The sound of mountain water

This is the fraser river just as is flows south into downtown Fraser. I love the sound of mountain water.

Yes, it's really spring in the Rocky Mountains

An overnight Spring Snow Storm has blanketed the valley. It’s really beautiful now that the sun has come out. There is about four inches around my house. On this morning’s walk with the dogs I realized that it’s okay there is snow; we need the moisture.



Yesterday I ordered new bike clothes: Jerseys and Bike Shorts, and am eager to get out on road and mountain bike. Yesterday I rode around Pole Creek Golf Club for this week’s column. It’s a gorgeous course and although I don’t golf, I enjoyed riding around the meadows, and seeing a part of the county I’ve never seen. The willows were beautiful around Pole Creek. It reminded me of a Marjorie Cranston painting of willows and how dramatically colorful they can be. I never noticed all the different shades of orange and red they really were until after I saw her painting.

Here’s what this morning looks like:

Hopefully it will all melt by the end of the day and create some good flowing creeks and streams for the dogs to play in and get all muddy.

May 10, 2010 Rocks

Hiking with Views of the Continental Divide

I wrote in one of my outdoor columns this month that I'm inspired by the Continental Divide. The last two mornings I've been hiking straight up the mountain behind my house to a spot where I can look down into the Fraser Canyon and up to the Continental Divide.

Here is Abbey looking down at the train coming through at the exact time we arrived at the spot. If she was a few years younger I bet she would've run straight down to it.
It was a beautiful morning and I sat at watch the Fraser River flow; I could hear it too.

Daisy loves running around up here; all the wonderful scents of critters. This early there is no one around and Daisy just runs and runs. I love watching her.

She is such a good looking dog.

I also love just watching the sun rise over the mountains in the morning; and that this is in my backyard.

Bernard DeVoto

Bernard DeVoto writes in his essay Footnotes on the West that art, literature, and life are all bound to the seasons. True. True.


DeVoto is not as well known as other writers who write passionately about conservation, The West, and public lands. I read Stegner’s biography, The UnEasy Chair fifteen years ago when I was reading everything Stegner wrote, but didn’t really remember much of it.


I read an old article in the August 08, 1994 issue of High Country News about DeVoto and how the FBI investigated him most of his adult life because he was so outspoken in the 30s and 40s; specifically writing an essay about “government spying, Red-baiting, blacklisting and Communist witch hunts that swept across America after World War II.”


So now I’m reading DeVoto’s West – History, Conservation, and the Public Good which is a compilation of some of his essays edited by Edward K. Muller. This is a good book. It’s interesting to think about how his writings in mainstream newspapers and magazine in the east really changed public opinion about how to manage western lands. He convinced many politians that western public lands need to be managed by the federal government to ensure the they were not sold to public interests. We would, for sure, have a different west, if not for his voice.