Storm Watching

Waves...just atoms crashing into each other across the Pacific.

On the Beach

The time you enjoy wasting is not time wasted.

The Wild Pacific Trail

Nuu-chah-nulth-aht

Nuu-chah-nulth-aht=People from all along the mountains

West Coast Wolf

Lu Noir

Forêt Humide

Scrapping and Yelling

A Zoo for Trees

One of the last tiny pockets of Old Growth forest left on Vancouver Island. Ironically named MacMillan Provincial Park.

Sunny Juxtaposition

 Somewhere east of Soggy Saddle and a tad west of the source of the formerly clean Whatcom County drinking waters, there lives a spot named Devastation Divide. Otherwise called Annihilation Alley. But probably best known as Obliteration Overlook. It's here you can look out at a mountain made of dolomite. And within the same view you can see 6 clear cuts and a five-stepped terrace carved into the side of the mountain. A mining operation. To obliterate whatever's still left East of East Soggy Saddle.

It's here that a modern Indian came out of the woods. Chainsaw in one hand, a warm can of Rainier in the other. "Did you see that wild, black, scary creature darting through the trees?" he asked me.

 "Yes, that was the Lu," was my only response.  

 He smiled knowingly and headed in the opposite direction. 

Kirstenia and I continued on. Up and down. The road was decommissioned, gulleys of earth yanked out of the hillside. We didn't know where we were going, but we were going there for sure. Going through mindless space etched into a useless landscape.

We walked past a scene from Deliverance. A man with a bandoleer wrapped around his chest was laying face-first in the muck and firing his machine gun at what once was a stump. All around us a civil war on the proportions of Central America in the mid-80s. Machine gun reports rattling off the rocks. A grenade launcher was hucking projectiles into a  dishwasher. A 2003 Panasonic 30" wide screen riddled with bullet holes. Too small...the TV that is. Thrown off a pick-up truck during the last heat wave. 

But we had to search for the source. What's been eluding us all these years. That glowing cave in the woods that emits a light--warm, brilliant, the perfect temperature that evokes a knowing bliss. The Source of Everything. All of the world's mysteries unraveled. But it remained hidden beyond our imagination. Beyond anything we could ever hope for.

So we kept on keeping on. And keep on keeping on. 

Time for a Council with the ravens. We stopped in a large circle, full of light. Made all the lighter by all the trees felled around us. Small trees raised on herbicides and shotgun shells surrounded us. And we sat for a picnic of leftover half-baked salmon with a light mayonnaise spread on gluten full bread. The dogs surrounded us.  

We sat and thought of the man who wasn't with us. Sitting on Desolation Row. A knife in the back. The Council of the Trees told us he'd be there again. On some high cold mountain range. He'd be there. Always there. And our thoughts were with him. Sitting in that Council of lost trees. 

You just can't exaggerate that stuff.

Almost complete destruction.

What good tea looks like...

Rich, complex, earthy. 

Deep, calm energy. 

These are words that come to mind when drinking quality aged Chinese tea.

Flavors brew in a small yi xing clay teapot, which gives control for proper steeping.  

Pu'erh tea is from the Yunnan province. Tea leaves are dried and rolled. Then they undergo microbial fermentation and oxidation. 

They age well. The pu'erh I've tasted from the early 20th century left a coating of goodness on my taste buds that I can still feel today. The energy carries on through my bloodstream.

The tea leaves might come from wild trees a thousand years old. Big, bushy, when you drink them, you might feel the power of a thousand years of history--of a being resilient to a millennium of sun, rain, wind. These tea leaves give strength. 

One of my favorite pu'erhs is the one I know simply as Purple Moon and Stars, the image on its paper wrapper. Its dark, silky, earthy flavor goes well with drizzly dark days in the Pacific Northwest. The Menghai tea factory also produces some astounding teas. Some I've had from the mid-1980s gave me the calm energy.

Other tea comes in little bamboo baskets, like pillows, a Liuan.

One of the joys of finishing a tea. The beauties of the spent tea leaves. Here is a spent oolong. Pu'erh also can make beautiful leaves, too.

I get my tea from Daniel Lui who runs the Chinese Tea Shop on Pender Street in Vancouver. He shares with us wonderful aged teas and guides us in our tea journey.