Well, that wasn't so bad....

 Like many others, I recently found myself saying "Thank goodness this year is over!  Good riddance, 2021!"

And then I started going through photos for an end-of-year blog and realized - I didn't have such a bad year.   Sure, I miss live concerts and festivals, street markets and parades, craft fairs and garage sales.  I miss in-class learning with Elder College and local arts centres.  I miss seeing old friends and family too far away to visit in these covid-times.  But so many things brought me great joy. Despite covid, despite rainstorms called atmospheric rivers, despite floods, summer heat domes and winter snow storms, and severe damage to main highways, and vet bills and car bills and rising costs of living....I still had a pretty good year.  Isn't that right, Maggie?

Every year is a good year fer me, Mama! 

I hiked and camped with a friend I've known since we were six. Dozens of hikes, all over this beautiful island on which I live.  Hikes along coast lines and in forests, by waterfalls and lakes, up mountains and through valleys.  Familiar hikes and new hikes, easy trails and harder ones. On sunny days and on rainy ones.  We hiked and camped. And camped and hiked. And every day was a great day.

Sally and I at Christie Falls, Ladysmith BC

Elk Falls, Campbell River

Notch Hill, Nanoose Bay

Paradise Meadows, Strathcona Park

On our hikes we saw birds of all sizes, we saw seals and sealions, we saw little critters like mice, vole squirrels and raccoon. We saw beautiful flowers and magnificent trees.  We are so blessed to share a world with such natural diversity. 

I spent a week in the northern part of the island, in an ocean front cabin with my sister-in-law, and we explored towns like Port Alice and Alert Bay and Port Hardy. We saw whales and sea lions and beautiful inlets.  I wandered those beaches too, and photographed eagles and listened to the waves and watched the sunrise and the sunset.

Alert Bay

Orca - one of  many whales that cruised our coast this year

Sea Lions

Sunset at Cluxewe Resort, near Port McNeill

In October, I got to meet up with my daughter who flew up from California while I took the ferry over to the mainland for a weekend together, during which we also visited the colourful Fisherman's wharf in Steveston and met up with my brother and his partner.  Nothing beats family time, especially when you've been parted for awhile.

Family time!

Kiddo at Boundary Bay Park

Fishermans Wharf, Steveston BC

And then, of course, there is my shadow, my fur kid, my beautiful companion.  Maggie can no longer do the hikes, and prefers to stay home with a sitter than to camp or vacation in new surroundings.  But together we went to all the local parks,  and we wandered the beaches, and we moseyed around the neighbourhood every day.

Rathtrevor Park

Craig Bay

Eaglecrest Beach

And on the beaches we explored tidal pools, watched seals and herons and otters and other delights of nature:

Jellyfish resting on shiny stones 

We enjoyed the spring flowers and the fall leaves, 

We dressed for the weather when it rained, and we paddled in the water when it was warm out.  And sometimes we just sat, and thought, and breathed deeply.  

We goin' walking in the rain, Mama?

Me and my buddy, enjoying a rest

And for all those joys, and for all that beauty, we give thanks for another year on this beautiful earth.

So farewell, 2021.  Thanks for the ride.  And welcome, 2022 - may we share as many pleasures with you as we have with your predecessor.  

Happy New Year, everyone.  

(If your year wasn't as joyful as mine,  if you faced the loss of loved ones, of your home, of your income and livelihood, if you suffered from the fires, floods, covid, and transportation disruptions, then may this year's end ease your sorrow and stress, and may 2022 bring you peace and comfort.)

Frosty face and snowy sheltie

 

Happy Holidays!

Bet you thought I'd gone for good!  A new hard drive, some frustrating challenges, a new photo-editor, and....a new-to-me camera!  It's a steep learning curve for this luddite, and I'm still working on replacing all the settings and software I lost (like my preferred font, all my labels and past blogger layout, etc.), but I still have fantasies of returning to blogging. I like writing and I like posting photos with prose - things that are rather limited on facebook.  However, only a very small handful of people actually read my blogs, even when I do a link to it on facebook, so is it worth the time, effort, and frustration?
Maybe.  Some of the eight or so blog followers have been with me since the early 2000s, when I used to blog for a sanctuary, and most have been with me since 2008 when I began this blog. And I value that sort of friendship.  Plus, sharing photos and stories is fun. 

So, here we are....my first attempt at making a card with the new photo-editor.  This photo was taking last week with my compact Sony, the camera I bought a year or two ago but which has been a big disappointment (especially with regard to sharpness, colour capture and the zoom feature) compared to my earlier versions of the same camera.  But Maggie doesn't care - she just likes posing for the camera!  I've done a bit of photo-editing on this to not only turn it into a card but also to sharpen the image. 

The following photos were taken with the new-to-me Canon Rebel I bought at my favourite household consignment store this week. It is much like the Canon I inherited from my sister ten years ago (which finally gave up the ghost).  It's an oldy - a Rebel T3 - but very lightly used and in outstanding condition, and it came with two lenses (one a telephoto 75-300) as well as charger, a nice case, battery and card.  I took the photos at the Wildlife Refuge near me and I'm happy with the results.  I've done no editing to the images except to add the watermark. 

So between a new hard drive, a new-to-me camera,  and the new photo editing program I just signed up for, I will hopefully get back to blogging.  Meanwhile, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and stay safe! 

I'm still here

Been without my computer as I received the black screen of death a while ago.  The hard drive died.  I can't blog from my phone and as I'm new to the smartphone, I couldn't figure out how to even access the blog. 

Just got the computer back from the shop and all my software programs are gone including my watermark program etc which I paid for when I downloaded it. The computer geeks said they recovered everything, installed a new hard drive, and set everything up the way it was before. NOT!

I hate technology. 

If/when I get this straightened out, I'll post some pretty pictures. 

Nile Creek Trail(s) - Two trails, a year apart.

Some days I think my mind is failing faster than my body - I wrote this entry the evening of  July 6th, had the photos all watermarked and ready to add first thing in the morning ..... and promptly forgot about it.  I discovered it, unposted,  when I came here today to do another post.  So here ya go, oh patient ones, a rather belated post of a hike from over a month ago:

The problem with not blogging regularly is that I have no permanent record of some of my previous hikes - when I did them, how tough they were, how long they took.  My writing on Facebook  tends to be minimal in these details, plus Facebook tends to arbitrarily delete old posts.  I do know that it was about this time last year that my hiking buddy and I did Nile Creek West - a hike which, for me, was one of the toughest ones I'd done in many years - log bridges,  slick boards or thin logs with (or more often without) ropes to hang on to, rustic steps and round slabs of tree to help us through the boot-sucking mud.  But it was one of so much beauty - a dozen waterfalls, so much greenery, birds, berries, creeks, trees that touch the sky and were so wide around that it would take several people holding hands to encircle their trunks.  

Sections of Upper (West) Nile Creek Trail

Some sights along the way

Waterfalls on Upper (West) Nile Creek Trail

More waterfalls....

So many waterfalls!

Our lunch spot....by a waterfall.

The previous autumn,  buried in a long blog post about many autumn hikes, I had mentioned hiking part of Nile Creek East (also called the Lower Nile Creek trail).  I had gone with someone whose pace was not well matched to mine.  It was a gentler hike than Nile Creek West, and not as dramatic, but the speed at which the other person insisted on going spoiled it for me and I swore that one day I would go back to enjoy it.  

This week my regular hiking buddy and I did just that - we explored Nile Creek East at our well matched pace with lots of time to stop and enjoy fresh berries, listen to birds, discuss unusual plants or trees or whatever else caught our eye.  

Large white fungi

Huckleberries - lots of yummy huckleberries!

Monitropa Uniflora - also known as ghost plant, ghost pipe or Indian pipe. 

One tree dies and serves as food (and a ladder!) for another. 

Okay, we did get a little confused as there were several forks in the path and very little in the way of signs.   Never mind, we had compasses, common sense, a basic mental layout of the area, and although we did hit muddy bogs and steep inclines and took a few wrong turns, we made it back in one piece. Even better, we had a great time doing it. 

Only one log bridge, with a sturdy cable rail, on the East (Lower) Nile Creek Trail

An early-falling maple leaf drifts lazily down the creek

We called this a |"Neapolitan rock" as it was chocolate on the bottom, vanilla in the middle and strawberry on the top! 

One of the highlights was a barred owl.  I've seen barred owls on several of my hikes in the past couple of years. Invariably, I hear the sound of agitated robins, and when I look carefully in the trees where the birds are fluttering about in near panic, there camouflaged by tree bark will be a barred owl. That is what happened this time. Just as we spotted it, it looked over its shoulder at us. 

The owl permitted me to take a few more shots before flying off.  A few minutes further down the trail, we heard the robin ruckus again.  Just as we rounded a curve in the trail, our barred owl drifted down right in front of us, facing us with wings outspread and lightly striped belly facing us as it gently slipped down into the sword ferns not five feet in front of us.  My reflexes were not quick enough to catch the owl parachuting down, and once in the ferns where he hopped around doing a little owl dance he was partially obscured by foliage until once again there was lift off and he flew away.  That is one image I may not have on my camera's memory card, but it is certainly in my cranial memory!  

Our plan was to do a loop trail, going further than I had walked (or run!) on my previous visit.  We found a sign directing us to the "Donkey Trail" and ascended a steep narrow path to another wider, flatter cross trail.  Along that trail we discovered vanilla plant in seed, wild blackberries and raspberries, and - a donkey.  

Vanilla plant in seed

Wild blackberries

No, not that kind of donkey - an old donkey engine.  I would have been more thrilled to find a real donkey, the kind that goes hee-haw (one of my favourite animals!), but at least we figured out why it was called the Donkey Trail.  

Donkey engine on the donkey trail

We then continued along until we were reached the point where one would go under the highway to connect to Nile Creek West, at which point we took a trail back down, sticking close to the creek whenever we came to unmarked forks.  That decision led us through some mucky mud, and entailed a bit of bushwhacking, but we found some lovely spots and ate our lunch sitting on a log beside a tree where a redbreasted sapsucker was also enjoying his lunch.  After a refreshing break, we headed on and eventually got back to familiar territory and the trail that would take us back to the car. 

Our lunchtime companion - a sapsucker

I haven't done much hiking lately - between my hiking/walking friends' surgeries, record-breaking temperatures, and covid restrictions, we cancelled more than committed to our days out.  And Maggie has had some health issues (arthritic hocks, a systemic bacterial infection that affected her paws, and a few other age-and-allergy related issues) so even my walks with her have been minimal.  So my hiking buddy and I were both somewhat out of shape. East Nile Creek (aka Lower Nile Creek)  would be an easy hike for a fit person, a moderate one (at least in places) for relatively out of shape seniors. We took 4.5 hours to go 5.5 miles ( just under 9 km).  But as I said, we take our time to enjoy the scenery, to discuss what we see, to take photos, and to break for lunch. 

For me, hiking is all about the journey, not the speed and distance.  And a beautiful journey it was. 

A peaceful and pretty spot for a rest