A country walk

The trick to enjoying a walk on Saltspring is to get off the main roads, which are narrow with hardly any shoulders. Traffic zips by your elbow, and you're uncomfortably aware of how dependent you are on drivers watching where they're going. Fortunately, there are lots of side roads, virtually untravelled, where people walk their dogs and themselves in relative safety. Here are some of the sights along one of my favourite side-road routes:

Walking this road reminds me of the scenes I grew up with -- wild-flower and weed-filled ditches, quiet fields, and scattered homes and farms along the way.

One of the side roads off the side road is Meadow Lane. What a wonderful address to put on an old-fashioned envelope!

In the years I've walked this road, Sugarland Farm  seems to have undergone several different incarnations, some more serious about farming than others. The current owners seem to be quite serious, with a thriving greenhouse and nets over a field to keep the birds away.

And what do we have here? A cow in an idyllic field with a second one munching away in the background. It looks like there is an open gate, but there is actually wire over it to prevent escapes. 

John was with me on this walk, so he was able to get a "real" cow photo, by tramping through the ditch and using his proper camera. Notice the bugs all over the poor cow's face and shoulders, and the little bird eating away at them.

I love this photo of the cow with the bird on its back to eat the bugs. Everybody has a role. Photo by John.

A chair by abandoned to the elements by the side of the road. The seat is unpeeling layer by layer, like an onion.

Weeds and grasses by the roadside.

Along the roadside, "brand new second hand" books; $1 apiece. All were older titles, some quite famous.

Ayn Rand and Aldous Huxley were among the authors on the table; I noticed Huxley's book was gone the next day I walked past.

Another view along the way. It doesn't look like much is being grown in these fields except grass.

Another cow; this one minus the flies. This little statue is in the front garden of a house we passed on the way back from our country walk. Photo by John.

Nature lessons from Henry

A bee, a thistle, a country road: I was every bit as entranced as nature-loving Henry Ryecroft would have been  in George Gissing's semi-autobiographical The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, written more than a century ago.

This wild area of Duck Creek Park on Saltspring Island is a good place to observe nature. Ryecroft would have been at home here.

Look at thistledown up close, and it's a marvel. No wonder the seeds spread like, well, weeds.

Knee-high banks of golden grasses and drying weeds nearly erase the path into a section of Duck Creek Park in mid-summer; wade through it and you end up in near-wilderness. But it’s here that the dragonflies tilt and glisten against the sun, the birds are loudest and you can watch as a perfect sphere of translucent spikes detaches from a foamy mass of thistledown and floats silently into the air.

I always appreciate that kind of scene, but I paid more attention to it this week thanks to fellow nature-lover Henry Ryecroft.  Ryecroft -- the fictional creation of late-1800s novelist George Gissing (apparently based largely on himself) -- is a struggling, sad-sack misanthropic writer confined by penury to the bleakness of his life in London. “For more than six years,” he writes in The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, “I trod the pavement, never stepping once upon mother earth – for the parks are but pavement disguised with a growth of grass.”

 Until, late in life, he gets an amazing surprise. Someone bequeaths him an annuity, and for the first time, he can indulge his love for nature. He leases a rural home in Devon, hires a (very quiet) housekeeper, and thinks, reads, and -- most of all -- walks the countryside. He’s a conflicted, sad soul even in his newfound freedom, but his appreciation of nature has been sharpened by years of deprivation, and the intensity of his enjoyment and his observations rubs off on the reader.

How can you not see even thistledown differently after reading passages like these?

“All about my garden today the birds are loud. To say that the air is filled with their song gives no idea of the ceaseless piping, whistling, trilling, which at moments rings to heaven in a triumphant unison, a wild accord. Now and then I notice one of smaller songsters who seems to strain his throat in a madly joyous endeavour to out-carol all the rest.”

He finds interest in even the simplest sights: A resting place under a tree doesn’t have a great view, but it is “overflowered with poppies and charlock, on the edge of field of corn. The brilliant red and yellow harmonize with the glory of the day. Nearby, too, is a hedge covered with great white blooms of the bindweed. My eyes do not soon grow weary.”

Returning home after contact with the outside world, which always leaves him in a bad mood, he passes a valley with a farm and a blooming apple orchard. When the sun bursts through the clouds, “for what I then saw, I have no words; I can but dream of the still loveliness of that blossomed valley. Near me, a bee was buzzing; not far away, a cuckoo called; from the pasture of the farm below came a bleating of lambs.”

Weeds have their own charm; Ryecroft made it his mission to learn the common names of all the plants and flowers he came across in his walks in Devon, England.

The groomed part of Duck Creek Park. The grass has been cut; the path is visible.

Another look at the bee a friend and I saw on this thistle near Duck Creek Park.

It ignored us and went busily about extracting whatever it gets from thistle blooms. It seemed to do a very thorough job.

Saturday market sights

Saltspring's Saturday market is a showpiece for what's happening in the gardens, kitchens and studios of the community. In the middle of summer, it's all abundance and colour: Sweet peas, glowing tomatoes, bags of lettuce lit up with orange nasturtiums. A checkerboard of raspberries and blueberries. Tables of beets, carrots and broad beans. From the studios, beautifully knit teddy bears and bats with wings that fold and button up. Felted owls like little statuettes. From the kitchens, the Laughing Daughters baked goods; Bite Me scones. And from the fantasy world, fairy doors -- lots of fairy doors. Here are some photos from Saturday's tour through the market in Ganges:

My sweetpeas are coming out at home, so I resisted the urge to buy a bunch. But lots of people did -- I spotted bouquets all through the crowd.

I'm still kicking myself for not buying this bouquet, with its unusual pale pink foxgloves surrounded by delicate white flowers I can't name.

Fall sunflowers are already brightening up some stalls.

A checkerboard table of blueberries and raspberries caught my eye.

Salad greens look like beautiful bouquets when orange nasturtium flowers are added.

A table of colourful tomatoes.

Freshly picked vegetables stacked on a table. I bought a bunch of carrots, which tasted just like the ones from the farm garden  at home. 

I thought of my knitting friend Linda when I came across this display of knit rabbits and teddy bears.

The display had a row of bats of all colours. Their wings spread out...

... and fold up, held closed with a colourful button. 

The knitting display, and the knitter.

There's always lavender somewhere at the market. This was a pretty display of it.

I'm not sure what these wire things are, but perhaps they're structures for growing plants over. I liked the woman in the background with the flowers peeping out of her beautiful bag.

These look like they're carved, but they're actually made of felt.

There were two displays of fairy paraphernalia at Saturday's market. This one offers make-it-yourself fixings.

In the same booth, a couple of completed fairy doors, all dressed up with mushrooms and flowers.

Another fairy door with different trimmings.Somebody must have fun pulling all this together.

And, at another booth, serious fairy doors you can attach to a tree and leave outside. A couple are already painted, but there are plain ones you can decorate yourself. A kid could have fun with this!

The market territory has been expanded so there are booths now bordering the water. I include this photo of a booth of glass doo-dads because you can (kind of) see the boats and harbour behind it. 

Carol climbs a hill

John thought it would be a great adventure to do the Baker Ridge Trail on Saltspring on Friday.  Do I look like I'm having fun? Photo by John.

On trails like this, my strategy is to hang onto anything solid. John was always a few yards ahead of me so he could photograph me trying to stay upright.

This might give some idea of why I usually avoid this trail, described at the entrance as "difficult."

Thank goodness for trees to hang onto, is all I can say!

The walk I often do on Saltspring is half a loop. The Quarry Park Trail begins off a side road, leads up a modestly steep ridge (a hike of “moderate” difficulty, says the sign at the entrance) and takes you down the other side to the beach. It’s a short distance, so I usually walk the beach for awhile, then retrace my steps and go home.

Completing the loop would mean walking along the beach to a flight of steps that leads to Baker Ridge Trail, which links back to the starting-point side road. But this trail is far more menacing than the first; its sign warns it is “difficult.” From the bottom, it looks innocent enough; a series of earth-filled wooden steps, but it gets steeper and steeper, and eventually turns into a pile of moss-covered boulders. If you fall, well, it’s a long, bumpy way down.

That sign has always been a good enough warning for me. But I was embarrassed a couple of years ago when I met a young woman and her small son – maybe five years old – who told me they do the whole route, often. A five-year-old scrambling over rocks I’m afraid to face!

So when John suggested on Friday that we do the whole loop – “Let’s have an adventure!” – I had two reactions. First, what a horrible idea; second, if a five-year-old can do it, so can I. For John, who grew up in hilly Vancouver, the trail was as easy as a city sidewalk; he scooted ahead and scraped away the slippery arbutus leaves so I wouldn’t fall, then turned around and took pictures. I watched every footstep, clung to whatever was solid and envisioned the embarrassment of falling. Imagine having to be airlifted out!

When we “summited” without disaster, I was pleasantly surprised. There was no big view, but there was the pleasure of knowing it was all downhill from there. And that I had at last matched the efforts of a five-year-old.

The first part of the loop is the Quarry Park Trail, a "moderate trail for the average hiker." That sounds like me, and I walk it often.

Such a nice gentle start to this trail.

A little stairway partway along takes you through the hardest section.

Typical steps in the Quarry Park Trail -- quite different from those in the second part of the loop.

This gives you a sense of the gentle slope on my familiar route.

But arbutus leaves are a menace -- dry and slippery and everywhere.

The reward at the bottom of Quarry Park Drive; a beautiful beach view through an arbutus tree. Photo by John.

Walk along the beach for awhile, and you come to this stairway, which takes you  to the second part of the loop, the Baker Ridge Trail.

Here's the sign that has always warned me off this trail: it's "difficult."

The start of the Baker Ridge Trail. It looks gentle enough, but soon turns into the rock formations I was scrambling over in the photos at the top of this blog entry. I know I can do it now, but I  won't be doing it alone!