Fall Fair

This week in wildlife news:

1. As I was walking up 'A' street (street names here are mostly either letters of the alphabet, or numbers), something dropped from the top of a telephone pole and landed at my feet. I looked up. Looking down at me? A huge raven-ravens are really big!-eating a pear.

2. Jordan and I were barbecuing some very tasty veggie burgers in the yard the other day when a mama deer and her baby came wandering into the yard to munch on apples fallen from our tree. I thought it was interesting that even though they were clearly hungry, they still sniffed at some of the apples and rejected them. Hey, I do the same thing!

This week, I found myself wanting to go on a little date (solo) to Nelson. Also, I needed to cash a cheque, and I actually can't do that in Kaslo yet because I don't have a bank account at Kootenay Savings (I love these tiny banks that exist in small towns and nobody else has ever heard of them). I took myself out for lunch, went thrift store shopping and oogled at all the choices in the supermarket. Fine, it wasn't really a 'supermarket,' but more like a convenience store that sold many different types of ramen noodles. Score! Nelson has great coffee, excellent people watching, and trying to find a parking spot is ridiculous. Plus, the parking meters only take coins. I had to park illegally, go to the bank, wait in line, get cash, go somewhere else to get change, then go back to my car to plug the meter. I guess I could have parked for free, but the closest free spots were literally on the outskirts of town.

Another road trip I took this week was to the Argenta Fall Fair. Jordan and I went with his brother and family. Argenta is a tiny little community about 40 minutes up the lake from Kaslo, population 100. The people have to be quite self-sufficient, as Argenta has no stores and is pretty isolated, especially in winter. A local advised me that you need to have 'the best snow tires money can buy.' The Fall Fair has been going on in Argenta for many years and takes place at the town hall. Some people build a different wooden sculpture each year (this year it was a Phoenix), and then, after the square dance, during the hippie rave, they burn it in a big bonfire. The food at the fair was unbelievable. We had rabbit stew, superhero muffins, curried chicken pot pie with salad, coffee, and French pastries made by a very talented French chef. And when I say 'we had,' I mean these are the things 'I' had. The French pastry guy had like fifteen different, amazing, pastries to choose from. You could buy an entire plate of them for $35, which my brother-in-law did. The whole family dug in. I regretted it later, but that's not really the point.

The Kaslo Saturday Market this week had a community apple press, run by the Food Security Hub. People brought boxes of apples (we ALL have boxes of apples), loaded them into a really really really old and very cool apple pressing machine (never seen one before), and then took home growlers and big mason jars full of fresh juice. It was, in a word, FUN. I never realized I could enjoy something as down-home as pressing your own apple juice until, on the way home in the car, I found myself rambling on and on about how much I'd enjoyed it. I also bought a case (yes, a CASE) of tomatoes at the market, because I keep feeling like I'm never going to find tomatoes again. So every time someone is selling them, I think to myself, 'Well if I don't get 20 pounds, I'm probably going to regret it.' Suddenly, buying produce is all wrapped up with fear that if I miss out, I'm going to 'regret it.'

Let's see...what else happened this week. Oh yes! I got my hair cut! Truth be told here, I sincerely love getting my hair cut. You get someone to wash your hair for you (always the double shampoo and double conditioner), that head massage sometimes. It's great. What I don't love is how frizzy my hair is for like three days every time. I think I got my hair cut on Wednesday and it's still in that 'I JUST got a haircut' phase.

This morning, me and Jordan took Nico (our dog friend) up to a little hike called Strawberry Ridge. The names of places around here are all adorable! Fish Lake! Bear Lake! Coffee Creek! Shutty Bench! OK, I don't really understand that last one. But 'Coffee Creek' is just such a darling name. Anyway, we finally got some bear spray and I packed my backpack with water, an emergency blanket, and snacks (oh, I got lost on the river trail yesterday). Strawberry Ridge was pretty breathtaking. You get a bird's-eye view of the lake, and the ridge is actually full of little wild strawberry plants. I'm sure there were bears and cougars eyeing us around every corner, but Nico wore his trusty bear bell around his neck just in case. Thanks Nico!

At Strawberry Ridge, frizzy hair and all.

This afternoon, we spent some time in our yard, collecting garden and wild bounty. Grapes! Blackberries! Pears! I was going to fill the suet cake feeder for the Steller's Jays, but I just filled it two days ago, it's already empty, and I'm not MADE of money.

This death stare just means these are MY grapes.

Tonight, spent from an evening of chili-making (secret ingredient: bourbon), biscuit-making (don't use chick pea flour to make biscuits) and carrot/apple muffin-making (apparently they 'needed more sugar'), Jordie and me went down to have a beach fire at the lake. One of my favourite things. There's so much driftwood everywhere, nobody around, and the little sounds of water lapping at the shore of the lake melt my heart. I feel like I've asked about ten people about this recently, but I'm still thinking about it. Isn't driftwood supposed to be at the OCEAN?

Last thought on Kaslo this week. I had this lovely moment when I was walking down Front Street. Even though it was the middle of the day, it was pretty quiet on the main drag. I heard this man kind of shouting, and as I got closer to the t-shirt store (all they sell is wacky t-shirts, and I really want one), I realized they were blasting a Bob Dylan song called 'My Back Pages,' which I used to listen to on repeat when I was in university. I was standing almost a block away, but I could still hear every word. "Oh, but I was sooooo much ooooolder then, I'm youuuuunger than that nooooooow."