The adventure goes on …
Officially, this post is about the pine marten that has been determined to share our cabin with us, but in actuality, it’s more about all those little things that have been happening in my life, and my head, since my last post, way back in December – the bats in my belfry, so to say.
Continue reading “Martens in the Roof and Bats in my Belfry”
Based out of Prince Rupert, we used our 40 foot research boat, the Moody Blue, and our 33 foot sail boat, the Awen, to carry out community-based, independent, scientific (biology, chemistry, and oceanography) research. We used low-cost, appropriate technology for our studies, which gave remote communities the opportunity to gather detailed information about their marine environment. Our goal was to enhance our environment by encouraging an awareness of our connections with our ecosystems, developing patterns of sustainability and resilience, and supporting growth towards localism.
For those who have known me best as an oceanographer, it may seem strange that I ‘ve headed off in what appears to be an unusual direction – botany, ethnobotany, herbalism, and permaculture. However, I come by these interests quite naturally. My parents were farmers, and I spent about half of my childhood growing up on a cattle ranch, and the remainder of my childhood living and working on a fruit orchard. I have always had a close connection to the land and living, growing things. I started gardening as a child, and have grown gardens in a variety of locations off and on throughout my life. My mother is an Irish-descent Canadian, and she learned both Celtic and North American plant lore from her parents. Fortunately, I inherited an interest in this type of knowledge.
Years ago, as a child growing up on a farm, I used to have a flock of bantams and sold “organic free range eggs” at the local health food store. However, as I grew older, eggs and butter became “bad” foods, full of cholesterol and saturated fats. Since heart disease runs in my family, I reluctantly gave up on these great foods, or used them rarely and suffered pangs of guilt for my vices.
I had our potato harvest stored in bins of sand under the house, but I obviously wasn’t prepared for -9°C weather.
Winter solstice has passed, and the days are getting longer, albeit it is still hard to notice much change. The weather has been a bit crazy – periods of icy cold, but sunny, “deep freezes” followed by torrential rainfall.
After two weeks of “deep freeze”, I woke up last night to the rain pounding down on our cabin roof. We were supposed to go visiting friends today, taking the Draiocht out towards the mouth of Port Neville Inlet, but last night I was having bad dreams about the trip, and sat up for a long time listening to the rain slam into the cabin.
It’s been a bright, blue-skied day, with the temperature hovering around 0°C, and only a slight breeze (in spite of continued warnings of cold outflow winds) – a perfect day for a walk through our woods. We have a couple inches of snow on the ground from two days ago, not enough to make walking difficult, but it makes a perfect layer in which to observe animal tracks.
Originally, when I started out with the idea for this journal entry, I was going to tell about our concepts for microhydro on our site, but … water froze and became ice, and the story developed of its own accord.
It seems to me that I can’t remember a day in the past month when it hasn’t rained. What is this – global warming, or global wetting?