last to leave

Aug 25.  Candy, Douglas, Molly, Ellen, Annie (dog) and Muffit (cat) were the last of the family to leave.  A whole month of children and grandchildren.  How lucky we are!

There was some question as to whether Ellen would be found in time to go.  The smoke didn't help, but there were some sound clues - not bird.

Two days later, we woke to suddenly-clear sky and sharp shadows.   The reprieve from smoke was only temporary, though the air was never really thick again.

Harvest.  So much fruit.  Pears (Duerichens'); ours only a few days away, to be picked by Mick and Chris.  Italian prune plums - the smaller tree totally picked (no grizzly-bear contender this year), the larger a few days from ready.  Crab apples - boxes to Kay and Koko, Chris to find homes for the rest?  Strawberries - still going strong after their midsummer pause.  Grapes - yummy.  And Doco and I were flying back so could bring only a taste - plus a jar of huckleberry jam!  The rowan-berry harvest (below) is left for the drunken robins (and hopefully not the bear).

Sept.12.  The view from the ranch house as we were about to close it up, alas, at the end of summer.  A day of many squalls, but the plane flew.  Doco and I really were the last to leave, but we have designs on coming back up SOON.  Here's hoping.

cousin power

Here is a somewhat random set of 'cousin' photos from August, 2015(!) at New Denver.  I just like them.

A cousin pile

"Racing Demon", if you dare

Not exactly cousins.  Son and father heading for the road 

Bosun mine

Galena ore.  Silver, lead, and zinc.  A rich vein was discovered on the ranch by JC Harris in 1898 and immediately sold to an English company who created the Bosun Mine (named after his companion and farm helper, "the Bosun").

The vein ran from the lake, pretty much straight up the mountain.  Counting from the top, the mine had 6 tunnels into the mountain.  Nearest the lake, tunnel #6 is just off the track down to our beach from the Lovicks'.

Below the dump from Tunnel #6 - just after sunset and just before a storm

Tunnel #5 is below Harris Road just after it leaves the highway.  Tunnel #4 is just above the road to the Bosun Lake.  Tunnel #3, #2, and #1 are up the mountainside into the forest.

I thought all the tunnels were filled in by the government 20 years ago.  Certainly the lower three were, but the fillers seem to have missed the collapsed upper tunnels.  There are still openings to be found, and kept from falling into!  In the photos below, in March 2012, Cole and I were on a spring scramble up the vein from Tunnel #4 with Stephen Hornsby and Anne Knowles - discovering holes.

Tunnel #3?

Tunnel #2?

Top tunnel - #1?

Then, in about 2016, in the depths of Nancy and John's house, Ralph discovered this sagittal-section map of the diggings.  Too small to see much here, except where the six tunnels go into the mountain and the huge gaps in land underground.  There's now a copy on a cupboard door in the ranch house.  It's a wonder there's any ground left at all in parts of the hillside.  

Geological Survey of Canada, about 1930

Colin's table

As promised, here is Colin's table for the summer kitchen in back of the ranch house.  The former table (now kindling for the cook stove) predated Thomas Wright's work on the restoring of the log core of the ranch house in the early 1970's.  The old table was wobbly and in shreds, though still in use by Eric to produce delicious suppers in late July.

Solid, handsome, and immensely useful.  All cedar, and all from pieces milled by Norbert from ranch trees.   In addition to daily suppers, the new table has already supported the making of something like 30 jars of yellow-plum jam (Douglas and Colin as jam chefs), a dozen(?) of huckleberry jam, and 21 jars of canned pears (Julia and Meo).  Doco has hugely enjoyed working alongside Colin in the barn workshop, Colin on his table, Doco on his bookshelf, with the sometime help of Griffin and Alice.  Quite astonishing altogether.

Doco's bookcase

A landmark day, September 1, 2018.
Doco is delighted to have made his bookcase, and it's lovely.  The design inspired by a Japanese cabinet in "Fine Woodworking" - note the birch legs.  The top is beautiful old-grain cedar.  It's the second product, after Colin's splendid outdoor-cooking table for the ranch house summer kitchen (see, hopefully, next blog post), of Doco's cleaned-up wood-working shop in the squirrel-barn.

Doco now says the bookshelf, designed to fit against the stair wall in the upstairs of the clay house, is not what he intended to make.  It was planned to be a long-wall-length shelf for ancient family collections of Dickens, Scott, Stevenson, Kipling, Thackeray …  This made bookshelf is much too useful for ancient books, and is now stocked with more current books from the ranch house on all sorts of topics for browsers of assorted ages.  So, back to the shop … maybe even later this fall?