Shady Beach Duty

.. Glen called time out from working for a drink of water ...

I was on Shady Beach Duty today.

LaRue owns the lease for the CPR land at this spot.

It is the area that we use as a driveway that parallels the track, a lovely spot, one that we need for shade, now that the old apple tree was cut down.

For some time boaters from Sicamous have come to Annis Bay, enjoying this spot.

Of course, the boaters are welcome to any spot on the beach, but fifty feet of the land from the tracks is owned by the CPR and LaRue owns the rest to high water.

Those are the pieces of land that we are tending.

I went down to do a little work there this morning.

Glen came after he had finished his bike ride with Connor and Nicco (Richard’s old boarder) along the top of Larch Hills.

The Johnson baby-trio were there doing some pushing and shoving about whose turn it was to be on the yellow rope swing.

three of the five boats lined up 
along the beach area can be seen here

as well, Glen is holding the new well-loved
beach driftwood Gandolph staff

I am still at rest.

Glen told Michael, Alice and Betty to ask their mother about the Golden Rule, something they told him, they haven’t heard about yet. I don’t know what she told them, but they came back to the yellow rope swing, ready to take just one turn each and go to the back of the line.

When no other child is there, I might let them ride the swing forever. They think uninterrupted (for them) swingtime should also happen, even when there is a line-up. So we practiced -- one turn each – swing out, swing in , grandmother grab the rope and hold it so it doesn’t accidently go out again, and then go to the back of the line.

I had been clearing the Oregon Grape Berry bushes from the path this morning, making it easy for adults to get to the swing. Children just scramble over the logs, across a plank bridge and scramble up the side of the cliff. Glen was carrying tarps full of debris away. Bonnie Wyora joined us with clippers and a rake, laughing at what she found around one tree trunk in her pseudo archeological dig around it.

Photo: Bonnie Johnson

a random artful feather

She said if she had something precious as a child, or even know and didn’t know what to do with it, she would put it down close to the trunk of a tree to keep it safe. Now she was getting to uncover the treasures of other people who thought that way.

Glen slowed me down a bit on the area around the swing, pointing out that there are some other areas that also need help. And that I could leave a bit of vegetation under the trees. And besides, he said, 2 men are going to come into this space with pick axes and in a couple of hours, level this off enough for one large tent. Hearing this, Bonnie was quick to offer her 10 person tent and her hammocks. We walked to the left in the thicket, to just the right place for the hammocks, Glen pointed out, – no blocking the path through the forest that others will take through there.

Glen pointed to a low blue rope around a tree saying that the rope is killing the tree. He took it off and sure enough since the rope was placed on the tree, the circumference of the tree had grown and the rope had cut way into the bark. There was a long log across 2 trees, and other camps used to put a tarp up there to keep themselves out of the rain. Now only the log is left and the ropes high in two trees. So that will be a job for tomorrow. No use destroying the tall, tall Douglas firs because of our ignorance or maybe our lack of respect for the tree.

Finding old copper and black coloured tin cans, so rusted that the sides break away when I pick them up, or a telegraph wire anchored into the ground, transmittors half broken and the wire very hard to pull up, I began to think of how many people must have been in this spot. Glen said if we dug much deeper at that spot, we will uncover a midden of items and that perhaps we should leave well enough alone.

Midden?

The word was only partially familiar to me. That is, I could spell it but I didn’t know what it meant. I told him, good job, throwing a word into the conversation that I couldn’t bring up a definition for. He started with, on the coast the Indigenous people would eat and leave the shells behind which would build up ….

Later on in the day, and tired, I laid down on the beach for a rest, wondering aloud about Indigenous legends concerning the cedar and the Douglas fir tree. I couldn’t remember which of them is a clumsy but kind and friendly giant who used to walk around accidentally knocking people and things away, now turned into a tree. I am sure it is the tree with the roots which reach out and knock people over as they walk through the woods today, or at least that is the truth of that legend.

And the tree also remains kind, giving people its bark for hats, clothing and blankets, its wood for canoes, its soft branches to lay on. “It must have been the cedar tree”, I said to Glen. He replied, “The tree that we just cleaned up to be a walking log for the children is driftwood cedar. Look at its roots.” If any of my readers come to visit the beach, they will have to look at those roots. Odd. Still giving today in the form of a log walk for children practicing balance.

I laid on my back, looking up the at the boles (a forester’s word for the trunk of a tree). The green boughs of the tree hung gracefully, the russet coloured wood of their branches bowed gently up to the sky, the bright light of the sun filtered out by the needles of the tree.

Boaters from the Sicamous condos, who sometimes use this beach, had been coming straight to the beach, then slowing down, noticing the 2 new docks in the water and the black and yellow No Trespassing sign on the tree. They slowed down and cruised back and forth, looking for a new space, the first one siding up to the high pile of rocks that marks the end of the shady beach. Then dropping anchor there. “They are surprised that the area behind the beach is now inhabited”, Glen said, “as well as surprised at the new docks”.

As the day progressed, other boats joined the first one, lining up, dropping anchor, but no one ever getting off a boat, nor none of the beautiful wake board boats ever taking their riders for a ski. Just sitting there in the sun, occasionally riding out a way on a floatie and then back to their boat. By the end of the day 8 boats were there – three by the willow at the sandy beach and 5 lined up just to the left of our docks, their anchors dropped.

“Those anchors aren’t really heavy enough to keep the boats steady against the current of the water,” said Glen. “The boats will eventually slide down closer to our dock until they will have to start up their motors and move back a bit.”

A little later Glen was still sitting right beside me as I lay resting and I heard Glen shout, “Which is your boat? I am going to climb on it and jump off. If you jump off of my dock, I want to jump off of your boat.  Which one is it?”

“Hey, I was just going to jump off of the dock,” said the man who had swum over and put his beer on the edge of the platform.

“Well, I just want to jump off of your boat. Which one is it?”

“Fair enough”, said the man taking his beer and swimming back to his boat.

Janet Pilling and her friend, Tanya, on paddle boards

Janet and her friend, Tania, came later to go out on their paddle boards. Tania’s is a new, deluxe paddle board, purchased for her by Patrick, her husband. She is steady and sure on the paddle board, jumping off and on at will. Janet is also steady. We have 2 paddle boards at the beach and only one paddle, so Janet’s paddle really works for her, for she always has access to a board. The woman go out further than we let the children go. “I wish she would wear her life jacket”, her husband says. She makes me wear my helmet when I quad.” “Is it the law to wear your helmet?”, I ask. “Yes,” he says.

Dave Card arrives with his son, Caleb. They bring a coleman stove and a pot to the beach, preparing to make instant soup for supper and stay over for the night. Miranda has been trying to light a fire with a magnifying glass. The camp fire. She positions the sun on a piece of bark. Just as it seems as though it will ignite, someone walks through the field of the sun and the light goes out. She tries three times.

On the fourth time, it is I who walk through and ruined the experiment. She continues to try, this time on a piece of bark in the fire rim. Still no hit. I wonder if 2 magnifying glasses would be help, for I notice that we have three at the house. Dave Card is beside her, now with fuel and as I walk away, I notice the fire is going.

The children are elated, thinking she has started the fire with the magnifying glass. She has said to me, “Well, I don’t have to worry, giving this magnifying glass to any of the children that they might start a fire. It just isn’t going to happen.”

Well, not the end of my day, but the end of my typing.

Arta