SeaRose Studio Fall 2004 Newsletter

 

Good day to you - a silvery, rainy October day.
 

It is not yet cold here in the Broughton Archipelago, but it is damp and misty. The hills are swathed with veils of mist, fog blankets burrow into valley bottoms. It is pretty tough going for the deer hunters, although about once a week a perfect, sunny fall day invites E.G. and Bill out to the hills. It is rare they bag their deer before November, although we recall last year fondly as E.G. got his two the first day he went hunting. Food collecting is an ongoing activity here. All summer I have been gathering vegetables from the garden. This year we had such warm weather starting in mid-April that my garden’s development was advanced by three weeks. Consequently, I was able to bring to fruition and harvest strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, constant salad greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, basil and peppers from a temporary greenhouse. We had a steady supply of beets and greens, broccoli, carrots and potatoes. From the sea we have feasted on prawns, ling cod, halibut, crab and salmon, salmon, salmon. As we move into the winter months clams will be added to the crab and prawn catch. We have smoked both salmon and prawns, canned and froze salmon. Now, just the venison is left to be preserved for the winter table.

 

I had attempted to begin a summer newsletter but time moved so swiftly through the sunny months and into fall that I had to scrap what I had written and begin again. The best thing (besides the food) that comes with me into autumn are the memories of the wonderful people I met this year and how they enriched my life in myriad ways. I want to thank everyone who came for an art retreat, you know who you are. I enjoyed all of you so much. You inspired me in numerous ways.


 

Norma connected me with her cohorts at the card printing/art supply shop in Qualicum. I have created art cards of six or seven different images and sales have been brisk as well as informative about popular images. The cards are an affordable and flexible vehicle for getting your info and images out there. You never get stuck with three hundred cards that just won’t sell. So thanks Norma, and Bonnie and Bill.


 

Linda and Carol, who found me on the Internet, came all the way from Ontario for their BC adventure. We had a powerful painting week together in July, and after they left I spent the better part of the next three weeks painting passionately.


 

August brought John Harper and Mary Morris. They have been studying the rock rings that edge the clam shell beaches at low water slack and after much inquiry and research have deduced that these were created by the people digging for clams over thousands of years. There is a short piece about the clam gardens in Bill Proctor’s and my book, “Full Moon Flood Tide” and John contacted Bill about this topic. John put on a special slide show presentation about the clam gardens in Proctor’s living room and a few lucky people got to see it. His work is quite fascinating and we are pleased to be kept in the loop.


 

September brought friends and family. My daughter brought her new love to meet us (a great guy) and her wonderful gifts of massage and song. My dear Uncle Jim and Aunt Jean made a visit that went to the deepest core of heartwarming family love. Their appreciation and enjoyment of what we had to offer them meant so much to me. I think often of their gifts of musical evenings with the guitar, long conversations about heartfelt family matters and lots of laughter while setting for, heading, cooking and devouring prawns.


 

I had planned only to touch on these matters but as I wrote I truly realized how deeply wonderful this summer was for the people that arrived on my doorstep. Thank you everyone. You all helped to make this the best summer I have had in years.


 

And so we move inexorably into winter. Pottery production for the Sointula Fair is underway. E.G. is a wonderful potter, creating beautiful large bowls, smaller ones as well. He asked me to paint a design in one of his big bowls with a cobalt blue underglaze. I enjoyed it so much I painted about twenty five pieces with images of fish, flowers, mermaids, black panthers and the amazingly popular cat motif, inspired by our own “personality plus” Abyssian cat, Beasty Girl.


 

My garden, which desperately needs some fall cleaning up (I will get to it, I swear), is full of little chirping yellow birds. Bill and I did our October bird count last week. We were pleased to come upon 60-70 black turnstones on the rocks in the Burdwood Group. There is something so appealing about these charming little birds. They move as one, turning from front to back as they circle around and land back where they started. We shut the motor off, drifted up close and watched them for awhile.


 

The bad news is that Viner River has very few chum salmon in it. We fear that the fry that came out of the river and swam around the Burdwood Group were overcome by sea lice from the nearby fish farm. For four years now we have been observing the fry after they hatch and leave the river in March and April. We find them in their usual places, small shallow bays and coves. We have seen them laden with sea lice and observed how handicapped they appeared. It is hard to describe the sense of futility, despair and heartbreak experienced when a community works so hard to rebuild and enhance a run of salmon. Viner River Chum run had been decimated by logging damage to habitat; now we see increasing numbers of salmon suddenly plummet due to proximity to a fish farm. The eagles, wolves and bears are going pretty hungry in Viner this year. It is the blackest of black ironies that wild salmon stocks suffer so much from the presence of farmed salmon.


 

We got to go with Howard Pattinson of Tide Rip Tours on a grizzly bear viewing trip last week, probably the last one of his season. We saw up to twenty grizzly bears in an amazing array of colours. I had thought of them as simply brown but their coloration went all the way from a dark honey, through a cinnamon colour to a deep chocolate. They were mostly mom and cub trios with a couple of mature individual females and a trio of three year old siblings. It was wonderful to feel not only safe in the raised viewing platform but as well that our impact on the bears was minimal. Howard told me that the presence of people was keeping the big older males away from that section of the spawning channel. The result of their decreased presence was an increase in the amount of salmon the females were able to eat before hibernation. This has an impact on their ability to bear healthy young in the spring. The population seems to be increasing steadily. Whether this is actually a good thing for grizzlies in the long run remains to be seen. There is much to learn and the two hours that we were able to view them in the channel went by quickly. Thanks Howard, for making the trip possible for us.


 

So dear people, the sun is out and we must go now to set the trap for crab. I could keep on writing but two pages is my newsletter limit. Do please email me if you have any comments or queries. I enjoy hearing from you. Bye for now,

 

Yvonne