Bloganagan

Grandma Wears Hiking Boots – Preview

Smokey Okanagan - July 24, 2009

Three days away from home and lots has happened. While I helped Bruce with his photography workshop at Cathedral Lakes Lodge, the Glenrosa and Rose Valley fires were largely contained. Most people in West Kelowna are back in their homes, but the evacuation notices have moved north. The Terrace Mountain fire near Fintry (west side of Okanagan Lake midway between Kelowna and Vernon), which started at the same time as the other two fires, has increased exponentially in size. We're out of danger here, but the smoke still hangs in the air. Looks like no rest for the fire fighters this summer.

 

Glenrosa Fire, July 20 2009

Today I was on the media bus that toured part of the Glenrosa Fire area. Although the forest fire has been partly contained and it appears that homes are no longer threatened, we saw both air and ground crews continuing their work. See photos. 

What absolutely astounded me was the job these people did in protecting homes. While three dwellings were lost, it's nothing short of a miracle that scores more weren't destroyed.  I saw places where the fire had burned right up to the side of the structure, but the house remains standing. Two of West Kelowna's most important heritage buildings were also saved. Again, the fire burned all around them, but the log house and barn in Gellatly Heritage Regional Park still stand. Unbelievable. Heartfelt thanks to all the fire crews - ground and air.

West Kelowna - Glenrosa Fire - 2009

My posts on the Okanagan are usually upbeat, talking about great people and places and things to do here in the valley. This post is also about great people, heroic people, but I write with sadness because our community has lost, continues to lose, precious natural spaces and individuals suffer personal tragedy. (See photos) 

As I write, more than 11,000 people have been evacuated (and many more are waiting tensely on evacuation notice) in the face of two forest fires - Glenrosa and Rose Valley - both of which started on Saturday, July 18.  At least three homes have been destroyed by the Glenrosa Fire. I saw one of them burn and ached for the people whose family memories were being consumed by the flames. I've also watched the unbelievable skill and heroism of the helicopter and airplane pilots who are working feverishly to save hundreds more homes. 

Easy-ridin' the KVR Trail: Chute Lake to Naramata

Mention the Kettle Valley Railway (KVR) Trail, and the Myra Canyon Trestles above Kelowna jump to mind. But there's another section of the old rail line that involves even more spectacular Okanagan scenery, a genuine character, lunch at a Naramata Bench winery, a mind-bogglingly knowledgeable tour guide, and one border collie.

“It’s all downhill,” Ed Kruger assures us as he packs people into, and mountain bikes on top of, his Monashee Adventure Tours bus. Comforting words for a couple of semi-out-of-shape middle agers joining a group of 30-something Vancouver lawyers on a 36-kilometre cycle trek team-builder.

Ed calls this tour Rock Ovens to Valley Vistas.

Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre

Why did the biologist paint the rattler’s tail yellow? Who cares – I hate snakes – well, more like love/hate. The fact is, I actually wanted to see a rattler, but they’re getting so scarce in BC’s southern Okanagan Valley that my best chance for a sighting was the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre in Osoyoos.

The Commonage

Here's a book title for you - Where the Grass is Always Browner on the Other Side of the Fence: A History of the Okanagan Commonage...

It may sound a little tongue-in-cheek and it's certainly a tongue-twister, but this book by retired veterinarian turned historian and author, D. John Price, should be in the library of every Okanagan history buff.

I met Dr. Price one sunny summer day and we sat on the deck of his stunning log home overlooking Kalamalka Lake, with the brown grasslands of the Commonage all around us. Behind the house, several horses loafed around in corrals next to the bright red barn that centres the cover of his book. A big black dog, lounged at our feet.

Here's a bit of what he had to say.

Kettle Valley Railway - History/Archaeology Tour

Since my first-year university Classics course (Ancient Egypt, Greek pots ...) I've wanted to visit a dig. Notice I didn't say I wanted to take part in one - all that meticulous sifting and dust-brushing, not so much - but I really have wanted to see the process in action. I never suspected that my chance would come right here in the Okanagan.

OK, so the 12 UBC Okanagan students working under the direction of associate professor and archaeologist  Rick Garvin aren't going to stumble on a Tutankamen's tomb - but they are turning up the detritus of the humble working men who laboured in the 1910s to build the Myra Canyon section of the Kettle Valley Railway (now the popular KVR Trail).

Toe-tappin’, Train Talkin' Troubadour – Jack Godwin

You've likely gathered that I'm quite a history buff and I don't much mind the shape my history lessons come in: museums, castles, interpreters, roadside plaques, recreated villages,  even the History Channel. But I know that lots of you would rather eat raw eggs; shave your legs with an emery board; listen to a thumbnail scraping a blackboard - well, maybe not that. But you're really not into the history thing.

Jack Godwin understands. This retired history teacher learned in the classroom that “the way to get students involved is to hook them emotionally with a question or a story.”

In his second career as chief engineer of the folksy, bluegrass Kettle Valley Brakemen, he uses the same technique, drawing audiences into the performance with tales from the railway days, stories about how he came to write the songs and lots of humour. Every concert is a rollicking history lesson with special emphasis on the Kettle Valley line.

Dobbin Flume

Water is a defining, constraining feature of life in the Okanagan. From the beginning of European settlement, the imperative to transfer it from where it’s plentiful to where it’s needed has produced some impressive feats of engineering.

Early bench land homesteaders, with no viable means of tapping into the big sources like Okanagan and Kalamalka Lakes, turned the laws of nature to their advantage. They built gravity fed irrigation systems, bringing diverted water, first through simple ditches and later through flumes, from upland creeks and man-made lakes to their fields. Remnants survive, but they may soon be lost — victims of vandalism, natural degradation and development.