das loft

Having a pretty interesting time here - good interesting. I'm getting a better sense of this valley, Nelson and Winlaw. Starting to feel a bit more at home here.

I've been having the best food. So many greens from the garden, from various gardens. Last night I had greens from someone's garden in Nelson, who just converted his friend's backyard to gardens from pure cooch grass (is this the same as twitchgrass? Spreads by the roots, pretty hard to kill completely...). He was growing a variety of spinach that was a beautiful deep red. He was also growing a stevia plant! I tasted a couple of the small leaves - man, they're sweet. I'd never eaten fresh stevia before. What a trip. And tonight I had more greens from Ricardo's garden, and an abundance of greens he has, too! Everything's starting to get gigantic now that we're experiencing the longest days of the year. It's pretty exciting, but it makes it hard to keep up with harvesting! The crazy part of the summer begins already...

Nelson is a pretty darn charming town. I got a chance to wander through some of its neighbourhoods today. The gardens people have in their yards are numerous, varied, and abundant. The houses themselves are quaint and cottage-like, each one full of character. Much of the public space is unmanicured and wild. As I remember seeing in Portland when I visited a couple years ago, there is an abundance of flowers in Nelson, roses being the kind that most often caught my eye.

The Soulstice celebration was pretty fun. I think my favourite part of any party like that is the dancing part towards the end.. when I'm properly unsober and feeling the rhythms of the music or drumming... I love being in "the zone", you know? The day after was super super lazy at Ricardo's. Ricardo had three of his friends from Nelson staying for a couple nights, and I liked their energy, so I decided to be social and tagged along. We had some mushroom chocolate sauce on Breyer's vanilla ice cream topped with oats and maple syrup. It tasted divine, I tell you. The sauce had a mild but pleasant effect on me.

I ended up spending the next day still hanging out with Ricardo's Nelson friends. They were planning a day trip canoeing and fishing somewhere along the Kootenay River that passes through Nelson, and Ricardo said I shouldn't pass it up. So I joined them. We didn't end up actually fishing probably because we wasted too much of the day getting ready for the trip, plus the boat was a little tippy with the four of us in it, but it was still a sweet trip. There's a cave and some petroglyphs across the river in Nelson.

There are also some less favourable things I learned about the Kootenays. It's a little discouraging to know how much of the population of Nelson and Winlaw is involved in the drug economy, and the reason that people can afford the high prices for land around here. It seems many of the residents in the valley who can afford the more expensive properties have a profitable relationship with the trade of one drug or another. Yet despite the Kootenays probably being the drug capital of Canada, I've heard the culture here is in fact a lot more positive than on Saltspring Island. It sounds like the drug culture out there has really screwed some people up, and Nelson and the Kootenays are a breath of fresh air in comparison.

Another sobering point about life in the Kootenays: winter can be quite the challenge, especially in the Slocan Valley (i.e. Winlaw). It gets very dark and the world is engulfed in many feet of snow. It's gorgeous, but the snow is heavy, and practically impossible to deal with without some kind of vehicle or other powered means of transportation to get you to the plowed road. You may also be chopping wood constantly to heat your home. The creeks run low, so water is a concern; melting snow on your woodstove is apparently too slow of a process to be practical. Generally, it sounds like valley residents don't leave their homes as much in the winter. If you're not living right in the city, then plowing/shovelling the driveway becomes a huge chore, and can be enough to keep you inside your house worrying if your supply of food is going to run out. It's important to keep a well-stocked root cellar or pantry in the winter if you're not living right in town. (And when the shit goes down and they bomb Iran, maybe that'll be important for everyone... yikes!)

Labels: bc, gardening, gas prices, nelson, winlaw