Backpacking The Cayoosh Mountains

Imagine yourself walking to the top of a narrow, snow-covered ridge at almost 8000 feet of elevation. Intently concentrated on your footing you manage to notice the wolverine tracks in the snow beside you and as you stop to follow them with your gaze, your eyes take you down into The Lost Valley. There in front of you it lies, never been logged and barely traveled by mankind. Several pristine tarns catch the sun's light as they sit placidly in the bowls of the glacial cirques. By this time your chin is getting a little bit cold in the snow where it has dropped along with your lower jaw.

Imagine yourself standing in a delicately vegetated meadow scooping the purest water you have ever seen from a mountain stream right where it comes out from an underground spring. As your thirst is quenched your eyes are lifted across the valley to a complete panorama of enormous peaks capped in stunningly white glaciers blaring out on the horizon. As you allow your imagination to carry you, you can almost see how they drop off on the far side into the Okanagan plain, feeding the Fraser River and it's tributaries and giving marvelous rafting adventures to Lytton thrill seekers.
A sudden eruption of colour in the cloud above the ice-capped peaks causes you to lose your train of thought. The violet, tangerine, gold and scarlet all meld together to bid the sun safe passage on its way to the other side of the horizon. After you've wiped the drool off your face, you fix yourself some dinner and as you are sitting back in the cool of the evening with a warm mug of hot chocolate in hand you rub your eyes in disbelief: the sun is rising only two hours after it set! But as you watch you see that this is not the sun but his daughter the moon. She lights the sky with such magnificence that all hope of digitally capturing her splendor is abandoned. The bloated harvest moon bathes the ridge features all around you in the most astoundingly haunting glow of silver light that you simply shiver in awe of the one who created it. You fall asleep to the face of the moon shining through the moisture vent of your tent in a heavenly beam of white light catching on the mist of your breath and shimmering brilliantly. Your dreams are dominated by the vision of a breath-taking sunrise but even the wildest of your dreams can not prepare you for what you will see coming over that distant horizon to thaw the frozen alpine and light the morning sky on fire.

I could go on but I think that I will end my experiment in literarily re-engineering what words don't suit to describe. I was just backpacking for six days just above Duffy lake and the Duffy Lake Road. Sometimes it's difficult to remember that I'm in school. I recommend having class in the Cayoosh Mountain range... you can learn a lot.

Freedom

He said it is easy, just saying ok,
He said it was sweet
I disagreed
He said it was great, strippers all around,
I looked at him in silence
and disagreed
Then I thought of all I'd done
Brief shame, cause I'd agreed
sweet turns rancid
HE said HE loved me, told me HE'd died
HE said HIS blood frees
I readily agreed
HE said I could be HIS friend forever
HE would love and mentor me
I said sweet!
Somewhere along the way I forgot
I must give it all to HIM
That's sweet?
But HE's divine and holding-back sells short
Spirit guided potential
Not cool.
So everyday I'll dedicate to HIM
Friendship, choice, money, time
So free!



This poem was inspired by a conversation with a man around a fire at a birhtday party. Take it as you will.

The Baidarka

The Aleut Natives derived a method of travel and hunting that has since been unmatched by man's efforts. In a land devoid of all common building materials, the ingenious Aleut people used Bearded Seal skin stretched over an elaborate frame of bone and driftwood sewn together with sinews and grass to fashion the Baidarka which we now call Kayaks. With these vessels the Aleut people traveled as far as South America and Japan taking slaves and making trades. They were also used in the hunt of seals where hunters would paddle stealthily closer to seals before letting loose a javelin to kill their prey.
Now as intriguing as Kayak history may be, the sport itself is awesome. I just returned from a 6-day paddle around the North half of Quadra Island. The currents in the area make it very similar to paddling on a river with obstacles like whirlpools (huge ones), eddies, deafening rapids, boils and freezing Pacific water. I got first hand instruction and experience paddling in currents and learning all about them and how they work.
There are some awesome things about Kayaking besides the sport itself. One of these is that you can bring anything you wanted! We ate soft tacos, hamburgers (we brought a little hibachi bbq!), teriyaki stir-fry and rice, chili, and tortellini with parmesan cheese to boot! It was nothing short of a feast. You can also bring all the dry clothes you could ever need and thanks to watertight hatches, they stay dry until you need them.
Kayaking also allows you to have great conversation with fellow paddlers. For example I was able to share Jesus with my buddy Pat and have some great discussion surrounding him. By the end of the trip everyone knew that Stewart was a follower of Jesus Christ and I can just feel that it makes them curious and interested and cautious about me. And boy oh boy if I'm not filled with The Spirit when those questions come knocking it'll be sticky. And if I'm not constantly in the word of God, I will have a great amount of difficulty speaking the truth and modeling Christ's love.
Sea Kayaking also opens your eyes to the vast world of marine biology and just how living that blue area on the atlas really is. Porpoises porpoising in the ocean behind your instructor's head while he's teaching might not be the best for your attention span but I think that sometimes allowances can be made. Seeing a bright orange star fish with 20 legs is a rather awe inspiring sight. And salmon in droves, jumping all around the pod of kayaks, and seals playing and hunting in the currents all the while screaming their Creator's name with their splashing. Kayaking was a world of fog laden mornings where the sun's rays made everything hauntingly beautiful and surreal, to thunderstorms that shook the earth and lit the darkened sky to humble a mere man, ending with jaw-dropping sunsets that painted the sky, water and mountains with such a pallet of colour that optical addiction was immediate.
It was fantastic.