A casual backtrack (part 1)

Skunk Cabbage on Bowen Island...wild garlic? Georgia O'Keeffe?

April 17th, Kamloops - Town of the Mystifying Signage

I guess you would call this Canada's equivalent to the Scottish Lowlands; a sweeping wind- and rain-eroded hilly landscape of sage brush and tumbleweed. The major crop here seems to be North American ginseng, the cooling opposite (the yin?) to Asian ginseng's hot-blooded yang.

Kamloops is a strange place of industrial units and functional blocks that disguise the odd area of interest. Though I don't recommend their wildlife park, except for the four yellow-eyed wolves. In this town the north and south Thompson rivers meet in a gentle way. Whilst sitting by the river watching the sun go down, Pat commented that the experience is just like sitting on the shore of the Ganges in Varanasi. I hope not.

...and yes, he was being sarcastic.

April 21st, Jasper

Here I am in the Canadian Rockies enjoying the most awesomely brtual mountains I ever saw and - oh! look at this - it's a notice of intended prosectuion from the Wiltshire police, here's me doing over 70mph on the A303 from London to Devon.

**sigh**

April 21st continued, Columbia Icefields

Who'd've thought the purity of the Columbia Icefield could sustain such blackness? This is what I found out there on the Athabasca Glacier:

April 23rd, Banff - Sulphur Mountain

Neither words nor camera can do justice to the experience of Sulphur Mountain's summit on a clear blue day. Before, I'd been thinking how all these monumental snow-topped lumps of rock made me feel like the Tardis - bigger on the inside - and made me ask "how can this litlle body possibly contain everything it feels inside?". Well, a panoramic view of an unending mountainous landscape did the opposite: it made me feel like a minute, temporal speck sitting on top of the world. Pat quoted the old mama from Mike Leigh's High Hopes: "I feel like I'm on top of the world" she says in broad cockney as she peers over the edge of her son's roof garden down onto Kings Cross' disused gasworks. I know what she means.

April 28th, Osoyoos and home

"Looks like it's been raining for a month here. In fact, it looks like it doesn't know how to do anything else but rain."

Auckland and me

Well, Auckland, I'm sorry to say this but I'm not sure I like you all that much. Granted, your art galleries are good, you have more hostels than you can shake a stick at and mostly the sun shines.

But you are neither metropolitan nor bohemian, neither glamorous nor scuzzy, and your pedestrian lights are a law unto themselves. I haven't found any 'pockets' of anything that have charmed me and to top it off, there's a bloody bungee jumpy cagey thing outside my dorm window (mild dislike for lengths of elastic with people attachments is turning to hatred...oh shit, I'm in the wrong country aren't I?!).

Solution: get out.

I have a bus ticket that takes me way up north tomorrow morning, right up to the resting place of Maori spirits at the tip of the Ninety Mile Beach that is only 64 miles long. This same very useful ticket then takes me everywhere else I could possibly want to go over both the North and South Islands, whenever I like and for however long. Result!

Last port of call in this city is the K Road...

Wherever you go, there you are

And your home towns always find you in one way or another...

Ever heard of "focus", Catherine?

Turbulence

"Turbulence signals unsettledness, turmoil, surprise, rupture and unpredictability. It is both within us, in our psyches, and it is outside us. In turbulent times the feelings of loss, fear, anguish, grief and anger, along with the notions of hope, sustenance, the capacity to dream and find refuge rise to the surface"

"[It's] about the real, imagined, poignant and ambiguous transformations that occur along the way"

The big smoke

And this is my first experience of Auckland: the 'big smoke' in the land of the long white cloud, according to the gospel of Lonely Planet. I arrived at the hostel by 7am, but they wouldn't let me check in until after 10...gah! sleep-deprived, twisted and acutely aware of being alone...not good!! So I went to the highest point I could find so I could loiter awhile. I found clouds mainly, but it beat the hostel lobby easily. This is about 200m up the Sky Tower, New Zealand's tallest building and the 12th highest in the world (hmm, not such an impressive stat, that one).

You can jump off this tower if you want. I don't want, thank you very much.

Chronologically challenged

Not only have I just lost a whole day (May 3rd fell into the ether somewhere over the Pacific between LA and Auckland), I also appear to have mislaid 3 weeks...I did go to Canada, honest. I loved Vancouver. And I really did see miles and miles of untouched mountains that could almost let you forget the man's scars on the world. It's just that I'm not that competent at this digital diary thing, and am still getting to grips with my camera. Anyway, once we've overcome the logistical problem of Canada images being on Pat's mum's desktop on the 21st floor in Vancouver and me being in a full-on Korean internet games room on the other side of the world, something might be posted.

In the meantime, here's Bill Reid's sculpture, which is in the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver: Raven Discovering Mankind in the Clamshell.




The raven finds a clam shell washed up on an island and there seem to be people living inside. He prises the shell open and coaxes the little people out by saying that if they face this world they'll grow tall. The raven is known for being a trickster - he lies, cheats and steals and is my favourite incidentally - so they're probably wise to be cautious. Anyhow, the little people do make an unglamorous escape from their bolthole and I think I'm right in saying that this marked the beginning of the Haida Nation on Queen Charlotte Islands, a nation that is now particularly known for its art.

That's an eagle's head on the raven's backside - the Raven and Eagle clans are affiliated in some way (and now my knowledge runs out) and so everytime one clan is depicted, the other must also be represented. An upside-down eagle on the raven's tail isn't all that complimentary though.