solar power – Karen's New York Love Affair

Life in the Wild

The Monkey Valley Retreat Centre is truly in the wilderness. Our nearest neighbours are about 30 kilometres away.

Monkey Valley is surrounded by crown lands on all sides, affording an exceptional experience of privacy and feeling of being away from civilization. The retreat centre is off the grid, which means that no power lines or phone lines go to the property. We do all we can to maintain the wildness of this place.

The way of life at Monkey Valley is designed to minimize human impact on the earth. The retreat centre runs on solar power, with an energy-efficient, quiet backup generator for extended cloudy periods. We use as little energy as possible, and try to keep waste to a minimum. We use biodegradable products as much as possible, because the water that goes down the drain eventually finds its way to the creek.

Our water supply is from an underground spring that is bountiful year round. The water has been tested to ensure it is safe for your drinking. It is crystal-clear and delicious, straight from the tap.

The centre has a cell phone for emergency use. Your cell phone will work in the house, but we encourage you to unplug from it while you are here!

The retreat centre is a haven for steeping in the energies of nature. Time here is free from traffic, TV, radio, and newspapers. We honour and acknowledge the shamanic traditions that use mind-altering substances to shift consciousness. However, at Monkey Valley we don’t use these methods to journey to other states of awareness and deepen into our true nature. No recreational drugs or alcohol are permitted at the retreat centre.

When you come to the retreat centre we will teach you about low-impact camping and ways of being in harmony with the land and her creatures. We also teach safety topics such as how to stay found and how to handle wild-life encounters.

More Monkey Valley doings, or how I spent my writing retreat not writing

Luckily, most of the diversions at Monkey Valley are more fun than cleaning up dead mice! This is how I spend my time not writing:

• Get winter tires put on the Tracker.

• Get chips repaired on Tracker windshield (much cheaper in Merritt than in Vancouver). The chip repairer is amazed that my windshield has lasted through 7 winters already!

• Purchase and install new water filter. Learn that the threads must be dry or the water leaks.

• Purchase and post replacement “No Hunting and No Trespassing Under Penalty of the Law” signs. Duck under branches. Climb over logs. Worry about Lyme disease and wish I’d worn a hat. (My head starts itching again as I write this!)

• Discover that two new sections of fence need repair. Purchase supplies. Make repairs.

• Purchase and install new smoke detector.

• Replace batteries in flashlights.

• Purchase lock de-icer and apply WD-40 oil to locks on gates. Need to purchase more WD-40.

• Purchase eco-permit at Merritt City Hall so I can take garbage to the Aspen Grove Container Site. $1 per bag. Learn that the container site now has recycling bins too!

• Check water level in the new batteries for the solar power that I purchased in August. Learn that expensive new Water Miser battery caps ($287.42) did not prevent water loss as promised. Learn how to use new hydrometer ($12.00). Use hydrometer to check the state of charge (cell by cell). Learn that Power Pulse equalizers ($140.88) do not equalize charge across cells as promised. Top up water in batteries. Use generator to charge batteries for 4 hours. Re-test with hydrometer. Learn that new batteries ($2568.86 excluding freight, tax, and labour) do not charge to manufacturer’s rating while new.

• Start propane wall heater. It works! (For about three years in a row I had to get a technician out to make repairs before it would start.) Wake in the middle of the night to smell of steak cooking. Have vegetarian freak-out, wondering why intruder has come into the house and started cooking steaks. Eventually realize the smell is cause by dead flies burning up inside the heater!

• Wake up to beautiful snowy Monkey Valley.

• Take the cat scratch posts, litter box, and dishes out to the barn. Goodbye, Donald.

• Find big puddle on bathroom floor. Shut off water line to leaking valve under bathroom sink. Mop up water.

• Wake up to find all the snow has melted.

• Chat with handsome cowboy who knocks on my door one morning, complete with horse, dog, hat, and lasso! (This is my favourite diversion while at Monkey Valley!) He is rounding up the Douglas Lake cows, bringing them down to the home pasture for the winter. Steve is a wonderfully kind neighbour. This summer he brought his chainsaw and cut away some giant trees that had fallen across the road on my property, and he even bucked up some of the wood so I could use it for firewood! The Douglas Lake Ranch, established in 1884, is Canada’s largest privately held working cattle ranch, with a herd of 20,000 cattle.

• Do cleansing ritual for the house, releasing any negative energy and filling the house with love, light, and positive energy.

• Yell at pack rat that climbs onto the roof each night around 10 PM. What is he doing up there?

• Put photos of my nephew in a photo album. Write funny captions for photos.

• Listen to new Rolling Stones album (Aftermath, 1966). Marvel at this first album of all Jagger-Richards compositions. Marvel at “Goin’ Home.” Not the length—which was one of the first rock songs over 10 minutes—but the absolute sexiness. While it has a flavour of Van Morrison’s Gloria in places—she makes me feel so good, she makes me feel alright—it is audacious and I can’t believe they got away with it! I also can’t believe that I have never heard this before, although I’ve been a Stones fan since I was 15. Cry because my Dad’s dead and I am listening to this record on his amazing stereo system. Cry because I am listening to this record alone at Monkey Valley. Cry because I want Mick Jagger.

• Talk to writing buddies about how our writing is going. Mine is not going (see above).

• Spend many hours eating meals and reading books in front of the fire (see below).

• And always, always, make fire first thing in the morning (average house temperature upon waking: 13° C), and carry in firewood last thing before dark.

So that’s how I spent my fall vacation! The only thing left to do is wash all the windows and floors. And since I really do not feel like washing all the windows and floors, I have decided to return to Vancouver. Where I am sure I will write lots and lots!

Monkey Valley doings—as snug as a bug in a fug

As you know, I came to Monkey Valley this November to write. And as many writers can verify, it is a law of the universe that just about any mundane chore can seem more important when there’s writing to be done. Monkey Valley provided me with myriad (which literally means 10,000) diversions. Would you like to hear about them?

The first was the most horrible. When I arrived, I discovered that my favourite little furry visitors had been scampering around the house, and the first order of business was to clean up the signs of their presence. Yes, I am talking about mouse turds. 🙁 For some reason, the biggest accumulation of mouse turds was around the live mouse traps. There was also a big mess of ground up blue mouse bait outside the traps. I can only surmise that the mice inside the trap passed bits of the poisoned bait to the mice outside the trap. How terribly sad. I feel like such a beast. Eventually, of course, the mice outside the trap joined the mice inside the trap.

My evil plan is that the bait entices the mice into the trap, and then kills them, hopefully quickly and painlessly. Since they die there, and not in the walls of the house, I don’t have the scary problem of maggots parading across the living room floor, which once happened when an animal died inside the wall. Unfortunately, judging from the half-eaten remains of some of the mice in the traps, the death is not always quick and painless. It can involve being cannabalized by one’s own mates. Or maybe this chewy snacking occurred after the mice were already dead… I hope so, but it is still a terrible thing for the living mice to have to digest. (Pun intended.)

The other benefit of my perfected mice-killing scheme is that the poison from the dead mice does not travel into the chain of life at Monkey Valley, poisoning bugs and birds and other creatures who might encounter the little dead bodies. But as I gathered the little corpses into a big green garbage bag, it occurred to me that the poison will still enter the biosphere at the landfill where the dead mice wind up, thus poisoning bugs and birds at the site of the landfill, rather than at Monkey Valley. The goal of ahimsa is difficult indeed. Perhaps the traditional “dead mouse trap” is better than the “live mouse trap & poison” approach. To be continued…