Creator, Destroyer

Tinder dry weather, wind and dry lightning have caused fires to spread aggressively in the province. (B.C. Wildfire Service)

Creator, Destroyer

In a lifetime of nudging nature
to show us her vast range of 
grandly impressive geological
sites of monumental landscapes
few have been more varied and
stunning than those we have seen
in that westernmost of Canadian
provinces where we alpine camped
canoed and strolled among the 
world's old forest marvels. Ascending
mountains, placing a tent on a narrow
shelf on their slopes, watching the
force of nature that is a thunderstorm
and waiting out the drenching in that
tent to finally see across the vast
expanse to the Stein Valley a bonfire
in defiance of possibility. Paddling
our geared canoe through the
Bowron Lakes in the Cariboo
Mountain range, from lake to river
to lake. The mountain sheep, the
fear of grizzlies, the shrieks of 
screech owls, moose and salmon
the tracks of wolves. Awed in the 
presence of venerable trees the 
ephemeral hush as of nature's 
cathedral. The vast stretches of desert
the irrigated fields of ginseng, and 
the roaming cattle ranches, the depth
and awe of the Fraser River Canyon
this there was and this we saw. And
now wildfires roar about Cache Creek.