Swallows from the past (or maybe the future)

The edge of the prairie around Wainwright has little in common with the mixed foliage of this Yukon valley. Similarities can be found in the air carrying the scent of an anonymous low, budded plant which is permanently affixed to my memories of Wainwright. The air similarly carries clusters of swallows who I yesterday watched diving into the river low and fast, pulling out of the upstream as soon as they were subsumed by it.

Today I am back by the river seeking them out. I find myself needing reason in a world which has temporarily and suddenly lost almost all such commodity. The Yukon flows as inevitably as ever and today the blue skies are returning. A swallow turns sharply and flies directly at my head followed by another, hot on its tail before they fly off, continuing their dogfight. These actions are likely a warning but I greet them with a grin, travelers acknowledging each other as they pass on a country road.

Years back in Wainwright, with the same smell in the air, I sat on the hull of an Armoured Personnel Carrier eating jam on stale crackers watching the long grass bend in agreement with the wind. The swallows were out flying low and fast, again upstream in the river of prairie grass. I followed one with my eyes, straining to pick it out as its form shrank into the distance and thought to myself, “I remember this feeling, remember being a swallow.” That twenty-year-old version of myself, almost impossible to see in me now, was often filled with rage, booze and frustration. On that day though I was imbued with a joy borne of absolute certainty.

Myself at twenty is now twenty years behind me and as I settle into this new decade I vainly hope the swallows of Dawson, like their Wainwright cousins, might offer a righted view of the world, a world which seems to have slipped of its axis.

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Tonight the drunks of these two towns will stumble into the streets, mimicking a slow motion version of the seeming randomness of the swallow. Their worlds will take on the tilted, comforting haze of the immediate.

Don't read too much into this post

Below the levee with the town out of view, I am down at the river. Such a massive and endless thing making so little noise. It glides by me as a trick, an impossibility. This morning the clouds hung so very low over the valley, submerging the tops of the mountains and appearing as the river’s nemesis or twin.

Yesterday, in my temporary cabin, away from my temporary residency, away from my home, I watched and listened to more TV than I’ve done all year and the subject of death was everywhere for me.

House, True Blood, Lost, something about Haitian Voodoo and Angel (on DVD) were my line-up. This morning Patrick Lane told me about the Red Squirrel in his yard. Three years of arguing between the two and Lane now holds this squirrel, victim of a car’s wheel, in his hand as it fades out.

My own fear of death has something to do with the loss of control, the same way turbulence terrifies me because I have no say in the equation. Surrendering control is not easy for me but the river has such certainty, is so sure of itself that it doesn’t need to say a word. The swallows dive in briefly, flying upstream, gulping in water, bugs, I know not what. They are fearless flyers.

I don’t believe the river but it assures me that one day I’ll come to terms with what it has to offer.

What's that noise?

This morning I was awoken by an intermittent fading and lamenting electronic whine. At first I assumed it was Kerri’s (the other residency artist) alarm clock as it was coming from a distance and was intermittent. The noise of what could be described as a wounded cyborg wasn’t abating though, so I finally got up to check it out.

As it turns out the noise was the smoke alarm being activated by a burst water pipe in the ceiling, drowning the alarm and flooding the residency house. The good news is neither our work nor possessions was overly affected though there’s damage to the walls, floors and ceilings of the living room, kitchen and Kerri’s studio.

The scenario of waking up to a wounded cyborg and a subsequently raining ceiling is a little confounding at 6am on a Sunday morning but when all was said and done, the outcome could have been much worse.

We’re now out of the building and have been put up at individual cabins at The Triple J Hotel. The cabins are pretty cute with tiny kitchenettes and I have a table with a window at which to paint. The only down side is the lack of internet access, which I can only gain by sitting in the lobby of the hotel.

As I look out the window of my temporary new home I am slightly reminded of a WW2 era army training camp or high-end fruit pickers shacks in Kelowna. For example:

Work continues though as can be almost viewed by my sketch of Shannon in the above photo.

Now though, I’m heading back to the studio to collect my ziplock bag of Earl Grey tea. I have already brought the milk and cereal with me. Stability has almost been achieved.

C'mon, crumble

It's worth emphasizing that these posts are works in progress, writing that I hope will one day constitute part of a book. But here and now they are attempts for me to understand where, and how, I am.
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While I’m in Dawson my partner Shannon is back at home drawing, crocheting, re-watching Lost, spending time with her friends. She is home.

The other night we were talking across these few time zones about the blog so far and what I am calling The Island of Toronto (not to be confused with The Toronto Islands). For myself this island starts as just that, the accumulated physical elements of the land, but land whose make-up has little connection to my previous homes. The smells, the terrain of Toronto – with occasional exceptions – are foreign… but then again the present is always foreign. When my family moved to Trail in 1979 both the land and the people were unrelentingly foreign but now that polluted town on The Columbia is part of my known terrain.

For Shannon though, this island of mine is emotional; a construction built from my lived past, starting with the pain and raw beauty of being a kid in The West Kootenays. It was only when I realized I had turned Toronto into an island that I began to address the many decisions, large and small, that over the years have moved me away from community.

I am here in Dawson, a town of around 2000 souls, in equal parts considering and ignoring the specifics of small town socialization that compelled me to come here in the first place.

I come here from Toronto, a city I love and am happy to be away from. My island of Toronto temporarily resides in the Yukon River. If I look out my window, past these ramshackle houses and down to the riverbank, I can see it looming and slowly, hopefully eroding from the sheer force of the water passing around it.

As goes the water

A sad fact of my so-called cultural life is a slavish devotion to military non-fiction. When I sit, looking at the Yukon River I am reminded not only of The Columbia River, but also The Volga as it flows through the former Stalingrad. I’ve never been to Russia and my connection to that river is mostly through the writings of Vasily Grossman and Anthony Beevor. Grossman was Russia’s pre-eminent war correspondent during the apocalyptic battle for Stalingrad. Beevor is an outstanding contemporary writer on the same topic. I am surely getting off topic here, but the strength of their writing and, in this case, their descriptions of The Volga almost assure me that I’ve sat on the west bank where the Russians found themselves pushed almost into the river. Where, behind me on the flats of the eastern shore they assembled and fought back from the brink of destruction.

When I packed to come north though I made an effort to bring some divergent reading that has been sitting in the to-do pile for some time now. One of those books is Patrick Lane’s memoir, There is a Season:

Defined by its (overly?) poetic garden musings of the elderly Lane, there are also catalogues of the brutality of his youth in Vernon. Growing up in the BC interior can tend towards harshness and violence. The scale of our experiences differ, but if such violence stains youth – and it surely does – my experiences, like Lane’s are equivalently, brilliantly pinholed by the radiance of the natural.

Walking out our family’s backdoor in Montrose you would initially be greeted by the somewhat feral cherry trees that constituted the garden portion of our yard. The world of man swiftly gives way as the yard, with equal swiftness, tilts up onto a mountainside. There was no actual boundary to the yard and so in the spring I could walk from cherry blossoms and flowering dandelions up through birch and pine trees. Approaching the crest of the mountain, the grade settled to reveal a shallow and microcosmic marshland, and later the receding snowline as it made its last stand at the bases of the conifers.

Down in the village kids would gather at the western edge, where housing ceded to cliff faces and the only road down to The Columbia and the scorched earth of Trail. Here, on the edge of our redneck Shangri-la, we would lean over the road’s crumbling shoulder and fill ourselves on snow-melt as it came through moss and tumbled off rock faces. Those Spring-time satings remain one of my most cherished markers of spring and are the standard by which I judge all water that passes my lips.

On the bike

In response to the previous post, I offer a small, and impossible to actually demonstrate, example of riding in Dawson. The principal point here: The is only up and down, there is (almost) no coast. For those in the know, a 160mm front disc brake is not enough, no sir. I almost never pick up any appreciable speed as I'm either grinding up a paved road to reach the trails or grinding the brakes on rooty, rock-filled trails that care not a whit for me being on 2 wheels. I ride by myself as I prefer it that way, but also I don't think there any any serious riders here who have grown pubic hair (apologies if you fit into both categories). A couple of times I've walked a section, not because I couldn't conceivably manage it, but the consequences when alone are just not worth the risk (or maybe I'm just lame). Here are th'photos:



Below, I try to take a shot while riding along a cutline. The actual trail is up ahead.






























You'll note my name and the Beatrix Potter characters.
















Some fancy depth of field action as I take a break from the hairyness.












































Looking back up the trail. The seat is that far down for a reason.






















Once more, down.






















Thanks Monika and Jonah for getting the scoop on Dawson's trails. And thanks to Kale for ordering the many parts and super sweet frame that I'm taking advantage of. The frame is great (as I hope the painting is).

Not long until Happy Hour.

When I ride alone I prefer to be by myself

The sound of a kid's scooter careening along the long, planked sidewalks of Dawson sounds like distant thunder or a cargo plane echoing off the mountains. I hope I evoke a similarly grand sound as I pedal along.

* * *

I wish my friends – the ones would appreciate the rambling, collapsing bars and their denizens but mostly the landscape (ie hairy-ass downhill rides) – were here to see this place and share in the giddiness of not flying over the bars on trails were you are never not braking.

There is, however, good reason that Chris McCandless is my favourite literary character and failed hero. The truth is I don't need my friends; don't really feel the absence of my attempts at building a community back home. I am happy to ride alone and not share the fear, the cackles of joy as I don't hurtle ass over teakettle down a trail definitely not meant for bikes (or even for hikes).

I am happy to sit by myself all day long, to write and paint (and ride) and think about myself on what constitutes the edge of my known world. I am here to strike it rich and just like the early days of the gold rush, this is something best done alone.

Thankfully my friends already know this about me.