About Monkey Valley – Page 2 – Karen's New York Love Affair

Glowing white stick lights up Monkey Valley!

I’m back at Monkey Valley for the month of November, working on a personal writing project. I arrived November 3, to balmy conditions. No frozen water pipes! The road was dry and easy to drive on! All systems were running in the house! It is so nice to reap the benefits of the ten years of work I have put into getting this place to run smoothly. And also nice to have the grace of a mild autumn.

I went into Merritt on Thursday to have the snow tires put on. I also ran into old friends at the Post Office and Espresso Etc., my favourite place for coffee and lunch. You can see the decaf I had in the photo to the right, where I was testing out my new technology: a glowing white stick that miraculously gives me internet service wherever I go! It was wonderful to catch up on news with people I haven’t seen for a while, and reconnect with this place that has been my home off and on for eight years now.

The real test was whether the internet stick would work at Monkey Valley. As you know, the cell reception here is notoriously bad. When I first tested the internet stick, aka Mobile Internet Key, I had to hold my laptop above my head, so that it was inches from the dome antenna I had mounted high on the wall. Obviously this was not a practical solution: my laptop is not the lightest on the market, and it is difficult to type à la Jimmy Page with the laptop over my head!

But I had a look at the cable I so carefully installed last summer (2009, was it?!), and saw that I could get some extra length out of it if I ran it straight from my upstairs bedroom, through the loft, below the railing, and down to the table below. Hence the set-up you see in the second picture. The dome is inches from the internet stick, and the signal is fairly reliable. Every now and then it still drops, so I need to be mindful about saving my work before doing any actions that might cause Internet Explorer to lose the page I’m in. And of course there is the risk of brain damage from working so close to the cell phone signal, which has been boosted and intensified by the booster upstairs! So I will do my best to minimize internet time this month.

The great news is, though, that I can use the internet for just $35/month (versus the $100+ I was paying for satellite internet). And with the dome antenna sitting on my TV, I can actually talk on the phone while sitting on the couch. No more standing on a stool trying to hear what my callers are saying! Things just keep getting better, don’t they!

Fried and fit to be tied

Well, before I even had a chance to text the picture of the new antenna from my cell phone to my email, the new power adapter was fried. Dang!

All that “Searching for service” was for naught, since the power adapter had fried after less than a day of receiving phone calls. What gives around here?!

Positive thoughts about not being able to receive phone calls in the house at Monkey Valley:

It gives me a reason to take the phone with me on runs, where I get reception at the higher elevation, and talk to friends while I’m running. Makes the hour go by more quickly.
It makes me be more intentional about when I use the phone. I have to really need to use it to go to the trouble of going up on the roof.
It means my day is not constantly interrupted by phone calls, and I choose when to collect messages and return calls, preserving the retreat-like atmosphere.
It means I don’t waste time talking on the phone, and get more done.
It helps me with that Greta Garbo “I vant to be alone” thing.

Ah well, it was good while it lasted. Kind of like relationships with men. I guess I need to take a look at my object relationship with my phone! I can’t get no satisfaction! Sounds like the frustrating object relation to me.

Chairway to heaven: the efficacy of ridiculousness

There was a breakthrough at Monkey Valley this week. For two years now I have been suffering with my cell phone here. I could only get a signal by standing on a bench on my back deck and holding the phone in the air, or by climbing up on the roof. Not great for those 7:45 AM conference calls with my client in winter with -10 C temperatures! Not to mention wind and rain…

So I finally forked out some cash to get a power booster, hoping that this technology would allow me to use the existing Yagi antenna on the roof to channel the digital signal to my phone inside the house. So I went to Kamloops, and got the power booster (second trip, and after many preparatory phone calls with different providers). I brought it home, and hooked it up, hoping this would be easy for a change.

I put my phone near the inside antenna and saw the discouraging message “Searching for service.” Shit! I took the phone up on the roof to see what kind of signal I could get, and got about two bars. I called Telus to see what was up, and confirmed there were no outages in the area. So something was wrong with the setup. Maybe the Yagi had broken down since I last used it with my old analog 3-watt bag phone a few years ago, before Telus forced us all to switch to digital.

I thought the best thing to do would be to test the antenna by moving it higher up on the roof, to where I was standing with the cell phone when I got two bars. But how would I support the antenna? I looked at the spot, and saw my dining room chair balanced on either side of the roof ridge, with the antenna strapped to it. Okay, that might work…

So I went in the house, got a chair, and hauled the chair up onto the roof, along with some trusty duct tape. I went to the antenna, and tried to pull it out of the plumbing outlet pipe in which it was lodged. It wouldn’t come. I pulled and pulled. It wouldn’t budge. I pulled some more, cursing to give myself more power. Finally the antenna budged, but the pipe came with it. Darn! But since it was loose anyway, it probably wouldn’t hurt to pull it some more. I pulled the pipe out as far as it would come, gaining about three and a half feet of height for the antenna.

In fact, about the height it would have been strapped to the chair. So what the hell… I went inside to check the reading on the cell phone and lo and behold: four bars!!! It worked!!!

The ridiculous notion of the chair on the roof led to the solution: the antenna just needed to be higher. Since I had contractors coming this week to do some other work (Brent and Tom of Tri-Ross Construction—great guys), they agreed to mount the antenna with a more permanent solution than sticking it in the outlet pipe with duct tape, and they also fixed the pipe I had dislodged. Wow! For once the new problems I created were easy to solve. And now I have indoor phone service at Monkey Valley.

My first phone call was a real thrill let me tell you! By the fourth call, not so much! And today, the darn reception was down to “Searching for service,” even up on the roof. Well aren’t we all! So unfortunately, I am still at the mercy of the whims of the universe as to whether some mysterious force chooses to send the signal my way or not. I guess that’s pretty much what life is like. At the mercy of a mysterious force, which sometimes sends visions of dining room chairs on roof tops.

Goodbye, wascally weasel

I had a productive 9 days at Monkey Valley, with the winter plumbing problems fixed at low cost, thanks to Kevin Thompson of Princeton, BC! Finishing work on the barn is well underway, too, thanks to Brent Ross and Tom. It is going to be bee-you-tiful, as my grandma used to say. I’m coming up on 9 years at Monkey Valley now, and I do believe all of the work will be finished this year!

I also felt inspired to do some work on the medicine wheel. I went down there to pray for my friend Dorrie, who died recently, and felt spirit telling me it was time to finish the wheel, which was created at a medicine wheel teaching in 2005. At that time we laid out the direction stones and center stones, and filled in most of the rest of the wheel with pieces of wood. Now I started replacing the wood with stones—the grandfathers. I dug a narrow trench from the east door to the south door, in honour of the spring section of the wheel that we are in right now. And I filled in the entire curve with beautiful stones. That was a bit of a job, as the stones felt the need to periodically leap from the wheelbarrow on the journey from my house to the wheel. I did my best to be patient with them, but at one point my patience ran out and I pleaded for their cooperation!

The time at Monkey Valley ended on a sad note, with a morning discovery of weasel corpse in the downstairs bathroom. The poor little thing has expired. I don’t doubt this is due to torture by Donald. It was a real gift to get to see weasel up close, this time in his summer clothes, but I felt sad that his life is over. He emitted a perfumey, flowery musk smell, which I also noticed in the region of Donald’s nose. What a perfect creature this weasel was; whole and self-contained. His is-ness was striking, even though he was no more.

I didn’t feel as sad about this tiny animal death as I used to do when I found a bird or mouse that Donald killed. It used to break my heart. I wondered if my heart has hardened, but a dear friend suggested that perhaps I am just more connected with the natural cycle of life and death now, through the time I have spent in connecting with the land. So that I can accept the natural fact of death better. Maybe so.

Accepting the death of my friend is a different matter, which I don’t wish to treat lightly in this blog. I will say that I am missing her very much. I pray that she is held in loving light, and is at peace, finding her way in the new formlessness she has become.

Digging a hole

Here it is, December already. The time of the west is drawing to a close, enticing us to move around the wheel to the north. But sometimes, in our solitude, we can get stuck in the west. Especially for those of us who enjoy the introspection that the west evokes. Going inward for healing and to increase our self-understanding is a vital function that the west supports us to undertake. Yet the purpose of this growth and learning is to emerge renewed, strengthened in our resolve to bring our gifts to our people. That is, we do the work of the west in preparation for the turning of the wheel onward to the north, which is the direction where we take our place with our people, and contribute to our community.

Digging a hole is an excellent way to enjoy the energies of the west while turning, turning, to the north. It is a physical expression of digging down, earthing ourselves, but because it is work, a task, with a physical nature and clear results, it helps us embody our west nature and bring it into the north, into the place of contributing to our people. For someone who is feeling depressed (stuck in the darkness of the west), a concrete physical activity like digging a hole is a great way to use the element of the west—earth—to bring about a shift. The energy evoked by the hard physical work of digging charges us with the red of the south. While the task that the hole will serve to fulfill brings in the energy of work, service, and contribution of the north. It is not so hard to dig a hole—with enough effort, just about anyone can do it. But the fact of the doing it helps us feel confident in our capacities to function and contribute—evoking the confidence of the will aspect of our true nature, which is associated with the north.

As I mentioned previously, my street sign for Starshine Way was STOLEN! So in the next few postings, I’m going to tell you the story of digging a hole for my new sign. To be continued…

Adventures of The Donald

Visitors to Monkey Valley usually enjoy the spirited character of The Donald. They might hear him galloping down the path to the Medicine Wheel, sounding like a horse, his tail puffed up and fierce. Or he might precede the group softly, with the tip of his upright tail bent at an angle as he walks. He often stops to roll on the ground, presenting his belly for rubs. Kim Ashley took the photos of Donald on this page, when she was up in BC co-guiding Monkey Valley’s first vision fast in August 2008.

He’s also a favourite in our Vancouver neighbourhood, where he is more well known than the author! Donald is an adventurer, and he goes into people’s houses and cars, and goes along for a walk with strangers. He has been photographed by snapawayoungman and has an international following on Flickr!

Recently he went missing for three days and nights. Concerned neighbours and friends helped print and distribute posters, checked the internet for found cat ads, checked under bushes, and generally contributed good wishes for finding him.

Less than an hour after I had put up “Donald is Missing” notices, I received a phone call. He followed a beautiful young woman named Elizabeth home on Sunday night around midnight. She took him in and fed him, and he stayed with her for three days! He was only three blocks away, and she let him go out whenever he wanted. Which implies that he could have come home but chose not to. So my personal belief is that he enjoyed the company of this younger, blonder woman, whose perfume still clings to his fur. And also, she fed him better! He was very unhappy to come home to me, and growled and hissed at me all night.

This was not Donald’s first adventure. He has been missing before, and was found over 15 blocks away and taken to the SPCA. My friends Geoff and Azusa put up a missing cat poster, and someone who had seen him at the SPCA saw the poster and called them! Another time I had a call that he was in someone’s house on First Avenue. He has been shut up for long periods in garages, basements, and the “cold room” at Monkey Valley, because he just goes where his curiosity takes him! And he has been chased by a coyote or two in his day, and lived to continue with his aloof philandering ways…

For those of you who are familiar with object relations theory, you might notice a thing or two about my relationship with my cat!

Ah, the luxury of hot running water!

It took two years from the time I bought Monkey Valley until there was hot running water to fill the beautiful claw foot bathtub in the upstairs bathroom. The bathtub was the first purchase I made after getting Monkey Valley. It weighs hundreds of pounds! Hugh and I brought it up in the ice blue Volvo station wagon I had at the time. With another friend helping, three of us managed to carry it up the stairs. Then it took two years for Hugh and I to install the solar power, the water pump, and get all systems going so that hot water was flowing through the veins of the house.

Plumbing has been one of the biggest challenges here, because it seems to be impossible to totally drain the house. I have a routine that takes about 1 ½ hours to do, to shut down the house when leaving it in winter time, which I have refined after various expensive mishaps involving small leaks, huge gushing leaks, expensive repairs, and even more expensive service calls:

turn off the power to the pump
open all the taps to drain the water
drain the line down at the pump house
open the screw under the Bosch flow-through propane hot water heater to drain the water in its pipes (failure to do this led to two very expensive repairs)
drain the water filter system (forgot to do this once and the whole thing busted)
drain the lowest line in the house
attach a hose and drain the line to the outside tap, which is even lower
drain the tap from the cold water tank
drain the washing machine, which has a tiny little tube at the bottom for this purpose
scoop remaining water out of toilet bowls (two)
put salt or environmentally-friendly anti-freeze in the p-traps (basically, down each drain), toilet bowls, and toilet tanks

Now that there is a solar hot water heating system added on to the original plumbing, Russ Hughes of Active Mechanical in Merritt (who installed the solar heating system, and is sadly now deceased—may your spirit be at peace, Russ) advised that I shut off the line to the new propane-heatable hot water tank, and leave the pilot burning. On sunny days, this gives the solar boiler a large body of water to use for heat exchange. Leaving the pilot burning is supposed to prevent the water in the tank from freezing during spells where there is no sun. This is a new element in the system, so I am not sure how well it will work, but this time around it worked fine.

Anyway, as you can see, the whole thing is a goddam pain in the ass, and sometimes it makes me wonder why I bother living out here! This time coming home there were no leaks. But before I could turn on the water system I needed to:

close all taps (remembering the cold water tank tap, which I have forgotten to close in the past, resulting in a gushing flow when I turned the water back on)
put the screw back in the Bosch flow-through
open the valve in the line from the hot water tank
turn on the power to the pump, which uses a step-up transformer to convert the 110 volt house power to 220 for the well pump
light the pilot on the flow-through tank

Plus, always, light the pilots on the stove and fridge to get those running again.

This time around, it only took an hour to make the fire, get all systems going, and unload the car. Plus another half hour to unpack food, clothes, laptops, and so on…

And then it was time for a nice hot bath!

November 25 – Frosty homecoming

Each time I return to Monkey Valley it is an adventure. There’s no telling what I will find. This time I arrived about 7:15 pm, well after dark. The outside temperature was -4 degrees, and the inside temperature was 0 degrees! In the power room it was a bit warmer—4 degrees—due to the solar boiler keeping a tank of hot water warm.

So the first order of business was to turn on the power (let there be light!), then to make a fire. If any of you have experience with heating a house that is 0 degrees, you will know that by bedtime the house was still much too cold to go to bed! With constantly feeding the fire as soon as there was room to put more wood in, I managed to raise the temperature to 10 degrees by midnight. I tested the feeling of the bed upstairs, and it was way too icy to get in! So I brought the down comforters downstairs, pulled the couch close to the wood stove, and settled in there for a few hours. Around 4:00 am I went upstairs with the warm blankies and was able to stretch out full-length on my bed and get some comfortable sleep. In the morning it was 8 degrees in the living room, and time to get that fire going again!

By bedtime the second night the temperature in the house was up to a balmy 18 degrees downstairs, and 20 degrees upstairs in my bedroom. Heating is obviously very important! I have a backup propane heater, which is due to be repaired on Friday. So hopefully after that I will be able to keep the house a little warmer while I am away for short winter trips. For longer trips there’s nothing to do but drain the water, put anti-freeze in the p-traps, and hope for the best. If heating is the top priority, plumbing is also very important (second priority), and has been a continual struggle. So has pest control, which can become top priority in a flash… (to be continued)

More cowboys!

This morning when I was up on the roof for the daily conference call with my client, the wind brought men’s voices over the tree tops. I looked to the southwest, but couldn’t see anyone, and figured it must be hunters at the top of the ridge. After I was finished with the call I went down to the barn and circled around it, just in case they’d come down the hill from the ridge. I called out “Hey!” every now and then, so they wouldn’t accidentally shoot me if they caught a glimpse of movement.

I didn’t see anything, except to notice how the once-bare muddy ground is covered with a layer of moss and grass now. Eight years ago the ground was a diesel- and oil-soaked mess, on account of the previous owners’ carelessness in feeding their five 10KW generators. I had a lot of help to clean up the physical mess, and afterwards my mom and I did some energetic cleansing using Reiki. In fact, my mom gave me the master’s-level attunement out there one summer day while we were cleansing the land around the barn. I still recall the glorious green light shining through the plants as I knelt on the ground to offer healing to our dear earth mother.

Anyway, no sign of hunters, so I went back to the house to get a fire started. I was on the balcony by the master bedroom, when my eye caught the movement of a bird high above the field outside the gate, so I paused to watch it, listening for its call. Soon enough I heard the raven caw. Then I spotted two riders on horseback down in the field below the raven. I called out a greeting, and walked down to the gate.

Two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl… Hey! Up came two young cowboys, Riley and Wacey, and their black-eye-patch cow dog, Pirate. We passed the time of day a little. Nice morning. They were looking for stray cows. November 12, and the range laws say all cows have to be in from the range on October 31. So they’ve got to find all the loose cows before they run amok!

It is a glorious sight to see cowboys doing cowboy things. They were wearing round-brimmed hats, and those long overcoats called dusters. The horses were brown, robust, and lively. Each cowboy had a rope coiled over the saddlehorn. Even though I’m a vegetarian, I like seeing these older ways of life continue. Ways of life that are close to the land and living things. May there always be cowboys, out on the range!

Bandit: more about the dog from Missezula Lake

A while back I told you the story of the New Year’s Eve visitor who resembled a wolf, and scared my friend Dorrie as she was sitting on the porch one evening. I recently went through some boxes and found a picture of the dog, and a thank-you card from his owners.

The dog’s name is Bandit. His people are named Chuck and Pat Krastel, and they all live in the community at the east end of Missezula Lake. Bandit is a favourite friend in the community, welcome at many homes. When he was missing, lots of his friends called Chuck and Pat to ask if they’d found him yet. He also has some kitty friends, Dancer (shown here), and Chico. It’s amazing how the feline and canine species can get along!

Missezula Lake is about a mile south of Monkey Valley. Shrimpton Creek flows down into the lake, and I’ve followed the creek down to the lake a few times with friends. The way is tangled with fallen trees in places, but it’s a fun outing to hike down to the lake for a skinny dip!

There’s a campground at the west end of the lake, and a few fishing cabins along the north shore, and then the Missezula Lake community over at the east end. It’s a popular community, fully serviced, with year-round residences and cottages.

Bandit doesn’t really look like a wolf, but remember it was dark when we first saw him. He was an emissary of love, who still reveals to me that part of my heart that is longing for the universe to bring me someone to love. Someone black and white and furry!