Homeless: Discontent Part III

Homeless: Discontent Part III

I am homeless. Clearly I am not broken down living on the street. I could rent a place to live if I choose to. I have not made that choice in the last two years.
For two years less two months I have been working out here at Discovery in the North West Territory. I have been staying in a camp for six weeks at a time with two weeks off. Maintaining a place, through paying rent is clearly a waste of money. As a result I can not call any place mine. To fill the need of a place to be I have returned to a place that was always partly mine, I have started to say withe my parents during my time off something of a default.

So I returned to a default, one seldom used for the long term but, logical for now. The arrangement is economical for me, I pay in to the food bill, and once or twice my labour has been used as well. This set up is made favourable by the log cabin on the property. The old house, gives me the privacy I want with the added bonus of good acoustics and a wood stove. But it is not mine, it will never be mine. It will always be the families, there will always be a mix of stuff; Mine mixed in with the stuff left behind by the sister and the stuff that has always been there. It is also located near Nakusp a town that I can not call home even though I grew up there. I get cabin fever too quickly out there.

My Homeless state is something of a function of the taking this job and the time leading up to that choice. During the spring of 2006, I was finishing up my degree and having a rough time of it. My interest in schooling was waning again, I have a meta cycle in my life that brings me in and out of school periodically, but that is for its own post. Because of my fading interest in school my interest and efforts to apply to grad school were falling short. I had ordered up a few info packages and application forms but I had not really done the proper research needed to do that seriously. So I defaulted to taking the first good job that came along.

Taking this job has lead to a from of mental homelessness. When I did not pursue grad school and therefore did not get accepted I was left with no where to go. Grad school would have given me a place to live, because the school that would accept me would make its city my home. Choosing where to live for me. Instead my work makes it possible for me to live any where not too far from an airport. But my work also makes living any were seem pointless. As long as I am renting not buying and as long as I am out here for six weeks I have no solid motive to hunt for a place.

I have traveled too little even with in Canada to have enough of a base line to know which towns I want to live in. But I want to live some where I can call mine. I am too much of a homebody to want to live this disconnected life forever.

Right now I partly live out my car, keeping a chest of useful things in it for when I land. Its a good thing too, I always have a change of civilian cloths for when I come out of the bush. It lets me head of to visit friends with out hesitation, but my car is not home. It has helped me survey a few towns. I have taken a liking to Penticton, but I remain unconvinced of the long term appeal of that town.



Vancouver has many charms but I would not want to do it two weeks at a time I would want it full time or not at all. All in all I don't know where I want to live just yet. I suspect that when I get my ass in gear I will start to seriously apply to grad schools, I will eventually get accepted and that will bring my original plan to completion. Leaving me with a life style that lets me sleep in my own bed more nights then not.

Oh The Games We Play

Northern Lights Entertainment report.

This will be a departure from the traditional entertainment report for I will not be talking about media I have brought with me to work for my enjoyment. This rotation I tried to keep the media load light in the overly optimistic view that if I have less to distract me I will do more writing. That is failing so far as I picked up on my last day in town a new tech toy, the
iPod touch. It is more hand held computer then iPod, and if itunes would ever let me down load the new software update it would be even more of one.

Tech toys while fun and distracting are not my focus. Rather it is what was done on my time off. First the short summery: Some last minuet shopping in Kelowna a few days before Christmas, Madness. A good Friday night drunk to shut down from that madness, coffee with some of the old K town crowd. Kelowna was followed with a trip to Nakusp, which was framed with interesting drives over the mountains. Thankfully I have Serenity, which handled fine even at Deep Creak proving that Subaru are Suberb (Blame Aimee for that one).




Christmas was in Nakusp where I had to cut down a tree on Christmas Eve day because on one else in the family was in the mood for one. In a break with tradition the better part of the gifts under the tree were from me. All of which went over well, including and much to my surprise, socks. Which were accepted with all the appearance of joy. The latest news is that the socks are still being worn and have aided in the distracting of board mind.

The last gift was delivered late, on the 4th of the New Year unwrapped and unexpected. The package, the Settlers of Catan it is board game the goal of which is to build your civilization. Now civilization-building games are not new to me but tabletop forms are. This is a game type I have always played on a computer.



Catan proved to by addictive, which is ultimately why I picked it up I was already addicted from Christine's introduction over Christmas time and I know it would go over well with Risk playing crew in Penticton. I had underestimated the appeal. The first night there we played four games almost non-stop till nearly 2am. The second night was not as long but almost worse as we had started to add the expansion packs. By the end of the weekend our maps had grown to huge proportions and the game play was fast and chaotic. At times it felt more time was being spent setting up the map then playing it. The beauty of the Catan franchise is that every one is active even if it is not your turn you are still involved as trade between players can happen at nearly any time, you can improve you out come next turn with a good trade.


Oh the Games We Play.
It was my intent to deliver a fun present instead I spawned an addict, I am sorry, but I will join a game the next time I am in those parts.

So this year I learned trust the gut, give gifts that feel right even if they are a little silly and gaming is good for your mental health.

Spring and Summer

Spring and Summer



The 21st of June saw the passing of the summer solstice, completely devoid of dreams. In fact that midsummer's night was almost devoid of night. Summer started that day as well. Summer came at the tail end of a spring that left me feeling cold. The spring was coming out of a year with too much winter .



Having returned from a short vacation in the Okanagan where summer had taken hold and the Kootenees where spring had lost its youth, I was struck by the different evolution of the seasons between the North and the South. The pace of the transition was the most striking. The Kootenees handle spring the best of the three places I have lived taking it on with energy and vigor that is highlighted by the snowy winters. The Okanagan does summer with great skill and energy, its springs are easy to miss as the lack of contrast with its soft winters make it some thing of a non season. The North it's strength is winter, but it still fits in the other three seasons on an accelerated schedual. So to the South to see green explode.






The Kootenees, Mountains, trees with lakes thrown in for good measure. Of the three places I have dwelled it is by a good measure the wettest, with parts falling under the banner of rain forest. In the parts I call home the snow melts starting in late February or early March. The melt is followed by the brown time, when the flattened grass and bracken ferns dominated the landscape. For the land back home this brown time is one of the few periods when a person can freely move about with out being tangled in grasses and ferns up to shoulder hight or bogged down in snow. Out of the brown, the fiddle heads of the brackens emerge and grass shoots appear forming the first delicate signs of life. The trees are slower to burst forth, but when the leaves of the birches and cotton woods take too leaf and the pine and fir put forth new growth everything takes on a bright green fresh look. This burst of green is the heart of the quickening and peaks within a week. Once this burst is over the green darkens and the growth slows to a steady pace which will persist until the heat of the summer pushes the plants to take a break. While the Kootenees get toasty for a few months in B.C. it is the Okanagan that specializes in heat and summer.




June, when the Kootenees is in mid spring two hundred kilometers west the Okanagan is in the start of summer. I spent a large part of my June brake in Kelowna where after deplaning and getting out of the airport I was hot for the first time in months. Even late May the heat was on, the temperatures were well into the 30's. For a man that has spent the majority of the last year north of sixty with far too many months of winter heat was a shock and a blessing. The heat was visible with swiming pools being occupied, tar in pavement melting in the sun, and the sun was bright and blinding off the freshly washed cars, it was summer. All that would change between the then and the end of August would be the severity of the traffic back log towards the floating bridge and the crowding on the beaches would increase. I look forward to in a few weeks time returning to the heat. Which leaves the state of the north left to explore.



Currently I am nearing the half way point of this work cycle. As I write it is the 30th of June and summer did not appear until the 21st, before that we passed through a time of cold rain and cloudy days with chill winds blowing off the lakes with the last of the ice still holding on. When I flew out on the 31st of May large areas of lakes were ice covered and on the larger lakes the ice road was the last ice hold out as it was the thickest ice. The ice is gone now and it has for the last couple weeks. It has been hot and muggy with the temperatures are around 25 and there is the continued threat of thunder storms that does not come through.



The spring that this summer came out of was less well defined then the Kootenee's season, it is a slow plodding transition. Much later then their southern counter parts the trees come to life, the buds and leafs are small and slow to open and as they open they retain the light green and delicate look of the first opening for weeks rather then days. A northern summer is not complete with out its buzzing heralds of misery the flys, horse flies, black flies, mosquetoes and countless other bitting sucking and other critters that make a living by trying to eat you and any other animals. The flies live in have haste, for no matter how hot it get or how long the day, they know that it will end. And end it will, sooner then would be hoped.




Space, latitudes and seasons, two places almost side by side can differ hugely in character, yet the differences of east and west diminish as you move north. For the South there is a long spring with the summer moving slowly out of a long spring full of growth or summer bursting fully formed from a nearly ignored spring. In the north spring is long but it is the early part of spring when life still has its weak hold that lasts and summer turns on with a definite start, to be met with an equally quick end. The South gives me bright flowers and tight mini skirts, the north bright nights and bites at night.