Autumn Update

     Greetings my friends and apologies to any of you who were planning on living vicariously off of Stuart’s and my Canadian adventure. Turns out that unless you are rabid fans of This OLD House, our current “adventures” are less than thrilling. Since you last heard from me, we have been working like mad people to get our place set up and winterized.  We finally got our shed built, our 300 lb wood stove wrestled into our house (this was a process that involved various car jacks and some clever engineering (thank goodness Stuart has a great grasp on the fine art of the jerry rig) and our huge picture window installed in our living room, (bat cave no more) just in the nick of time, since it snowed two days after we opened a huge hole in the side of our house.

                                          Little shed in the big woods.

Before: the view from our window...

 ...we could almost see the whole world... 

                             

Cutting through a wall within a wall!

The walls are almost 11 inches thick! (counting the rough wood siding)

Before: January, 2023

After: October, 2023

So...we haven’t been out and about much to actually explore where we live, excepting the hardware store, which I could now navigate blind.  We did manage one getaway to Jasper National Park to celebrate our anniversary and we stopped on the way at the Athabasca glacier which is part of the Columbia Ice Fields and is evidently the most visited glacier in North America. You can walk right up to it, though sadly it is retreating at a rapid rate (there are markers showing where it was over the years and it is receding faster than an old man’s hairline).  We went in late July and though it was calm and roasty where we parked across the street, when we reached the glacier edge it was windy and freeeezing! Evidently glaciers make their own weather systems the same way forest fires do.  The ice melt pools around it were white ( I suppose with sediment) but eerily beautiful. They seem to exude cold and shimmered in that stark landscape. 

Athabasca glacier in Jasper National Park

Snow melt in front of the glacier

                                 

A pool of snow melt

Brrrrrrrrrr...

Outside of Jasper we went for a short hike across the 5 bridges of Maligne canyon, the deepest canyon in Jasper National Park.  Photo’s don’t do justice to how far down in those narrow canyons the Maligne river flows, but there are some spectacular falls that the river continues to carve out, and it was a gorgeous walk. I hope to go back in the winter and take one of the guided ice walks through the bottom of the canyon (though hopefully we don’t have to slide down any of those falls…stay tuned).   

Maligne Canyon (named by a furious French priest who maligned  it because it was so impossible to travel through. 

Beaver dam or log jam?

.

Besides that little trip we have pretty much stuck close to home but living here is enough of a nature hike. For one thing there are SEASONS! When we moved here in late June it was greener than green and almost every afternoon the the blue sky would cloud up and tremendous thunderstorms would roll in, shake the house and roll away again to leave the sky lit up til around 11.  There were wild flowers carpeting the hill behind us and I picked a fresh bouquet for my table every day.  

Mr. Wilder in the wild

.

Now the land is turning to browns and golds as the nights get darker earlier and the cold is creeping in. We live in a mixed forest of poplars, quaking aspen, white spruce and jack pines, and this is the time if year when the leaves turn golden and shivers in the slightest breeze.

Everyone up here has tattoos; even the Aspen leaves!

 

  The skies here are always dynamic. Amazing sunsets and a couple of nights ago we got a Northern Lights show for hours (sorry, no pics) The sky shimmered and  streaked and billowed like nothing I have ever witnessed. This year is supposed to be a good year for Northern Lights so hopefully i can share some with you in the future.   

We haven’t seen any bears on the property yet, although I did see some black bear poop on the trail up to my brother-in-law’s house and there have been sightings down the road. We carry bear spray whenever we leave the house as this is the time of year when the bears are fattening up for the winter hibernation and we don’t feel like contributing to their diet, if possible.  We do have a resident herd of deer who graze around our house and one who has a habit of startling me by standing just outside our bathroom window and peering in when I am getting out of the shower.  We have a fine, fat, red squirrel who likes to drink out of the cat’s water bowl on the deck, and an army of mice who are eating the cat’s food in the house. So we aren’t lonely.     

At any rate, I think we are finally done with most of our house improvements now, so hopefully we will find time soon to actually go out adventuring and get some interesting photos of our surrounds. Either that or we are going to hibernate and you will hear from us next Spring.     

Let me close with a fun fact: in Canada everything is required to be labeled in English and French. So i am learning some new vocabulary and I will share a word with you every time I post.  

Today’s word is important: papier hygiénique: toilet paper  

A tout a l’huere, J