On the road in Peace River country

This week I've been travelling with the BC Book Prize, the Peace leg of the book tours. We've been to Dawson City, Fort St. John, Fort Nelson, Hudson's Hope, Chetwynd...we've been everywhere, man. I've never been this far north. We're mainly travelling the Alaska Highway. In Hudson's Hope, we were only a couple of hours from the Northwest Territories and 300 miles from the Yukon border. The highlight of the drive so far was today, the road from Fort St. John to Hudson's Hope. What a breathtaking view of the Peace River valley!  I don't use exclamation marks lightly, but this view calls for it.

Rae Mate and Bryan Pike

My travelling companions are Bryan Pike, our driver and the executive director of BC Book Prizes, and Rae Mate, artist and children's book illustrator. I have to tell you about her book, called Pussycat, Pussycat, Where Have You Been. The book starts with that short little rhyme (4 lines) and builds on it, telling the story of where pussycat travelled. Rae calls it the hero's journey and a love story. It's beautiful, a real instant classic in the category of Goodnight Moon. There is a spiritual depth to this little tale that just captured me. And the illustrations are stunning. It's the kind of book that, even as an adult, I want to own. Here's a photo of Rae Mate reading at the Dawson Creek library.

Rae Mate

You can see some more photos and read blogs from the tour on the BC Book Prize website. And here's a link to more about Rae Mate's book:

http://www.amazon.ca/Pussycat-Where-Have-You-Been/dp/1897476469/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334897182&sr=1-1

Writing on the road

It's hard to write when I'm away from home, but it's also hard not to write. Sometimes I feel like I'm only half here: the other half is in (at the moment) a community hall in rural Manitoba. But it's not an unpleasant feeling, except that I'm pulled and want to be there. I've been reading old issues of Chatelaine magazine from 1967, research for the current novel. What strikes me, besides some of the quaint ads (for the "every half hour cocktail party" (???)), the neat clothes (culottes!) and the fact that we used to call couches "chesterfields," is that we haven't changed much. Yeah, we've changed on the surface; we can choose from a shelf of about 600 varieties of tea (as a tea drinker, I notice this) and we can Skype from India to Penticton and all that, but our human obsessions remain essentially the same. We're not so advanced as we seem to think we are. We recycle our dilemmas. We work with the same seven notes, rearranging them in different patterns.

A friend who grew up in India read Shelter and said something like "the landscape is different, jobs are different but the human problems are 100% the same." I get the sense of that reading The Odyssey or the Ramayana. (I don't mean to put Shelter in that class!) Old but familiar tales, familiar at the root, ringing with recognition. I'm not sure if that's cause for hope or despair.

The Ramayana

There are many, many versions of this Indian epic, the Ramayana, from comic books to plays. The back cover of this version says, "One of India's greatest epics, the Ramayana pervades the country's moral and cultural consciousness." I've only read two versions, R. K. Narayan's short prose version (which I loved) and a graphic novel version from the perspective of Sita by Samhita Arni. And I've just begun this one, my third. A hefty near-700 pages, it's a translation of the Sanskrit text by Valmiki, probably written between 750 and 500 BCE. The translation is by my friend, the talented and witty Arshia Sattar, who I met at the Sangam House writers' retreat.

In the introduction she writes,"the question that looms large over the Ramayana is that of the relationship between myth and history, ie. is the Ramayana a true story?...Early Orientalists [found that] Indians seemed to mix up their human heroes with their gods...Most scholars of epic believe that an epic grows around a core legend or tale that probably did occur. Thus it is possible some king (perhaps not named Rama) did exist, that his wife was abducted and that he fought a war to get her back." 

And that gives you a taste of the plot. Like the Odyssey, this is a story of complex personalities and relationships, twists and turns of fate and human weakness and, above all, dharma, a word that roughly translates as "duty" or "right." And if ever there was a use for the shorthand WTF, it comes at the end of the Ramayana.

Ethel Wilson's Swamp Angel

I first read this book a long time ago; I can tell by my name written on the inside cover in rounder, more careful handwriting than I have now. And I found a folded note inside that reads: Damon, Just gone for a walk. Help yourself to a cupcake. Slap some icing on it (them) L. And a phone number in different ink (not my writing; I never crossed my sevens). The note, written by my long-time friend Laurie who lives in Winnipeg and is still with her partner, Damon, suggests that either I lent this book to her, or I borrowed it from her, kept it and eventually wrote my name in it, thinking it was mine. Then again, I rarely write my name in my books unless I'm lending them.

The book smells like an attic and someone has written in it, in ink GUN=SELFHOOD, POWER. That was neither me nor Laurie because neither of us would do that to a book we loved. Whoever did it also underlined "Burrard Inlet," "Stanley Park," "Lion's Gate Bridge," "golf course," "New Westminster" and "outraged endurance," but then the underlinings peter out and past chapter nine, it's clean. I feel an instant dislike for the person who did the underlining. It's as if the book was mined for uppercase meaning then abandoned once it'd given up its goods. That's probably unfair; it's not like I've never approached a book in such a businesslike way. Just not this book.

Skagit River at Sumallo Grove

 

I remembered little of this book except that I liked it and that it traveled into the firs and pines of the BC deepwoods and that it made the familiar a little exotic and I liked that. Re-reading it tonight, I was delighted to find that when Maggie leaves the home she had loved but now hated, she stops at Hope and reflects on the two roads forking into the interior of BC and she chooses the Hope-Princeton. I always choose the Hope-Princeton too, though it's a home I love that I'm heading to. And she stops by the river, which she calls the Similkameen. And the Similkameen does run along that road, but first you pass through the wilder transition from the coastal rainforest -- the huge cedars and salmonberry undergrowth -- where the road runs along the Skagit River. That's the river I always stop beside (at least when the road in is passable, which is from about May to October).

I was re-reading Swamp Angel because Shelter has been shortlisted for the BC Book Ethel Wilson Prize and when I heard, it reminded me of the book and of the writers like Wilson and Margaret Laurence and Gabrielle Roy and Adele Wiseman and Margaret Atwood, who I read when I was in my early twenties, those iconic McClelland and Stewart New Canadian Library books. I envied Margaret Laurence her cigarettes and coffee at her desk overlooking the Otonabee River and I wanted to do that. I don't have the river or the cigarettes but I spend my days writing at my desk looking out on the hills around Penticton and I feel a kinship to those writers who wrote things like "'I shall be all right. Just set me down near the river.'" (Ethel Wilson, Swamp Angel, 1954)

Ancient Indian technology

This is an interesting article about using ancient technology for cooling in India, like jalis (stone window screens) and stepwells. We visited stepwells in India on our tour and were told that they were a communal water system and gathering place, but we all puzzled over why they were so elaborate and deep (and would require so much effort to gather water, as opposed to the rope and bucket system.) Here's a photo of one:

 What I learned from the article is that they also acted as a kind of air conditioning. Makes sense. Just as you might go into a restaurant or movie theatre to escape the heat, you could take your time descending the steps to collect water at these way-stops, which were built by the ruling family. The stepwells also had a number of small rooms overlooking the well that could be used as "motels" by passing travelers.

My clever fellow travelers

The jalis are not just practical, but beautiful. Here's a 16th century-ish one and the modern update below it.

Back to India

The g group (Sef taking photo). Note the lovely Taj saris.

I was just thinking about one part of my trip that I wasn't sure about when I left home. I'd booked a tour through G Adventures, a Canadian company that used to be called Gap Adventures. It was a "Golden Triangle" tour, ie. Delhi, Agra (the Taj Mahal) and Jaipur (the pink city and Amber Fort) and it was for eight days. I was a bit apprehensive because I've never been on a tour before; I pride myself on being an independent traveler. But I wanted to see these India highlights and the logistics of doing it in a relatively short time seemed overwhelming. I'd heard about this tour company before ( a friend of mine traveled in Nepal with them) and I knew they used local small hotels, local guides and transportation and they try to be responsible travelers, ecologically and otherwise.

I'm taking photo.

 I got a great deal on the trip. It was around $650 for the 8 days, plus another $200 for the privilege of having my own room. I figured I'd be one of the older travelers in the group (because of the type of tour it was) and that was true. We were a group of 15 people and the average age was 26. This turned out to be a really nice part of the whole experience. Everyone was gung-ho, catching autorickshaws everywhere and jumping on the Delhi metro to go to the markets; the spirit was infectious. Sometimes I felt like the mature aunty ("you guys go ahead and swim; I'll take pictures.") That was at the one somewhat luxurious place we stayed and everyone was psyched about the promised swimming pool. I was still wearing every piece of clothing I'd brought with me--Delhi and area was cold! But it turned out the pool had no water in it, so no swimming for anyone.

I was touched by how respectful everyone was. I never felt embarrassed by my traveling companions; I hope they felt the same. There was a sense of curiosity, which seemed mutual among the Indian people we encountered. A funny thing that happens at tourist spots is that Indian tourists want to take photos of themselves with foreigners. We did the same.

I found a kindred spirit first in Jay from the UK, who had also chosen to have his own room. Jay's family roots are in Gujarat, so he found he was picking up Hindi pretty quickly. We tried to expand our Hindi vocabulary a little. The two Sarahs, from the UK (actually Hong Kong now) and Australia, were lots of fun. One night after supper we went hunting for an Anokhi textiles store, but as it got dark, we had to give up. The next day, it took two autorickshaws to track it down, but we finally found it and madly shopped. I only had a half hour; had to get to a movie.

Joe and David at Agneepath!

The blockbuster Bollywood movie experience was one of the highlights of Jaipur. We had to get tickets the day before. On the day of the movie, we joined the throngs waiting to get in then found our seats just in time. No previews or trailers, just lights down and right into the action, as cheers went up from the crowded theatre. As soon as a big Bollywood star came on screen, everyone cheered again. If a character said something cheeky, there were raucous hoots of approval. Something touching: more cheers. Love scenes: whistles and laughter.

After the show, all ten of us clambered into three rickshaws and made a speeding convoy weaving through the crazily crowded streets. Jay taught me how to say "Slow down" and "I have a son" in Hindi.

Light pollution

When I go outside at night and look up at the sky I have a pretty good view of some familiar constellations: the Big Dipper, Orion, Cassiopeia. I live in small town British Columbia. The nearest big city is a five hour drive away. But still, light pollution here is bad enough to obscure the dimmer riot of stars and the fuzz of the Milky Way that I remember seeing as a kid in southern Ontario.

About half an hour from here, hidden in the desert-dry rolling hills, is the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory. Last August, I went there to watch the Perseid Meteor showers. The plan was that I'd meet my son and two other friends there. But it was so dark that I lurched among the hushed bodies wrapped in blankets on the grass, then gave up and rolled into my sleeping bag on my back and looked up. Every time a meteor flashed across the sky, a gasp of awe rose up from the crowd and then the whispers, "Did you see it?" It was a moonless night. I can't remember when I've seen so many stars. Even my 14 year-old son and his friends were buzzing with excitement when I found them.

The sad thing is that there are places in the world where it's no longer possible to see the stars. The problem is worse in cities, obviously, but an article in the Telegraph in 2010 says that according to astronomers, "eight out of ten people in the English countryside cannot see the stars at night because of light pollution." It's troubling to think that there are children who could grow up never experiencing the overwhelming humility that comes from gazing at a starry sky.

There are actually now "dark sky reserves," places named for having exceptional night-time darkness. These are some of them:

Canadian Dark Sky Preserves and Reserves

• Torrance Barrens Dark Sky Reserve, Ontario
• Point Pelee National Park and Dark Sky Preserve, Ontario
• Cypress Hills Dark Sky Preserve, Alberta/Saskatchewan
• Beaver Hills Dark Sky Preserve, Alberta
• Fraser Valley Dark Sky Preserve, British Columbia

It's not only the stars that suffer from light pollution. Brenda "Birdschmidt" probably knows about the organization called Fatal Light Awareness (FLAP http://www.flap.org/index.php) that's trying to get the lights turned out in city buildings to protect migrating birds. Below is a photo of some of the birds killed from hitting lit windows.