Blustery, blustery days

 So we've been having quite a bit of interesting weather the past few weeks. Last weekend was, apparently, just the first in a series of winter storms we can expect between now and, oh, June. The earthquake two weeks ago did very little damage, all in all, but this wind definitely left its mark.

These waves, despite looking rather picturesque, were about 8 feet high.

And now there's plastic awning all over our lawn.

This was a hearbreaker. I loved this tree!

Greenhouse will be needing some attention...

The front gate blew off it's hinges and now lives in the garage.

This is our bar, Howler's. It's not extremely well ventilated.

Before you, the RCMP parking lot. To the right, Howler's roof. To the left, the pole that slowed its progress.

Winter

And thus, with barely a hint of fall leaves, winter has arrived in Haida Gwaii. My roommate L and I harvested our (mostly still green) tomatoes, bell peppers, plums and potatoes today, stuck all the herbs in the greenhouse, stacked a cord of wood in our garage and split a ton of kindling. Our house is freezing but the fire is starting to roar and hopefully we'll be warming up (and shedding some layers) soon. We're all officially obeying the speed limits again as there's ice and frost on all the roads and the sanding trucks have started making the rounds. There's snow on the mountains and a serious chill in the air.

Oh, and I may have whooping cough.

Summer 2012 in Pictures

Bike trip from Charlotte to Port Clements!

Bought a wetsuit.

Canoe trip in Jaskatla Inlet

Urchin. I ate this one :)

All these rocks are from the same teeeeny island.

Our canoe, complete with all the waterproof clothing a girl could ask for.

$39.99/lb?? We pick these by the greedy, greedy handfull.

This is Johnny. Short for John. Short for John Snow. She's rad.

To be clear, the green ear is from her ID tattoo.

Solo car camping in Grey Bay. I love my truck :)

Roommate L and I went down to SKung Gwaii and Rose Harbour.

Rose Harbour. Such a cool spot.

The Two Most Important Days of Your Life...

... are the day you're born and the day you find out why.

It's been so long since my last update that I don't even think I can apologize for not updating for so long. It's quarter after three on a Friday and I'm in that exhausted, end-of-my-rope, super honest place that usually means the very last thing you should do is write a public blog post. But here I am.

I've reached an interesting conundrum. Since we talked last I've landed what I might describe as a dream job for me (not 'the' dream job, no such thing, but 'a' dream job for sure), working in community health and wellness, on the ground, in the trenches (kind of ), doing things and making change and transforming whatever I can transform up here. I've been doing this job for a month and half now and every day I see more and more of how much work there is to do here and how much I want to do that work. Ironically, and here's where the conundrum comes in, I've also been working on a medical school application that I've been focusing on, for the past year or so, as the path to 'what I want to do with my life.' But now I'm faced with the idea of leaving Haida Gwaii for six years to do the work I want to do, despite the fact that the work I want to do is here, now. It leaves me unsure how to proceed.

In other news, I spent the summer crabbing, fishing, learning to shoot guns, driving standard, going surfing, picking wild berries and making way too much jam, camping, paddling, falling in love, growing food, building my home and my life, and just generally continuing in this breath-taking and unexpected transformation of myself. I think it's pretty much safe to say that every assumption I've ever made, every paradigm I've ever believed in, every belief I've ever held and every truth I've ever known has been changed in some way over the past nine months.

Successes of Today

Today I joined the ambulance service.
Tomorrow: volunteer fire department.
I'm learning to spin fire poi. And getting certified as a Wilderness First Responder.
I've been camping up a storm, covered in bites from Haida Gwaii's charming collection of black flies, mosquitoes and no-see-ems.
And soon I will have a phone that treats all Canadian numbers as local. Meaning I can actually call you, whomever you are, and we can catch up!
Love,
Cait

Sniffle sniffle

Accomplishments of this week:

1. Split an piping hot Americano all over my forearms. Was laughed at by the President of the Council of the Haida Nation. But in a nice way.

2. Got a stupid cold, called in sick to work and then went to a going away party for a friend. That was at my work. Thankfully coughed like a plague victim all through lunch, thus proving actually had cold.

3. Made 8 loaves of bread. I'm a bread-making machine. All were cooked for 30 minutes at 400 degrees; risk of transferring cold to loved ones via bread: nill.

4. Hiked the Pesuta for the third time and found my first agate! So exciting. Only to me, but still. Also, subsequently found second, third and fourth agates on same trail.

Sorry about the lack of pictures lately friends but the good news is my lovely roommate L and temporary roommate C and I are going camping and exploring on Moresby Island this weekend so I ought to have something more visually stimulating soon! 

Life's a Beach

Lying on the Deck, in the Sun, Drinking Tea

News item #1, I fixed the comments section on this baby so people can actually leave anonymous comments now, hurrah! Apologies to everyone that I gave the "you're an idiot, it's sooooooo easy" face when you told me you couldn't comment. Turns out it was entirely my fault...my bad.

News item #2, I'm home and almost completely unpacked! The drive here was long but beautiful and, best of all, uneventful. It was really hard to say see you later to the people I love in Vancouver but it was also such a relief to get back to my quiet, breath-taking town and the people I love here. I think the best part of going home for a visit was seeing that the things and people that really matter to me will always be there with me and that I can leave without feeling like I'm leaving things behind. It definitely wasn't the trip that I'd expected and I didn't get out of it what I thought I would but I got things I wasn't expecting and left with a feeling of...peace.

L, my roommate and one of my closest friends up here, and I have been unpacking, reorganizing, decorating and puttering up a storm in our lovely home. We've been having lots of family dinners, picnics and breakfasts with our nearest and dearest and just generally getting the house to feel less like a rental abode and more like our home. So far it's going very, very well.

News item #3, I had my first day of work today! For those of you who haven't heard, I've taken my masters degree and leveraged a sweet position at a coffee shop for the summer :) It's actually a really, really great place to be and work, and a fantastic break from the office/research/health environment. It was also nice to finally sever my almost ten year relationship with UBC at the end of March. I've got some more career-related things on the back burner but I'm really looking forward to a chance to sit back and think about what kind of work I really want to do. Urban-based, macro-level research at an academic institution is definitely, definitely not it. So today at work I spent six hours chatting with the lovely folks of Skidegate and Charlotte, learning how to make phenomenal coffee, puttering in the garden and greenhouse, making beautiful food, and occasionally running across the street to the ocean with everyone else in the shop to watch the killer whales playing in Skidegate Inlet. I couldn't stop smiling all day.

I am so happy here. It's incredible to me that I can feel this happy all the time. Things this spring haven't been easy and a lot of the changes in my life are really scary. But I am so, incredibly happy. I feel light and full of possibility and adventure. I've made a vibrant life for myself here that is fulfilling and exhausting in the best way possible. I live in one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. I have no idea how long I will live here or where I will go next or what I will do but every moment here is filled with joy.

April 27th, Cait Comes Home. May 7th, Cait Goes Home.

I am split between two places now. It's a new feeling. I came home with a to-do list about a mile long and I'm leaving with a lot of stuff, though considerably fewer belongings, and a feeling of discontent. Maybe the homesickness I feel is for a state of mind, rather than an actual place. Maybe it's for the Caitlin brain of several months ago. I've fielded a few panicked "Sooooo, how are things with you?" conversations over the past few days. Hopefully I've managed to convince people I haven't lost my mind and moved to a hippie commune...though I kind of have. And on Monday, the day after tomorrow (actually, tomorrow, it's 12:35am on Sunday) I'm going to pack my car and drive back home.

It's incredible how overwhelming the city is after four months in Haida Gwaii. I have an incredible new respect for people I know who lived in small towns and moved to larger cities. Everything is just so...much. There is so much noise, so much movement, so many people and cars and things happening everywhere. It's exhausting. I can handle about three hours of being out and about and then I just want to hide and have a nap. Very much looking forward to my island life.

Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site and Gwaii Haanas Marine Conservation Area and Haida Heritage Site.

The name really is that long. And calling it "The Park" is a major, major faux pas in some circles. We mostly just refer to it as Gwaii Haanas to save time and to try and not cause irreparable damage of our reputations. Gwaii Haanas is difficult, and expensive, to get to but it's an incredible chunk of land and sea. It's the only area in Canada that's protected from the top of the mountain peak to the bottom of the seabed, which is doubly impressive when you think of everyone who had to get on board for that to happen (the Council of the Haida Nation, Forest Service, DFO and the province, just to name a few). We had the amazing opportunity to go down to Gwaii Haanas on an overnight trip about a month ago with Moresby Explorers (an AWESOME group of people if anyone who reads this ends up needing to go to Gwaii Haanas).

The view from Moresby Explorers Camp on Moresby Island. Our starting point.

We went out on Zodiacs, so layers of warm, plastic-y waterproofness were key. They also made us look a bit like tired penguins.

Off we go!

After a good long, bumpy, awesome ride in the Zodiacs we got to Arrow Camp, and abandoned logging and mining community full of neat old machinery.

And also full of graves of the people who once lived here.

From there we went to Skedans, one of the many old Haida village sites in Gwaii Haanas. A really amazing place with a lot of old poles, homes and history.

I tried to get this photo and the next one beside each other but that seems to be more than Blogspot can handle. The horizontal piece of wood at the base of this tree is actually the small, horizontal pole shown in the photo below. Now it's serving as a nutrient source for the new trees and vegetation.

There is an interesting an ongoing debate about preservation of Haida village sites. Traditionally, poles and other wooden items were allowed to degrade over time and eventually become part of the natural environment again. The Haida have chosen to continue this practice with their old villages in Gwaii Haanas. It's hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of just letting things 'die' like this but at the same time, scrambling to plasticize or fibreglass them doesn't make sense to me either.

The roof beams of a long house, lying over the dugout part of the house at Tanu, another village site we visited on our first day (the walls and other roof pieces have collapsed and disintegrated over time).

The lovely floating Moresby Explorers camp where we stayed overnight and had a fantastic meal, all cooked by the two gents on the porch!

And of course we had a music session on the porch that night.

Such a beautiful spot.

On our second day we started by visiting Athli Gwaii (Lyell Island) where the blockade of logging by the Haida went down in 1985. We visited the bay where the blockaders lived and hung out. It was definitely the most incredible part of the trip for me.

If you ever get a chance to see video footage of the blockade itself (which I highly recommend you do), this is the very road the Elders and young men stood and sat on to prevent the loggers from getting to their cutblock.

We ended the second day by going to Hotsprings Island, which as you can guess has a some natural hotsprings that were really beautiful but my camera died. Oh technology.

The trip was really incredible, and also an awesome break from the raaaatther stressful end of our final two classes. Getting down to Gwaii Haanas can be an expensive and difficult and having the chance to go there with the 19 other students I have come to love and respect so much was an incredible honour. Many of the people who actually live on Haida Gwaii don't have that opportunity (and we also received some financial support from Gwaii Trust, which was amazing as they usual reserve funding opportunities for on-islanders). In summary, come to Haida Gwaii and see how incredible this place is!

Reflections

Apologies for the sad and neglected nature of this blog. I wasn't sure at first if I would keep it up now that the program is finished but after hearing from my mom that apparently some people out there actually read it, I figured I'd better keep going. I'm actually in Vancouver right now for some much needed family time and to get my affairs in order and get my brand spanking new car! This also means I have an actual internet connection, so here's my first post post-program: a ton of photos! Stay tuned for more photos from our trip to Gwaii Haanas.

 

Jags Coffee in Skidegate. My favourite spot for a good cup of coffee and some awesome company.

This is how we do homework in Haida Gwaii. By the light of our headlamps.

The Port Clements Museum. A big room full of raaaaaandom things.

The white raven, the now-deceased mascot of Port. The other thing Port's famous for is the Golden Spruce....also dead.

Old logging equipment outside the Port Museum.

...with students in the shot for scale!

One of the many little islands in the inlet in front of Charlotte. The smoke is from a fire we made on a kayaking trip.

The Goat Man Tree. I don't know where the name comes from but it's mad fun climbing.

Charlotte on a cold, clear morning as I headed into town to catch the bus to school.

Me, red hair, in Port.

The Port dock...wharf....thing. It's lovely and apparently people swim off it in the summer.

CMT - culturally modified tree.

A clear cut block with massive blowdown in Jeskatla.

Moss :)

A huge CMT out in Jeskatla.

An abandoned Haida canoe, likely left due to massive deaths in the carver's family during the smallpox epidemic.