Ian's House
I had a house concert in the Wildmare area of Chetwynd while on the BC Cherry Bomb circuit for Home Routes. Tricky to find and an icy driveway in March, but worth it to spend some time in a beautiful, acoustically delightful round house built with love by a retired fighter of forest fires. Ian is a very youthful guy. He keeps a full schedule growing food in the summer and working on this ever evolving house and land, solar panels, hauling water from town... He's the organic salad bar supplier for a local school, though this time of year all that's around are potatoes. Ian was crowned the Garlic King of Chetwynd, and assures me it's fairly easy to grow garlic if you just plant in the fall to come up in the spring. Cut off the curly flowers and eat them in a salad.
We're north enough for midnight sun. Still light come summer by quarter to midnight, light to get up at 3:30 am.
Ian has a beautiful wood stove that is so cozy heating this place. The details of the decor came alive with a little haul of the locally grown. It's an amazing thing to have a home in a giant circle. The place is meticulously well insulated, which holds the key for the crazy northern winters. The roof is a cone and the central beam is a seriously huggable tree trunk, salvaged from the logging industry. Surrounding the central core is an inner octagon of tree trunk supports, slightly smaller, but still impressive in size. Tons of open space, 4 rooms including the bath which all start at the octagon posts to the outer walls of wood, concrete, insulation. The twenty something sections of outer wall are well windowed, and the plants in the space thrive, ivy growing up one of the support logs.
I played a show here for five people. One drove 40 k, 3 others 65. Smaller audience than usual... but it's a milestone for me because I seriously don't care. I think it was good for all of us. Really good.
Ice.
Raw Timber.
Road to Chetwynd
Driving here was a beautiful ride, and I thought constantly about conversations with X who came to Chetwynd year after year to plant trees in the 90's, and saw so clearly the facade of the industry. The main road is surrounded by mountains that are tree covered. But beyond the view of the highway the mountains are slashed and clearcut for miles and miles and miles of rough terrain, unbelievably rough terrain. That's where the planters would plant their little tiny treelings. Try to catch up with the sawing maw of the logging industry. You could die trying, or at least seriously test yourself. The tree planters seem to have the utmost respect from the other workers up here. Not a coveted job, not by the logging company, not by the forest fire fighter. Almost disbelief that anyone would do such a job, so awful the conditions, camping in the snow, the bent low position, the grip of the hand on the shovel and the impact on bones and tendons, the dig, shove and stamp... And yet from the perspective of my left middle upbringing, in my urban Canadian youth it seemed that tree planting was a right of passage, and all the people I know who have done this work are good ones. The camps were legendary, the stories ,the music, the cooks, the mosquitoes, the monotony and the meditation of the motion in the life being planted...
The self-proclaimed red-neck logging manager I met also had respect, but perhaps also thought of the planters as crazy people... Dammit though, the forests should still be growing. What's crazy is that they are cut and cut and cut. That even now I hear of last stands of old growth a being sliced down at such a fast rate, and not even for lumber. Not even for the wood. For pulp. For newspapers to be thrown away. “Crazy” environmentalists and hard working societal outsiders become a strange partner to the forestry industry here. The trees supplied and planted are not to make a forest again but to grow lumber. So what does one do? Save up money by working a crazy planting season and happily nihilate outside the worlds enslavements for the rest of the year, playing (albeit on a budget) but not working.
Ian said firefighting is like that too. Good money, crazy season, then you relax. Good for when you're young. My host is certainly a crafty guy who lives in a wonderful way that makes me appreciate the intense and so often destructive luxuries of our time and space. I nearly dropped my CD sales down the outhouse hole and came inside to the warmth of the wood stove thinking, “I don't want to require money.” Playing music for people who want to listen and sing along, sitting with some kind of core of being together for a while, the great journey to get to these people, the food and stories shared... the stewardship of the land... equal rights and justice... It's slow it's slow, but it's happening.
The Loo