The weather this week is unsettled, but this morning the clouds weren’t so packed that rain was imminent in the morning, so we took the opportunity to go for an easy hike up to a little puddle of water up above West Vancouver; Whyte Lake. I say it’s an easy hike, but that’s only if you take the correct trail, which Kirk and I did NOT a few years ago. However, that hike meant that I knew the correct trail to take. But before we even got on the trail, I had to find the way to the trailhead parking, which is a bit confusing to locate.
When we parked I got out of the truck and a big white truck pulled in and I thought was going to park. The truck stopped across the front of my truck and a flash of thoughts went through my head….”Do you not like my parking job? Is that a parks vehicle? Did I do something wrong? Why are you rolling your window down? Why are you just looking at me and not saying anything? Why do you look familiar? Oh! Hi Gill!”
It was the SEP Community Advisor for the Salmonid Enhancement Program’s Community Involvement Sea to Sky corridor. In other words, someone I work with once in a while. I run into people in the strangest places…well, perhaps not all that strange.
There is a tiny little salmon hatchery tucked up above the highway, in a strange little spot. Nelson Creek Hatchery. I’d heard of it before, and, quite literally, stumbled on it the last time Kirk and I had come in here for a hike. The volunteers and a couple of DFO staff, including Gillian, were here today to adipose clip the coho to identify them as hatchery fish in future fisheries.
My bestie and I enjoyed an easy hike up to the little lake in the forest, and back again, stopping in at the tiny hatchery where about a dozen people were happily clipping fish.
Then it was down to Lonsdale Avenue to grab a few calories in anticipation of the pile of sand sitting at the end of the driveway waiting to be shovelled into buckets, carried up the new driveway, and dumped and set and tamped into the gaps between the slabs.
Relevance of the pigeons?
Nothing, it just amused me that there were a few of them sitting ‘in’ the water like little ducks. It seemed odd on a cool and cloudy day with rain in the forecast…but I suppose they were just enjoying a little communal bath.
And then it was time for some heavy lifting….. When I doubt for how to occupy the afternoon when you have a friend in from out of town….put her to work! It can’t have been too bad, she’s still smiling 😊
Shortly after starting, there was a voice from the bushes and on of my neighbours, a lovely fellow in his early seventies, was standing at the edge of his yard and our driveway, with a bucket in one hand and a shovel in the there, and said “I have a bucket too…I can help“.
So, with a few cautious…”Please don’t hurt your back again Paul” he dug in and helped out too.
