April 29th

15C and sunny - my birds are busy outside and things are looking good out there this morning.
Well I wonder what I can figure out to put on this site today. RHL's pioneering story sure helped fill things in but I'm afraid I am now back to my stuff.
Her is a story that I wrote early on, it's not very long but I'll make it stretch over two days - I Don't think I posted it here before.

 MY CATHEDRAL

Part 1

M

any years ago I lived in the tiny isolated town of McBride.  McBride is deep in the Rocky MountainTrench along the Fraser River the valley floor there is narrow, averaging perhaps a mile wide, widening towards the west and narrowing as you go east.   On each side of this fertile plain, forested and barren side valleys enter some big enough to contain rivers almost as big as the Fraser itself, some containing fast moving glacial streams and some are hanging valleys suspended high above the mother valley they feed.

 I could and maybe one day I shall tell stories about many of these side valleys, but this is a story of the valley in which I found a “cathedral”.

 The valley, which is the subject of this story, has the uninspiring name of Horsey Creek.  But perhaps what better way to hide a treasure than within a name that elicits no curiosity or romance?  I first came to know Horsey Creek as a result of my duties as an Assistant Forest Ranger and then later I discovered the valley for myself.  How lucky I was then and how fortunate I am today to have the memories of my many trips into that area that is so representative of so much of the mountains of interior British Columbia.

Horsey Creek is one of the side rivers that supplies large volumes of water to the upper Fraser, in the winter months it runs crystal clear, its water is so icy that it numbs your lips to take a sip.   In the spring and early summer the water is milky from the melting snows and glaciers that loosen and transport mica schist from the peaks so high above.

 When I first came upon this valley there was a logging road that had been carved along the almost vertical cliffs and back and forth across the river on wooden bridges until perhaps some six miles up, the valley widened and its walls flattened and provided a site for the growth of a forest of huge White Spruce.  This forest site extended for about four miles, sometimes narrow sometimes wide.  Note, I said a site for a forest.

A few years before my arrival this timber stand had been found and it had been sold to a logging company.  This company built the road, sent in fallers and felled almost a third of the timber and removed only a few truckloads before they went bankrupt and abandoned the trees.  Earlier Forestry staff had not monitored the “logging” and had never mapped out what had been done.  This job fell to me along with trying to establish a volume of what had been cut and consequently a value so that the government could share in whatever proceeds there were from the bankruptcy.

 This story could end with the disaster that was thrust upon this beautiful wilderness, but for me it was the beginning and I only hope that I am capable of truly sharing what I saw and what I have felt.