Ferry Fabulousness - A photo scrapbook from July 23

After some debate, Duncan and I decided to head out to the Shuswap for some time with the extended family.   This means, "The Ferry!"    The masking protocols have only just changed, so that the outside decks are fully accessible again.   While we were on the 9am ferry, Duncan spend the trip sleeping down on the car deck.  Not surprising, as he stayed up the night before!   I, on the other hand, spent the time up on the top sun deck.  It was a truly spectacular trip.  Here are some snaps, and videos (in reverse order, but... whatever!)

For those of you who like video versions, here are some clips from the trip.  

This first one catches the sparkle on the water (as the ship moved out from the Schwartz Bay Ferry Terminal

This one might seem long (ie. 4 minutes).  However, you get to see what it is like to be in Active Pass when the ferries pass each other going to and coming from Vancouver.   It is a fab part of the voyage!

The Jarvis Family returns for a visit

Duncan, Thomas and two Rebeccas

This week, 5/6ths of the Jarvis family arrived for 3 days on the Island (Katie was on another trip in the Interior this time around).

Monday night, as the sun was setting, and Hebe had crashed on the couch (yes, a three hour time zone change is hard to work around), I took Duncan, Thomas and Rebecca on what I promised would be a quick jaunt down to Caddy Bay to see the sunset.

I love the soft colours, though it was way more intense in person!

The sky was only beginning to darken, so the moon was still wrapped in a blanket of blue.   We each took a turn trying to take a shot of the moon, a task made more difficult by the wind blowing in:  when you are using 80x magnification, the slightest breath of movement shoots the moon out of the frame!

(old) Rebecca's 'left' orientation (in photography as in everything else?)

Duncan's top corner shot (did he 'choose the right' here?!)

(youthful) Rebecca finds a pathway through the middle

Thomas abandons all attempts to constrain the moon within the frame!

After a short stroll on the sandy shores, we decided to race to the top of PKOLS to see if we could also catch the sunset from the top of the hill.

A splash of pink still visible in the sky, as the night started rolling in on us.

Never a bad time for a selfie! (Duncan, Rebecca, Thomas, Rebecca)

As the sky darkened, we could see across the water to the lights of Port Angeles (on the US side).  

There were also a set of lights further up the coast.  We were not sure if it were another city, but the camera helped up sort it out. A ship!  

A ferry?  A cruise ship?  

When the Jarvis's asked again what the name of the hill was, a fellow-traveller at the top told them it was "Mount Douglas" at the same moment I said "PKOLS".  :-) 

And so that gave Duncan and I an opportunity to share our experience with being at the top of the hill when the name PKOLS was returned to it during the summer of the Idle-No-More protests.  

And that led to conversations about Treaties of Peace and Friendship, and powerful WSANEC stories about the creation of the islands, and of floods, and arbutus trees.   

Such a beautiful night for sharing stories, and thinking about the amazing beauty of this island, and the power of past and present Salish practices, stories and knowledges.

[Imagine nightfall, and the transition from Monday to Tuesday]

Tuesday morning, while the young adults slept-in at both the Chateau Carter-Johnson and the Jarvis Air-BNB, Catherine and I took 13-year old Hebe off on an adventure to see two beaches (both on her bucket list).

"Hey! There is seaweed on my shoe!

First on the list, was Mount Douglas beach...the beach you can access close to the bottom of PKOLS.  

Heron looking for breakfast

We headed down past the towering Douglas Fir and Cedar trees, towards the beach, salmon habitat stream to our right.   

It is fun looking at the huge pile of driftwood logs blocking the entrance from the sea to the stream.  On one trip, a guide told us that those logs protect the salmon from other predators, and that when the time comes, the tide will lift those logs just high enough for the salmon to swim safely under.   What an adventure. 

Our main goal was to see if we could walk across the kelp, find some stones with barnacles on them, and see if we could find any baby crabs hiding under stones.  Success!

We found a little friend under a rock

Hebe not quite ready to have the crab on her hand... but the 'popper' was a midway step

And finally, Hebe was willing to give it a try!

Hebe and Catherine found some beautiful shells, picked clean by the hungry seagulls hanging around.   Some of the now-empty shells were still wrapped in some 'scarves of seaweed. 

check it out!

Is this the kind of scarf Arta would wear?

Hebe also learned how to see little holes in the sand, hinting that a clam might be hiding below the surface.   She took a shell, dug down, and came up with a live one!

A true moment of excitement was had when Catherine, walking across the clam bed, discovered that clams can shoot up jets of water, hitting the unsuspecting traveller.  It was like watching a clam-whack-a-mole.   People should feel free to ask her about it!  :-)

And finally, we headed off to Gyro Park, so Hebe could see the Octopus slide, and check out the sandy beach.   There were so many kids on the slide that Hebe took a pass, and we decided to head for the water.

A flotilla of sail boats out on the bay

This catches only a hint of the sparkles seeming to dance on the water.

Hebe got brave and decided to go in for a swim.  And yes... she decided to take the plunge! (of course, i haven't figured out how to do autorotate with my video, so you have to turn your head sideways to fully appreciate it!)

After Hebe took the plunge, she declared that sea water did not taste very good.  She was also a bit chilly, so we let our feet dry off in the warm sand, sitting on a log, and watching the Crows work the beach.  Even a crow, it turns out, likes a stroll on the beach.

Crow, out for a stroll

Here is a video version of the 'crow walk':

Sunset from PKOLS

The sunset as seen by the unaided eye

Tonight, Alex and I took a quick drive to the top of PKOLS, hoping to catch the last rays of sun as it set.  

We were about 10 minutes too late to see the sun actually drop below the horizon, but we were not too late to enjoy the spectacle of colour it left behind to mark its path.

zooming in a bit closer

Yes, I did bring the 'super zoom camera' with me to see if I could capture some closer views.  

As you might imagine, I am thinking still about finding some colour-drenched images to use as inspiration for water-colour playtime.

I loved seeing just how close I could get to capturing the pool of red lying just on the horizon of the mountains.

The challenge is, that the closer you get to the details of interest, the less you can see the whole picture.  

I suspect there is a very obvious metaphor going on there, but there you go.

In a more practical mode, I did find myself thinking about my aunt Wyona pointing out that a picture needed to have a bit of variety in it for the images to pop out.  I was left wondering if the closest view (the one most drenched with colour) was the best one for the purposes of painting?

And the latest watercolour challenge with Wyona reminded me that getting those sunset colours vibrant takes more time and layers.  And that you need contrast between the sky and something else.

From last week's watercolour session under Wyona' much valued tutelage!

When Alex saw the results, he told Wyona and I that our volcanos looked great.   

Volcanos?!   

Well.... I will continue to work on my 'sunset skills', but I did wonder if, rather than explaining that this was a sunset and not a volcano, I might not find it just as satisfying to rename the painting?  

Something like "Meditations on a Volcano"?

Thinking about Water Colour from the top of PKOLS

The world full of colour

Sunday evening, I headed to the top of PKOLS  with the new camera in search of photos.  I have, over the years, taken hundreds of photos of PKOLS (known to some as Mount Douglas).  But this time, I went with a slightly different objective: to find source material to inspire some watercolour activity.  

Yep.  Watercolour, my most recent attempt to learn a new skill.  My Aunt Wyona jumpstarted things for me.  When she was visiting in May,  she went out to to the art stores to gather the materials needed, and spent a few evenings giving some lessons to me, my sister Bonnie, and my son Duncan.

Working with Wyona was fun.  She brought with her both her experience of Chinese brush painting (from all those years in Malaysia) and of watercolour. For photos of the masterpieces completed under her most excellent tutelage, you can check out this post over on the Larchhaven Blog.

Of course, once Wyona was gone, I was left with the business of trying to remember how to go about doing things on my own.   That was harder.   For sure, I will be signing up for a course in the fall, but it seemed that it might be fun to continue picking up the brush throughout the summer, to see if watercolour and I might become more intimate with each other. 

I continued in my quest to transform photos of "the lake" (which means "The Shuswap Lake") into a watercolour versions.   I am still a newby, but there is something satisfying in seeing what the water and paint could do.  

Today, I started to branch out.   My friends Stacy and Jess came over to spend the day painting in the back yard.  This time I used a photo from a recent trip to Arbutus Cove as a guide. 

As you can see from the original photo, below I am not exactly at the 'accuracy' stage. And there is much to be learned about how to draw a tree!   But how fun to have some new skills to learn.  :-). 

I am a beginner at the 'enjoying myself' stage, which is something to be celebrated. I have certainly been happy to at least get water and paint on the paper. 

And so, to return to the matter of PKOLS.   Having spent a day looking at a photo of a place I love, and trying to imagine it in watercolour, it seemed right to gather more photos of another place I totally love, PKOLS!

It was just after 8pm when I was at the top.  I knew that if I waited another hour or so, the sunset would drench the sky in pink, but as it was, I still got the gift of a stunning pallette of blues and greys.  I also got to spend sometime pointing the camera in all directions, zooming in and out, thinking only about finding shots that might be fun to reproduce in watercolour.

So, here are some of the watercolour ideas I came away with.

These first three three shots are basically the same spot, taken from the top of PKOLS looking out towards Sooke, but from a distance.

Same shot but zooming in to get closer.

Again, getting closer.

 

What I love about the above photos is the fact that they already look a bit like water colour paintings. Or, indeed, like they are the product of collage work using different coloured strips of paper. 

 

I just continued working my way around the 360 degree view that you can have at the top.   The pallet of blues just extended itself, as one looks in the direction of the Saanich Peninsula (where the important ȽÁU, WELṈEW̱ Tribal School sits in the shadow of the Mountains).  That school is doing the work of SENĆOŦEN language revitalization with their immersion programs.  Impressive.  Standing at the top of the hill, looking out over the water, I am reminded of listening to John Elliott tell the story of PKOLS, and of how the Transformer stood at the top of PKOLS, picking up people and throwing them into the water where they were transformed into Islands.  I think I also heard a version of this from Rob Clifford and from Nick Claxton.  The SENĆOŦEN word for islands, we were told, is "ancestors of the deep."  

In this account, each island has the name of a specific ancestor (and a name that links one to stories/knowledge about that specific island).  In this Origin Story account, once some people had been transformed into islands, other people were then picked up and placed on the different islands, and told that they were to take care of their ancestors, and their ancestors would take care of them.   

I find this story quite moving, and it gives me a quite different way of looking at the islands. If I understand them as ancestors, there are different questions about ways to better understand my obligations with respect to those ancestors (including such things as calling them by their proper names,  and understanding different ways of asking about how, when, whether one comes for a visit!)  [There are some lovely maps of the islands with their proper names starting on p.20 of Dave Elliott Sr's book, The Saltwater People]

In this image, I like how the land reaches out to the water in a way that looks like Raven's beak.

Returning to the moment at the top of PKOLS, since my focus was on watercolour, I also found myself looking up to the sky for inspiration.  

At that time of early evening, the blue of the sky was also tinged by swathes of golden shaded clouds. 

With a change of focus on the camera, it was possible to catch the 'sharp edge' on that particular cloud formation.

Here is another version of the same shot, different zoom, and after the wind and continued blowing, stretching the cloud even further across the sky.

The question now is what these moments of beauty might look like once I have had some time to sit in front of a piece of paper with water and paint. I am looking forward to the exploration (or even just an extended period of time staring at the images).

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ADDENDUM - July 7, 2021

photo from top of PKOLS

Wyona came for a visit, so I got to have another lesson.  

Here is the photo we chose to copy.

Here is my version of the photo:

Rebecca's interpretation

And here is Wyona's interpretation of the same scene (which she managed to do in between all the work of walking me through the steps). 

Wyona's interpretation

I love it that she added in the boats as a detail (and then coached me through doing one).  No, they are not in the original photo, but I think they anchor (forgive the pun) the image.  I do have some work to do on colour-mixing (I was in fact TRYING to use the same colours as in the photo), but Wyona keeps telling me it is fine for the colours to be 'ideas' and not simply 'copies'.  Well there you go.   I love looking at both versions together, and thinking of the fun of painting alongside her.

A table of delights!

The table is still covered with paints today, so we can use the same pallet for another painting (I only have her here for another day or so). 

 

Funny that this photo does not look 'messy' to me; it looks like a landscape of possibility and adventure!