30thirtyTHREE-OHtreintatrente

that's how many years complete. same old same old, but i feel pretty alive, i do! skinny dipping in icy-cold mountain-top lakes is one way of celebrating. donuts and a misty morning are another. standing on the mountain-view porch, watching the magic of a tipsy raven is one more way. supper with new friends promises to be a fourth. i am a lucky lady, this is sure!

letters from a thursday in the BC north

let me tell you about this particular piece of heaven.

i arrive in the new home. view more stunning than i remember as the late afternoon sun pours into the living room past lush houseplants and wooden furnishings. high ceilings, glass almost filling the walls that face the mountain.

i walk the eager black dog waiting for me - through more sunshine, down the gravel road to my only 3 neighbours. woods and mountains are all we meet.

i return to my new temporary home and prepare myself a lovely little salad - fresh greens from an earthenwhere pot on the mountain-view porch, fresh basil from the kitchen garden, beautiful black olives and fine cheese, sprinkled with italian olive oil and fragrant red wine vinegar.

sitting on the porch, overlooking the forest that is the backyard and leads only to the mountain, my borrowed black dog licks my feet as i please my palate, and i look off at the glacier-capped mountains further in the distance beyond the forested hills that close the valley of the Hazeltons.

i can't imagine feeling anything but peaceful with this massive rocky slope towering over me, with all those tiny spots of trees rising up its slopes, with that persistent snow up near the clouds to put me in my tiny little place.

everyone has apple trees (and bear-visitors almost without exception). berries are plentiful, and I've heard mushrooms are as well. so are fish - today i feasted in Gitsegukla with a clan celebrating a gravestone placement ceremony. the big chief had passed-on 3 years ago, and today was a celebration, in blanketed regalia, with 'burnt fish' and cold potatoes, and elders and speeches. so much to eat, so much to watch, so little that i could understand. then back to work at the community clinic, and then an early end, which was good news -- today i am tired after a moderate night on-call.

the day, living beside a mountain, is extended beyond the dusk that falls to earth -- the peak reflects back another hour of sunshine and light to keep me from napping just yet.

still, i'll soon be asleep, maybe even here on the couch with my book that i'm unlikely to get too far with. and then tomorrow i'll run the four and a half kilometers into work, i think.

on the other hand, i could tell you about how last night, i terrorized myself with handed-down stories of violence. of scars perched on cheek-bones cut by her lovers' fists when their son was small and she too was only a child. of a desperate father, molding gold and setting diamonds while his family, his life are shards scattered around him, and his child, still very much a child, returned to him with a black eye and a need for powdered crystals of another kind.

or my frustration today -- first, disappointment, though there are any number of possible reasons to explain why the mother of my 19-month old patient from emerg last night never made it back to see us about figuring out whether her little one has rickets or not. and more frustrating was the 2 and a half year old who's young parents came to see us today to see about getting disability allowance for her -- she wasn't speaking well (and had been identified over a year ago with hearing problems), but somehow had slipped through the cracks. ears perforated, teeth rotted away to little stumps, and her little brother on a similar tack - and i can't tell who will make sure that they are looked after.

enough of ramblings.

hope all are well!

xome.