One Week Later

After 3 direct bomber hits

We woke up this morning to a pond filled with smoke. After 3 days of rain and 3 days of sunshine.

A lightning strike from a week ago smoldering. With a couple of days of hot dry weather and some wind the fire was back.

We had to Skype friends in Williams lake to phone Forestry and give them our googled coordinates. For some reason we don't have access to

1- 800 emergency numbers. After the fire spotting plane saw the small fire it swept dozens of times checking the area for more smoldering fires. A couple of times they flew over our cabin with their sirens on. About ten minutes later 3 bombers dropped their loads of red fire retardant.

I never thought of it but Aki finally remembered the camera after the bombers were gone but caught the spotting plane doing one last pass with their siren on.

A fire fighting ground crew is here now pumping water onto the remains from the lake.

Watching the bombers flying at the tops of the trees and dropping their loads was quite a sight.... Damn I wish I had my camera.

http://www.caribooblades.com/

Lightning...

We were under lightning yesterday. Kai and Aki watched a strike on a tree just inside the forest line at the end of our small lake, start a fire then trees began igniting. I was changing a tire and heard Aki yelling "fire!" Lightning began striking all around us. Another fire started on the west side of the lake about 300 metres away. We couldn't see the flame but we watched the smoke. We watched the smoke speed up very quickly.

We got over how cool it was.
With lightning striking all around us we planned our escape. Funny, the computer was first on the list.
At that moment light rain started with a breeze. It built and within minutes it was a raging rain storm. Winds tossed the trees around, bathing ... splashing them in water. For a 1/2 hour the forest was drenched.

Within 10 minutes after that the sun came out, the sky cleared and we went back to work --- exhilarated and full of awe.

Gardening with the Tide

Lots of rain, thunder, spectacular lightning and the mosquitoes are to be reckoned with and getting worse.

This is all adding up to a great mushroom season. Morels and boletes . An excellent start for the saskatoon berries. All the seedlings have lots of water.

A great aspect to all the rain is that the range cattle have enough to eat out there and will leave us alone.

Ranchers lease crown land, range, for their beef cattle. We are surrounded by crown land. Some dry years they eat all the grass, flowers and shrubs in the gov't range so they begin busting down our gerden fences.. This is not an enjoyable experience. We end up harvesting early because they won't stop until they've eaten everything. If there is enough rain in May and June the vegetation grows , gets a head start. Fingers crossed, the beef won't bother us.When it comes to beef, we have no rights.

The lodge pole pine is gone but still standing supplying us with easy firewood and building logs.

Looking across the lake at the fringe of trees left in the riparian zone, it appears as though we live on the edge of a cliff, but the open space just beyond is a clearcut. Trees take up water, and when the trees are cut down, the water runs into the lake, and the lake rises. The tide.

The tilled garden plots that are now under water have sprouted cattails. .

Our new crop.

Each spring now we wait to see how much garden space we will have. Raised beds help enormously. We wait, but there is inevitably much mud-slinging in the turning of the soil.

We have everything in now, and the gardens are looking good.

The swallows are building, the air is full of birdsong, new life begins.

http://www.caribooblades.com/

Loading Shotguns

It was -8 this morning. All the mud has frozen. Good thing in a way because we can get out and back in tonight from a visit to some neighbours.





A break from the nice post....


We have lived in this beautiful place going on twelve years. Peace, freedom and we have almost shaken off our urban ignorance and anxiety.


Almost but probably never completely.




In our very first post we were excited to write about our lives here, share it and maybe be a bit of light .
There is a huge elephant weighing on our minds.


The abuse and disrespect toward the natural world here is right in our faces. The abuse is absurd.


We are urban people transplanted into the forest, or what's left of it. It is mind-blowing to witness the extent of human greed. It seems we are loading our shotguns, taking aim and blowing off our own feet.






Supplying the world with the pillages of rape.


They are talking "bio-fuel" now, with the "bio" making it sound friendlier somehow. The pine beetle killed off the Pine forests, we suppose because of the warm winters, now we want to cut them all down for bio fuel and plant "marketable stock". They are saying, the money suckers who survive from bending our rubber minds, that the threat of dead decaying pine forests will produce enough carbon emissions to threaten the planet ? We are crazy. What does all the wildlife do while we are clearing the forests. Have you ever walked through a clear cut? There is no place to go. There is nothing left. We are proposing clear cuts of the like never seen before. Meanwhile lumber mills are cutting, killing, the last 500 -600 year old fir trees. Our neighbours found a 1000 year old lying in a cut block left because it had some rot in the middle. The point is why was it cut down and left in the first place! Maybe the last one. It won't even get a chance to rot and become fertilizer for the next generation - the "unmarketable timber" is pushed into piles and burned.


We humans, whether you like it or not, are ripping off the dead, eating them and then complaining about the aftertaste and the heartburn.
We'll go in with feller bunchers and cut the trees, skid them out with skidders, load them on trucks and truck them to plants that aren't built yet, process them into ethanol, put the ethanol into our vehicles and burn it.... Sounds like a green plan to me.


But everyone knows this. That's what makes it so absurd and difficult to even talk about.


http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Forests/Canada/BC/Beetle/


Nice post cotinued....

Next morning: An enjoyable evening, a small gathering of neighbours (anyone living west of the Fraser River is a neighbour) who tend to stick to ourselves but venture out occasionally to share views, good food, homemade wine and also to offer a bit of support. Sometimes it is easy to feel completely alone in our quest to live simply with minimal damage.

We left their candlelit yurt with the nearly full moon rising in the sky, driving carefully past shadows of countless deer, bumping down the logging roads, finally into our yard to be greeted by our two dogs, tails wagging - good to be home.






http://www.caribooblades.com/

Muddy Boots

The melt down, break-up has started. With the sun higher and rising, the days warming up and revealing the earth, the famous Cariboo/Chilcotin clay mud is just beginning to form. In about a week the mud will be deep enough to keep us mudded in for two weeks. It begins to dry out in about a month and turn into a cement hardness. Any attempts to get out will leave ruts until the rains in the fall. Nothing quite like getting stuck in the mud. Over the last 11 years we've spend days digging out until we figured r and r was a better way to go. Now we don't even attempt to get out - if there is one concept we've learned here it's how to relax.

Now we thoroughly enjoy being able to stay in. A sense of freedom really.

We are almost through our dried food and the winter meat supply. At the same time our chickens are now laying a dozen eggs a day, our small green house attached to the cabin is producing a small amount of greens. In a couple of weeks dandelion greens, wild onions and fireweed shoots will become welcome additions to our diets.

It all happens eventually...with no worries.

Anticipation and a great sense of our lives is the fruit produced after a winter of work and thought. We used to think that everyone should attend an art school for awhile just to learn about themselves in relation to everyone else. Now we think that maybe living in the bush with nothing could be the way to go a longer distance.

We are setting a date now for some time off our knife and tool making.

A new charcoal burning forge and a new charcoal making kiln are the goals for our time off. A busy gardening month as well. The cycle continues.

http://www.caribooblades.com/

A Conversation in 2004

Hi Scott and Aki.

I have been sending The following testimonial to a few people:

"Speaking of beauty... I wanted to pass on a little conversation I’m having with a friend of mine, Scott, who lives in the bush, no hydro.... He makes a living making carving tools, chef and hunting knifes. All made from the sun. He is astounded that we are fighting wars; killing people over energy. Mean while every day huge amounts of energy are delivered free to every home on earth.

From my friend Scott:

When I get up in the morning I race out and face my solar panels to the sun.
I was in the shop all day yesterday, full sun all day. 3 hours straight on the grinder, + 1 hour sanding on my machine, + 1 1/2 hours drilling and reaming on the drill press, then 3 1/2 hours on the computer with the satellite connection (it takes power as well), 2 hours of tv with a light on for three hours and I still have plenty of power stored (in batteries) to email you this morning. It's looking like it's going to be a beautiful sunny day today again. We can't use all the power. Oh ya, the freezer was on for 3 hours yesterday.
You guys could have systems running easily. I don't understand why you don't. A solar array (250 - 300 watts), a regulator, an inverter. Total cost is around $2500 - $3000. That's it.
It is so simple. You can start right now by building a sun tracker, you need to follow the sun. I built one for $35. If anyone tries to tell you that you must have more or says you can't do it for that, they’re full of it.
Ciao,

Scott.

www.caribooblades.com

The Heart of Winter

There
Is so much information.
Everything is information. I
Seem to hear everywhere. A barrage. Seemingly all
Out of proportion. Overwhelming. Confusing.
Frightening. Floundering, until I pick out a familiar sound. It could
Be a voice, the way a hammer hitsa nail directly on the head, a perfect connection.
Suddenly my own space expands.
I fade and block certain sound. I can
Pick up more familiarity,more sounds, until every sound I hear is familiar.
The sounds of a city become mesmerizing.
So much sound is communicated is untrue
misguided, illogical,
Nonsense, malice.
This information surrounds us, can destroy us…
Survival in any space depends on the way we adapt to that space.
The State of being free.
(or maybe we're just bushed)
Snow ice cream
Mix together in a big bowl:
1 egg
half cup sugar
half cup milk, cream or evaporated milk
1 tsp vanilla









Add snow and flavouring (maple syrup is good) and stir!