Mail the Opera

Nothern Lites Presents Mail the Opera: A Farce.

Post Card Prelude.

In the beginning there was a post card. I found it in the Yellowknife air port gift shop. It was pretty with a picture of the Northern Lights one better then I could ever take. I picked it up to send to a friend who I knew would like the random surprise of it. I picked it up without having an address to send it to or even a stamp to send it with. Those failures were quickly fixed. Armed and ready I wrote out my note in my best(worst) script and pondered how to send it on its way.

I was at camp, no roads to town at that time, and there was chaos around the planes. Lots of flights coming in but I was always else where when they came in. A week after my arrival I sent it off with Doug, the site manager. This almost worked. It got passed off to the chief Geologist and some how made its way back to Doug.

Through Doug it traveled to Saskatoon Sask, where after a week in hiding it was cleared out of the depths of a brief case. I have been told that an extra note was added to it. I had spent some a few seconds worrying about the content of that extra message, but all people in the loop have a good sense of humour. My worries were replaced with a good laugh and an interesting story to relay. Ultimately the card was well received and unlike other items it was received.

License Fugue.

Events parallel to those of the post card. On the day that post card started its journey out of the store to BC, I was on the last leg of my trip north. As is routine I had stayed the night in Edmonton. As is often the case I slept poorly. Worse then normal, that night. I slept for 20 minuets at a time. I was dead in the morning. Which is how I managed to forget my Drivers License. It was folded up in a spent West Jet boarding pass. I was able to sweet talk my way through the air port.

Once at the gate I tried to call the hotel. My phone was dead, thankfully airports are the last hold out of pay phones. It was easy to call the hotel and have it sent south to family. So far so good. It made it home in a little over a week. During that week I picked up what I was told was an address that would get things to me.

This package like the post card before it spent a week in hiding before it got sent out. By this time my rotation was nearing the half way mark, and speed in postage became key. I tracked the package online. I saw what day it arrived in Yellowknife.

I was in Yellowknife. It had vanished. two and an half days in town talking to all the people at all the places it logically could have shown up, and nothing, nada, zip.
After those couple days I had became convinced I should become a Spy master and say to hell with the geology.



B.C. Coda.

A day or two after my pointless running around Yellow Knife, I was back in BC. I had a busy time off planned. Mostly things went as planned, and it was a generally sanguine time. Its vacation like qualities were masked by things like a trip to the dentist. As I was running around half of BC I had concluded that drivers license was fully lost.

So as I was waiting to go into to the dentists chair, I set the wheels in motion to replace my lost ID. Because I had lost or placed securely in a safe place some other key papers, I had to start from scratch. Two cities later, the day of my departure for the north I was able at last to start the replacement of the lost drivers license. It was in the mail after I came back up north.

I have not yet seen this new version. I have no faith in the post so the new one can wait for me to come to it. My temporary one will be valid long enough to get me home where I can take my new peace of plastic into my hands.

For the musical score to this opera please send $1dollar, cash, to
Po Box 111, Nowhere drive,
Nowhere BC, N0W 0R1.

Don't Touch the Glass

Don't Touch the Glass

Bars and beers, I am a fan of beers, but it is bars that fascinate me. Across all walks of life folks head out to relax and to take a load off. Sooner or later most people will end up spending some of there time sipping a brew trading BS with their friends or strangers at bar over a jug of the house special. The last year and a half has seen me spending more time in pubs then average. This is partially a function of money and partly a response to work. It is a function of money because now I can afford to go out when I can go out, and a response to the dry nature of my camp.

The semi-enforced sobriety at work has made going out for drinks part of my routine to separate work life from life back in civilization. A beer will never taste better then after 6 weeks dry. Ironically before working in the bush I could have gone six weeks with out a drink but the choice was never removed from me. A few drinks after I land back in civilization do wonders for unwinding the stress of weeks of continuous work. These drinks have to happen somewhere and alone in a hotel room is not my choice venue. Which after my abandoning nightclubs I have confined my substance consumption to domestic environments and pubs.

Pubs are not as mystifying as Nightclubs. For a start a person can be heard over the music or the TV, which is playing in the background not blasting the floor to shreds. This opens up normal channels of communication that are blocked in noise saturated environment of a Night club, where body language is king and you won’t make it if far without the latest bling. Though bars also collect there own species of patrons, the nature of pubs is more a function of geography then night clubs as clubs tend to cluster around the center of towns, pubs are more randomly distributed. To skip past a long winding paragraph, the size of smoking rooms in bars reflects on the demographics of neighborhood where the bar is situated. Smoking rooms decrease in size in pubs located near the center of cities and expand away from urban centers. This can be examined with a truly meaningless comparison of a few joints I have visited over the last year for one reason or other. I will start in the south and move north for no real reason.

At the Southern extreme of my range I frequent one or two places in Penticton, Of those two I can not recall the floor plan well enough to recall the presence or absence of smoking rooms, of the second it has one, tucked away in a corner, It also has a large balcony. It is located on the second floor in a down office block. I can not tell if its location or marketing that result in it having a base of regulars that fall either in to the student type or business professional type, but that appears to be who ends up there. Due to Penticton's gentle climate, for the majority of the year the absence of a smoking room is made up with its large balcony. Which was not in use on my last visit, which was in early January. This being Penticton any observation made during the winter will be negated by tourist influx during the summer.

Moving north some 60 odd Km lands me in Kelowna. Where on a more then a few Friday nights I have gone out for beers. Due to the friends choice of venue I have ended up repeatedly in one of the two western themed clubs/bars that have the city as their host. The older more established centrally located and marginally classier joint has less then a quarter of its floor space devoted to smokers. The small size of the smoking room made it one of the first places I observed the terrarium like qualities of smoking rooms. When the smoking room is small and confining like that the sense of us and them is strongly apparent. In fact some of the smoking rooms have the same proportions as a standard aquarium. The general flow of people is to hang out on or more likely around the dance floor and moving into the smoking room only when the craving takes over. This pattern differs from the bottom of the market. The red neck joins.

The second Western themed bar is in neighborhood with a poorer reputation and making a good effort to maintain it. The bar was built on the empty lot that once held a grocery store, and now hosts a sad attempt at a western bar. This is the second incarnation of that building as a bar/club, I never made there in its first incarnation but my loss is less then minor. It plays at being some kind of nightclub; it has a DJ and a dance floor. The dance floor is nearly always empty and the DJ is not the cocky young type seen at flashier joints but a scruffy nearly middle-aged dude who has not been hip in 15 years at least. In this sadness is a smoking room, half the place safely behind glass packed full when the dance floor is empty. Here every one hangs out on the smoking side, coming out to get drinks and some times dragged out by the rare man there with his girl friend who has an affinity for the song and has developed the urge to dance. My most northerly venue lacks a theme or pretense, which after the mail order western effects is a refreshing change.

So there I was in a bar a small working class pub in satellite community of Kelowna known as Winfield. Foul weather had caused me to delay my departure to Nakusp by a day, which did nothing to improve the driving conditions but that is a separate issue. My only reason for being in Winfield was a hotel close to the airport and away form the city traffic. It also has the advantage of being in walking distance to a pub. The working class nature of that joint was made transparent by the presence of the glass partition which enclosed close to half the floor space. That was where this essay was born.
Unlike other places with smoking rooms, it is not a place to go when you want to have a smoke but the place to be because you smoke. Since it is likely that your friends will smoke too every one gathers in the smoking room. I found my self in the position of being more part of them then of us. I was the minority. Me and handful of others were clustered around the windows looking into the smoking room, wanting to be part of the apparent fun but not wanting to take part in fumes.

It is a function of the one constant in human civilizations. There are two groups of people in the world, Us and Them. It does not mater which group you belong to every one out side that cohort falls under the listing of them. In the case of Public Houses south Western BC, Them can be a function of nicotine addiction. This separation is mechanically enforced with glass walls. Who then falls into the Us category is then a related to nature of the neighborhood where the watering hole resides. Smokers become Them closer to town centers as 21 century norms start to dominate, if you migrate far enough from centers of civilization values start to drift closer to mid to late 20th century, and non smokers start to fall into the Them listing.

None of this changes the fact that if I could I would take off the roof from a smoking room and through in a hand full of cigarettes and watch them fight over them like so many fish in a bowl.

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.