Sunshine Valley

Yesterday was a challenge. My alarm for 6 didn’t go off so I only awoke with my normal 7 am alarm.  I had to get to Chilliwack to pick up my camper to take it to Adventurer RV to have the decals done.  Kevin had done the major repair in the spring but the decals had not been in stock. I’d looked at the blank wall on one side of the camper and been tempted to hire a friend to paint that side. The Insurance Company would not have been on board. 

The Langley bottleneck wasn’t too bad.  Madigan was excited about a car ride. I had an Ian Rankin audio book.  I just could have used another coffee.  Loading the camper went well.  I had planned to leave the trailer to pick up later for when I was going to be picking up my ATV.  As it was I’m so poor at back up a trailer and time was running late I chose to take it with me,

I’d hoped to wash the camper at the self wash place but the entrance was full and I worried that I’d not be able to turn around with the trailer, one of the reasons I’d planned to leave it.  At least this put me back on time to getting the camper to Kevin at Adventurer RV on Chilliwack Mountain Road.

“It’s okay,’ Kevin said , smiling, “We can wash it.”  

The lovely receptionist was already down at dog eye level offering Madigan a treat. He’s pretty skitterish but he took one from her.  He recognised her as a good heart.

  

While the camper was being beautified Victor came by in his Ram truck so we could go for breakfast at Tim Hortons.  He’s had major surgery and is walking with a cane.  His challenge is to be able to lift his leg to mount his ATV for moose hunting.  

“If you can’t get enough lift with physio you could erect a t bar to your quad that you could attach your winch cable to and lift you into your seat. “ I joked.

Victor is very handy and mechanical and had developed a winch rig to lift moose quarters onto his ATV that all the hunters admired.

“So I could use that to haul up game as well and you could take my winch rig for your quad.”  He laughed.  

Victor was military and one of the brotherhood. We both knew “Sarge” who’d served in WWII.  He’d died of old age a few years ago.  Victor had helped him at the end hunting.  Victor’s more Vietnam and Cypress era but we’re all getting older now, like Sarge did.  Victor has a son and friends who he are glad to help him get the game out.  

I’m planning on hunting this fall and the issue isn’t the ambush or stalk but rather getting the game out.  A moose is a couple of thousand pounds, a deer a few hundred pounds.  The last few years I’ve just shot grouse/partridge,  I’ve let game go simply because the work of getting it home was too daunting.  I’m whining about my fractured back from a plane crash and here’s Victor gang ho despite two surgeries in the spring to deal with the damage from a long ago motorcycle crash.  I’d slipped in the rain coming down from Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh but I had to climb the little hill to see the glorious view and think my grandfather’s had done that before me.  There’s a cost for glory and dignity with aging.  Neither Victor or I or so many of our old friends regrets the craziness of youth.  I feel sad for those who have lived lives of quiet desperation and haven’t even memories in old age.

This summer with the heat and long stretches of sunny days has had me recollecting the sweet joy of my summer growing up in the prairies.  As kids we bicycled everywhere.  The  blue sky went on forever above the wheatfiields and we could watch dark storm clouds  come rolling in for hours shouting thunder. Otherwise we could lie on our backs looking up at thee cumulus clouds telling stories in the sky with their changing shapes.

Now here I am again in Sunshine Valley. Laura and I had commented on it often and we passed by on our way to Princeton or Merritt.  I stopped first a few weeks back on my way home from a week of workation with my camper , laptop and star link in Logan Lake.  I loved walking Madigan aground the well kept grounds with a dog walk area he just loved .  I rode my folding electric bike up to the logging road along the river and decided I wanted to come back and explore more.  

We’re booked in a couple of weeks. It’s long weekend and Laura and I have time off so we have an extra day off for time off. She’s finding the clinics more stressful.  People are increasingly frustrated demanding and even belligerents with the broken health care system, shortages and long waits. Her doctors are my age and continue to work. We all love serving patients but more and more see colleagues leaving because of the top heavy administration and irrational interferences that always occurs when untrained bureaucrats get power. We’ve had 10 years of a failed surfboarder drama teacher in power whose influence has been Shakespearian  with  something definitely rotten in the state of Denmark 

I’m working full time hours by government job standards but half what I used to work as a private clinician.  Private practice medicine carries the system but more and more doctors are opting for the gravy train great life style of government work with endless meetings and little demands to do heavy lifting or get ones hands dirty.  There’s an arrogance in that work too and so much time for politicking and gossiping. I did a few years of that when I was younger at different times and frankly now that I’m older I’m envious of the high pay and pension and various packages,  But I like my freedom.  That’s a fact. I’d not be able to do the sailing and camping and travel I have done so easily.  

When I took a month off work to sail my yacht back from Hawaii and the mask broke I could phone my assistant and let her know I’d be a week longer returning. In a government job I’d get all manner of attitude for something like that.

Now here I am today out camping when I’d actually planned just to have the camper job done and return it to storage.  Kevin’s partner noted that my trailer lights weren’t working properly. 

“I know,” I said. “I can only connect the camper or the trailer but not both at the same tine,”  I said knowing I was at risk of getting a ticket if a policeman became ornery.  The big lights on the trailer that Kelvin of Travco had fixed made the whole rig safe but technically it wasn’t quite legal,.

“We use a splitter” he said,.

“Would you he able to fix mine now before I leave” I asked,

“Sure,” he said picking up the parts from the little store at reception. I’d just bought more of the special RV toilet paper and septic tank deodorizer. They had lots of electrical parts as well. 

So an hour later I had a legal system with lights working on camper and trailer.  He’d fit me in between two jobs he was doing in the shop. Big Winnebago buses worth hundreds of thousands the owners happy to have these folks work on their rigs given how conscientious and trustworthy they were,  I feel blessed when I can trust a workman.  It was the same sailing, My life depends on good work.  I’ve been blessed that most do adequate work but so impressed when I’m blessed to find a godsend place like Adventure RV.  

I was thankful too that Victor had told me about his friend at Chilliwack Motorcycle just off Chilliwack Mountain Road. I’d left my Honda 420 Tracker ATV there the week before  today. It’s was there in the lot waiting for me to pick it up,  When I ‘d last used it in the mountains by Princeton last year the wrench symbol had come on and the engine seemedto be working harder. I’d only had it a year and it was well past it’s first service date.  I carry a satellite phone but admittedly worry as I’m driving on old logging roads beside gazillion mile down ravines forcing myself not to think of mechanical failure.  All I’d need was for brake to fail and if the engine failed I’d have a might long walk out of the deep back woods.  I was thankful to have the machine serviced by their mechanics.  They do Harley’s too and racing motorcycles along with ATV’s.  Their clientele like me can’t afford to have less than the best work done given what we’re doing with our machines.  The engine purred when I started it up and it was likely just the dirt ash and dust I’d been in that clogged the filter, 

There’d been so many fires the last few years caused by arsonists , probably domestic terrorists or just sick folk. I’d treated several so knew the addiction that starting a huge flame and televisions fan fare gave these folk, the evil ones and the mousy boys and girls with pent up resentments.  One of my favourite hunting areas by Copper Mountain Princeton was totally burnt out.  Because the liar in Ottawa wants to make money on climate change he’s unwilling to support the forestry and community policing services that have been catching the arsonists.  One woman admitted to starting 35 fires.  70 rural churches were burnt down last year.  Theres’ been less change in climate but a whole lot of change in government.  I miss the days when we had powerful bright men like Mulroney, Martin, Chrétien and Harper in power. This puppet selfie low IQ bully has been a nightmare.  I looked at that once green forest with miles of black despair and thought of Lord of the Rings.  Thankfully the provincial government has been doing all it can despite the evil federal menace,  It’s obviously our premier lives here and doesn’t appreciate the cost of having such stupidity and evil in the east wasting our forests with his pavement mind urban police’s disregarding the farmers, ranchers, miners, natives and forestry folk who live here in God’s country,   

Well, that’s an aside.  It troubled me a lot to go through the town of Lytton and see that it was all destroyed by arson and think that these folk would get away with such out rage because they could say it was the climate rather than put the responsibility in Ottawa where it belongs.  Now more fires are raging by Kelowna.  A patient texted me a request for an inhaler, her family physician on vacation because her asthma is so bad because of the smoke in the air.  Thanks to wifi and computers I could get an Rx to a pharmacy there,.  

Fortunately here the air is great.

My ATV is thoroughly vetted with new parts and everything copacetic.  Thankfully Honda makes tough machines,

Well, here I was having had breakfast with Victor at Tim Horton’s attended an online international meeting on zoom sitting with Madigan watching Canada Geese on the river while waiting for my Camper and now it was early afternoon still and I had a camper and ATV and remembered how much I enjoyed glamping at Sunshine Valley RV.  I contacted the clinic because the Camper and ATV storage isn’t open Sunday so it means I return Monday afternoon.  I will phone the three patients I would have seen in person and make up for this last minute change .  The clinic will priorize rebooking them and I have to remember that the broken health care system isn’t my problem, that people didn’t wait so many months to see me in the past.  Two more of my colleagues have left the province too going to Alberta where I”ve been invited to go as the decline in standards here in my subspecialty area has attracted the best to the best of doctors .  I’m sorely tempted.  But I really like this clinic and I like the ability to do virtual work and have been having great sleep without nightmares,  The college even offered me work but I had to confess that my experience dealing with authoritarian structures had caused me so much stress in the past that right now I’m enjoying working as a clinician and  healing,  seeing people for their sake not because of some law suit or third party interference. Someways I feel like I did when I was a northern doctor or island doctor or country gp.  I’m just a clinician and enjoying healing not fighting politics as well as insaniety and cancer.  

I’m really quite happy, I rode into town and visited Laura who was stressed by the city and her work and I felt I was on the right path. I’m not ready to retire despite being of an age that I could.  It’s just that even now journaling and thanking god after and early morning walk is so sweet.  

I’m so glad that the Camper is ready for the weeks that Laura and I will be having our vacations this fall. I’m glad to be able to check out the ATV before hunting season. The trailer is working like a dream.  

I dreamed of my incredible friend Marion Nadler, a psychologist I worked with North Vancouvrr Island a quarter century ago.  The beautiful Anne Lindsay was the social work then and I met the two of them never known how close and how long our paths would entwine.  I remember thinking I’d died and gone to heavy when the two of them invited me to lunch so we could meet as I was doing out reach consultation into their areas. I’d date Anne and remain friends for decades and actually move to Parksville to live across the country road from Marion. We last had lunch together before Covid.  Her children are grown , the little boy I knew as a toddler is now a successful businessman. Her daughter who looked like a vogue model exercised the brains her phd mother had passed on last I heard had done something at the university,. Marion has a hacienda in Mexico on the west coast, Bungalos Paraiso Melaque.  She’d learned Spanish travelling Mexico after she completed her clinical psychology degree at University of Manitoba.  I’ve yet to visit Melaque and rent one of her cabins by the beach.  It’s on the bucket list. In my dream she was laughing and reminding me how silly the world was.  We used to laugh and play music and dance and I have such fond memories of times at her place. When I was persecuted because I lodged a complaint against a powerful now dead professor she was the person who stood behind me.  Marion had my back.  It’s a reflection of how peaceful it is in Sunshine Valley that I dream of Marion and the good times I had living in the country before moving back to the city.

I was talking with the lovely receptionist at Adventurer RV after I’d sat outside beside the river reflecting on how peaceful it was in the country, how one could go for a picnic beside a river in town and be so distant from traffic.  She said they did that, taking their lunch to sit by the river in summer

I told her I’d twice lived and worked in the country but that both times ex wives had brought me back into the city.  I’d been a country doctor but my wife ddin’t want to leave the safety of the university teaching hospital and her mother whereas we’d planned to travel and work and live in the country.  Her paediatrician friend and doctor husband had a hobby farm with cattle and trout pond. I loved them and their life and had hoped for that but she was happy at the university in the city.  Eventually she’d stay there and have a clinic with her mother as reception and work with her sister while I’d go off to be a fly in doctor in the north, specialize and sub specialize in the the states and Canada and work as a fly in doctor in the Polynesian islands live and work in BC.   

I’d had the property in parksville and loved my life there only to find my crazy wife was sabotageing it. “I just went along with it till you got it out of your system. I always knew I’d convince you to live in Shaughnassey. My mommy got my daddy to settle down because she knew what was best.’  I only heard this after I’d seen the old man go in sane and mother was decapared certifiably insane and my wife’s cocaine addiction had declared itself. We were all drinking wine and smoking dope in the day. It was a hippy kind of young or yuppie young urban academic thing but cocaine was a no no. I remember Marion’s husband got hooked and left Marion for a lawyer who I presume liked cocaine. Not Marion.  Fortunately for me I had an idiosyncratic reaction.  I didn’t need stimulants either but would get all round up with work that I’d need some R&R, drinking a glass of wine and smoking some weak weed was my idea of relaxation back then. 

We say work hard, play hard, go to AA.  When it was time to quit I did but my ex didn’t want to but w’e had some great times raising turkeys and sailing.  I was blessed in the wives I had even if we had addictios and one tried to kill me and herself.  All the while I was going to therapy they refused.  Pride is a problem. Thankfully anger management for women has come along and women are learning to deal with their anger rather than always blaming it on men.  

Back in those days women would tell me they don’t get angry, only men do.  Thankful the field of psychology progressed though gender and race continue to be as problematic as other political weaponized words like climate.

I am really more accepting and less blaming today but then I don’t drink and don’t smoke weed and do my vest to avoid negative people in my personal life.  I’m alone a lot too.  I’m afraid more.  I’ve really been blessed like this morning. I walked Madigan who was ecstatic at the early morning walk. I then mediated at a chair in the community garden watching the sun come up between the mountains.  

It’s 9 am.  The rules are you can’t start up your ATV before 9 am so not a good place for serious hunters.  I used to be out in the woods before dawn but now I’m happy enough to get out after coffee usually waking at 6 or 7 and getting our 8 or 9 which explains some of why I’ve been only shooting grouse the last few years.  I’m not even hunting today just exploring so this is just fine.