Winter Pursuits

A couple weekends ago, my brother-in-law, Ardy, and I took the kids out tobogganing.

As it was the first time in about 22 months that we had enough snow, it was kind of a big deal. The kids in question are his 7 1/2 year old daughter and my 7 3/4 year old son, who are more like brother and sister than any kids exactly three months apart could reasonably be.

We've been raising them like that. It's one of the reasons we moved out here.

We roasted down a nice bowl hill for 90 minutes in different configurations of pairs to much shrieking laughter, and almost no complaining about cold or climbs. Somebody had a campfire going off to one side - out of the way - at the bottom of the bowl. It smelled marvelous.

I can recall a couple times Dad took us out like that - but the tobogganing was usually ancillary to the trip. Trips out usually involved ski-doos, dogs, campfires, snowshoes, and - more often than not - frozen stretches of water, with tree limbs cut into hockey sticks and pucks. In later years there would be backpacks, bush cabins, and mulled wine, but these are stories for another time.

You only sat around for a winter weekend in The Sticks if it was actively raining. Which - In Winter, in the Sticks - was pretty much never.

It was a glorious afternoon - and all Ardy's idea. So I told him about Twister.

Serious tobogganing in the Sticks didn't require a car; everything in the place was walking distance, even for a pre-adolescent.

It's remembrances like this that make me feel like I grew up in a different dimension. We no longer let our children cross the street alone at an age where we were out of sight of the house from dawn till dusk... but I digress.

You had pretty much had three standard options for sledding when you lived in lower Sticks. The hill behind the row houses was okay, and it was really close, but it was a short rise at only sixty or so vertical feet... and the slope was fairly terrifying at between 70 and 80 degrees. It was also a standard path for a lot of kids to go to school... so very often it was either worn to dirt, or chopped-up and refrozen ice - which rattles your teeth while sledding.

The water tower was better - across Highway three at the top of the hill, and it was a good 150 vertical feet - but still 70 to 80 degrees vertical. It was so steep that snow very often didn't stay on it all that deep, and it was popular enough that the tracks would be worn to the dirt.

The speed you could reach on it would also flay your skin in cold weather.

By far, the best hill around was Twister.

It was an old cut road that wound its way down from Old Highway 3, and opened up to a small meadow at the base of the causeway that was built up to support New Highway 3. The climb was something like 200 vertical feet, but since it was originally a road it was cut into the slope with S turns and switchbacks to minimise the slope. It took a good 15 to 20 minutes to walk up from the bottom.

The result? Add a little snow and you had 3 minutes of steep-banked wide-track bob-sled-inspiring greatness that was populated every snowy weekend available.

And seriously - the more kids, the better. Lots of them would bring inner tubes from the mine trucks  - once punctured, they couldn't be used on the trucks any more, but patch them and fill them up, and you can seat up to five 10 year olds on one.

The season after my brother first took me to Twister, Santa delivered a pair of plastic formed sleds. They were basically a rectangular tub with a catamaran shaped front slope, and a seat pressed into the form. They were also the fastest sleds on the hill the next 4 years running.

We were lightning. In one of those interceptors you could let the tubes go first, and get around the top corner, and you'd still pass them before you were half way down. One of the best places to pass was above an innertube on the outside of a turn embankment. If your timing was bad, the tube would bounce you right out of the gully into the trees. Which of course was all of the fun.

The hill was like riding down a drainpipe.

Somebody built a golf course on the end stretch of Old Highway 3 in the mid 80s. A couple years later, someone noticed guys on dirtbikes were using the Twister cut road to get on to the 9th hole of the golf course, and tearing up the fairways.

Several huge roadblocks of deadfall were constructed across the path of the cut road at various intervals almost immediately after that.

And a Legend passed into the mists of memory.

When Lawn Chairs Attack!

Dad had a long-standing, near-legendary problem with folding lawn chairs.

Wait, What? Lawn Chairs?

Yep.

Looks innocuous enough, doesn't it? Woven polyester/plastic slats, 1mm thick rolled aluminum molded into 2.5 cm diameter formed piping, riveted together in a fashion ostensibly designed to provide hours - years - of support as you are entertained in the Great-Out-of-Doors.

But there's one thing the packing label won't tell you. It hints at it nowadays - but doesn't come out and say it directly.

Turns out Dad started to expand a bit once he hit 30. He always, in his own writing, would refer to himself as Slim Hunter - as, in his late teens and early 20s, he was certainly beanpole-esque at a long 193 cm and barely scratching 97 kilos.

For those of you for whom Metric is so much gobbledygook,  that works out to 6'4" and just a touch over 210 pounds.

And by 30 - getting larger. Interestingly, his limbs remained lean and very strong. Unfortunately that meant that all his weight gain for the next 30 years was in his chest and gut. He managed it by remaining active, Hiking, Running, Hunting, and eventually Cycling. I think he probably got back down to 105 kilos from cycling by the time he was 55 - but still had the legs and arms of a leaner man... so still seemed bulky.

Yes, I know Dad always swore he was 6'5". He also always wore cowboy boots. It's easy to add an inch to your height when nobody can see the top of  your head.

At any rate, I was looking Dad in the eye by the time I was 20 years old - and I've never made it past 193cm.

Let's just say that Dad was pretty freakin' large and leave it there.

I don't remember where we were the first time it happened - but I wasn't very old. Probably around 8. That would make Dad 38, and in the worst of his paunch development. He was in a lawn chair, as shown above.

On Grass. On the tiniest slope backward, and to the right. The conditions, as they say, were perfect.

The lawn chair, sensing that Dad was at ease, and therefore vulnerable, suddenly, maliciously and without warning threw him to the ground and clamped its ravenous jaws upon his buttock in an effort to eat him whole.

Dad, never one to be ignominiously eaten by mere furniture, fought back.

This did not appear to be the case from the vantage of the casual viewer, of course. The scene was more reminiscent of an upside-down turtle trying to get clear of a set of bagpipes - and it sounded imaginably similar, too.

After a few minutes of flailing around and some mildish cursing, Dad rolled to his feet, victorious, the mangled carcass of the lawn chair laying in crushed defeat before him. He escaped with only scratches, amidst much tittering from various onlookers.

I said that was the First Time. There were a few others; details mostly the same until the last one which actually drew blood in an attempt to relieve Dad of his kidneys. He liked to show people the scar.

But that was that. Mom found a different brand of lawn chair in Better Homes for Ogres and went shopping, coming back from the Outdoor Shop in the next town... which was in the next province... with four sturdy, thick-rolled, thin tube, very, very sturdily (and therefore, tame) framed chairs.

Which had canvas seats. Nice striped ones.

The canvas on the chairs suffered Dad and weather for a single season, and then promptly split on the first trip the next spring. Dad,  his backside on the ground, arms akimbo and feet dangling, sputtering and cursing somewhat less mildly, fought his way loose form the Very Very Sturdy Frame, and left it where it fell in its disgrace, laying on its side.

Mom looked at the chair. Then back to her spring edition of Ogre Living. Then back at the chair. This went on for some time as Dad, still sputtering, used his chainsaw to cut a stump to sit on.

Well - I presume it was him sputtering... it may have been the chainsaw. The pitch was similar.

Mom eventually put down the magazine with a shrug, picked up the now-denuded lawn chair frame, her bag of macramé cord, and a fresh glass of Sangria from her Camping wine box, and went to work.

Mom macraméd. And Knitted. Pretty much if it had to do with knotting up fibers, she built stuff out of it. We all had really warm sweaters. Nice ones. We had furniture, planters and wall hangings littering our house in The Sticks.

Speaking of knotting things - she also used to cut our hair. But that's, as I like to say, a story for another time.

She also liked to take a box or two of Sangria on camping trips. She says it helped drown out all the sputtering.

At any rate, over several days she built a seat and back out of the macramé cord, weaving and knotting and creating pleasant patterns in tan, cream and green. I suspect it was of her own design, I can't be sure and she can't recall. Eventually, over that summer, she had re-upholstered all four of those chairs.

And they were brilliant. They lasted forever. And superbly comfortable. But there was a drawback... and it was why they were superbly comfortable.

Macramé cord tends to stretch. A few seasons of Dad sitting on them, and the chairs were like little hammocks slung in an upright frame. You get in, and if you're under a certain height... your feet no longer touch the ground.

But you're comfortable. Especially when the backs got bent a little further back from use so your chin wasn't crammed into your chest. It's impossible to get out of the chair without help, but it's okay... you're comfortable.

Just don't decide you need to pee.

One thing though - you couldn't manage a plate in them. Your knees were usually about chest high. Balancing a plate on that was not going to happen.

I haven't sat in one of those chairs in 15 years. Now lawn chairs are geodesic arrangements of piping covered in ballistic nylon - no way you're getting through that. But I said they come with a warning.

Maximum weight 225 lbs.

Dad would love that.

As such, I'm very careful sitting in them. I'm pretty sure that tag means that if you're less than that, you aren't a worthy meal.

The other day when I was thinking about this, I thought, "no way..." and then Googled Macramé Lawn Chairs. Yep, They exist. She could have made a fortune. But probably not.

I'm pretty sure I saw a Macramé Lawn Chair peeking around from a dark corner in the basement of Mom's house when we packed it up last June.

Wouldn't surprise me. It was probably pretty hungry.

Rum Junction

I recently recounted certain events surrounding the development of a hunting cabin called the Rum Junction Hotel. About a klick south of Highway three, barely five minutes out of the little town I grew up in - The Sticks - there is a bottle in a tree.

Okay, seriously. In that neck of the woods, there are very likely a number of bottles in a variety of trees - but none that I know of that are a named landmark for a very select group.

Couple things.  I grew up in the 80s.  It wasn't exactly the wild west, but... well, okay, it was actually the West, technically. My point is you've all very likely seen the posts on facebook how we should never have survived our childhoods... well a lot of this story would probably - nowadays...

Whatever. This story has elements that are not gonna be politically correct. I'm probably gonna offend PETA, MADD, and possibly the BCTF and a bunch of other acronyms, but that's the way things went down. Get over yourselves.

But then, my old friend Zon tells me I'm not exactly hindered in my commentary by an enormous audience, so I guess we're good.

Right. Into the abyss.

Dad and I were out hunting. It occurs to me that this is usually the way these things start.

The unusual part is that he actually saw something. An Elk.

And he saw it long enough to get a shot off.

When I was 15 years old, Dad was a pretty good shot. Having said that - a bottlecap in a tree is almost exactly unlike a 500 kilo Elk ripping up turf and trees around it as you can, realistically, get.

But I wasn't there - I was in the valley. I started moving in his direction when I heard the shot.

I found a man in befuddlement. He was certain he'd aimed true - but we could find absolutley no evidence.

Eventually, Dad found a tiny shred of bloodied flesh on a bush in the vicinity, that might indicate a bullet wound on a large animal. So now we had to track it down.

Six hours later, it was getting on to dusk, and we had not managed to find even one more trace of an animal that was injured, and we very nearly tore that valley apart. But Dad, being a Conservation Instructor and Environmentalist in his way, had an idea that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Heh.  There's an acronym I use as a matter of routine... SLAGIATT. Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. It's a great catch-all for when things go unpredictably, horribly sideways. This seems to happen a lot in My World.

We were coming back the next day - and we were bringing The Dog.

I grew up with dogs. There were usually two. And they were generally large - as in over 40 kilos, and 30 cm tall at the shoulder, and very often both. This Dog was both. He was the unregistered offspring of a purebred Shepard and an Alsatian Police Dog, and a couple years later would be diagnosed with genetic Retinitis Pigmentosis, and then develop cataracts.

That's a story for another day, of course.

He was in no way intended or trained to hunt or track... but there was nothing wrong with his nose.

The next day, we were back in the draw at Roberts Creek.

Dad handled the Dog. The Dog was somewhere over 50 kilos, and still otherwise prime, and Dad, rightly, was concerned that he'd yard me off my feet running a blood trail.

Four grueling hours up and down 45-degree slopes with nothing to show for it, the Dog pulls Dad off his feet. In landing, Dad came down beside a bush and one of the twigs slid under his glasses, and gouged the cornea of his right eye.

Never done that, but I wear contact lenses sometimes. I'm pretty sure that it HURT. I seem to recall him mentioning that once or twice.

Dad was on a mission, though, and gamely carried on through excruciating pain, his eye tearing to the point of useless.

And for several more hours, we continued to find absolutely no trace of this evidently phantom Elk. Dad, finally, had had enough, and sat down beside the old snag in the center of the draw up the valley. He pulled a bottle of  overproof Demerara rum out of his pack. It was a 750 ml bottle; back then we'd have called it a 26er. It was about a third full.

"I brought this to toast with in case we found that Elk," Dad said. "Don't imagine you can drive us home." I thought about it for a second or two, and, having never touched a steering wheel in a moving vehicle to that point, knew my limitations.

"Thought not. Well, I can't see a damn thing, and this is the only painkiller we have. Pass me one of them cokes."

So we sat under that tree, and killed the sixpack of coke we had in my bag, splitting the remains of the bottle between us. When it was empty, Dad decided to hang it in the Snag we sat under, in the bottom of that draw. there was a perfect broken-off branch pointing straight up about 10 feet high.

I rode Dad's shoulders and mounted the bottle on the branch... and we hiked down the 20 minutes to the truck and drove home - very fortunately without incident. It took years for dad's eye to heal all the way. And now - we have cellphones so such events would never happen.

That bottle sat upside down in that tree - hell, as far as I know, it still is. Eight years after we placed it there Dad expressed amazement no one had shot it out yet. I have not been through that draw in 22 years, though, so I can't even tell you the snag is still standing, let alone the bottle.

That Snag in that Draw lives forever as Rum Junction. Welcome to the Group.

Ghost Stories

I learned a lot from my last camping trip with Mum and two of the boys. Mostly that campfire Ghost stories are just as tough as I thought they would be. I have a new appreciation for the Imaginations of my predecessors.

The best part about camping with Dad and Uncle Crazy Legs had to be the Ghost stories. They had a vast repertoire; from the Humorous to the Benign; all the way into tales that could make the blood of the most worldly seventeen-year-old run to ice.

And you always knew when it was time; the fire was brightening against the chill of the mountain summer's eve, and Dad or Uncle Crazy Legs would start like a distant howl on the wind...

"WhoooooHoooooooooooo..."

It was campy, but it always worked. Every kid, any age sat with rapt attention until the story was done. Very often one or two had eyes squeezed shut, or left in fright all together. It was glorious.

Naturally the mark of success for a ghost story was how hard it was for which kids to fall asleep. You'd be amazed at how much spookier the bush is at night after one of their better tellings. I hope you went to the bathroom before it got dark, because, believe me... you aren't interested in leaving the camper now.

A little taste of moonlight plays through the trees and throws faint shadows that move with the boughs in the breeze... really - just stay in your sleeping bag. The terror is delicious.

We actually tried, as kids, to record some of these stories for posterity, with varying success. I must admit though, that success has diminished given that those recordings, to my knowledge, have passed into legend along with the stories themselves.

Dad did start writing a manuscript about 20 years ago. He never finished it; there was always one more hill to hike up, one more trail to ride down, and that's really the way it should have been. I have that manuscript now, and the technology to convert it back to a usable form... and the collected memory of a dozen now-adult cousins to flesh out the stories. And, it turns out, I have something else.

I was sweating bullets, and I had researched the history of the area for three days... but on our last camping trip, I told my boys a ghost story of my own devise.

Kid Two didn't admit to much, but it kept Youngest Kid up that night.

Thanks, Dad.

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.

Pancakes

"Uh, isn't it a little early to be drinking a beer?"

Kid Two asked me that one on our last camping trip. It probably had something to do with the fact it was 9 am Saturday Morning.

It occurred to me then and there that that wasn't the first time I'd heard that particular question.

But not the way you're thinking.

I had heard it last uttered from my own lips, in the dim, distant past during a camping trip, querying my Dad. I would probably have been nine or ten at the time. Probably younger.

The fact that it took Kid Two until nearly sixteen to ask that of me - well, that just means I've been embarrassingly slack in the camping department.

Dad was in charge of breakfast on the family camping trips - and on most hunting camps. One of the most memorable Breakfast dishes he whipped up was "Ranch Style Eggs - " a concoction of stewed tomatoes and bacon with eggs poached in it - best served to hangover sufferers. But that, mercifully, is a story for another time, and I digress.

Dad made Pancakes.

Looking back, I realize that this was a skill he acquired throughout the historical course of our outings. I recall the first few batches weren't all that great. Tasty, sure, but commonly a mangled lump, occasionally scorched.

This is not to say I have not scorched more than my share of pancakes. It does turn out, however, that I'm much more efficient at scorching Ribs. Into Frustrating Charcoal. But we're talking about breakfast.

To be fair, Dad didn't have the excellently engineered tools I have; Teflon-coated aluminium skillets, carbon-vinyl flippers, and the like. He used an old stainless steel flipper on a cast iron fry pan, with a little butter to keep things from sticking. It's amazing any of his creations came out one-piece, and golden fluffy brown. And they usually did.

The fluffiness was key. And dad discovered the secret to light-fluffy pancakes. No matter what scratch recipe or brand of mix you use, use Beer.

The foam lightens the mix. Dad liked Coyote Pancake flour and... well, honestly I don't recall that he was fixed on a particular brand of Beer. He liked Lethbridge Pil, Black Label, and Kokanee, But it was a crap shoot what you'd find in his Fridge. He even went on an MGD kick for a while.

But always Coyote Pancake Flour.

I'm not so much the purist - I don't really care what brand of Mix I use, and have found it doesn't really matter. I've also found that Coors Lite provides the desired effect for my flapjacks without all that telltale, hoppy taste that one finds in Beers with... Flavour.

Now, I've been cooking experimentally for some time, and recognise that Freshness and aroma are desirable qualities in the ingredients I use in my culinary creations. I'm not above a little preparatory sampling.

So when I asked my dad that fateful question, so long ago, His answer was "I'm not Drinking Beer. I'm making Pancakes."

I, in my foolish youth, took that to mean it was the cook's prerogative to finish off the beer that he obviously didn't use up in the Mix.

Time and experience have taught me otherwise - It's the cook's duty to ensure the freshness and flavourfullness of every ingredient that goes into the dish. To not do so would be a disservice.

"I'm not Drinking Beer," I told Kid Two. "I'm making Pancakes."

One Match

My training in bushcraft started when I was 7 years old.

That was when Dad had me join my brother, sister, and assorted cousins scouring the brush in the area of our summer campsites in search of kindling to start the campfire with.

Pitch was the best. It was also pretty tough to harvest when you wouldn't own a penknife for another two years. Coincidentally, that's also when you permanently crease the print on your left index finger, but never mind that.

The best pitch was found on knots of branches that had broken off a live tree a couple years ago. The pitch - especially on Pine trees - was thick, hard, and had bubbled into a mass that could be conveniently carved away from the bark without seriously damaging a tree. And boy, does it burn.

Dad would take all the sundry fire starting matériel from us kids, and collect it together in a lump at the center of the fire pit, build a campfire in a cross-hatch structure from twigs and kindling around said lump, and light the whole mess up.

With a single match.

Of course, as none of the collected second generation had reached puberty by then, we all thought this was marvelous, especially since the skill came with it's own title - "One-Match Phil."

One-Match Phil was legendary, and made appearances at all camping functions from fishing on the Elk in February, all the extended family camping in summer, right through to elk hunting in 4 feet of snow in November.

And then - he bought a chainsaw.

It took me a long time to discover this was the watershed moment. As it turned out, Grandad passed away when I was about 12, and Dad bought the chainsaw about the same time. It made sense, as I was suddenly occupied with Dad in late summer and early fall from my early teens in the collection of firewood for Grandma.

Grandma had a wood-burning stove in the kitchen in Kimberley that supplemented her central heat. That and she just liked a fire.

What I hadn't noticed at the time - but recognize now - is that whole second generation had aged, and, as a result, had become less interested in combing the underbrush for fire-lighting supplies.

But One-Match persevered. For a long time, He collected his own pitch.

One November, he just gave up the subterfuge. At this point, the Chainsaw had become a fixture in our camping gear - probably because we had denuded the breadth of the Kootenays of fallen scrub kindling by that point.

It had been raining for days, a wet, cold, half sleet soak that permeated everything. Dad calmly cut the top off a pop (beer) can and filled the bottom with chainsaw gasoline from the small jerry can that accompanied the chainsaw everywhere.

He set that in the center of the pit where the ball of kindling would go, and built up the wood frame around it - and lit it.

With a single match.