I’ve been at Monkey Valley for three showings this spring, and now summer is here. On my last visit, it seemed all the beautiful creatures came to say goodbye to me. Here are a few pics from this trip. 
Tag: moose
What is my purpose?
As you might have guessed from my last entry, this time when I set out on the medicine walk I was determined not to get my feet wet. At least not until after the sun came up! I set out at about 4:25 am, with a cool morning temperature of 1° C. I paused at the threshold I’d chosen, a natural doorway formed by two trees. I offered sage to the spirits of the four directions, and asked them to be with me on the walk. This was perhaps the first time I spoke to the spirits this way, and I was slow and awkward. I informed them of my purpose for the medicine walk. I wanted to find out what the purpose would be on my upcoming vision fast. Though I had many ideas, I had no clarity as to the most important wish to focus on. As my teacher Jed advised, I would hold my question close to me all through the day.
Formalities accomplished, I set out along the dirt road that led through the gates of Monkey Valley. I wondered what magic the day might hold for me. What is it like to step through the threshold into the world of spirit? I felt open, curious, light, and innocent. I followed the road north, taking the right-hand fork that swung around to the east to ford the creek. Sometimes I ford the creek by climbing along an old log fence, but this time I wanted to follow nature’s path, so I went along the creek until I found a log that was wide enough to cross on. When I reached the road on the far side of the creek, I followed the overgrown track that went south down the valley, gradually climbing from the level of the creek to about twenty feet above it.
Suddenly I heard a loud sound. Moose! I looked down to the valley floor, and saw a beautiful ungainly creature running through the grasses below. Was it male or female? It had no antlers, as far as I could tell, and didn’t seem to be pregnant, nor to have a little one nearby. I think the moose had heard my own ungainly passage, for it took shelter behind some bushes. I waited a little while for the moose to emerge again, thinking “Moose is more patient than me.” But I was wrong, for the moose resumed its journey. I watched the glimpses of rich brown limbs and hump as the moose crossed the valley floor and disappeared into the trees on the other side. I am patient! Perhaps this discovery was the first gift of my day’s journey. To be continued…
Live entertainment from the Monkey Valley porch
Moose in the meadow
Last Saturday morning I was sitting on the porch having tea and brekkie, looking out over the creek now and then but mostly reading a good mystery novel. I heard some splashing sounds to my left, and looked up. Lo and behold, a young male moose emerged from the willows by the creek. He had fuzzy antlers, with about two prongs on each. What a wonderful surprise!
I watched him for about 10 minutes, as he meandered, chomping on willows, and slowly made his way to the other side of the valley. Now that’s a breakfast show! I had recently commented to a friend that the valley is perfect for moose, with a lot of water and willows, and I was surprised I didn’t see them more often. Now here one was!
Deer and chipmunks entertain more often
The next day a deer was browsing through the meadow while I ate my breakfast on the porch. Nice! And then Donald and I were entertained by a little chipmunk eating flowers for breakfast, tail twitching, at the other end of the porch.
Power booster woes
The day after that was a Monday, and I needed to go to Kamloops yet again, for some more cable. I was still troubleshooting the power booster for the cell phone, working out the glitches. It turned out last time the connector in one end of the cable that connected to the indoor dome antenna got gibbled, and the copper wire wasn’t meeting the part where it is supposed to pass the signal into the power booster. It took a trip to Kamloops to figure this one out, and get a new connecter put on. Then I realized the connector on the cable from the roof antenna was also gibbled, and not meeting with the power antenna. I stripped the wire and inserted the bare copper into the power booster, just to see if it would work. This is when I finally discovered that the distance from the inside antenna to the outside antenna wasn’t long enough. Previously, the lights on the power booster always showed green (even when they weren’t getting a signal, which is not how it is supposed to work according to the manual). Now that I had both antennas firmly connected to the power booster, both lights were red. This meant another trip to Kamloops to get a longer length of cable.
I tried three places in Merritt, but none of them carry this type of cable. So on Monday, I went to Kamloops (for about the fifth or sixth time, at a four hour round trip each time). I got 30 feet of RG58 cable. The kind people at Walco Radio put new connectors on, and also gave me some connectors for the cable from the outside antenna. Steve even showed me how to put the connector on, step by step, and sold me a tool to use to do it. I have learned more than I would have though possible from this odyssey into power booster installation. Most people just take it home, plug the ends together, and it works! Those poor saps never get to learn a thing…
Lightning and thunder and forest fires, oh my!
So anyway, I drove home Monday, arriving home in a rain storm at about 7:30 PM. As I was driving down the last hill before my house I noticed puffs of white on the hillside across the creek. Streaming smoke was coming out of the forest. I’d seen a few flashes of lightning as I was driving home, and figured one must have struck here and started a fire. Yikes!
My first thought was to grab Donald and my laptop and get out of there. But even before that, I stopped right there on the road and called 911 to report the fire. They gave me the number to call, but I couldn’t get through. The message said there were high call volumes due to the large number of forest fires, and to call back later.
So I called my sister Kim to let her know I might be in imminent danger, drove to the house, and got Donald and the laptop, all the 
while checking on the fire. It didn’t seem to be getting bigger but it wasn’t getting smaller either. It was between 500 and 1000 metres from the house, at the north end of the valley, and if it spread it would cut off the road access to the house, trapping me there. So I figured I’d better spend the night in a motel in Merritt, just to be on the safe side. I decided I had a bit of time, since the fire wasn’t moving towards the house. So I went through the house, gathering up more stuff that I would want if the house burned to the ground. My camping gear. Some family photos. My favourite knife from Cutco, which my sister Kirsten sold me years ago. My grandma’s silverware. And yes, the power booster and all its related parts. If the house burned down I was going to get my money back!
So about an hour later Donald and I left Monkey Valley. As we drove past the fire in the darkness I saw flames amidst the trees, which I had been unable to see earlier. I stopped at the Kentucky-Alleyne campground to let the attendant there know about the fire. Once I got out to Highway 5A I was able to get through to the forest fire line (*5555) and reported the fire. A little while later someone from the Merritt fire fighting department called me back, and said he would send a crew out first thing in the morning.
The next morning at about 8:30 he called me at the motel and said they’d sent out a helicopter with two guys and some firefighting equipment. Another two guys drove in by truck. They were using a bucket to get water from a nearby lake (via the chopper) and would probably finish by noon. So it was safe to go home.
I got home that afternoon, and another storm was underway, sending down buckets of water, with lots of thunder and lightning. Donald and I sat on the porch under cover, enjoying the storm. And once the rain stopped, I ate dinner on the porch and watched another two helicopters haul buckets of water south of Monkey Valley, near Missezula Lake. They went back and forth for about an hour, fighting another fire nearby. What a dinner show!
Two days later, after another storm, I drove out of Monkey Valley to return to Vancouver. And what did I see but another forest fire on the hill south of Missezula Lake! Another call to *5555. Whew! I wonder what will happen next time at Monkey Valley!
Bizarre cat ladders
P.S. I just have to mention a blog I came across, devoted entirely to cat ladders! According to a related interview in the LA Weekly Art Blog, the Germans, Swiss, and Swedish folks are the most crazy about freedom for cats via architectural deformation in the form of bizarre cat ladders.
Madame Moose strides again
On a run at Monkey Valley recently, a magical thing happened. I was running up the road, and saw a magnificent female moose in the meadow beside the road. She saw me too, we looked at each other for a little, and then she moved away up the hill.
I felt awe and pleasure at this rare contact with Madame Moose, and continued on my run up the hill happily, keeping a lookout in case I saw her again. Sure enough, when I got up near the top gate I saw her up by the gate, and she saw me again too. I backed off a little, so she wouldn’t feel trapped or threatened, and then I thought I would take advantage of this opportunity to ask her a question.
“Should I sell Monkey Valley?” I asked her. I was feeling very discouraged about the amount of time I’d been spending on tending to the ranch this summer, and feeling burdened by it.
She said, “Don’t sell this land. Don’t sweat the small stuff.” Or as my brother-in-law Geoff Price told me, “Don’t sweat the petty stuff, don’t pet the sweaty stuff”!
Then she hopped the fence in a single stride. This seemed to confirm what she had said to me. To take the small stuff in stride.
A note to the poster who claimed to see a dead moose caught in the barbed wire fence on my south fence line: Not! The fence has been there thirty-plus years, and the moose and deer all know where it is. As I saw with my own eyes, these magnificent ungulates take such things in their stride.
I have not been so equanimous, and decided to probe the universe’s plans for me by putting Monkey Valley on the market, in spite of the moose’s advice (or, if you prefer, my own inner guidance as prompted by the moose encounter). I am feeling the call to have more freedom in my life, and keeping two homes has been feeling like a burden. Much as I love the quiet and privacy of Monkey Valley, I feel a stronger pull to the city, and it is a strain to keep both going. So I’m going to see what happens. If the place sells before snow flies, I will take that as a sure sign it is time to move on to new pastures. If it doesn’t sell, I’ll keep Monkey Valley and make a new plan.
In either case, I will continue to offer vision fasts. Either at Monkey Valley, or on the land near Monkey Valley.