Outdoor Discoveries

Weather better suited to indoor investigations

Unlike this time last year when I was in the middle of string of outdoor excursions, this month has little very little action at all. The weather has brought storm after storm and the rain is flooding down from the sky as I write this words. January may have been more appealing but other concerns like gaining a new contract took precedence. That has been sorted now so next week should see a start on revenue earning work again.

That is not to say that I have not been exploring ideas for overseas trips or one nearer home even if COVID-19 could limit such excursions for a while. Finding possible destinations in Washington State, Oregon, Montana and Wyoming has drive me to perusing various guidebooks and others for Colorado, California and Ontario have found their way onto my reading list. It is the prospect of extending North American explorations after last year’s stint in British Columbia that is the underlying motivation for all of this.

There is no shortage of wilderness areas but there is a need to find a base from which to explore them. Denver looks promising for a stay in Colorado but I need to uncover more about that state and, in a sense, the same applies to Lake Tahoe on the boundary between California and Nevada or Ontario where being based in Toronto could have a use.

Reading guidebooks may not sound exciting but they do advance all these pipe dreams. Consulting local magazines like Distinctly Montana, Wyoming Magazine, Big Sky Journal, Montana Outdoors and Montana Quarterly would augment these in a more bite-sized manner and some have email newsletters too so it is not a case of reading everything at once only then to forget it all afterwards. My European explorations have been more gradual affairs, after all, and it always helps to find ideas one at a time.

The next steps would be to make use of these but that will depend on how the year goes. COVID-19 is a reminder that events can derail such designs so it is best to see what can be facilitated. One thing is sure though: another visit to North America could happen yet.

Into the 2020’s

2019 had its share of preoccupations, both political and professional, and I did get out and about more during the first half of the year than the second. Weather had its part in that as much as those aforementioned preoccupations but the dividing line appears to be my trip to British Columbia in July. That also needed recovery from jet lag together with financial restoration.

Before all that, there were numerous trips to Yorkshire and Scotland between February and May. The Yorkshire outings took me around Settle and Malham after a visit to the North York Moors near Great Ayton. Easter was spent around Edinburgh with excursions to Linlithgow, Peebles and Penicuik getting me out into more natural surroundings on a sunny weekend that rather spoiled me. Subsequent return visits in May even featured a return to Stirling as well as another stopover in Linlithgow.

The Canadian trip was the highlight though and my base in Vancouver allowed for plenty of exploration around the city itself as well as fitting in side trips to North Vancouver, Squamish and Vancouver Island. The introduction was so thorough that I struggle to think of an excuse to return and there should be plenty of those as long as I figure out how to spend time on any associated long flights.

To some, 2020 is not when the new decade begins but popular opinion is not awaiting 2021. For me too, a certain wistfulness has descended and I look back to 2000 when I began my career and 2010 when I changed jobs. The 2010’s have been life changing too and unwanted political developments to come in 2020 will bring more change. For that reason, I am not planning very much and will see how the year goes.

It this was 1990 or 2000, my sentiments would be more optimistic since that was the world view at the time. However, all that has dissipated and popular dissatisfaction is causing all sorts of upheaval. Throughout all this, it is important to keep a sense of perspective so it is likely that sunny days will lure me out of doors like the last days of 2019. After all, my late mother left me with a constant desire never to waste bursts of sunshine.

We appear to live in a time when making one’s own new happy experiences is never more needed and then there is the necessity to share them. Distractions in 2019 have lengthened the trip report backlog though I am writing one at the moment. As I now look to 2020, that motivation is one that feels sound even if I largely will let the opportunities come to me. Then, less of them get wasted and more stories are there to be told. If a few are uplifting too, that will be even better.

Going transatlantic

A North American outing always seemed a long shot yet it has come to pass. My base became Vancouver in British Columbia so it was a Canadian escapade too. It might have been that all the Canadian reading of spring, summer and autumn of last year made the trip an eventuality in the end. The next step was to find a usable base for making use of just such a thing.

It also turned out to be one where much had to be learned for this was my first transatlantic leisure trip and there only was a business one to Delaware as a predecessor. Dealing with time zone differences that meant that so much of the day was outside of normal European business hours was another consideration as was the subsequent ongoing reacclimatisation to the home time zone afterwards. It was for that reason that I bookended the trip with a few work-free days before and and after going for the purposed of preparation and recovery.

There was a certain trepidation too because I used the services of an airline that I had not known before though that became an unrealised fear when it was boredom during the flights that turned out to be the bigger intrusion. Being to tired to read meant that I got to observe others binge-watching videos and cartoons on the online entertainment system when the scenery underneath us did not attract attention. This needs rethinking for future long haul air journeys.

In Vancouver itself, finding one’s way about the place meant getting to know its superb urban transport system composed of frequent bus, rail and ferry services. City parks are in abundance too and some are large enough to occupy entire days. It is very possible never to leave the city with all there is to be found there, especially when you consider that I was there for only a week.

Still, that left enough time to find my feet and get used to the very different time zone. Stanley Park saw visits the first and second days of my stay before I left the city to go on a day trip to Vancouver Island. That took me to the provincial capital of BC, Victoria, and offered sights of the islands that we passed on the way there. The third day was spent in Vancouver where a visit to Pacific Spirit Provincial Park accompanied the decision to purchase bear spray in advance of some hiking.

There were two hiking days and both were without bear encounters and I was not disappointed for I overcame another fear. The first of these took me into the Lynn Valley near North Vancouver on a day when temperatures reached around 28° C. Nevertheless, I was under forest cover most of the time so that shielded me a little while I ventured as far as the Norvan Falls while fitting in a loop around Rice Lake. The next day took me to Squamish where my rambling took in Alice Lake Provincial Park along with a broader sweep of the countryside surrounding Garibaldi Estates and Garibaldi Highlands on another warm sunny day.

With my hiking days behind me, the bear spray was handed into Vancouver Police Department Property Office in advance of my return home after a satisfying and packed stay in Canada. There was much to learn and much to experience and warm sunshine was the main weather type. In a lot of ways, I only scratched the surface of what was there but it was a good threshold to cross and the countryside was as good as anything that I have found elsewhere. Once I work out what to do during those long flights, a return visit cannot be discounted.

History

It appears that we are living in one of history’s more turbulent epochs and such is the drama that I have avoided reading very much history until now. The cause has been as much about the fear of reliving what is unnerving about our current times as the allure of other interests. However, I have relented and started on books that have awaited my attention for far too long.

Completing Tim Robinson’s Aran Island duology and his Connemara trilogy made me more open to Diarmaid Ferriter’s On the Edge, a modern history of Ireland’s offshore islands that was published towards the end of last year. When that proved eminently readable, I then started on the same author’s The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 and that will keep me going for a while before finishing two more from other authors would complete the same backlog.

History remains a subject to which I am more than partial with Christopher Clarke’s The Sleepwalkers, Norman Davies’ Vanished Kingdoms and Robert Kee’s The Green Flag all acting as staging posts on an ever continuing expansion of perspective. More may follow if I ever decide to look further into the stories of various other countries that I have explored in recent years and Switzerland comes to mind here.

That is not to say that other titles will not be perused during this run of historical reading but they are likely to lighten the mix. In any event, there is a pile of unread magazines that also needs reducing so that should help my idea collection to grow. At this time of year, it usually is opportune to think ahead to what excursions may be possible and North American ones are tempting options for this coming summer. What happens in reality still remains another matter though.

While it can be pleasant to allow your imagination to take flight, political and financial realities do help to ensure restraint. The acquisition of a new lens for my Canon EOS 5 Mark II and the rebuild of a five year old desktop PC involved such an investment that I am not so willing to expend too much more at the moment. Nevertheless, the new lens needs more testing so that adds incentive for an outing should more sunshine come our way. It is fine to dream but modest excursions do much for any overburdened spirit.

Journeys of others

Before my career break, I found it difficult time to read a book and often lapsed into watch television documentaries on the BBC iPlayer. The situation got reversed after a book called Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi encouraged the practice. Whenever I feel an emotion that I do not want to remain, a TV watching binge never helped but reading a book causes movement and the feeling can be left in the past. It is as if someone else’s journey brings you along too.

Currently, that is taking on the shores of the Aran Islands in the company of Yorkshireman Tim Robinson. Reading his two part work on the islands has lain on my reading list for far too long and I started Stones of Aran: Pilgrimmage back in the noughties only never to get very far with it. My paper copy may be gone but I made a new start on its digital counterpart and it is reading well so far.

Handily, I visited Inishmore (Árainn, as Gaeilge) so the localities are not all that lost to me. If another visit were to happen, then Iaráirne could see an encounter as could the opposite end of the island if I feel sufficiently adventurous. Sightings of Inishmann (inis Meáin, as Gaeilge) or the Brannock Islands could be additional rewards for such endeavours. Before such things, more of Robinson’s works like Stones of Aran: Labyrinth and his Connemara Trilogy await and who knows what they might inspire?

The world described by Tim Robinson is not dissimilar in ambience to that described in Chris Townsend’s The Munros and Tops, another of this year’s reads. After that came John McPhee’s Coming into the Country and it proved to be a book in three very different sections. The first section features the Brooks Range with a narrative split in two with the second part preceding the first. It still hangs together well with the second and third sections featuring more of the folk that are attracted to the idea of a wild place away from the strictures of everyday living.

That unleashes tensions when trying to find a new state capital or dealing with the encroaching bureaucracy keen on keep a wild landscape as it is when you fancy exploiting its resources on a small scale. The act of taking a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer into wilderness oddly aroused my concern for the machine and not the landscape as might be expected. Maybe it reminded me of of abandonment in a big hostile world and there could be a wider theme there. In the end, McPhee finds himself siding with industrious Alaskans earning a living rather than others solely following their perhaps unrealisable dreams. They might fancy abandonment much like Christopher McCandless only to find that they still need humanity or that it continues to intrude on their world.

Stepping away from humanity awhile is a recurring theme in my own wanderings and it is why such places as the Scottish highlands and islands are as amenable to my ends as the wilder parts of other places. That also explains a certain interest in North America that was accompanied by perusal of writings about Lewis and Clark crossing the continent though that was a very dry read that I was happy to finish.

There is another recurring theme in all of this: you often find Robert Macfarlane appearing in these with either a recommendation or a foreword. That applies to the McPhee and Robinson works as much as that by Nan Shepherd on the Cairngorms. It might be that he is using his fame to restore older books to our notice but I reckon that I might be reading them anyway given how I have been collecting them onto a reading list in recent months.

Speaking of those older books, it is unlikely but if I ever were to wnat more but I might be tempted by the Gutenberg project if I wanted eReader files of works from a very different era by Heny David Thoreau or Raplh Waldo Emerson. They are out of copyright but a visit to either AbeBooks, The Literature Network or Scribd could serve a use if I fancied a wider selection of those still covered by such restrictions. With more new tomes that appeal to me, that is unlikely to happen just yet. Usefully, the time taken to complete any single volume should put a brake on any overspending. After all, it is better to acquire for reading than to decorate a bookshelf and horde more than you need.