greenstorm (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greenstorm) wrote2021-09-03 03:39 pm
greenstorm) wrote2021-09-03 03:39 pm
Old acquaintances
Today was another day in the bush. I went to a sample site I for sure had to do, fairly close to a quite disused logging road called the Kuzkwa South. This was south of where I'd been working before by about 20km. I had my suspicions halfway up the road and then recognised it very suddenly when an unmistakable cliff loomed through the trees.
Inzana is a wide bowl with lumpy soil-and-tree crusted lumps those 20km north.
The Kuzkwa South road snakes up and down and up and down with astonishing potholes and quick corners though abrupt topography until grey-streaked peach cliffs suddenly loom up on one side and a little lake sparkles downslope through the trees on the other. The cliff is fringed with rubust, healthy-looking douglas fir and the lake is ringed wit birch. Everything looks so inviting to play on: the rock cliffs look like they're easily climbable, fractured like ladders, though the long talus slope leading up to them suggests keeping to the edges and to the anchor-points of clumps of trees. The lake is so sparkly, not distant at all but not close enough to have road dust: it it looks like just ten minutes of climbing through trees to get there.
I'd been there once before, briefly, in 2015, for work as a summer student. That moment of coming around the corner and seeing the cliffs and the little lake, the highly interactive landscape, has never left me. The spot is only just shy of two hours' drive from town and only really 20km off the pavement (the last 10km is very slow!) and I was giving serious thought to going back there camping when a pickup appeared going up as I was going down. He didn't have a radio so we did the truck-negotiation of backing up into a wide spot so we could go past each other and I figured this was not the weekend to go up. Hunting season, also likely not great timing. I wouldn't want to do that road in snow either. It took careful maneuvering to get around some of those potholes without getting stuck even with them dry and with a lot of traction.
I'll still keep that place in my heart. There are so many places in my heart.
The actual spot I was working wasn't bad either: there were clumps of huge aspen trees, 30m or so (well, huge for the area) and a spaghnum wetland that was nearly dried out so I could squelch across it if I didn't stand too still: it opened out into a pond that was still filled with water. This is probably the only month I could have walked that wetland: it had aquatic weeds on one edge.
The road in had those improbably large moose tracks and an equally large wolf track dried into some of the mud.
It was just pretty. Nice. It felt like home. I listen to podcasts on my phone when I'm out since I've given up my project of memorizing poetry: it's important to make noise constantly when you're out so the bears know you're coming and can make good decisions.
I can see the shape of my loneliness best when I enjoy things. I want to go home, tell people about them, take someone out to see those sudden cliffs and go scrambling up them together. I want that not always -- some spaces are just for me -- but sometimes. I want the option.
Either way, the landscape is doing its best to comfort me these days and I appreciate it.
Inzana is a wide bowl with lumpy soil-and-tree crusted lumps those 20km north.
The Kuzkwa South road snakes up and down and up and down with astonishing potholes and quick corners though abrupt topography until grey-streaked peach cliffs suddenly loom up on one side and a little lake sparkles downslope through the trees on the other. The cliff is fringed with rubust, healthy-looking douglas fir and the lake is ringed wit birch. Everything looks so inviting to play on: the rock cliffs look like they're easily climbable, fractured like ladders, though the long talus slope leading up to them suggests keeping to the edges and to the anchor-points of clumps of trees. The lake is so sparkly, not distant at all but not close enough to have road dust: it it looks like just ten minutes of climbing through trees to get there.
I'd been there once before, briefly, in 2015, for work as a summer student. That moment of coming around the corner and seeing the cliffs and the little lake, the highly interactive landscape, has never left me. The spot is only just shy of two hours' drive from town and only really 20km off the pavement (the last 10km is very slow!) and I was giving serious thought to going back there camping when a pickup appeared going up as I was going down. He didn't have a radio so we did the truck-negotiation of backing up into a wide spot so we could go past each other and I figured this was not the weekend to go up. Hunting season, also likely not great timing. I wouldn't want to do that road in snow either. It took careful maneuvering to get around some of those potholes without getting stuck even with them dry and with a lot of traction.
I'll still keep that place in my heart. There are so many places in my heart.
The actual spot I was working wasn't bad either: there were clumps of huge aspen trees, 30m or so (well, huge for the area) and a spaghnum wetland that was nearly dried out so I could squelch across it if I didn't stand too still: it opened out into a pond that was still filled with water. This is probably the only month I could have walked that wetland: it had aquatic weeds on one edge.
The road in had those improbably large moose tracks and an equally large wolf track dried into some of the mud.
It was just pretty. Nice. It felt like home. I listen to podcasts on my phone when I'm out since I've given up my project of memorizing poetry: it's important to make noise constantly when you're out so the bears know you're coming and can make good decisions.
I can see the shape of my loneliness best when I enjoy things. I want to go home, tell people about them, take someone out to see those sudden cliffs and go scrambling up them together. I want that not always -- some spaces are just for me -- but sometimes. I want the option.
Either way, the landscape is doing its best to comfort me these days and I appreciate it.