Breaking Up Is Not So Hard To Do

Dear Vancouver, I’m breaking up with you. It’s not that I don’t want to be with you, it’s just that my desire to be somewhere else is much stronger.  I really think we should see other cities or towns. Very soon. Like right now. After I’m done dumping you. Maybe we could just be friends?

You know this has been coming for a long time, and you really must believe me when I say I really do hate to see it end like this. As you well know, I like to write things down, so here are just a few reasons why this can’t go on:

• Your house prices are completely wacky and have become disconnected from reality. Basically, the price of real estate and the cost of living is too high, while pay is simply too low.

• You’re too moody in a very rainy way. Morning drizzle, lingering showers, and full-on rain just downright puts me in the doldrums. I know this was never a problem before, but since I’m somewhere new, where rain is a rare “event”, I’m much happier.

• You have the worst traffic jams in North America. Just sitting on your gridlocked streets can bring me to tears. I really can’t deal with it anymore so I'm trading in my car for a canoe.

• You have no soul. I can't feel your happiness when I am constantly stuck in a long line-up or a traffic jam. Angry people have turned your once warm heart into a superficial, empty shell.

• Our relationship is suffocating me; you are much too overcrowded and overdeveloped.

So there you have it, Vancouver, we’ve had an on-again off-again relationship for almost 30 years. But after leaving again for the fourth time, I’ve come to the realization that it’s really over this time and I’m never coming back. 

Yes I’m the first to admit that in the eyes of the world you’ve been a pretty good place to live in the past, however, the growing list above has given me a strong urge to stray and I know I've strayed before but this time I've found somewhere where I can live free and unrestricted; somewhere where the sun shines warmly and there's never any traffic chaos (and I do mean never); I've found a place that really makes me feel alive. Yes I know that perhaps I’m still in the honeymoon stage of this new relationship, but my heart just can’t take this constant breaking-up and then making-up anymore!

I know I'm making it seem easy, and to be honest it wasn’t too difficult with Vaseux Lake sitting pretty and waiting for me in the wings. I do think the space between us these past few months has been good for me though I know you took it rather hard. The minimal contact we did have was necessary to deal with the practical aspect of things like moving out, signing papers, etc. Thank you for enabling me to keep our visits short and civil. 

Of course a stage of denial is completely natural during times like this, no matter who instigated the breakup, but acceptance is the key to being able to move on. I have accepted and embraced my new life at Vaseux Lake and I hope you can move on quickly too. There is no benefit to holding on to heartache and regret.

Please don’t try to tempt me back again, it won’t work this time. When I find myself in a weak moment and missing you, I will pull out my list and ask myself “why would I want to go back and torture myself again?” I did the right thing getting as far away from you as I could. Our relationship was no good for me!

I’m sorry, Vancouver, that we are done; our relationship was unique and special in a lot of ways but I’ve made up my mind and Vaseux Lake is “the one” I want to spend the rest of my life with. Here I feel renewed, revitalized and prepared for a whole new wonderful life. 

Vancouver, there will always be a special place in my heart for you and definitely if you're ever out this way, be sure to look me up.

Regretfully,

The Unnamed Lake

I came across this beautiful poem the other day by Frederick George Scott and just had to share:

THE UNNAMED LAKE

It sleeps among the thousand hills

Where no man ever trod,

And only nature's music fills

The silences of God.

Great mountains tower above its shore,

Green rushes fringe its brim,

And over its breast for evermore

The wanton breezes skim.

Dark clouds that intercept the sun

Go there in Spring to weep,

And there, when Autumn days are done.

White mists lie down to sleep.

Sunrise and sunset crown with gold

The pinks of ageless stone,

Her winds have thundered from of old -

And storms have set their throne.

No echoes of the world afar

Disturb it night or day,

The sun and shadow, moon and star

Pass and repass for aye.

'Twas in the grey of early dawn,

When first the lake we spied,

And fragments of a cloud were drawn

Half down the mountain side.

Along the shore a heron flew,

And from a speck on high,

That hovered in the deepening blue,

We heard the fish-hawk's cry.

Among the cloud-capt solitudes,

No sound the silence broke,

Save when, in whispers down the woods,

The guardian mountains spoke.

Through tangled brush and dewy brake,

Returning whence we came,

We passed in silence, and the lake

We left without a name.

Frederick George Scott

'Twas The Night Before Christmas...

It's just a few days before Christmas and as I stand on my snowy beach looking out on an almost frozen lake, I can't help but reflect back on Christmas a few years past where we found ourselves on the verge of a big house move and celebrating Christmas amongst a giant maze of packing boxes.

I didn't know then that as the Clovelly door closed on us, another door was slowly opening and would direct us down a magical path to a very different way of life. The sale and consequential move from our Clovelly house a few Christmases ago has given way to the birth of our Vaseux Lake house. We've since been on a transitional flight path that has taken us from suburbia to rural lake life.

The move into the lake house has been a dream come true and every day I am grateful to call this lake my home and the people of Oliver my neighbours. So on that note, I am looking back to a time when this all began and revisiting a poem I wrote on December 22, 2011 for my old blog Running with a View:

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
was a maze of packing boxes, no room for a mouse.
No stockings were hung by the fire with care,
no tree, no lights; had the Grinch moved in here?


The movers would come in just a few weeks
so Christmas had taken a gloomy back seat.
As I lay in my bed, attempting to sleep
I suddenly sprang up and leapt to my feet.


I would go for a run and work this thing out,
I couldn’t let the Grinch fill me with doubt.
As my husband lay nestled all snug in our bed,
I pulled on my runners, grabbed a cap for my head.


Outside the moon shone lustrous and bright
and it lit up my way on this cold Christmas night.
I ran all the way down to the cove by the sea
and I couldn’t believe the view I did see.


Out on the bluff a strange sight did appear,
a jolly old elf with eight sturdy reindeer.
And nearby a sleigh, piled high with new toys
was ready to deliver to good girls and boys.

 

I shook my head slowly, wiped sleep from my eyes
but the vision remained, I’m telling no lies.
The jolly old elf was so lively and quick
and I thought to myself, could this be St. Nick?


He was chubby and plump, just like in the story
and I laughed when I saw him in all of his glory.
His eyes--how they twinkled! His nose like a cherry!
And he winked as he waved at me, gleeful and merry.


Then he chuckled and shouted, called his reindeer by name
and more fleeter than eagles on the wing they came.
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle
and I was left dumbstruck as they flew like a thistle.


I still was in wonder as I made my way back
to my house which now stood with the moon at its back.
And way up above me, I heard a merry “ho ho ho!”
and in a blink of an eye, it started to snow.


Renewed with the spirit of Christmas and hope
I skipped back to my home, there was no time to mope.
And as I tiptoed back in to my mess of a hall
I knew this would be the merriest Christmas of all!

Wishing you all a magical Christmas!

THE VOICE IN THE ICE

With just one week to go before the winter solstice, and the frantic holiday pitch building to a frenzied crescendo, November is now nothing but a blur to me. The winter wind continues to etch itself indelibly into my daily routine and is one of the few sounds to break the silence of winter along with the occasional great horned owl and coyote call.

But yesterday, in a very unlikely place, I encountered another voice of winter: the lake. After a bone-numbing cold spell marked by daytime temperatures that barely reached -10 Celsius and nighttime temperatures that plummeted to -15 Celsius, the lake froze over. 

Yesterday, late afternoon, the temperature rose to a balmy 4 degrees-Celsius, the air was still and it was perfect conditions for happy hour on the beach with a bonfire. As usual, I was first at the fire with my glass and bottle of wine. I settled myself in front of the roaring fire and as I listened to the snap and crackle of the burning wood and sipped my wine, I heard something else--a long, slow, rumbling groan resonating from somewhere nearby. 

Unsure what the sound was, or where it was coming from, I looked around me, but there was nobody or anything remotely near to where I was sitting. Over the ensuing 10 minutes I heard the incredibly loud sounds over and over. The sounds ranged from a low, belly-aching groan to a high, fast-paced swoosh. At this point, Mark joined me and as he sat down a giant boom and swoosh enveloped us. Mark, looking as a child would who had just discovered the magic of Christmas, exclaimed “It’s the lake, making noises”. 

Bev and Lanny joined us and we sat and listened to the lake stretch and yawn as the waxing moon rose in the sky above us. As darkness descended, a band of coyotes on the fringe of the lake joined in and the lake chorus sang loudly all around us.

Geologists have a name for this acoustic phenomenon: ice yowling. Yowling is described as low, drawn out moans that are very reminiscent of whale calls. A YouTube search on “ice sounds” turns up a dizzying array of recordings, though none of the recordings sounded exactly like our lake.

Our neighbor Bev has been at the lake for many years and is most familiar with the voice of the ice. As ice expands and contracts, it causes stresses through its depth and across its breadth. These stresses cause the ice to crack and refreeze. The sounds of this cracking and refreezing are transmitted through the ice and can get exuberantly loud. The colder the temperature, the faster the ice grows and the more frequent the stress cracks develop.

The lake does not grumble and groan every evening, and there’s no telling when to expect its eerie yowl. But just hearing its hauntingly beautiful voice confirms what I already know, this lake is alive with a spiritual energy and I am blessed to live here.

On A Good Day...

On a good day I can run for miles.

On a good day trumpets sound across the lake,

and I can see my reflection in the glass.

On a good day the breeze is gentle.

On a good day my garden spilleth over,

and my spade is light.

On a good day I can hear tapping at my door.

On a good day I feel alive,

and the sun's energy permeates me.

And on a bad day...well there are none here,

only different shades of a good day.

AUTUMN SPLENDOR

My first autumn at the lake began with just a subtle change in the light, with skies a deeper blue, with a sharp chillness in the air which could be felt in the shade, and the disappearance of migrant birds. 

Each day merged easily into the next without structure, meaning I never actually knew what day it really was. Every day felt the same, neither a Monday, nor a Saturday, or any other day for that matter. October was reminiscent of summer in so many ways.

The acoustics of fall are dramatically different though than summer—autumn’s voice can be heard as sharply as the air is crisp. But still I endured constant tormenting by the scolding Stellar's Jay and the mischievous “yak yak yak” of the Magpie. At night now I can still hear the “hoo-hoo-hooooo’ing” of the Great Horned Owl, accompanied by the eerie yelping and howling cries of coyotes across the lake.

Fall is so bright and intense and beautiful. It is as if nature is trying to fill me up with fiery color, to saturate me before winter turns everything stark and grey and cold.

Then came November—the wild month tinged with melancholy and the promise of shortened days, dull and dark. Just barely a day old it brought the long awaited rattle of rain on my tin roof and then later that week a hard frost which finally decimated my summer Begonias. I can remember watching in awe as a mad rush of snow birds headed south in their heavyweight RV’s. And none too soon as just a day later winter made an early debut with a premature snowfall, delicate as lace but rapidly melting.

My stripped and beautiful Birches, grieving the loss of their dearly departed leaves, creak and groan in the wind. A sobering reminder that we will soon be plunged into the cold shadows of winter where the bone structure of the landscape can be felt from every angle, where bitter blasts bite at exposed hands and faces, and hard frosts extinguish what’s left of the year. We will return once again to a plain sense of things.

“Are ye the ghosts of fallen leaves, O flakes of snow, for which, through naked trees, the winds A-mourning-go?  -John B. Tabb