Summer and smoke

This morning, for the first time this year, I hesitate, and decide not to crack open the windows.  There is a growing wildfire near Sooke, a community west of here, and while the city is bright with summer sunshine, I feel the dryness in my mouth that signals the presence of smoke, something that has become sadly seasonal here.

My mind drifts back, like smoke, to the two summers when my mother was a "hostel parent".  These were the summers when I was 7 and 8; Demeter had discovered that an affordable and comfortable summer holiday could be had, if she took over, for a few weeks, the running of one of the smaller and more remote international hostels in the great Albertan parks of Jasper and Banff.

I have about half a dozen memories of the hostels and enough time has passed that I can't readily distinguish which memories are of Jasper, and which of Banff.  I remember an early morning breakfast and seeing my mother drop the corpse of a mouse into the wood burning stove.  

There was a creek running by one of the hostels, where Double Leo Sister and I would play and paddle in the afternoons.  We were equipped with emergency whistles and told to blow on them if we needed help.  At the shrilling of them, Demeter would come running, banging a pot, to scare off bears, only to hear:  "Wasses, Mummy!!"  (We were terrified of being stung.)  By the end of the summer, we had become the girls who cried "Wasses", and Demeter decided the bears could have us.  (I've told this story before, haven't I?)

Demeter, questioned this summer, can only remember "Coral Creek".  There is a Coral Creek Canyon, quite far to the southeast of Jasper - and Demeter believes the hostel was in the southern part of Jasper National Park.  However, there is also a Corral Creek to the east of Jasper, past Hinton, Alberta, and another Corral Creek, nearly at Banff and less than five kilometres south of Lake Louise. Perhaps this other Corral Creek was the location of the Banff hostel where Demeter was a hostel parent.  None of these places appear to have hostels now.

Nothing left but distant memories.  I'm pretty sure that the Jasper hostel was where we were the summer I was seven, because my father came to see us there, and he left the family the summer I was eight, although I was never told.  

The second hostel was, I believe, near a railway track, because a family with girls roughly my age came to stay, and we children were at the railway track when a train came roaring through.  Our rather feather-brained dog, a poodle/Scottish-terrier cross, stood still on the tracks, gazing at the oncoming train, as it blasted its horn.  Too terrified to try to retrieve her, I tried to run in the other direction to avoid seeing her crushed, while the other girls, held on to me.  The dog sprang to safety with seconds to spare.

Demeter was called a "hostel parent" because of the youth of the visitors coming through, often in cycling groups.  A largish contingent came from New York City; they were loud and lively.  I was furious to be banished to bed.  For years, I remember a song they'd sing after dinner:  Hey, jig-a-jig, kiss a little pig, follow the band . . . . My husband's a baker . . . is he/ All day he bakes bread, he bakes bread, he bakes bread, and at night he comes home and (expectant pause) drinks tea!!

The implications of the pause zoomed right over my eight-year-old head.  I didn't know that the song is at least 300 years old, and was far filthier.  The cleaner version I remember turns up in the 1976 television movie Sybil, which starred Sally Field and Joanne Woodward.

 Toward the end of this second hostel summer (I'm pretty sure), Demeter had the bright idea of taking six-year old Double Leo Sister, and eight-year-old me on a spiralling hike up and around a mountain. The gravel road climbed in an ever-upward curve, as the sun beat down, and we wore out.  I've seen the pictures Demeter took that afternoon.  We looked weary.  We never found what Demeter sought: the fire look-out station at the top.

This week, Jasper National Park and the town of Jasper itself is aflame. I probably visited the town at some point, but my only memory of it was passing through it by train, when Demeter, Double Leo Sister and I moved to British Columbia. I was in my bunk half asleep when the conductor passed, calling for everyone to set their watches back an hour for Pacific Time. I may have thought of the hostels before drifting off, like smoke.