I've never owned a new bicycle to this day. But as usual, I digress.

Late in the summer one year, just after I'd first started the Learning To Drive process, Dad packed me and my brother into his Pontiac Catalina, and we headed west across B.C. to take my brother back to school. We were loaded down with art supplies, his gear, a tent trailer and everything else 3 guys need for a 700 km trip.

The tent trailer was merely for storage. We were going to be staying at Uncle Bug's in Burnaby, or Surrey, or whereverthehell he lived.

In a little town called Princeton on Highway 3, the car lost power. Completely. All it would do was idle.

And off the highway we pulled. A short inspection under the hood, and dad determined that the accelerator cable had broken.

Yes, you read that right. Perhaps one day I'll discuss how things that are never supposed to happen, happen a matter of routine. It's kinda like operating in an infinite improbability field like Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic - without the whole instant total existence failure part.

The next few hours produced an absolute flurry of activity from Dad - whilst my brother and I sat in the car, windows down, he reading in the back and I... well... honestly I don't remember what I did. It can't have been much, and obviously it was a mindnumbing couple hours.

Dad shows up with several bags and a harried look. He starts telling us about his last several hours on the phone, dumping the contents of the bags on the driver's seat of the Catalina.

"Turns out these things never break. I had one mechanic phone all over the country and he found one in Canada ~ in Quebec City, but if they ship it it'll take a week. So I called Uncle Bug and he's gonna make some calls so I need to phone him back in a few..."

I had by then perused the contents of the bags. Brass wire, one large C clamp, a couple smaller c clamps, some assorted nuts and bolts, electrical tape, and a microscopic crescent wrench that looked like it should be on a keychain. "Dad."

"... huh?" turns out I'd cut him off in mid-frustrated-prattle.

"What's all this for," I asked with my newly-minted "calm" voice. I knew that it was probably going to be interesting.

Not good - but interesting.

"Well, I went to the hardware store. I figured maybe we could rig up a hand-throttle."

Admittedly, my first thought was that the brass wire was too soft, and lacked the tensile strength to...

My second thought caused my Calm Voice to request a short leave of absence. I declined that request, politely, if perhaps firmly. "Okay, you want to drive the Hope-Princeton Highway one-handed while the other one controls your speed. And then try to do this in Vancouver in rush hour. Pulling a trailer."

He looked at me for a second. The funny thing is, when your Dad looks at you like that for a second, it's the longest second in recorded history. You kinda get a little chilled in the pit of your guts, wondering which way it's gonna go. It wasn't my first time. We had an unusual relationship, my Dad and me. Occasionally, I was his senate - his House of Sober Second Thought.

Like I said. The mind, evidently, clutters with experience.

"Yeah," he said, finally, looking over the hardware again. "I guess I'd have to relearn how to drive, wouldn't I." He looked a little rueful about having bought it all for nothing. But he hadn't. I had just then figured it out.

"Do you have any Picture Hanging wire in your stuff," I asked my brother - who was still sitting in the back seat, trying to will himself safely to his apartment in Vancouver... or really anywhere else.

You might think that's a mildly unusual request, asking for something so unlikely in a situation that... odd. It was the first time I had attempted to use my personal Improbability Field to my advantage. He reached into a bag and handed over a roll of thin, braided wire. "Of course," he said.

I did say Art Supplies.

"Perfect. Dad, you wanna find out how Uncle Bug is doing? I'm gonna use this, and these clamps and stuff and re-run the cable. Right through the old cable housing. I've restrung gears and brake lines enough, I should have thought of it. Great Idea!" I said to his back as he headed off with a strange little half-smile.

And I did. Took a little tape, patience and blood like everything else I've since done with cars; but I managed to restring the pedal so we could drive normally to Uncle Bug's.

Well, Almost normally. Never occurred to me to have the pedal blocked "up" when I connected it, so all we could do was 95 kmh - but the speed limit was 90, so no worries there. It broke the next morning the second I started the car to pull it in to Uncle Bug's driveway to be fixed properly. Right where I'd clamped it to the throttle. Figures.

Uncle Bug was a helicopter mechanic by trade, and liked to restore cars. He had made a few phone calls and had a new cable in his hands in about 90 minutes.

I suspect that gene is a recessive.

The Grizzly-Moose

Over the course of a recently-completed Very Long Drive, I had the occasion to pass along a little bit of Kootenay lore to a friend of mine.

We were moving my RV through deepest, darkest Western Ontario and I was driving. Chris was Shotgun, and my lovely wife was lounging in the back. It was twilight, and we were hoping to make Thunder Bay before calling it a 17-hours-travelled day.

Ontarioans will tell you that that part of the province is lousy with wildlife. Wildlife that appears to find leaping across a busy highway - like the Trans-Canada - the most sublime sort of sport.

So I was driving at twilight in something as sporty and maneuverable as a school bus, but not nearly so solid, constantly scanning the sides of the road ahead.

"Grizzly-Moose" I grumbled.

Chris looked at me ~ a look that indicated my sanity may be in question. "What?"

I've noted for some time that my casual common expressions tend to be somewhat... obscure... to MostPeople. I attribute this to rather a backwoods upbringing in the sticks of the Kootenays in British Columbia - and formal education in English, which evidently only High School teachers get.

I'm not a High School Teacher.

So I, naturally, launched into a dissertation on my personal cryptozoological experience.

"My Dad used to tell me stories about the Web-footed, Beaver-tailed, Grizzly-Moose.

It's a fascinating creature, native to the Kootenay region of B.C. It has the head, shoulder hunch, and body like a Grizzly bear, palmated antlers and a bell like a Moose, webbed feet like a duck - but obviously larger, and a broad, flat tail reminiscent of a Beaver.

This, of course, is not the interesting part. What makes it interesting is that it innately, instinctively knows when it is being looked at directly, and then instantly turns into a rock, or a bush, or a stump or some other inanimate thing in order to escape detection. So, naturally, you only see them from the corner of your eye, when you aren`t quite paying attention."

Oddly enough, Chris seemed skeptical. I attributed that to his youth and city upbringing.

"Dad actually saw a pelt for one in the early 80's," I went on. "Evidently there was one mounted in a pub somewhere in Montana, just south of Wardiner in the east Kootenays."

Now, to be honest, I had always been a little suspicious of the veracity of Dad's story about that. Everybody knows that a creature that can instinctively change into an inanimate object to avoid detection will almost certainly do so as its dying act. So what did He see? a pile of bark?

The truth is lost to history. I do know, however, that in (I think... it's been 30 years) 1981 a story ran in the Fernie Free Press on this very subject, penned by the most venerable and sage PipeDreamer himself, the late Bruce Ramsey - and it features my Dad telling the story of the discovery of a stuffed Grizzly Moose.

But you travelers are at least now aware. You swear you saw that stump move a second ago, right? That dark spot in the copse of trees up ahead - it looked at you, didn't it?

It's not your imagination. And I thought they were native to B.C. ~ turns out they've expanded their range.

"What's that?" Chris says suddenly, alarm in his voice as he points to a tan deer shape in the deepening twilight. As we approached, it resolved itself into a rock.

"Grizzly-Moose" I shrugged.