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.