Category Archives: Photography

Walk Your Way to Health Benefits

146. Brit DPS at the Maple Ridge DykeThe topic of walking is right up my alley (picture me strolling along – LOL) because I’ve always walked. Okay, I hear you … of course you’ve always walked. Started when you were about ten months old, or so your mother was fond of saying. True enough!

I’m using the above photo because I love it! But it is oh so misleading for 2021. That cutie-pie is now 9 years old! Wow, time flies. And when I head out to walk today, it will be steady North Island rain on my horizon. Certainly not those sunny days of yesteryear and place.

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When I say I’ve always walked, I mean walking for the pure joy of walking. Most days of my life, wherever I have lived or stayed, on whatever shore I have washed upon, I find myself heading out the door for a walk. It’s exercise, it’s a mental health break, it’s a creativity boost. My thoughts scramble around as my feet move to the beat of their own drummer. Somewhere, along the beaten track, all those thoughts fall into productive order. I breathe deeply and my steps become one with rutted paths, country lanes or city streets; I experience the beauty of trees, green grasses, squatting shrubs in every shade of the rainbow; I sense the pull of oceans, rivers, lakes, streams and canals; I marvel at the sight of a squirrel bounding up a tree, a Stellar’s Jay whisking out of sight, or a snake writhing along the path.

Emma - High River walk  Emma - High River 2

Here’s a couple of pics from a great walk I had with this granddaughter (circa fall 2020)around a new man-made lake near their home in High River, Alberta. Fun times. Walks with grandkids might be some of the best kinds.

The other day, I tuned into Dr. Brain Goldman’s podcast – The Dose | CBC Podcasts | CBC Listen What are the Do’s and Don’ts of Getting the Most out of My Daily Walk. According to Dr. Goldman and his guest, Dr. Jane Thornton, walking is one of the most meaningful things you can do to improve your health. It delivers a powerful range of physiological, cognitive, and mental health benefits. Dr. Thornton goes as far as to prescribe walking for her patients. Actually getting her prescription pad out and writing it up. She talks about how patients are motivated by the written words. It gives them permission to carve out the time it takes to walk.

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I think Dr. Thornton should include the above visual with her written prescription for walking. What an amazing progression from a mere three minutes of strolling to reduce your blood pressure to 40 minutes to reduce the risk of heart disease, to a more ambitious 90 minute hike to brush away those depressive thoughts.

Walking – it’s all good Smile

Let Me Tell You a Story

  Before Easel

It is all about story … what else is there?

You can bet that old, battered easel found at the recycling yard has a story. Of course it does.

Stories surround us. We are immersed in them, swimming in an endless sea of story. At any given time, we seem capable of simultaneously tuning our attention to multiple stories. The lay across our palms, mixed threads of weight, colour and style. Some grab us with their vibrancy, others drift along cloudlike in a clear blue sky, some hold us in an iron grip and still others are dippable – in and out we go.

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When it comes to fiction, I’ve never been good at reading more than one novel at a time. But switch up the delivery methods and I’m quite comfortable holding several strands of story in my palm. I am happy to read one novel on my Kindle, listen to another on Aubible and follow a fiction series on Netflix – no problem.

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Currently the situation is as follows:

1. Reading Hilary Mantel’s novel, The Mirror and the Light on my Kindle. This is the 3rd book in her highly acclaimed Tudor series in which she takes Thomas Cromwell as her main character and teller of the tale. I read the 1st book, Wolf Hall, several years ago and loved it, then recently finished the 2nd, Bring Up the Bodies. I’m surprised it has taken me this long to get back to Henry VIII and Tudor England.

2. Listening to, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry on Audible. I read the book ages ago. Hearing it read by a narrator who has all the accents and pronunciations bang on is a totally different experience. Highly entertaining and totally gripping. The place is India, an unknown city by the sea, the time is 1975, a state of emergency throws four strangers together. “An enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.”

3. Watching Borgen on Netflix. Take my word for it, you get used to the dubbing. Borgen is a political/newsroom drama set in Denmark. The two main characters are Denmark’s Prime Minister and the anchor of the country’s major TV broadcaster – both women. The drama circles around the major events of the day and the personal lives of these women.

Easel - Brit and Emma

Story is not confined to fiction. On any given day, I am listening to stories told to me over the phone by my daughter as she commutes to and from work – the three things granddaughter Emma would do if she was Prime Minister (my heart was warmed by her top priority – give millions to the homeless, followed by cancel school because it’s mostly boring); granddaughter Brit’s outfit for teacher day; and the trials and tribulations of the work life during Covid.

Easel - Kristen

I tune into the latest story told by my son. His Covid hobby is creating heavy metal mixed cassette tapes complete with artwork for the tapes themselves, the liner notes and slip covers. These get distributed amongst a network of enthusiasts and garage metal bands.

Easel - me and Emma

I get a text from one of my granddaughters giving me the merest fragment of story – When did my mom start figure skating? I’m going to write a biography of her. Hmmm …. interesting. That request sent me scrambling down memory lane. Another day it was – How do you make peanut butter icing, Grama? Well, you make some icing, and you whip in some peanut butter. Easy peasy!

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There are snippets of stories on Facebook and Instagram – photos and quotes and startling revelations. Now and then, a long newsy email arrives from a friend. These are replete with story upon story stacked up like the yummiest layer cake you’ll ever dig your fork into. Multiple story threads emerge in every news and political podcast that dumps daily into my podcast app.

Finished easel - mountains

Through casual conversations, stories pop up right, left and center. A simple question, “What are you doing?” can lead to multiple stories. Some you want to hear, some you certainly don’t. But you get what you get and don’t get upset – as my granddaughters learned in Kindergarten.

Finished easel - beach scene

As I said, literally swimming in story here! Story is a deep stream running through our lives, so deep and rich that if we had the inclination, we would never run out of things to write about. And in our telling, we create another layer – like an office tower – one story on top of the other reaching higher and higher, always with elaborate stairways and elevators to gain access between floors.

Did you pick up a story from the photos? Or did they simply confuse the story conveyed in the written text? Could you hold the multiple strands of story? Hope so! 

How are you drifting down the stream of story today? Where are you hearing the snippets, the gripping tales, the startling headlines? I’m all ears for a good story.

Life Happens in the Barren Writing Land

20210124_131710I hung that note on my storyboard this fall.

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See for yourself the fade to nothingness that is happening to the 5th offering in the Crater Lake Series. A strange phenomenon, really, – not the fading – that makes perfect sense!The book started with such gusto in the early days of 2019. Barely a few weeks into the writing, I had eighty pages. Going back now, I am still enthralled reading those early pages. That – Damn, this is good – feeling often seeps through me.

Even now, two years later, the characters speak to me daily; more like yell at me with megaphones in their hands. Yet I do not heed them, I do not return to them. Why did I abandon them? I am not posing these questions to build your suspense. The truth is, I haven’t anything like adequate answers. I have circumstances, which are not the same as answers. Oh, yes … circumstances, I have many; answers, but a few (or none).

I embarked early in 2019 on a self-improvement project – get healthier, be more active, drop some weight. Not much different that what I would embark on every January. By March, I was enjoying a good deal of success. In some ways, that success took over my life. I’m not sorry for the time spent on such a worthy endeavour, but it did push writing aside. Sitting in front of the keyboard for hours on end was not longer on my priority list.

The further I got from the writing, the harder it was to find my way back. And so the time went by.

Over the summer months, an active, healthy lifestyle paid off with multiple engagements. My favourites with these two wonderful granddaughters Smile 

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There were several guests to our beautiful lake home.

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We took up kayaking in a big way.

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Our garden was a sight to behold.

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Come fall, there was canning and food preservation to consider.

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(This pic actually comes from Oct. 2020 – but 2019 was similar – maybe less tomatoes and more beans.)

We took a fall trip to see family and enjoy some beautiful BC and southern Alberta scenery.

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Hiking the Old Kettle Valley Rail Trestle Trail near Kelowna

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Sheep River Provincial Park, Alberta.

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Me, riding a bike with my BFF’s. First time in years and proof positive that healthy life style choices pay off.

Time passed. Then it was Christmas – the first Christmas we had planned to spend at home in ages. We decorated a tree, we baked cookies. Life was good. So went 2019.

Tree at night          Sugar cookies

Along came January of 2020 replete with many Crater Lake intentions. Before I could get organized to break the ice on the frozen pond of writing, I was following news stories from China and worrying that my worst fears about a global pandemic ending humanity were about to be realized. (Have you read Emily St John Mandel’s book Station Eleven. If not do, it’s superb, but then again, during our own pandemic, maybe not.) By the middle of February, when The Diamond Princess ocean liner was docked and quarantined in Japan, I was cancelling travel plans and we were stocking up on groceries.

Well, there you have it. That’s my writing hiatus in a nutshell. As I said, many circumstances but few explanations. I recently heard a podcast interview with one of my favourite authors, Robert Harris. He took the isolation of a pandemic as the perfect opportunity to pump out a brilliant book, “V 2”. Throwing in the towel on writing was clearly not a pandemic given. Well, though I have no answers for my own writing dilemma, this post gives me the chance to shout out two great books!

            Station Eleven          Robert Harris V2 (3)

Living Through the Pandemic

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As I sit tonight and put in my mandatory hour in front of the keyboard, I am thinking about the evening news a few days ago and the fact that January 25th marked the one-year anniversary of the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in Canada. Yesterday, we marked the same anniversary for British Columbia. What a year we’ve lived through. Brutal for many, barely a change for others and, for countless more, every variation of impact along that continuum. I think the disproportionate affects of this global crisis are among its most salient and heart-wrenching features.

We happen to be in the group who didn’t experience a significant amount of life upheaval. I came up with the following list of 10 factors to explain why:

1. We are somewhat introverted at the best of times.

2. We have both retired, our income is fixed and we harbour no dreams of world travel.

3. We live in a rural, isolated area.

4. We (Bruce and I) are neither of us, alone!

5. As a general rule, we keep our cupboards and pantry stuffed to the brim.

6. We love to garden and preserve our own food and we’ve been doing it for years. So, we are well provisioned with all the necessary supplies.

7. We hardly ever go to a restaurant and we don’t care much for shopping.

8. With so much heartfelt gratitude, we have not had to travel to be with sick, injured or dying loved ones.

9. We are both (as far as we know) healthy and have not needed to worry about seeing doctors or specialists.

10. We don’t get bored around our cabin home because there are simply too many things to do to ever consider boredom as an option.

So, we haven’t been turned inside out by Covid-19, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t fully aware of the devastation others are going through. Nightly news, podcasts, media articles and contact with friends and family keep us updated.

My heart goes out to all those who lost a loved one to Covid-19. I experience a sense of frustrated, hand-wringing hopelessness when I think of our poor seniors, so vulnerable in the care homes that can no longer care for them. I stand in solidarity with all the different types of front-line workers who have no choice but to be out in the world every day. Equally, I feel for those relegated to working from home when it may not suit them. I’m sorry for the kids missing out on school and beloved activities, to say nothing of the devastating loss of social connection. I understand how difficult it is for the small business owners who watch the hard work they have put into building their dreams go down the drain.

Even though our experience of this pandemic has been easier than what has been felt by many, I am sad for time lost with kids and grandkids. We would have been together more if we could have! I also miss the simple things, like a friend dropping by for a visit. Offering coffee and cake. Being able to share food and conversation around a table.

No one drops by now and if anyone did, they would be six feet away and wearing a mask. Coffee and cake would be a problem outside in the pouring rain or wind.

Suffice to say, these are difficult times. Here’s hoping we stay the course, stick to our best healthcare practices and pass through these days with a thought to how our individual actions may affect others. We can only live in the moment. Let us face that moment with integrity. As our provincial health officer for British Columbia, Dr. Bonnie Henry, has often told us, “Be kind, be calm and be safe.”

I am missing these people and their pets!

Dropbox 5My lovely daughter, Kristen; her husband Matthew, delightful granddaughters, Emma (with knees showing) and Brit; tried and true dogs, Gixxer (Boxer) and Zoey (Border Collie, Sheep Dog cross).

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       Mika             Doug and Cookie

My son, Doug and his lovely wife, Maggie along with their fun-loving cats, Mika (senior – white) and Cookie, playful newcomer.

Time for Truth–Overtime, in Fact

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Yes, that really is fresh salad greens in the winter! Gardening on Northern Vancouver Island means never having to say there is nothing in the garden to eat.

Onto a more important level of truth. This evening, I’m giving a shout out to fellow writer, Nicki Chen. She blogs over on Behind the Story. Her most recent post, A Season of Truth, is a heartfelt plea for something that should be a given – truth, the telling of the truth, bearing witness with integrity and transparency. Describing her relief that a veritable blizzard of lies has now departed her country, she moves onto a wonderful discussion of how truth is layered into fiction writing. Fiction – the lie by which we tell the truth.

Please, follow the link below. Nicki writes with a beauty that leaves me more than a bit intimidated.

A Season of Truth – Behind the Story (nickichenwrites.com) 

And if you have a minute, check out my author interview on my Location, Location, Location Series, of Nicki’s book, Tiger Tail Soup. She provided some great photos and wonderful insights into her writing process.

Location, Location, Location–Tiger Tail Soup by Nicki Chen « disappearinginplainsight

A Work in Process

Kayaking - Jan 2021 5

What do you call a writer who’s not writing? Okay, don’t answer that question. Try this one instead. What do you call a blogger who hasn’t blogged in almost two years? Whew – amongst yourselves feel free to discuss a long dry spell or life getting in the way. Ultimately, it’s all about process and I am definitely a work in process.

Starting back slowly. Thought I might say Hi. Decided to change my profile pic. Hoped I might be able to manage a post a week. Look for me on Thursdays.

Here’s a couple of photo pics for the week – winter kayaking. Not a bad way to pass the time.

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Hitting the Wall–Danger!

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Okay – it happens. We all know it happens. There you are logging hundreds of words a day, going full-steam ahead, typing with one hand and patting yourself on the back with the other. Then, wham! The wall. Danger. All of the above!

I had probably written 35,000 words when it happened – that horrible feeling that there is nowhere for any of my characters to go. I’d somehow managed to tell all their collective stories and to solve all their problems without ever getting the book off the ground. Talk about a wall. Talk about undertows! Talk about fear of all manner of wild beasts.

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When I hit the wall, I go out walking. And lucky for me, my trails in Feb. don’t need the above warning signs. Pretty quiet these days. On one of those walks, I got the idea to put each storyline to the question.

Ah … you say … the question? What can that be?

Where is the tension? Where is this going?

Danger 2

Yesterday, the ideas began to explode in my head like cannon fire. And I could see why I hit the wall. I’d revealed far too much about the characters far too soon. That’s easy to fix. One can always switch blocks of writing from here to there. And I hadn’t allowed myself to come up with enough action events to propel the storylines.

Danger - no problem

 

I was in possession of a plethora of action events. So, I took a scene plotter approach. I plugged my characters into those events and thought about how putting them in certain places at certain times was going to move their individual and collection storylines along. I know where they’re all going to end up – so that helps. As you can see, I’m out on that dangerous bridge without a care in the world. Of course, I’m not planning to dive.

 

Inevitable though, one day’s wild excitement is followed by a day of panic. As I contemplate the work involved in weaving all the threads together to create the tapestry that is unfolding in my mind, as I think about cobbling the pieces of story fabric together to create my quilt … it is daunting. Back to the walking.

(The photo below is the church on Zuckerberg Island near Castlegar. That is where the bridge above went to.)

Zuckenberg Island chapel house 2, Castlegar BC Oct 22-2018 - francis guenette photo

This whole writing process is like these socks I just finished knitting for myself. I call them my socks of many colours composed of all the bits of yarn leftover from my various holiday sock knitting projects. What I love about them is that I only need to look down at my feet and I can see the yarn that went into socks I’ve made for so many people I love. The book is like the socks of many colours – bits and pieces of my whole life knit into something wholly new that came from me but isn’t me at all.

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Action is Plot and Plot is Action

Fraser River - Bruce Witzel photo

A great story is life with the dull parts taken out – Alfred Hitchcock.

Morning grey on the Fraser River – day two of our fall trip. Nothing dull about that pic. In novel writing, we want no dull characters, no dull situations, no dull settings. But, let’s be clear on what constitutes dull. The definition, in terms of writing, is unique. Any action that doesn’t move the story forward is dull. If teeth brushing is integral to the movement of your story, then teeth brushing is not dull. Maybe your character is brushing her teeth and as she spits blood into the sink, she decides once and for all to leave the brute who smashed her in the face that morning. Definitely not dull.

On the other hand, the photo below, is vibrant with fall colours. It is no dull grey expose but what does it have to do with the story? The colours may pop but if they aren’t moving the story forward, dull, dull, dull.

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Action is plot and plot is action. I’ve read that genre novels are action driven. Lots of things happen to the character. Literary novels are more about the interior life of the characters. It could be said that the character happens to the plot. In each case, the story must find a way to move. It seems to me that most good novels are a combination of the two.

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A plot without good character development is all action and no bonding. The reader can’t get invested. On the other hand, character development without a plot is like being all dressed up and having no where to go. And by the way – have you ever heard of a Turban squash. I hadn’t until we stopped at the Marisposa Organic Fruit Stand outside Keremeos.

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At its most basic, plot is how a character deals with challenge. And it’s all about movement. Want something, go somewhere, learn something, come out the other end changed. There you have it. Bare bones, but if you can’t see down to the skeleton, you can’t write a decent novel.

The photo below is Sunset in Osoyoos, the end of day two of our fall trip. The bulrush chimes near the art gallery. I hadn’t been back to Osoyoos since selling my dad’s house in 2010. He’d died late the previous year. I wasn’t expecting the return to bring back such powerful, overwhelming memories. Death changes everything.

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