November, 2007 Archive

The Presidents’ Climate Commitment: Pro and Con

Monday, November 19th, 2007

Hello Mike


























Your next objection concerns possible abuses the Presidents Climate Commitment.















¢ engage all members of the university community


Lund Retreat Autumn 2007 (9)

Saturday, November 10th, 2007

7:15 Chet Baker singing and playing as I drink my coffee, thinking of return to Jan.

Time after Time
I tell myself that Im
so lucky to be loving you
so lucky to be
the one you run to see
in the evening
when the day is through

I only know what I know
the passing years will show
you’ve kept my love so young so new
and time after time
you’ll hear me say that Im
so lucky to be loving you.

Woke with a start at midnight from the sound of three sharp knocks on the door. No lights, no follow up. I sneaked around in the dark and locked all doors. Wake up at 5, achy as usual, take hot bath, go back to bed to feel the pleasure of warmed, relaxed muscles, meditate and sleep. Get up again at 7:00.

4:20 p.m. What’s happened to this day? After oatmeal breakfast, I write a guide to keeping warm and disposing of trash for visitors at Knoll House. Then split kindling to leave behind. Again enjoy feeling the aim improve as I tilt the axehead back over my head, bring it down on the quarter round, hear the crack of the fibres and the pop of the pieces shooting out in opposite directions. Pack the garbage to take to Lund, where I buy lamp oil, candles and matches for future power outages. An easy glide down, but a tough slog back up to Malaspina Road and then down to U. to give back one bike and pick up another. I make it all the way home on Peter B’s bike. Get back at 12:15, read for fifteen minutes and then start a cleanup that lasts four hours. After the morning’s splitting and bikeride, it’s hard work. The rain gets stronger and steadier, Savaryview fogged in.

Sad songs play on the computer. Now its time to pack my bag, lock up, and catch the little bus to Powell River.

Lund Retreat Autumn 2007 (8)

Monday, November 5th, 2007

How many vertical layers in Savaryview?

1. Deck surface
2. Railing
3. Close clearing with rocks
4. Path to bluff
5. Proscenium of trees
6. Lower fringe of trees in front of water
7. The passage between Mace and Hurtado points
8. Mace point
9. South beach and Savary trees
10. Georgia Strait
11. Comox peninsula
12. Comox Valley
13. Lower cloud layer
14. Front Range
15. Skyline Range
16. Distant sky
17. Overhead sky

What are the movements?

1. Sun, moon, star light: the time of day or night, the seasonal angle, the cloud covers
2. Skyscape: cloud density, color, shape, texture on horizontal and vertical axes
3. Wind: intensity, steadiness, direction, in sound, smells, effect on land, sky and seascapes
4. Tidal ebb and flow, shrinking and expanding the beach
5. Current in the channel
6. Snow cover on the mountains, expanding and receding
7. Wildlife: bugs, birds, mammals

The temperature drops a degree or two. Does the stove need a log? It’s been an hour. I go downstairs to check, feel warmth as I reach the bottom steps, hear the rippling flow of combustion, see the flicker in the window. Not at all. Instead of raising, I lower the damper. There’s a living being at work for my comfort down there that requires close tending. When I came home last night and the stove was cold, I worried that the jack pine was poor fuel, that Dick may have tricked me, that I’d have to order a load of fir for any visitors. But the fire lit easily, and when I woke up this morning, it was still going.

What are the planes of consciousness?

1. right now: the temperature, the stove, the view, the list, appetite
2. observing and recording right now
3. reading and revising right now’s entries
4. reading and revising yesterday’s entries
5. reflecting and commenting on yesterday’s entries right now
6. recalling: old stuff in the computer. Old stuff remembering earlier stuff¦

A phone call. The College Dean wants to know if I’d be willing to moderate a round table discussion on Sustainability and the Liberal Arts with a distinguished visitor the day after I get back. Suddenly there’s homework.

I walk down to the bluff listening to the glocks of three ravens flying formation.

I encounter a squirrel cheeping loudly and take his picture and a film and sound recording.

Douglas squirrel Tamiasciurus douglasi ¦skull olive brown on the back and buff underneath, the two colours being separated by a black line. The bushy tail is also darker above¦coniferous seeds from the mai pat of the squirrel’s food, supplemented by berries and mushrooms. ¦does not hibernate¦stores large quantities of cones for winter use¦.active during the day, scolding and chattering as it tries to chase other animals from its home territory. Nature West Coast 205

Follow the trail to below the summit. See Cortes and Twin Island.

Walk back and hear chipping and see a little wren on the path back to the house. Winter Wren, Troglodytes, troglodytes

Repair gasket on woodstove.

Eat the last leftovers of Michael’s Snow White Chicken. The water chestnuts and baby bok choy and diagonally sliced asparagus and the local grown chicken, stewed in its own broth, whitened with the corn starch”along with the remains of a bottle of Okanagan Semillon Chardonnay.

Finish reading Prodigal Summer. Its happy ending makes me feel happy. A vulgar enjoyment. I will enjoy sharing it with students.

This is my last night here until April or May. I love this house, this land, this neighborhood, this province, this country.

Lund Retreat Autumn 2007 (7)

Sunday, November 4th, 2007

Peter B. is back here at 6:30 in morning to pick me up for a hike up into the Coast Range. I have some difficulty getting going and packing what I need for the day. We drive two hours to the trailhead on logging roads where no old growth remains and the second growth is harvested with the haste of looters. But this grandiose landscape would be inaccessible without those roads.

We ascend through juvenile yellow cedars and wine-red blueberry twigs above Gamma and Alpha lakes till we come to the half-iced over Beta lake, at the base of the two Knucklehead peaks.

This is the easiest ascent of any of the high mountains in the area, and Peter’s plan is to make a loop between the two peaks and around the lake. But as we pull ourselves up by gripping the heather protruding through the iced-over snow, it becomes evident that the going will be rougher than expected. At times the snow is soft enough or the crust is thin enough for us to break through and gain traction. But in most places the surface is slick with hard ice.

At a little plateau where the vegetation gives way to pure rock and snow, Peter unpacks his single pair of crampons.

One goes on his left foot the other on my right. If you put any weight on the foot without the crampon, you are sure to fall, not something you want to do, given the slope and dropoffs. With the cramponed foot, you carve a rough, flat resting place for the useless foot but dont move it until you’ve stepped sideways and a little forward with the cramponed foot. Then you move the useless foot into its prepared spot and repeat the sequence. This is a lesson on the complexity of normal walking. It takes half an hour to make what would be a five minute traverse without the ice.

The weather is clear, the views spectacular and proceeding is not too strenuous or frightening if you slow down and pay very close attention.

We decide to stop for lunch at the saddle between the peaks, forgo both summits and head back the way we came.

The way down is easier because we have tracks to follow and the snow has softened a little. What a substance: hard, soft, appearing and disappearing–a solid almost as mercurial as liquid or gas.

Once returned to the lake, we split up to meditate, sitting on cushions of heather in the early lowering sun. Back by nightfall at Peter’s house, we’re served a salmon dinner by Margaret. A girl at the reserve sold her the fish, which, it turned out, was stolen from her grandmother’s freezer.