Christina Lake

Well, I'm back blogging again after a lengthy hiatus that included a relocation from one end of the country to the other: from St. John's, Newfoundland to the little town of Christina Lake in south central British Columbia, an area known as the West Kootenays, to be more precise. The family owns beachfront property at the southern end of the lake. Sitting on our deck, my view of the water is framed by two weeping willows. They were saplings when my father planted them, back in the fifties when he acquired the property, but they are immense things now. The trunks are close to fifty feet apart, yet the upper branches of the two trees almost touch. In front of the one on the east there is a small garden, and buried in that garden is an urn containing my mother's ashes (God rest her soul). That's where she wanted to be. For us, that is sacred ground.

I love to sit out on the desk just at the hour when evening is fading into night. That's when the bats come out. Fascinating, extraordinary creatures! Some of them spend the daylight hours under the eaves of our house or the tiles of our roof. I've never seen them up there, but they leave an unmistakable sign of their presence on our deck below, which I dutifully sweep away in the morning.

And then full night comes on, and when the weather is clear, the sky is a panoply of cold sparks. There's Ursa Major, the North Star, Cassiopeia, a thousand thousand other stars and constellations whose names I never learned, all seeming about to break into song from sheer exuberance of being. The night sky is closer, more alive here than anywhere else I've ever lived.