Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
new! subscribe!
it has been mentioned to me by two different people now – that they wish my blog was an email list rather than on the web because *some* folks don’t remember to check my blog regularly (can you believe it?)
so it turns out it is pretty easy to add a subscriber service to wordpress blogs, which i have fooled around with and got working. to subscribe go here or click on the link underneath the weather icon. once your email is added, you will get an e-mail with the link to each new post i add, constantly reminding you of my presence in real life and on the web – it’s like a small reminder of me.
enjoy!
visitors
i was away overnight on thursday, at union meetings in vancouver and then nanaimo. on friday i returned to roberts creek to the obvious signs a bear had been to visit the yard in my absence.
the scat pile in the middle of the yard was the first indication, noticeable in that it was dead centre in the patch of bare earth of the recently retired septic field. i mentioned this to my friend jess as we sat out on the front steps of my home, wondering aloud what had brought the bear into my yard… when i realized moments later that the grape arbour on the left front of my house was completely ripped to shreds. there are no more bunches of grapes hanging from the vines, and leaves and squashed fruit litter the brick patio below. worst of all, the support posts on one side were all been knocked down, which meant repair work was in short order. it looks as though the bear stood on his hind legs to get at the vine fruit, the weight of him pulling everything down as he went.
i suppose it is my fault for not eating the grapes when they were ripe, for now the bear has got them.
besides the bear, i had other visitors over the weekend – jess on friday night and fraser on saturday night – hooray for old friends 🙂 – fraser and i had a fire on the beach saturday night which lasted until the rain started (and there was amazing lightning across the sea before that took hold).
i spent yesterday (sunday) cleaning up the grape arbour and then split some kindling so i would have lots of dry for starting fires on the cold days. as i said to my friend george on the phone this afternoon – only a month ago bears and firewood were not things i had to deal with as part of my daily existence…
reminders
photo circa 1885 at the place now the corner of georgia and seymour in downtown vancouver
following up from my post of three days ago, photographic reminders do exist of the trees once lining these shores. i was poking around in the online provincial archives yesterday for work-related images, and came across these during some random-browsing moments. one hundred years ago might as well be a thousand when we look around the urban ecosphere today to the meager firs and birches struggling in planter boxes against the concrete – the corporate nod to some absurd aesthetic that sees trees (and ultimately all life) in the context of control.
from the north shore, circa 1890s
walking the line
some mornings i get to work and look at my blog – and i want to write in it – but can’t think of what i should write about. i want to contribute daily because it’s a good practice to be in, and because i am secretly pleased with myself when i can write or at least post photographs 5 or 6 days in a row.
and when i feel like this, it’s not because i have nothing to say, because (as y’all know) i *always* have something to say…. but usually that i have too much to say and i want time to filter it through and decide what is actually important.
as usual, i have a lot going on – particularly because the union i am a member of and organizer with is on the precipice of starting full-blown strike action – and i hold the official position of “area strike co-ordinator” for half the downtown core. this means i am responsible for ensuring that 1500 people know about and participate in any strike activity (which included the strike votes we took through the month of april).
in all my years of organizing, i don’t know that i have ever had such a definable area to organize before – 5 major worksites, 1500 workers, from hastings to georgia and from thurlough to main. in each of those sites, i have between 2 and 5 contacts, and it is those people i organize with so that each of their members is informed and ready for the day we move into a position of strike legality.
old stories
i took this photo, and the one at the end of this post, in a grove of old-growth cedar and fir trees in the gifford pinchot forest. it is difficult to remember this type of forest covered most of the coast at one time, and in vancouver there were trees that grew to be over 100 metres tall (that’s 35 building stories). since i first learned this, i have looked out the window of my 15th floor cubicle, trying to imagine my office tower surrounded by trees twice its size. the fact it is so challenging to envision points sorely to a removal from our own roots as forest animals (the root of savage means “of the forest” interestingly enough) – but it also means the loss of many stories of the land’s history only these sentinels might know, since they are the longest memory beside the mountains that once existed on these shores.
Red Cedar 