Red Cedar

Complaining about the weather

Posted on June 20, 2012 by Megan

I make a real effort not to indulge in Vancouver’s favourite pasttime of complaining about the weather. Even when it rains all June. Even when a good attitude towards the wet is seen as “pollyanna-ish” (thanks nasty co-worker!)

Not only is it futile, weather being an unchangeable element, but endless complaint is a drag on everyone. Rain is simply a major factor in a rainforest, and it’s also the reason my garden is doing so swimmingly (pardon the pun) this summer. The combination of mild temperatures and wet weather has created what you see above. Also – here’s a close-up of the potatoes and raspberries. I can’t remember any year in the last three when the growth has been this manic in June:

Anyhow – back to my original point. There seems to be this increasingly prevalent attitude that rain impedes us from getting outside or actually enjoying outdoor activities – which is totally not how I grew up. As a kid, I remember many days of gardening when it was raining, hiking and camping on the Oregon Coast in fog and mist, and hours of tromping around in wet underbrush and forest out back of my parents’ place. And it’s not like we had fancy rain gear either! Maybe some rubber boots, but otherwise there was this notion that you could get soaking wet in any activity, as long as you had a place to get dry afterwards. Be that campfire, home or weird-little-rv-type-thing…. being a wimp about the water just got you laughed at in those later environs.

Now, I will acknowledge that I do not like to be camping in a downpour – especially with my small ultra-light tent. I have become remarkably good at keeping dry with it, but still, who wants to be cooking in a nylon vestibule with mud running down underneath? On the other hand, I’m afraid that weather fears have kept me indoors more often than I would like over the last few summers – as I have developed the Vancouver phobia of getting wet.

Two things have reminded me recently of just how foolish (and limiting) that is. The first of those is the hunting planning we have been doing which involves trips into the late fall. This of course risks rain and cold, but with our recent gear investment, and some good planning I know that we can make a dry and beautiful camp in most conditions and I find myself excited to be outdoors in any weather again. The second is a gardening excursion Brian and I took on Saturday to dig up some free plants in Strathcona. This involved digging up two mature trees in the wet, and then replanting them (and some other odds and ends in my front yard). By the end of the hole-digging and replanting, I was muddy, soaked and totally acclimatized to both.

So much of being comfortable in any weather is spending time outside in any weather – a therapist friend of mine once described to me how we can develop our nervous system to withstand cold winters, which apparently is a traditional practice which explains how people lived through bad winters without central heating (longhouse fires notwithstanding). This involves exposing the body to extreme hot and cold during the first snow of the season…. (much like the Finnish Sauna) which then builds up resilience to cold for the rest of the winter. Over here at another blog I read, the writer talks about heat acclimation in the South which operates on a similar principle. That is, exposure and lots of it, plus working through the discomfort – something we don’t like to have to do in our modern city.

And perhaps this is where the increase in weather-related complaints comes from – a rise in the media-fed attitude that one should *never* be uncomfortable in a world of such consumer product availability. In Vancouver I would suggest this is compounded by the sense that a city this expensive to live in should at least have good weather. But all the shoulds and haves in the world don’t make it so, and personally I am more than a little glad to be in a region not experiencing an early forest-fire season like most of North America seems to be. Humidex in the high-thirties? That sounds freakin’ miserable to me, being a west-coaster and all.

So I’m going to redouble my efforts to remain positive as we round-out this wet June, and try to carry that into the fall and winter again. Key to my well-being in the winter months is actually getting out in the woods, where the grey is masked by a sparkling green, fed by the water which sustains us.

Early summer menus…..

Posted on June 19, 2012 by Megan

Outdoor living

Posted on June 7, 2012 by Megan

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Despite the grey weather, Brian and I made a commitment to outdoor living yesterday to the tune of $600 (shipping included). As pictured, we have ordered ourselves a 10 x 14 foot canvas Kodiak FlexBow tent – an all season portable cabin if you will – large enough for a cot, a small woodstove, and a table and two chairs. No kidding. It’s that big (and it weighs 70 pounds).

Billed as a tent for sleeping eight, with full standing height (6″6) throughout – the purchase of this tent springs from Brian’s desire to hunt and fish, to do so in the fall and early winter, and to be comfortable at the same time.

We currently have a completely serviceable tent – a Tarn 3 that I have been using for about ten years for backcountry/hike-in camping as well as car-camping trips. I sleeps two comfortably, weighs seven pounds, and when it’s not raining I leave the fly off to sleep under the mesh and look at the stars. Sadly on this coast, we don’t get to sleep without the fly very often! I just ordered new poles for the tent and I fully intend to keep using it for quick trips, backpacking and small-footprint tent pads – but I have to admit, there is something very tempting about a tent I don’t have to crawl into! Not to mention the amount of “living space” which makes wet-weather camping a real possibility. While my Tarn 3 definitely keeps us dry (with extra tarps, natch) there is barely room to sit up in, let alone do anything else. I have cooked in the nylon vestibule in bad weather but I wouldn’t really recommend that as a regular practice. With something like the Kodiak (with a wood stove install) you can basically survive in any weather, without feeling like you just have to “bed down” until it passes. Having done my fair share of bedding down during squalls – I can really appreciate having room to move in. Not to mention the room to put a cot in, thus getting us off the ground in colder weather.

The downside to the larger tent is of course its weight and size, which means never being too far off the road because you have to carry in a hundred pounds of gear. Fortunately there is lots of logging-road access camping in BC (and the whole Pacific Northwest) so you can get pretty remote and still have the car nearby. What I do think is that this makes camping/hunting/fishing trips a lot more viable in the wet and snowy fall, and it means that I would be a lot more likely to go along with Brian and crew if hanging out in camp (I have no interest in hunting) on a crap day meant I could have a relatively cozy place to curl up and read/work on projects, not to mention a place to get dry after a day of wet hiking. I think we’ll wait until next year to do the stove/insert project (another $500 all in), but I do look forward to the day when we are all tricked out 🙂

There is no way I would get rid of my lightweight set-up because I still think there are tons of places and trips that it will be more appropriate for – but I do love the idea of setting up for a few days in the bush and being able to make a bit more of a home. Already I have suggested to Brian that instead of the cabin booking we made for Wells Gray park in August, we should just cancel and take a campsite instead. That basically covers the cost of the tent purchase (the rental is $550), and gives us a bit more financial justification!

I am busy now making Craigslist contacts for a double cot and some oil-based lanterns at cheap prices. As a bit of a side note, it is incredible to me how much “new, used once” camping gear is out there – I guess some people think they want to camp but actually don’t like it once they are there. One thing I will say from my own camping and backcountry history is – the better the gear, the better the experience. And that makes me excited for our fancy new tent! I’m hoping for a lot more outdoors this summer and fall than last year – even with the potential for crappy weather.

Trips planned in my head so far include: a week in Wells Gray Park (August), a weekend on the Elaho River, a couple days at Sloquet Hot Springs (September), some time around Bralorne and Gun Lake in the hunting season, and we have a site booked at Porteau Cove for September – but I’m not sure if it will be big enough to accomodate this giant tent 🙂 Oh! Plus we are going to Singing Lands in October for the Fred Eaglesmith show and we will be able to tent instead of renting a cabin. That’s six trips between now and October – which I expect will greatly enrich my headspace and physical well-being. So yay to new tent and some excellent adventures in our very near future!

Recipes to invoke the sun.

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Megan

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I promise no talk about the weather except to say that it is grey in Vancouver at the moment – much like it is every year in early June – and instead of moping about it I have devised the perfect recipe for bottling sunshine. Inspired by this recipe, some so-so canning from last year, and a hailstorm on the weekend – I introduce to you:

Rhubarb-Apricot Cordial!

12 cups chopped rhubarb (mine was flattened by hail necessitating a harvest)
5 cups of home-canned apricots plus their syrup (The apricots I put up last year were too soft to be used for anything but sauce)
6 cups of sugar, plus more to taste

Put prepared rhubarb in a stainless steel pot and sprinkle a cup of sugar over. Leave for an hour or until the rhubarb starts releasing juice.
Strain the apricots, reserving the liquid.
Add the apricots to the pot and turn the heat on medium.
While the rhubarb/apricot mixture is cooking down into a mush, prepare a colander with a cheesecloth or another clean straining cloth (I just use a thin cotton table covering that would otherwise be cut up for rags). Pour the reserved liquid from the apricots through the strainer and let drip.
Once the rhubarb/apricot mixture is cooked into a mush, take it off the oven and let it cool a bit. Then dump that into the colander. Leave overnight to drip through.
The next day, prepare your boiling water canner and sterilize your jars. At the same time, put the strained juice into your stainless steel pot and add five cups of sugar. Turn the heat onto medium until the sugar melts. Bring the mixture to a boil for one minute or so after that, and then turn down the heat again. The thicker you want the cordial mixture, the longer you cook it. In my case I only cooked it for about 10 minutes total.
Pour into canning jars and process for 10 minutes. This recipe makes 2 1/2 quarts (five pint jars worth)

Also! Another recipe from yesterday involves fresh, local strawberries and basil – both of which showed up at Donald’s Market this week:

Strawberries and basil

2 cups sliced strawberries
5 large basil leaves sliced small
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup sugar

Mix all ingredients together, let sit on the counter for an hour or more to macerate. Serve over vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt. Amazing!

And finally, while we are invoking the sun here on the west coast, I direct you to the Ray Bradbury short story All Summer in a Day which encapsulates so much of what rainforest life is like on a deep psychic level. RIP Ray Bradbury – your stories have nourished our fantastical and darker impulses for all these decades and you will be missed.

Bees and lupins.

Posted on June 2, 2012 by Megan

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My attempt to capture a bee photo in the Garibaldi school garden on my phone…. what was so remarkable about this was 1) how many bees there were in the lupin patch and 2) that you could see their full pollen sacs (that orange blob) so easily. I love this patch of beauty right around the corner from my home!