Left hanging dry

 

A map of today's jet stream

Since mid-September, I have been rather unsettled by the quality of the daylight, particularly at dawn and dusk. 

It took me some time to figure how what the problem was.  Slowly, I realized that the light really isn't odd for the time of year.  The temperature has been.

The heat hasn't been oppressive in Victoria, but it's been warm, like a temperate summer day.  

Summer.  Not autumn.

It's been warm enough that local berries have been available for more than two months later than we would normally have them.  They were late, of course.  My journals are full of comments about how cold it was in May and June.

When I walk out in the evenings, I'm startled by how soon the sun sets.  It's setting at the normal time for just past the equinox, but my skin expects the light to linger into mid-evening.  The quality of the light seems unfamiliar, because it's not accompanied by rain.  Just as I couldn't put my fleece tops away in June, I cannot yet part with my summer cottons and linens.

I gather the problem is the jet stream.  For weeks and weeks, it has been hanging in a high loop at the top of the province of British Columbia.  When we're south of the jet stream, things get warm.

Now, according to the map, which I found at netweather.tv - it's pretty nifty; it's interactive - the dangling loop of jet stream will drop below us in about ten days, at which point, things will get recognizably autumnal.  

It may be too late for the salmon, though.

Evening, and I look to the south, as I walk our neighbourhood.  The sky is a light yellow colour above the purple peaks of the Olympic Mountains across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  It's a colour I associate with winter, but without the damp and cold.  I shiver, anyway.

No cockle shells, either

When life slows down, you tend to notice things.

I realize I'm only speaking for myself; life hasn't slowed down for those in essential services: nurses, doctors, care workers, pharmacists, grocery clerks, etc.

And in truth, being somewhat of an introvert, my life isn't particularly less busy; in fact, I'm bewildered by the frequent complaints on social media of being bored, or of having "run out of things to do".

Really? You have the entire internet at your fingertips, and you have nothing to do? Are you that on top of your housework and home maintenance? I never am. Even if I did get on top of everything, there would still be family research, which is endless.

However, part of my day involves walking with my mother, and since she uses a walker (zimmer in Britain), this takes a while, which means noticing things.

This week, I pointed out a cluster of what I took to be bluebells, and Demeter informed me that there are no true bluebells in North America. These are harebells*, and apparently, despite also being named "Scottish bluebells", they are a BC native plant.

I found this out because I have the internet at my fingertips.

*They look a bit small to be associated with hares, though.

Cuomo-sexual

Fortunately, younger daughter was in the room when I first watched this, and explained that this is a parody of "Sandy" from Grease - not my favourite musical. However, Randy Rainbow can make anything more palatable -- even White House press conferences with the current incumbent.



We're having similar fan-girling with our provincial health officers. Here are two tributes to Dr Bonnie Henry, the chief medical health officer for British Columbia:




Not nearly up to Randy Rainbow's production standards, but equally heart-felt, wouldn't you say?

Going postal in Canada

As the time stretches out, I find myself shifting from foot to foot, shifting the weight of my prepared parcel.

The line-up in the post office isn't long, but there appears to be a mini-drama going on at the counter. Granted, it's rather one-sided; the postal clerk is listening attentively to a lady dressed in flowing, multi-coloured garments, which say "aging hippie" elsewhere in Canada, but "business as usual" here. She is gesturing expansively with her back to me and I'm the third person in line, so I can't quite make out what she's saying, but she has a rather battered looking parcel. Talking steadily, she periodically waves slips of paper for emphasis.

The women just ahead looks back at me and raises her eyebrows. I grin back.

After what seems like a rather long time, the clerk asks her if she has a receipt. There is a slight pause.

"I was kinda hoping you would believe me."

There's an almost imperceptible collective sigh of exasperation from the line-up, but no one yells.

Never the twain shall meet

I was terrified to go in for my appointment -- and not just because of the thunderstorms noisily rolling through the neighbourhood.

The only appointment I'd been able to secure was at 7:45 pm. Ignored at the door of the Apple Store, as younger people skipped past me and collared the "Geniuses" in their blue polo shirts, I remembered that my appointment was actually for the "Genius Bar", so I headed for the back of the store, and scanning the long table, tried to catch someone's eye.

The person who finally noticed me was named Mark - a nice change from the Jasons and Joshuas with whom I'd been dealing all week as our house was being dismantled in search of asbestos. Oh, please don't ask...

I informed Mark that the battery in my five-year-old laptop had died, and, being in the middle of a move, it wasn't a propitious time to replace it.

"What about an iPod?" he asked, brandishing his own.
"But I watch movies on my laptop."
"Oh. What do you use?"
I could see him politely stifling his bewilderment as I extracted a small square out of my computer bag.
"I don't stream; I watch DVDs - yes, I'm a dinosaur," I told him.

He set to punching keys and exclaiming at some of the weird stuff it apparently was doing, while my heart sank. As he poked and prodded, he asked me where we were going. I told him Victoria, and he mentioned he'd been west. The last time an Ontarian boy told me this, he said he'd been to Winnipeg, so I decided to pursue another topic.

"Yes, it will be different, because there's no Apple Store in Victoria."
He pulled out his trusty iPad to prove me wrong.
"See? Union Square."
"Union Square? That must be new," I said uneasily. "Do you have it on a map?"
He squinted at his screen, and shrugged. "Uh, that's Vancouver. I guess you're right."
"I am, sometimes."

He mentioned he'd never been to BC (I could have guessed that), and that all his German relatives think that British Columbia is Canada: "Ach! Lake Louise!"

I paused diplomatically before answering.

"Well....Lake Louise is actually in Alberta, but I know what you mean. My British relatives can't get their minds around the fact that it takes three or four days to go to the West Coast by train."

Using something called SMC - he showed me an article on his iPad which presupposes knowledge I do not have - he magically resusitated my battery, and didn't charge me.

Making my way home under clearing night skies, I decided that he'd definitely made up for not being a geography genius.

Missing the point

Although I've been a prisoner of Hades for the past seventeen years, only returning to Demeter for the summers, I lived over half my years on this planet in Victoria. It was only this week that I made it out to Point No Point.

The Resident Fan Boy has been there, of course, but his family had a car, and a car is what is required, ironically enough, to get out to most nature areas.

Unless you're a determined, strong, and able cyclist. I am none of those things.

Here in Hades, I've only been to the Gatineau Park once, and that was on a field trip with a few scores of thirteen-year-olds. That was an interesting day.

The Unitarian Church in Victoria has, for many years, held a "service auction" as a fund-raiser. Demeter usually offers to knit one of her colourful sweaters, but this year, she bid on a trip out to Point No Point, because she knew it coincided with my visit.

On a brilliant morning, we set off in a convoy of three cars containing mature women - median age probably about seventy-five. Many of them, including Demeter, could not make the steep descent to the beach, nor even to the corridors of rain forest running along the tops of the cliffs, so before lunch at the restaurant (which, unfortunately, has a menu describing the Strait of Juan de Fuca as "Juan de Fuca Straight", delicious as the fare was), I scrambled down the long incline, picked my way over the pebbles, and stood, transfixed by the booming surf.

And I do mean "boom". Occasionally, I'd turn to scan the cliffs behind only to hear what sounded like a rapidly approaching, ravenous giant.

I only got caught once, with water swirling around my ankles, over my socks, and into my shoes. My fault - I panicked. Had I waited, the waters would have retreated enough to escape with dry feet.


As I wobbled slightly on barnacled rocks, soon to vanish under the incoming tide, it occurred to me that if this was my first time at Point No Point, it was likely my last.

You reach a point in your life when you stop assuming you'll be back, that you'll have another chance. The first time this happened for me was when elder daughter graduated from her university in Halifax, and I realized we probably wouldn't return.

I took far too many photos of breakers, hoping to seize and preserve one perfect rising, curling, crashing.

My time ran out, and I climbed the winding path, past ancient trees with trunks that wind and meander like serpents in the shade.

. . . but they don't listen to me

I know I'm back in Victoria when I see the twisted branches of the arbutus trees and Gary Oaks -- and when I see pewter verticals of the cedars.  These were in Butchart Gardens today.  I'm a little too drowsy to say much else.

First time in a window seat in twenty years

The Fraser River is turquoise near Hope, British Columbia, turning brown quite suddenly as it approaches Abbotsford and the delta near Vancouver.  The mountains are sharp, or mounded with a round dimple of water on the top. There is snow, but not much of it in this warming world.

As the plane swoops down over the eastern end of Vancouver, I squint and peer, trying to catch that moment when we are low enough to make out actual human beings below.  I never manage to spot pedestrians, but I see bicycles twinkling in the morning sun along the edges of the roads.

I transfer to a much smaller Air Jazz plane and am surrounded by British Columbians, distinguishable from Ontarians by their easy chattiness and loose, layered clothes.  It's a seventeen-minute flight to Victoria, so the wheels drop down while the plane is still suspended above Georgia Strait.  The ocean changes from the muddy tone flowing out from the mouth of the Fraser River to the green of the shallows to the indigo of the deep water near Vancouver Island.

The sea looks ridged and wrinkled from this high up, the surface only slightly scratched by sailboats, motorboats, ferries, and industrial barges.

Once again, Persephone returns for a brief summer, and for the first time, not in the company of her younger daughter.  (That's why she has a window seat.)

Keeping track

When my father departed for Boston with another woman, my mother decided to scrub around her life, make a fresh start, and move to some place warmer. She splurged, booking two "roomettes" on the train from Edmonton, Alberta to Nanaimo, British Columbia. I was eight years old and charmed by the beds which slid out of the wall like drawers. To this day, I can't recall having a better night's sleep, rocked through the Rockies. I was woken only once, as the guard in Jasper paced the platform calling out to those who could hear him to change their watches back one hour. Early in the morning, I lay on my stomach in my drawer-bed head-to-head with my six-year-old sister, gasping as nearly bottomless canyons opened up beneath the train as it sped over trestles. By breakfast time, we watched the sunny Okanagan orchards flash by the dining car. As an introduction to a new life, it was pretty hard to beat.

Recapturing that perfect sleep was one of the goals on my mind when we decided to take Demeter and younger daughter to Halifax by train last year to see elder daughter at her university and spend the Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend. Other considerations were Demeter's life long dream to travel completely across Canada by rail (this seemed a reasonable compromise), and the idea of traveling through the Maritimes in autumn.

We started the 26-hour journey with the dayliner jaunt from Ottawa to Montreal, moving in and out of the shadow of rainstorms and reaching Canada's second largest city with its mad inter-weaving of La Metro subway, VIA rail, Amtrak and commuter trains at La Gare Centrale, to say nothing of the shoppers. After nearly forgetting my suitcase on the platform (I was shepherding Demeter and younger daughter while the Resident Fan Boy charged ahead and disappeared down the train corridor), we glided slowly across the dark river surrounded by the blazing lights of the city, and made our way down the south bank of the St Lawrence before veering away south from the Seaway just past Rimouski and crossing into the province of New Brunswick at daybreak just at the innermost tip of Chaleur Bay. From there we headed steadily south, rumbling across the Miramichi River about mid-morning, entering northern Nova Scotia sometime after lunch then making a long circle around the south-west edge of Halifax, arriving in the late afternoon, steps away from the famous Pier 21 where so many new Canadians entered the country, including Demeter many years ago.

When we took Demeter to the Pier 21 Museum the next day, a brand-new Cuban-Canadian tour guide greeted her with an enormous "Welcome ba-a-a-a-ck!" and a gold alumna sticker for her coat. She remembered her fellow boat passengers, Germans en route to Wisconsin and Italians en route to Toronto, being put in holding cages, while she, a British subject, was waved through to the waiting train to Edmonton. (We also learned there had been a young man, a Haligonian, on the boat...)

And we visited with elder daughter at the University of King's College, ate two Thanksgiving dinners (one of them cooked by us in a student residence kitchen), saw the sights, including the ancient (by Canadian standards) Old Burying Ground in the centre of the city where they stopped burying people in 1844. And I wistfully watched elder daughter striding through the streets of a city that will be hers and never mine. And I watched Demeter wonder about the beautiful boy from Halifax and what might have been. And I was grateful to have seized the chance to come this way, even though the train bed, not a magic drawer, but a shallow fold-out shelf, was lumpy and jumpy and I never did much more than doze, or peer out into the darkness at ghostly white cottages, paddock fences, and flashing poles.

We flew back home. Train travel, alas, has long ceased to be the economical option.