Interior journeys: awful damn scenic

Two trips into the interior of BC, one in July to Castlegar, the second in October to Oliver (and also to Nelson). Attempts to drag along travelling companions failed, which meant at least that I could sing in the van, because I don't sing where people can hear me.
Castlegar is in the Kootenays, and would like you to know it's the Greatest Dam City in the World, being right close to a large dam (the Hugh Keenleyside Dam, sorry no tours) with a mildly alarming array of bridges and on/off ramps (not as scary as Portland, but Castlegar is much smaller than Portland).
If I were a much hardier cyclist than I am, more in JH-R's league, I'd probably want to cycle the railbed trail between Midway and Castlegar, which looks even more scenic than the drive, but I'm a feeble old lady, so I'll just look at the pictures, and look out the car windows.
Oliver, which I've written of before, is the Wine Capital of Canada, with a classy wine shop in the town, and any number of wineries (even a fruit-winery) on the way, plus the fruit markets in the Okanagan. I'm told that while it's dead easy to find work, it's nearly impossible to live there because of the cost of housing.
Nelson is where Roxanne was filmed, with Steve Martin, and it is picturesque like anything. It had an influx of new people after the film, because it was so clearly an ideal small town, with the result that it too became an expensive place to live.

The Castlegar trip was to attend Troll Stomp, and to spend some time with my apprentice Lucy and others of the Wild Women. The Oliver trip was for the last Tournament of the Golden Swan to be held at the Skunk Hollow site, so there was a valedictory feel to the weekend, even while I was visiting with Lucy and Evangeline, and with Nan Compton and her family, and others I don't see often.
(Even before online nicknames, much of my acquaintance used pseudonyms and aliases--please note also that my acquaintance includes a number of people who are willing to camp in the Interior of BC in October.)
Castlegar is about 7 hours drive from the ferry terminal (how I measure every trip off-island--no point counting the ferry wait and so on), Oliver only about 5 hours. Nelson 8 or 9 hours. So it's fortunate that the view is not only attractive but variable. There's more than one ecosystem on the way.

On the first trip I remembered to borrow a camera(!) and take some photos of the places I look for and stop at, so here you are, a little visual relief from the usual wall of text this blog provides.

The Hope Slide. This happened when I was a small child, so it has a different sort of meaning for me than most historic sites. An avalanche that covered cars on a BC highway, the very sort of highway my family travelled every summer, and that my dad travelled every weekend to get back to us when he was teaching somewhere else. A couple of the cars were never recovered. Here's a shot of the mountain, and you can still see how it fell away.


The Manning Park cabin. The first time I saw this, I was driving with my friend Kellii as navigator, and she'd brought a book of West Coast ghost stories to enliven (endeaden?) the trip. So we were primed to see this as a haunted cabin. It's fairly close to the western end of the park, right after an eerie stretch of bog (lots of that in Manning Park) separated from the road by a rushing bit of river. Just out of this photo is what looks like a boathouse, though it's rather too far from the water, and might be a summer kitchen or other outbuilding. I don't know its history, but it should have one. Maybe I'll make one up sometime.



Bromley Rock Provincial Park, where I care little for the striking rock bluff or tiny white sand beach (okay, I do, but I didn't take pictures), and instead am drawn to the scrap of former road that the rest area and parking was built on, which remains behind the outhouses. Even when the park is busy, this spot remains quiet and set apart, as if it's waiting for something to come along it.




On the July trip return, I stopped just outside Castlegar and picked up two hitch-hikers, a young dreadlocked guy and girl who were heading to Vancouver, to be supportive for the trial of their friend, an American deserter who'd been hiding out in Nelson. They were good company, though I will offer this piece of advice for hitching: when your ride stops to fill up, it's a nice gesture to offer to clean the windshields, especially if you're too broke to put in for fuel.

On the October trip, no hitch-hikers, though I did drive into Nelson and back with Lucy and Evangeline to save them from having to hitch-hike with all their camping gear. And going to my van on the ferry, I met two young women who needed a ride into Victoria, one of them with a guitar. Pleased to hear both of them talking over the coming election and preparing to vote, and glad I wasn't a slacker myself in that way, while Lucy and her sister were planning to be helping with the vote in Nelson. Yay for the engaged citizenry!

Happy Methotrexate Day!

Even as I do a victory dance that the Transparent tree is well-nigh stripped of apples, with very little waste indeed, more fruit weighs the branches. Three dehydrator loads of plums done, and two gimme-bags full waiting to be processed. Plus lots more still on the tree. I'm trying to pick the higher fruit, saving the lower for fresh-picking for lunches, later. And to thin out the clusters of plums so they don't spread that white mould to each other.
Pies seven and eight (of pies made in my whole life) are in the freezer. Pie six, with a lattice crust (in hopes that the non-baking apples wouldn't turn totally mushy) is sitting out. The top layer of apples seem to have retained their shape, but probably it's all mush under that.
The pears are turning lovely and golden and falling off the tree, not always in that order. The recent burst of warm dry weather has saved the blackberries from turning all to mould, so more pies and crumbles are called for.
I sat down and went through the back issues of Cooks Illustrated for ideas, and decided that it was just disheartening, that I should go back to my mother's old cookbook. All their baking instructions assume that you have a food processor. Good old New England self-sufficient, baling-wire repaired food processor. I don't even like using an eggbeater (the hand-powered kind) because they're a pain to clean afterwards.


Arthritis stuff: Today I had my hands and feet x-rayed. It's more complicated than I'd thought, which I suppose could be said for many procedures that require taking off your shoes. Hands were shot not only palm down and palm up--why is this necessary, when the x-rays go through the hands?--but with both hands making an awkward OK sign.
Fortunately the feet only required a soles-down and a profile shot. I didn't have to roll over and wave the soles of my feet at the machine as well. This is in aid of checking for erosion in the joints. Look! I am a river delta! At least in the extremities.
Tonight will be my second methotrexate day. "Pick one day of the week and make that your methotrexate day" would fly better if they gave out cute little calendar stickers.
I'm surprised how much the no-alcohol thing bothers me, considering that my greatest debauchery is, oh, two or three glasses of wine with dinner, with a brandy after. I'm not even sure that I've ever been properly drunk, not just tipsy and giggly. The only sobriety tests I know are walking a straight line and reciting tongue twisters, and Mark maintains that I could recite tongue twisters correctly if I were flat on my back and unable to see straight. Sweet-talker that he is. He further observed that my trying out tongue twisters was a strong indicator that I was drunk.


Rejections: a fairly fast turnaround from RoF for "Climbing Boys". May be time to take it to the e-markets. The odd thing about the Blue Form of Death is that the first rejection I had from RoF was the BFoD, but with a handwritten note that the story (Spellcheck) was a cute idea. That was my first short story written with the idea of showing it to people I didn't personally know. I'm fairly sure that I'm a better writer now than I was then. Yet handwritten addenda are no more seen. Sigh.
I wasn't entirely sure that the fabled Yellow Form of Promise was ever sent, but there is testimony here that it exists, at least.

ills that flesh is heir to, continued

Rheumatologist appointment this afternoon--made only this morning, so I suppose someone cancelled--and the tentative diagnosis is that I'm in the 30% of palindromic arthritis cases who graduate to rheumatoid arthritis.
Pretty much what I'd expected, since the second knuckle of my left hand has been swollen since February, unlike the usual palindromic thing where a random joint swells and goes down again within a couple of days (sometimes only hours). The right hand has been fine, so I wasn't symmetrical, but arthritis is just shifty and variable and unreliable. Though not as bad as lupus (It's never lupus) that way.

So, new drugs! Going to add methotrexate, which is such an exciting drug that the rheumatism website wants to show you an exclamation-marked video about it! It's on youtube! It is cooler and more exciting than me!
Methotrexate is a chemotherapy drug, but not to worry, because the doses for arthritis are teeny-tiny (a technical term) compared to the whacking huge doses you'd get for chemo. Oh, and they're not quite sure why it works for arthritis, just the way they're not quite sure why hydroxychloroquin (a quinine derivative) works for arthritis.
I think they may know why naproxen works. Maybe. It would be nice if I were taking one drug whose workings were comprehensible.
RA is a possibility I've been aware of from the first diagnosis, so I'm not upset. I'll just have to see what happens down the road, and cope with it as it comes (which is how life works anyway). Dr. Northcott seems pretty positive about the methotexate, which I keep wanting to call meths, and I tend to be lucky with side effects, so there's no point fussing.

What is more than a little annoying is that alcohol is pretty much out. One drink a week is what the pamphlet says. Of course this happens just as I've found a local cider that I like. I thought I didn't like cider (I don't like beer--it smells bad to me) until Mark got me to try a local still cider while we were in Suffolk, and it was lovely. Like what white wine ought to be (this will make no sense to you if you prefer white wine) and nothing like the fizzypop cider that comes in cases.
I stopped at Sea Cider on the way back from the ferries, caught their birthday celebration, and bought two bottles--Pippins, and Kings and Spies. Both were very nice indeed but I thought Kings and Spies had the edge.
If I can only have one drink a week, it had better be a good one.

In other news, I've almost caught up with the Transparent apples, and the blackberries have come in, forcing me to learn to make pies. Honestly, pastry intimidates me. It's one of those deceptively simple things, like gesso sottile, where the ingredients may be exactly right but all hope of success lies in having the right touch, and preferably decades of experience. So even though the pie looks okay, and the fruit sets, and slices can be cut and it all gets eaten, in some subtle way it can still be a failure.
Which is why I prefer making cookies. Pastry seems like a sneaking incursion of the imponderables of cooking into the rational world of baking, where if you follow the recipe you come through safely.
The third blackberry pie I've made in the last week is cooling on the baking centre now. This is not my fault.

Interior journeys

No, not pretentious, merely a lame pun. Last weekend I travelled again into the interior of BC, this time to Oliver, a little past Keremeos and Ashnola. Oliver, the Wine Capital of Canada (is every small town in BC the capital of something?) is working to be wine country, with tours and tourists and quirky shops and wineries.
I wasn't there for the wine, though I did mention it to Mark afterwards as, y'know, something we might do, just for, y'know, fun some time. Our travelling is so firmly SCA-business-related and there's so much of it throughout the year that going somewhere just to go there risks straining the brain-muscles.
On the way back I managed a stop at Crowsnest Vineyards, because driving past every single one seemed perverse. I tasted their two sample wines and bought a 2005 merlot, just because.

The travelling part: I drove there and back by myself, after dropping Mark off in Vancouver so he could share (and further learn) what he'd studied at the two swordsmanship seminars he'd just been to.
The drive to Oliver was smooth, the weather was clear and warm, except for the pass in Manning Park where snow lay on the branches and roadside. The road was clear, and the scenery was--I had to keep reminding myself to look at the road. Spiky evergreens, spattered and occasionally hidden by a bright tawny yellow tree, branches flung up and out like someone in hysterics, a lamp-yellow you could warm your hands at. I don't know what kind of trees they are, I confess this. Birch? I could tell the stands of pine, unfortunately, by the red, dead clusters and swaths of trees hit by the pine beetle. The red-leaved bushes were sumac, (non-poisonous) as I learned at the event.
I stopped briefly at the Hope Slide, and thought about '55 metres above the original ground level.' Driving through the Sunshine Valley spooks me a bit more, perhaps because of the view of the former highway, running into the mass of fallen rock.
The drive back started well. I stopped at Bromley Rock, to stretch my legs and look at trees and rocks, and regret that I hadn't brought a camera.
Mark says he's given up suggesting that I take a camera with me, so this is permission and encouragement to him to start up again, and remind me of the bare, grey, hollowed out tree-root clutching rocks in Bromley Rock Provincial Park.
The campsites or picnic sites are on shelving land stepping down from the road to the water, and the parking lot is built over a section of old road, which now curves past the paired toilets and runs slowly into the foundation of the present highway. The asphalt is smooth still, narrow cracks marked by moss and tall weeds here and there. Young trees are springing up along the edges of the road, making a natural avenue, a little too closely set to be planned. The new highway was high above my head, invisible and muted, and no one else had stopped at the park. I walked along it to the end, something I always want to do when I see old disused roads, but rarely have the chance to.
I suppose roads are liminal spaces, like thresholds, wells and hearths (remembering Dr. Doyle's comment on threshold burials in Well Below the Valley). It was easy to believe in ghostly travellers, in time being muddled and doubled, losing its way on a lost road. There's a lovely evocative passage in one of Hugh Hood's books, where the narrator hikes along a narrow hill or berm and realises that it used to be a railway track, and that in his youth he'd stood and watched the train come along it. One of the Goderich (New Age) stories, I think.
Between Princeton and Hope the weather turned to driving rain and gusty winds. Still scenic, but requiring more concentration. Most impressive was the continuing road construction in Manning Park, where the new road face was skinned with rainwater as smooth as a lake, and reflected the yellow and green of the trees as clear and unrippled as a calendar picture. Until I drove over it, of course.
The toughest part of the return trip was finding the New Westminster apartment where I had to meet Mark. This took easily half-an-hour, including driving up and down the wrong street twice, and largely fruitless quests for a)a public phone with b)a parking spot with a block of it.
Would I rather drive the Crow's Nest, or Vancouver? Let me think.

My purpose was to attend the Tournament of the Golden Swan (hereinafter Swan), mostly to spend some time with my amazing apprentice Anne (sometimes Alis, this time Rajpal), partly to help with judging as needed, to teach a class if anyone wanted, and to visit with a few people I don't commonly have opportunity to visit with.
As it worked out, I did sit in on a fair bit of the judging, had only one student (but eager) in the class, and skimped a bit on the visiting because of the judging, which is only loosely scheduled and can go on. And on. Rather like me sometimes.
Did manage a brief escape to buy local wine at the recommended Toasted Oak, though had to skip the tasting room (yes, another, later, visit is a good idea). I was in full 14th c. middle-class woman, with wimple and gorget, and Rajpal was in full Hindu male with turban as appropriate.
Does anyone know a joke that begins 'So, a nun and a Hindu walk into a wineshop...'? It seems there should be one, unless it's the rule of three and we should have had someone else with us. The staff were quite nonchalant about the whole thing.
Particularly appreciated was the chance to talk with Anne about writing, she being a talented writer (and role-player, and so on). We talked about the difficulty of handling dementia or similar mental problems in fiction. Which sparked some thoughts that might deserve their own post. Hm.

The purpose of Swan is to create and portray a medieval persona. Not someone in fiction, or someone who did exist historically, but someone who could plausibly have existed but didn't. In other words, to do for a weekend what the Society for Creative Anachronism allegedly does all the time. Very few people are willing to attempt this.
PARMA does this at our Fort Rodd Hill demo in late June, but as interactions with the public more than with each other. Often the public has no clue what sort of questions to ask, so I tend to make things easy by telling them what I'm doing, like grinding pigments to make paint, trimming a quill so I can write, boiling parchment scrapings to make size glue, and so on. I rarely get questions about what I'd eat for breakfast, how many rooms in my house, the names of my servants, or anything really prying.
Swan is considerably more intensive, though it has the misleadingly cosy atmosphere of a kaffee-klatch, probably due to being only open to female personae. I have several philosophical disagreements with the concept of Swan, but that, again, is another post some other time.
During the presentations and judging, I did some thinking about how the creation of a persona relates to the creation of a character. The Swan candidates, using words only, need to make their interlocuters believe in their homes, their families, their daily tasks, the journeys they take and the hopes, opinions and faith of someone who never existed. Like radio-plays convincing by sound that the characters are climbing a mountain, or in a storm at sea. Like convincing by a pageful of words and three key details that a character is running through the cobbled streets of a medieval city, desperately afraid of something.
It's always in the details.