From the top of Mt. Whistler you can see another mountain. This mountain’s peak is all you can see and it is black ash.  Little bits of ash tumbling over each other make up this peak. Who is burnt? Whose bodies were cremated to form this?

The town of Jasper is completely void of culture. The ‘bookstore’ consisted of jewelery, trail guides, cookbooks and some contemporary ‘best-sellers’ in fiction.  It is also very strange that there are no indigenous signs, names, people walking down the street. Nothing. There are no art galleries, no theatres. And the tourists, Oh! Tourists who call themselves locals because they just decided not to leave when they came to visit the Rockies 10 years ago.

The town caters to tourists and that must be why it is devoid of culture. Culture is not for tourists, though we come under its auspices.

On another level, too many people I’ve met or eavesdropped on are travelling on these buses to get to Fort MacMurry and the devil’s contract money that is the tar sands fortune. Later this week I will be sitting by a lake, cheeks mountain northside cold calming me down. Calming the fire of a conscience burning. “If the railroad was the 20th century’s greatest Canadian tragedy, then the tar sands are the 21st’s.” Fort MacMoney. For Munny. Fort Magedon. Fort MacMurked. For       Murly. Formerly.

***

Terrifying the forest is a mountain of black ash. Ash climbing over and over itself and a windless day. Marmots keep a respectful distance. Bears, sheep and tourists find their cousins here. Their mothers, brothers, daughters. When it became too hard to time consuming – and time IS money – to hold funerals and properly dispose of the remains, Fort Mac began to ship them to the mountains, hide them away here. Disguise them in plain sight.

Finally made it to Jasper. The bus ride from Vancouver to Calgary to Lethbridge, then from Lethbridge to Calgary to Edmonton, then from Edmonton to Calgary, then Calgary to Edmonton to Jasper was really unfortunate planning on my part…

But here I am, sick from some guy sitting beside me on one of those buses after Lethbridge…can’t remember when, and from midnight bus departures with 5:30am arrival times and no place to stay for 48 hours…no, more…departed Edmonton at 12:30am Aug 26 and arrived Calgary at 6am; stayed the day in Calgary visiting the Nikkei Cultural and Seniors Centre and getting a bad and expensive hair cut, then departed Calgary 12:45am Aug 27 to arrive at Jasper by 11:35am…ok, well a little over 48 hours anyhow. But this is all a bit of trivia isn’t it? See what this kind of travel does to your judgement of what other people will find interesting? Unhealthy indeed.

What really matters are well, my new found appreciation for conifers to add to the loads of love I have for these trees already. Since the Cottonwood “forests” of Lethbridge and Calgary’s hiking options provide no shelter from the mean old late August sun.

After interior Alberta, I miss the cool dampness of coastal BC and the interior Kootenays, and Ontario.  Give me Spruce please. Fir, Cedar, Pine. I don’t care as along as they are strong and plentiful. Give me them all. Don’t tease me with rivers whose bottoms are almost their surfaces.  Rivers thirstier than me, than the trees growing on their banks. These are places for other people to love. These are places I am strange and helpless to.

Napi's (Old Man) River, Lethbridge

A teenager in market research enlightened the back of my head on the evolution of the human brain and social media on the Greyhound between Golden BC and Calgary yesterday afternoon.  Her audience, a middle-aged adventurer originally from Hamilton Ontario, after visiting parents in Penticton BC has been inspired to do research on her theory of the declining creativity of children, and the series of plain upside-down sand bucket ‘castles’ without decoration she witnessed on the shores of the river.

Another traveller owns 15 pairs of glasses to go with whatever she is wearing. Once she paid 800 for a pair.  Perhaps more than once, ah the anonymous in-ability to confirm of an eavesdropper.

Only snippets of breathless conversation managed to spray me up the sweaty greasy grouse grind hike (1-2 hours of pure vertical assent up Grouse Mountain, North Vancouver). From this, I pushed myself to beat a very competitive guy trying to do the thing in under an hour. Past him in the last 1/4, but then he gave up/didn’t realize he hadn’t reached the peak just before the chalet.

Today, Galt Museum and Nikka Yuko Japanese Gardens. Both major sign post attractions upon entering Lethbridge.

top of Grouse Mountain after gruelling climb!

Most gratuitous: Kelowna, the chilly cheese dog

Most delicious: Japadog Vancouver, the terimayo dog (w shredded nori garnish)

Most addicting: Klahowya Village at Stanley Park, the bannock hotdog

Finally moved houses yesterday.  I have not written because I have been busy defending myself from the polydactyl demon cat, extra claws all the better to kill me with.  Was demon-sitting from the beginning of August till now.  Before that, the island and the wild pacific trail which wins for most beautiful.

The cat and the trail are behind me now, and I’m in-between cat-sits, hosted by some acquaintances with much nicer animals, namely a steely-tailed happy dog and gentle calico cat.  I have been able to get more work done being in this present setting. It has to do with, I think, the natural hurricane of productivity induced by the crashing together of my incredible shyness and the warm homebodiness of my gracious hosts.

So spending the day cloistered away from compulsory social interaction, UBC’s rare books and special collections library made a clinically clean and bright home.  I endeavoured to transcribe the entire 1947 Department of Labour Report on the “Re-establishment of Japanese in Canada, 1944-1946″, and have learned that I am able to copy four pages an hour. Endeavour is a favourite word of the DoL authors. As is Japanese, which is incredibly hard to type correctly when not looking at the screen or the keyboard. My variations include, JApanese, Jaapanse, Japanee and Kapanese.  Actually, it was difficult to type many words, and perhaps I am not such a good typist after all.  I could never be a 1950s receptionist, despite my love of gum chewing and second hand smoke.

fish cleaning station replica, at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery Museum, Steveston. My grandmother's job as a teenager in Ucluelet, earnings went into her father's renos on her bedroom they had to abandon within a few months because of the war

I remember suddenly being aware of the same drone when I was in the forest running away from the baby bear, only that time it was definitely a sudden appearance. I had been listening acutely for other twig breaks and running paws or huffing, and didn’t hear this drone the whole time, until that particular moment. It lasted for a long time, but it seemed to be concentrated in one place, as I realized it getting further sounding as I kept walking down the mountain. At the time I thought it was a wind.

I’d imagined a gap in the peaks somewhere so far above the tree canopy that I cannot possibly be aware of it or of the peaks, and a stream of wind billowing down through that gap, right into the forest and into my ears.

But as I walked back to town this evening, I heard Carpenter Creek roaring over its rocky bottom on its way into the lake.  Maybe it is the creek I heard. I like to think it wasn’t the creek.

Good bye again, my love. I will be back for you as soon as I can.

cameras on timers help me prove my existence!

I know better than to hike up some random trail, being a fresh-off-the-bus city boy. Because that random trail could be over 4 hours long in one direction. And that direction could be straight up a mountain. And that mountain could be unpopulated. And so unpopulated that when twigs break in the woods above you, that blonde haired animal cracking them isn’t a dog. It’s a Grizzly Bear cub. And that Grizzly Bear cub running in your direction a mere 30 feet above you is most likely followed somewhere by an over-protective mother Grizzly Bear who will split your body in two if you let her catch you.

And now I know.

So walking along, making sure to keep my keys extra jangly and my whistling extra echoey to announce that, no I’m not trying to sneak up on any bear, I find myself in this heart-stopping situation. And I listen for second, then see that cub come bounding out of the spruce, having a good old time. Then I think for a second, is that a dog? And at the end of that second when I’ve figured out that no, that guy is definitely not a dog, I start running in the direction I just came from. Which happens to be a steady incline towards the direction I’m running away from. I’m tumbling and jangling over all sorts of tree roots and stones and it’s a damn lucky thing I didn’t roll any ankles because my heart, finding itself again, decided to make up for lost time and was beating something fierce, pushing me down, down hill, like creek over the boulders, hoping violently for the valley bottom. I was hoping for the road over Carpenter Creek, which would still be another hour or so at walking pace, because I certainly wasn’t going to keep running when I got to the part you can see in the video I’ll post here. (The video was taken half and hour before the bear fiasco).

Aside: There is a family staying in the cottage next to me, running around in little black dresses and stilletoes conversing about bouncing a lot to walk in the shoes…at this mention, I resume my attention to the screen, refuse to stoop to temptation and peek. There apparently is a wedding taking place in the Kohan Reflection Garden – the Nikkei-built memorial garden -  tonight in three hours. What a beautiful place for a wedding, even if it is a hakujin one. Or maybe she (it is clear from their conversation it is the bride’s side) is marrying one of us, a Nikkei or mixie. How exotic and revelatory! More mixie babies for the Kootenays!

That picture is of me and the mountain behind my accommodations that I tried to climb (albeit unwittingly. I had heard that the trail was merely an old CP railway and thus flat, but apparently it was an old logging road). I was trying to get to Sandon, now a ghost town, but a former mining boom town, as well later a Nikkei internment camp. Here there are rumours that more Nikkei than usual ‘went mad’, that the valley the town was in was so deep that the sun only shone there for a few hours each day. What on earth possessed me to witness this place is beyond me at this point. I feel a lot more sober after a post-bear beer (and whiskey shot) about it all than I did when I’d set out dry originally.

I guess it’s the heaviness imparted by the alcohol. It is a deterrent from labouring to gain altitude. If I’d set out now, I probably would have turned back a couple hundred meters in. But now, it’s alright. I am not going ANYWHERE that is not in town. Swimming yesterday in the lake was adventure enough. I am looking forward to tomorrow and my last day here, Monday, because according to theweathernetwork.com it will magically become summer. And then emerging from Lake Slocan won’t feel like the woozy death it felt like under yesterday’s cloudy cool skies.

I will spend the entire summer here some day. Oh shit, a wasp just landed on my arm and aimed her stinger right at my mole, the one with two hairs springing from it. But she is not a bear cub and I am a bit more fearless that I was when I sat down to write this post.

What an eventful moment, look here, now a full-on white stretch limousine just pulled up to squeals of recognition from the stilletoed bridesmaids. Someone has declared. Shit now something has just bit/stung my foot, and I am pretty sure it’s a wasp because of a certain yellow streak that looks like pollen.

First sting. Good to know that I’m not deathly allergic to it now 20 minutes later. The clouds have really moved in, a flash of lightening just above the New Denver Glacier and it seems almost as if we’re in for a rain storm tonight before the summer gets here. The wedding in two hours will probably be rained out. Pity. I wonder if the precipitation that will fall on the glacier and other high parts still retaining snow will be rain or something more extreme?

But enough rambling. Enjoy the photos from the hike.
there’s more…

mmm…

check out the colour…

and the view…

The bus ride, what can I say? Every day felt like a week. A series of sleeps that are not quite sleeps and ecosystem/time changes each day will extend time for anyone. And literally, we gained an hour each day with the whole constant clock switching. Beef jerky, sun flower seed, raisins and Greyhound station tap water. Scrubbing till my scalp glows red thru my too short side hair over soggy washroom sinks in four provinces. How many different shapes can the body fold into when trying to ‘lie down’ in a bus seat? Not enough to find the right one!

Tip: when travelling by yourself among strangers in isolated regions do not insist on pushing through Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. You will have nightmares about murder, close rooms, greasy clothes and paranoia, and no one will be there to comfort you!

But yes, the heaven here. Warmly lit, clean and airy egg-shaped house I will be living and working in for the next few days is all mine, the liquor store in Nelson where my connecting bus picked up was open, my address book is steadily filling up with to-be postcard receivers, and the used CD/bookstore/cafe gave me two Patsy Cline albums for free. Oh, and I just killed a mosquito.

working in my 'cottage'/bachelor apt dome structure, New Denver BC

A few things are still up in the air…that is whether I’ll be leaving Vancouver in mid August to pursue more research on Nikkei dispersal in Calgary and Winnipeg (this is depending on a grant I hope to hear back from soon), whether I’ll be cat-sitting a lovely old boy named Griffin in East Van, and whether I’m travelling on an extremely discounted last-minute deal VIA rail or on the stinky greyhound…

Some things I can’t miss out on this time around:

Lynn Valley Canyon in North Van

the Salmon BBQ at Ukee Days festival, Ucluelet

Maatake in New Denver (I will have a kitchen all to myself!)

more visits with rad Nikkei women and QTIPOC listserv folks in Vancouver

Steveston Buddhist Church

The archives at Simon Fraser (hopefully)

Beard Papas and Fujiya obvs.

…more to be determined…

On Sunday, I made it to the Japanese Buddhist Church on Jackson finally for their summer service which consisted mostly of chanting what felt like the extra long version of Shoshinge, followed by the expected tea and cookies and socializing. And thankfully there was the woman who is everyone’s aunty, fluttering about, making sure introductions are made, connecting people on the most banal commonalities like…oh he’s been to New Denver too, look! there’s another thing you have in common.  Some people just have a gift. I had been a bit apprehensive about going to the service this month, worried that I wouldn’t be authentically Buddhist enough for them…but I should know better than that. It was nice to be so warmly welcomed by strangers at the temple, and we scored a drive to the Japanese grocery store for lunch out of it too – Fujiya. Fujiya’s plentiful and cheap bentos, donburi, and sushi will also be sorely missed!

traffic jam on a busy tourist saturday at the Capilano Suspension Bridge

new denver, we miss you already.

armies of trees marching down on us, taking small buses complete with bob dylan and dueling banjos soundtrack, a driver sunken into his baseball cap, his glasses, his seat, snaking around the edge of mountains, real three dimensional terrain while remembering to swallow and pop your ears,  to blink – refresh amazed eyes every now and then.

every view is perfect. taking good pictures becomes less complicated. it’s been a dry summer in the kootenays and on our  fourth morning, a haze overtook the mountains from some distant blazing forest. later that day it rained for a good hour while we took shelter on a potter’s porch sampling her first batch of cookies and watching the ghosts of old japanese women pacing arm in arm around the nikkei side of town.

the shallow rocky decent into the glacier-fed lake, water stretching all the way to the peaks shooting straight up from its far shores.

a beach of perfect skipping stones, the perimeter of the entire town.

worrying about the important things in life like what we’re going to cook for lunch, dinner? how will we love to each other today? what time to go to the lake? when to give bachan a call? is the metonymy working here?

paid our respects by dropping by great grandfather’s old trunk displayed in the internment museum, their old house on the tip top of kildare st., the kohan garden i feel so rich to have inherited as part of nikkei legacy. left homesick for toronto, lovesick for new denver.

this week too will be filled with goodbyes. i’m starting to feel time again, the month closing in on me.

lake slocan from the nikkei side of town