David Pitt-Brooke - Crossing Home Ground: A Grassland Odyssey through Southern Interior British Columbia

Crossing Home Ground

Crossing Home Ground

A Grassland Odyssey through Southern Interior British Columbia

David Pitt-Brooke

Copyright 2016 David Pitt-Brooke

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, .

Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.

P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0

www.harbourpublishing.com

Edited by Cheryl Cohen

Indexed by Sarah Corsie

Dust jacket design by Anna Comfort OKeeffe

Text design by Mary White

Map by Roger Handling

Photographs by David Pitt-Brooke

Previous page photo: Junction Sheep Range Provincial Park

Printed and bound in Canada

Harbour Publishing acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Pitt-Brooke, David, author

Crossing home ground : a grassland odyssey through southern interior

British Columbia / David Pitt-Brooke.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-55017-774-9 (hardback).--ISBN 978-1-55017-775-6 (html)

1. Pitt-Brooke, David--Travel--British Columbia. 2. Naturalists-

Travel--British Columbia. 3. Hiking--British Columbia. 4. Natural

history--British Columbia. 5. Human ecology--British Columbia.

6. Grasslands--British Columbia. 7. British Columbia--Description and

travel. I. Title.

FC3817.5.P58 2016 917.115045 C2016-904712-1

C2016-904713-X

To all who have stood in defence of wild country, beauty and grace, the beloved home places.

Also to Scott Steedman and Michelle Benjamin, who got me started.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, unremembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir , ed. L.M. Wolfe

Preface

Something there had been, something delicate, wild and far away. But it was shut out behind the doors of yesterday, lost beyond the hills.

Robin Hyde (Iris Guiver Wilkinson), The Godwits Fly

In autumn 2004, my editor at the time, Scott Steedman, treated me to a celebratory lunch, long promised. That spring Raincoast Books had published my first book, a collection of observations and reflections on a series of seasonal experiences in the wild and beautiful country along the west coast of Vancouver Island. Chasing Clayoquot: A Wilderness Almanac , as the book was titled, had done well. It had collected some nice reviews and readers seemed to enjoy it.

When wed finished our meal, Scott paused, looked me in the eye and asked the inevitable question: What now?

I was still living in Tofino, still enjoying life on the west coast, but starting to feel the need of a change, fresh horizons, new adventures (plus a chance to dry out, perhaps, and maybe catch a little more sunshine than one might reasonably hope for on the wet coast).

Also, much as I loved Vancouver Island it wasnt home ground. Id grown up in the valleys of British Columbias southern interior and that warm, dry, open countrybig lakes and rivers, ponderosa pine and bunchgrass meadowswas still, for me, the home of the heart, my place in the world, and I still felt the attraction.

Even before Scott asked his question, Id begun to wonder if I might approach and appreciate that home ground in much the same way as Id approached my adopted home on the west coast of the island, with an intense, consciously planned, systematic campaign of exploration, venturing out, month by month, to witness the particular events and attractions of each season. I would think and I would read and then I would write about what Id seen, partly to bear witness to the beauty and grace of the countryside and partly to share my experiences, especially with readers who might not in their lives have the opportunity to see things as Id seen them.

Ironically, Id never taken time to pay that kind of close attention to the countryside I grew up in. Now, it seemed, I might have a chance to make up the deficit. The result would be a companion to Chasing Clayoquot , a testament to beloved home places and a homecoming as well.

It was going to be a challenge. I knew that from the first. The valleys of southern interior British Columbia are a very different sort of environment, more populated, not as wild and tumultuous as the coast, not as magnificent, not nearly as renowned. Its a place of more modest beauty, though certainly with its own quiet charm: open, sunny, welcoming.

And very much in need of a little loving attention and testimony, as it turned out.

When I was a child, the Okanagan was still blessed with one of the worlds truly beautiful landscapes: leafy little towns, hardly more than villages, clustered along the shores of Okanagan Lake. And beyond the little towns, a countryside of fields and orchards. And beyond the fields, swelling hillsides of bunchgrass, groves of trembling aspen, open parklands of ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir climbing to forested uplands of spruce and fir. From that height, turning around, one could look down across the great bowl of the valley, the hills and the orchards, the fields and the little towns, to the glittering waters of the lake beyond. Space and light everywhere. It was something else.

That countryside had yet to feel anything like the full weight of humanity. I could bicycle in a morning to places where groves of ancient Douglas-firs still stood, huge and windswept. I could walk pristine meadows of native bunchgrass. I remember meadowlarks singing in the spring and killdeers calling around little ponds in the heat of summer. The scent of wild roses in June and the pungent fragrance of big sage on warm September days. Snowy winters, the hillsides gleaming white at noon, blushing gold at sunset, fading to indigo after dusk. The cold wind hissing through bare stalks of bunchgrass. Beauty and grace in all seasons.