Wild Nature – Page 5 – Karen's New York Love Affair

Cougars and cattle prods

I’m not sure now where the idea of a cattle prod came from. It probably came to me when I was out on a run, dodging Douglas Lake cows and hoping the bull wouldn’t charge me. I looked at how big the cattle are, and thought they are actually much bigger than a cougar. So maybe if the cattle prod moves them around, it might have a deterring effect on a cougar as well.

I went to a farm supply store in Chilliwack, and learned there are different types of cattle prods—short ones and long ones! What kind should I get? This decision required some thought about being attacked, and from what angle would the attack likely come. I imagined a cougar leaping on me from where it was perched on a tree above. I imagined it attacking from the front and side. I imagined it leaping out of nowhere and biting my neck. In the end I decided I needed a short one and a long one. The long one I could use if I saw the cougar coming from the front or side. The short one, worn in a belt holster, I could use to zap the cougar if it was biting my neck from the rear.

Are you getting an impression of how ridiculous this is? Well, it took me a few more years to reach that point. I bought both sizes of cattle prod, and for about a year I ran with them both. The small one I wore in a belt holster, around my waist. And the long one I carried in my hand. I did this for at least a year, until I realized that no cougars have ever attacked me, and I’ve never even seen one while out on a run, and it seems unlikely that any cougar ever will attack me. And although I’d never seen any cougar since that one I saw from my car, I’d seen plenty of deer. And I know that the deer are the cougar’s favourite food.

So I finally reached the conclusion that given the cougar has plenty of deer to eat, and given that I am in the middle of a large area of relative wilderness (not encroaching on cougar territory like the houses in North Vancouver), it is very unlikely that the cougar would want me for dinner. So I stopped carrying the cattle prod, and enjoyed the freedom of running without weapons! As you can see, it took a number of years for my direct experience to outweigh the strength of my fearful fantasies… (to be continued)

Cougars: pistol-packing mama!

Prior to moving to Monkey Valley I had little exposure to guns. My dad taught me and my sister Kim to shoot a rifle one summer at the family cabin on Knouff Lake. It was fun, shooting at cans on a log. Learning to watch for the kick. But since then I’d never used a gun, and probably never even seen one.

I believed people when they said I needed a gun at Monkey Valley. Being there all alone, and especially when out running by myself, it seemed I needed a gun for protection. So my mom lent me a rifle, and I enrolled in a course to learn how to handle guns safely. This course also was a prerequisite for obtaining a PAL license, which is required by anyone who owns, buys, or possesses a gun. I got the license, and I practiced shooting the rifle at a target that I nailed to a tree by the woodpile at Monkey Valley. This was kind of fun. I practiced cleaning and oiling it. I kept it hidden in my bedroom closet, easily accessible if anyone broke into the house during the night. I went over in my mind the steps involved in getting and loading the gun in the dark. It seemed that having the gun there made me more afraid of intruders, not less!

I went to a gun store on Renfrew Street in Vancouver to look at guns and get prices. I went to the outdoor sporting goods store in Merritt (the Powderkeg, now out of business due to Walmart and Canadian Tire big box stores being invited to take over from the local businesses), to see if prices were cheaper. I found out about the local shooting club in Merritt. My final piece of research was to go shooting at a range out in Chilliwack with my course instructor. This was a chance to try different types of guns and see how they felt. I had been leaning towards a pistol of some kind, which I would be able to wear in a holster while running. I found that running with the rifle was a little cumbersome!

I was excited about going to a real range to practice. In the class we never shot a loaded gun. I’d driven past the Pacific Shooter’s range many times on my way to go trail running by the Seymour River. My instructor lived in Langley though, so I drove out there and we drove to the range in Chilliwack. The day we went to the shooting range was overcast and chilly—a dreary winter day. No one else was at the range. My instructor showed me the protocols, like where to put our stuff, how to put up the targets, and what flag to raise to indicate the range was active. Then he showed me how to turn and shoot. He reinforced some of the principles I’d learned in class, about holding the gun and positioning my body. I tried shooting with his pistol. It was very black (energetically black, though actually a steely colour of metal), very heavy, very loud. And very powerful. I could see how using a gun makes someone feel powerful.

And I knew after trying it a few times that I could never shoot this gun at a cougar or any other wild animal. I felt that I would prefer to be killed than to inflict this shocking violence on a living creature. So that was the end of the gun episode. I returned the rifle to my mom. I resumed running with a hatchet. And I still kept imagining the cougar attacking me while I was running… (to be continued)

Cougars: a man, a truck, a dog, and a gun

When I told people I was moving to Monkey Valley, they inevitably thought I needed a man, a truck, a dog, and a gun. In fact, when I first bought the place, I had the man, Hugh McMillan, and we were getting along pretty good. I bought a pickup truck—a beige Ford Ranger that needed some work but was priced well below market value. And my mom gave me a beautiful Siberian husky-malamute cross puppy, with white and grey fur and startling blue eyes, and the cutest curly tail, whom I named Shaula, after the star in the tail of the constellation Scorpio.

But I was still living in the lower mainland, and I found that having a puppy, training her, walking her twice a day, and cleaning up her poop, was not for me. Maybe having a dog in the country would be great, but I wasn’t ready to move yet—in fact, it took Hugh and me two years to install the solar power, pump, and hot water heater. Plus that’s how long it took for two-way satellite internet to be available in Canada—an important component for me in being able to work from Monkey Valley. Shaula and I parted ways long before then. First I took her to the SPCA, but felt so sad at abandoning her, I cried buckets and went to retrieve her. A few weeks later, at the end of my rope again, I sent her by airplane to Williams Lake, where my mom retrieved her and eventually passed her on to a tree planter from Ontario. As far as I know, she lives there now, happily I hope.

Just as having a dog wasn’t for me, the truck didn’t work out that great either. The first winter Hugh and I went up there after snow fall, we found that with only six inches of snow the truck got bogged down, fishtailed around, and refused to go very far up the unplowed logging road. And in the city, driving a stick-shift in stop-and-go traffic drove me nuts. Not to mention trying to park it! I still have nightmares about a certain parking garage on Granville Island! So the truck had to go. I bought a four-wheel drive Geo Tracker instead. Hugh said it was a chick car. But it handled way better in the snow than the pickup, was easy to park, and great on gas.

And, sadly, to my regret and many subsequent wonderings if I made the right decision, when it came time to move to Monkey Valley in 2002, Hugh and I had a parting of the ways. So, long story short, I moved to the wilderness with no man, no truck, and no dog. All that was left was the gun… (to be continued)

Cougars: fears in the dusk

When I first moved to Monkey Valley, my biggest fears were attack by cougars, bears, and humans. I’ve already documented some of the encounters with humans. Pretty innocuous, and nothing like my late-night imaginings of a Charles Manson-like gang bent on my murder.

So it is with cougars. Due to my enjoyment of running in the wilderness, fear of cougar attack has seemed to be the biggest danger I would realistically face at Monkey Valley. Especially since I usually run at dusk, which is when I imagine the cougar is most active! I remember hearing a few years ago (or was it six years ago now?) that a jogger was attacked on Vancouver Island. The writer of the news story made a joke about joggers persisting in wearing lycra leggings and behaving like deer, as if we are practically begging cougars to attack!

Soon after moving to Monkey Valley, I was driving along a logging road about 10 KM from my home when I was graced with the very rare sight of a cougar in the distance. It crossed the road in front of me, several hundred yards ahead, and leaped up an embankment and disappeared into the woods.

Its grace and power was amazing to behold. It sprang up a bank that was eight feet high or more, compressing its haunches and making the leap in a single bound. It was a beautiful tawny burnished goldy-red colour. Gigantic! I would guess at least six feet long. So incredibly, obviously powerful and alive. The encounter was such a brief flash, but its memory has stayed with me all these years. My impression was that there was no way I was a physical match for this creature that was bigger, stronger, faster, and way wilder than me!

Previously I had imagined the cougar as little bigger than a coyote, and nothing to really be afraid of. But now that I’d seen with my own eyes its size and physical power, I knew that it could kill me with ease, if it chose to. I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating the size of the deer, the cougar’s favourite prey, versus the size of me. Only a few pounds difference, most likely. And the deer run a lot faster than I do!

One of the ways to deal with fear is to find out the truth. I did some research on cougars, reading up on them in Mammals of British Columbia, and learned that their territory can be as big as 100 square miles. I hoped that this meant the chance of my being in the exact spot as the cougar at the same time was very slight. But this didn’t really help assuage my fear. And one spring, Bob Ross of Merritt’s Tri-Ross Construction, who with his son Brent has done a lot of construction work for me at Monkey Valley, found cougar tracks in the mud by the barn. I examined their large size, and was struck with fear again. Clearly I was living in the cougar’s territory. There was no denying the potential for an encounter… (to be continued)

Holy cow, a visiting vole!

The other night I was wakened from a peaceful sleep by a crinkling sound. It’s not the first time this has ever happened, but it’s been a while. I replayed the sound in my head, and figured it wasn’t a human intruder—the sound was too small. It could be a pack rat, I thought, remembering that there is an unwanted pack rat living under the house at the moment. It might have come in the cat door…

But the sound seemed even smaller than that. Maybe it’s a little mouse that found its way in through a tiny hole, I thought. Donald was on the bed beside me, also listening. But he didn’t seem inclined to get up and go investigate. I decided I didn’t want to either, and hoped that maybe Donald would go catch it later. Then I promptly fell back asleep.

The next morning I went to investigate the little package of poisoned bait that I keep behind a bin in the loft. That seemed to be where the sound was coming from. There were a few loose kibbles around the package. Sweeping the floor downstairs I found some more clues: a kibble on the living room floor, and a few tiny droppings near the bait behind the stereo. Hmm…

Then I heard Donald playing in the bathroom. That can only mean one thing. He has found a playmate. Sometimes he finds them outside and brings them into the bathroom to play with. Other times, as in this case (I do believe) he found one inside the house. The downstairs bathroom is black, because all the bathrooms and showers in the house are painted the colours of the medicine wheel: red shower, yellow shower, black bathroom, white bathroom. Donald likes the black bathroom as the place to play with his prey. And there he was, grabbing something in his mouth and flopping it around and letting it drop. He did that a few times, but the poor creature seemed dead, so I left him to it.

When I went back later to investigage, I found the corpse of a tiny little vole in the bathroom. Thinking I was being somewhat morbid, I brought Mammals of British Columbia into the bathroom and made an identification—definitely a vole, with its tiny size and short tail, and the shape of its nose. But what kind of vole? I went to get my tape measure, and measured the tiny creature. It was about 11.5 cm long, including a tail about 2.5 cm long. It looked like a lot of the voles in the book, brown with lighter underside, but the only vole whose size can be under 12 cm in length is the Western Heather Vole. I learned it feeds on green vegetation, grasses, lichens, berries, seeds, and fungi. Lots of those things around here. And it likes the inner bark of various shrubs from the heather family.

That led, of course, to a consultation with Plants of Southern Interior British Columbia. Is there really heather around here? I learned that there are two kinds, white mountain-heather and pink mountain-heather. They are tiny shrubs, only 30 cm and 10-40 cm tall, respectively. They have blue-bell shaped flowers, and the pink ones do look familiar to me. But I am not certain if I’ve seen them. Clark, quoted in the guide, wrote “These cheerful bells ring an invitation to high places above the timber line, to those serene and lofty slopes where peace and quiet enter our souls.”

And so the cycle is complete, from crinkling in the night to peace and quiet entering our souls. I took the dear little vole and put her body under a young fir tree that grows near the house, and wished that her spirit may be at peace.

If you are interested in reading about other visitors to Monkey Valley, see these posts:

Is that a spotted owl?

On Thanksgiving Day, which is also the US Columbus Day and Indigenous People’s Day, I looked out the bathroom window and saw a large white blob on the top of a tree. Was it snow? But no, none of the other trees had white blobs on them.

So I went across the hall to my office loft to get the upstairs binoculars, and grabbed a note pad. If this was a bird, I was going to do it right and note all the pertinent details! Luckily the bird, it was, was still there when I got back. It was a very large puffy-looking brown bird, with a big white bib. That was the white blob I’d seen with my naked eye.

I noted that it had a pale beak and yellow feet. It had a white spotted pattern all over, chest and sides and possibly back, in a fairly regular pattern. It seemed to have white on the crown, and I noticed brown streaks on its neck, in the white. Wow, I felt like I was getting good at this! And I felt so happy to have this visitation on Monday morning, Thanksgiving Day.

The bird stretched its wings out a little and I noticed it had fat feathered thighs. Then it spread out its wings and tipped off the tree top, slowly soaring down into the valley below. I watched a few minutes to see if it would reappear with some prey in its beak, but it disappeared from view and I didn’t see it again.

So I went with my notes to check the Sibley guide. The owl section quickly showed me that this bird was not an owl. Its head was too small, and it didn’t have disc-like eye areas. So turning to the next likely suspect, I discovered my old friend the red-tailed hawk. I made a positive identification. This one was a juvenile, which is why it had the white bib. Aha!

I look forward to seeing it age and change colours! I had a peek in the Audubon guide too, just to see the pix there, and noticed they describe the call as a “high-pitched scream with a hoarse quality, keeeeer.” Whereas the Sibley guide describes the voice as “a rasping whistled scream cheeeeeew falling in pitch and intensity.” I favour the keeeeeer myself, and this is the noise I attempt when talking to the hawk as I run by.

Red-tailed hawk has long been a resident in my valley, and now it is clear that the hawks are carrying on. Fooling around with each other, too! Their presence here is something I am very grateful for. In the early evenings of winter, sometimes the hawk circles above and calls out to me when I go for a run. They have been a faithful companion over the years, when it is quiet and lonely here.

I am thankful.

Coming home to Monkey Valley – October

I actually come home to Monkey Valley quite often. Usually, I make two trips a month to Vancouver, which means I get to come home to Monkey Valley twice a month. The previous post gives some background on why I was away so much before the September homecoming.

Originally, I began living at Monkey Valley full-time and year-round in October 2002. But having been away so much in the past two years, my psyche doesn’t know where home is—here or in Vancouver. This could be considered a question of the West, returning to the theme for October. Who am I? Where am I? Where is home? Where do I feel at home?

Is a bear at home in the woods? This time on my way home, I had a wonderful greeting from the West. As you know if you’ve been reading about the Four Directions, the West is the direction of the fall, and of earth. But you might not know that the animal for the West is the bear. Especially black bears. And that’s who greeted me just after I’d driven through the Kentucky-Alleyne campground, between the two lakes of the same name.

The type of topography found here, known as kame and kettle topography, consists of many hills and depressions, and illustrates a glaciated landscape. There are azure lakes set in grasslands, surrounded by forsts of pine and fir. The Kentucky and Alleyne lakes are an incredible greeny-blue colour. If you’re interested in some beautiful footage of this area, check out this You Tube video.

Suddenly, as I eased around a curve in the road just after the campground, there was the cutest little black bear crossing the road in front of me. I was driving very slowly because the speed limit through the campground is 20 KM/H. Donald was laying on the dashboard, and he made a startled sound when the bear appeared. We watched him cross in front of us and then amble into the woods. I grabbed my cell phone, opened the window, and got a few pix of him! (One of the things you get to enjoy on this blog is my blurry blob-like photos of wild animals!) He took his sweet time walking away from the car, moving through the trees.

The bear is very special to me, and I’ll tell you more about that another day. My heart feels glad when I get to have a glimpse of or encounter with this magnificent furry creature. May your encounters with bears be safe and gladdening too.

Wild women run in the dark!

The West is the place of darkness, black, the night. I wonder if night owls enjoy hanging out in the West part of the wheel, and early birds prefer the East.

For just about as long as I’ve been running (since I quit smoking for the first successful time—lasting three years—in 1996), I’ve run at night. Not always, but when life’s demands take up all the daylight hours. People have various reactions to this, but it’s usually a mixture of shock and concern. Fear of the unknown, I think. With one boyfriend, it was a surefire way to know he cared for me (and engage in some negative merging). All I had to do was mention a night run and he’d freak out!

Running at night has an entirely different feel to it, whether in the city or in the country. In the city, I find it is way more peaceful to run after dark, when people are at home and asleep. The humming vibration of the city settles at night. Even those I might encounter out walking their dogs are shrouded in darkness. It is easier to ignore them, to stay in my own inner space. There is an unspoken agreement among the night walkers, to respect the privacy of the darkness.

The meditative space of night running is something I love about it. There’s not much to look at, so the feel of the running becomes the rhythmic back section for reverie. It’s easy to sink into an altered state of awareness, imagination, inspiration.

Last night I ran in the misty mountain darkness of the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve. Listening to Led Zeppelin (what is and what should never be, the battle of evermore, when the levee breaks) on the drive out there helped set the mood for entering a magical land of darkness. I parked on Lynn Valley Road, due to the ridiculous parking restriction of 6 PM in the LSCR parking lot. Crossing the wooden footbridge that arcs high above Lynn Creek, I entered the darkness of the woods.

It took about eight minutes of gravel trail running through the woods to get to the LSCR parking lot. As I first entered the woods thoughts of mountain lions crossed my mind. For some reason they always do on this stretch of road! Dressed all in black, maybe I could pass for a bear. But my roar just wouldn’t have the power to convince! Anyway, with this lame strategy in place, I continued on to the LSCR parking lot and from there onto my favourite loop trail, down the Twin Bridges Trail to the Seymour River, following the river North along Fisherman’s Trail, and then up the bun-burning Homestead Trail back up to the parking lot.

I’ve done this loop at least 100 times over the past five years or so—probably more. I’ve done it walking in the dark with a friend, so I know which parts are the blackest. I wasn’t worried about losing my way or falling into a pit or off a cliff! I could just let my feet and belly find the way as I sensed into the deep mystery of the night. It is hypnotic, the way a luminous white sheen fills the air on the trail in front of me. This effect is heightened when there is a mist like last night.

I was just enjoying this luminosity, and the rhythm of the running, as I ran down the long easy stretch of Twin Bridges Trail. Then suddenly I heard a sound like a chicken crowing, about chest height, in the trees ahead and to the left. It was so loud and close, I stopped for a moment. My mind translated the sound into a human imitating a chicken, trying to attract some kind of night bird! It didn’t feel totally threatening, but I was definitely startled. The call was such a definite pronouncement, I said “Oh, really. Are you sure about that?”

Only silence answered, so I continued on. I realized as I replayed the sound in my mind it must be an owl call. It was a new sound for me, accustomed to the call of the great grey owls at Monkey Valley. Although it had a hooting quality, the range and pattern of notes was more complex. I’ll have to look it up in the bird books when I get home, and see if I can find out who was greeting me in the darkness of the misty autumn woods.

Like the music before the run, this encounter supported the magical feeling of running in the night. It was a blissful run right until the end, an hour later, back up the paved access to Lynn Valley Road. Wild women run in the dark!

Taking a night walk (or run) is always a good way to explore the territory of the West. Try it!

P.S. For those who might be feeling confused right now, I keep an apartment in Vancouver as well as my home at Monkey Valley. This was a Vancouver night run, in the North Shore mountains.

Is that a wolf?

Cowboys, dogs, and dirtbikers: visitors to Monkey Valley

You might be noticing that all of these invaders of my privacy are men. Men who break the law and ignore the postings I have put up every 20 to 50 meters around the perimeter of the property. But one time there was a non-human male visitor, and he was so sweet!

I had some friends up for New Year’s Eve a few winters ago. One night after dinner my friend Dorrie was sitting on the porch, legs dangling into space, looking out at the night. I was inside supervising Keith and Marvin while they did the dishes. Suddenly I heard a faint warbled “Help!” I heard it again: “Help!”

I ran to the door and opened it a crack, and a very large creature was standing there looking at me. “Are you a wolf?” I asked. It was greyish, and big, but the tail was wagging a little. The soul of the animal did not feel harmful, but at the same time I didn’t know this creature, it might be a wolf, and Dorrie was scared!

I chased the animal off the porch, and Dorrie came inside. We all talked about what had happened, and looked outside, but the animal was gone. Not for long though. The next day he was back. He turned out to be a very large friendly dog.

I fed him some cat food and vegetarian scraps, which he ate. He had a very thick coat, and seemed okay with staying outside. Over the next few days I became very fond of this sweet fellow. I wondered if the universe was sending me a present for the new year, a new family member. Although I hadn’t had any intention of getting a dog, I was turning over the possibility of keeping him.

However, I also thought I’d better try to find the owner. I called both vets in Merritt, and they suggested I also contact the Humane Society in Princeton. I did, and soon I got a phone call from the dog’s human family, very happy to find their dog was still alive.

It turned out that he lived in the community at the east end of Missezula Lake. On New Year’s Eve there were a lot of fireworks, and he got scared and ran away. Somehow he found his way to my land, and came to the house. He obviously trusted people, and I learned that he was friends with all the people in his community.

Perhaps this is the lesson this beautiful soul brought into my life. That people can be trusted, and will help when we are lost and alone in the cold.

Soapberry Indian ice cream

Indian ice cream—a gift from the land

At the August vision fast at Monkey Valley, the spot where our council circle met had some translucent reddish-orange berries that looked very succulent. I licked one and found it to be very bitter. The faster asked what they were, but I didn’t know, and didn’t even recall seeing this type of berry before. After the faster went out on her two-day quest, I looked up the berries in Roberta Parish, Ray Coupe, and Dennis Lloyd’s Plants of Southern Interior British Columbia. I discovered they are soapberries. I remembered that my friend Pam told me soapberries are the stuff Indian ice cream is made of.

While the faster was out, my co-guide Kim Ashley (a different Kim than my sister, Kim Rempel) and I decided to try making the ice cream. We gathered the berries in the traditional method, by spreading a cloth on the ground and then beating the bush with a stick! (Following the instructions in Nancy Turner’s Food Plants of Interior First Peoples.) But we used electric beaters, not so traditional, to whip the berries with a little water into a beautiful pink foam. We didn’t have the traditional whipping implement—a piece of cedar bark—on hand. The mixture was still quite bitter even with brown sugar and a few wild raspberries added. An unusual but interesting taste. The whipped foamy texture is wonderful—a real treat.

This treat was part of the welcome-back-break-fast feast. It was really neat, to offer the faster some food gathered from the land. It strengthened the feeling that the spirits of this place welcome us doing the old sacred ceremonies here. Ho!

Recipe

Mix 1 cup berries with 1/4 cup water and 4 tablespoons brown sugar, until all the berries have dissolved into a stiff pink foam.