Jan. 15
An introduction to zen and the art of bird watching
Walking along third avenue, I spied birder Chris Siddle, the man you may have seen wandering the streets of Nakusp last week with a pair of binoculars.
“I look like a perv,” Siddle said jokingly when we met up, “but if anyone asks, I say ‘I’m with Gary’ – no last name – and they know I’m doing the bird count.”
He had already found a treat today in the compost at Spicer’s: a Wilson’s Warbler who has decided that the heat from the decomposing vegetable matter is preferable to Central America this winter.
Birders’ best finds are often found near or even in human wastelands. Siddle related that some of his best birding days were spent near sewage lagoons. In Fort St. John, he saw an amazing 72 species in one hour, and the ironically named “Sweetwater” sewage lagoons in Tucson, Arizona are a hot spot for birders.
“They don’t advertise they’re sewage lagoons,” Siddle said dryly, “but they are.”
Siddle traveled from Vernon to come help with the bird count in Nakusp. Like most visitors, he likes the quiet and the remoteness.
There are too many people and too much traffic in the Okanagan now, he said.
“Too many birders?” I asked.
“That too,” he confirmed, something not unique to the Okanagan. Down at the coast, Siddle had witnessed birdwatchers outnumber the owls they were watching. Some of the “watchers” were so engrossed in their photography that they kept moving in on the birds’ territory and crowding them, a big no-no. That kind of behaviour impacts the birds, and impacts bird watching too, Siddle told me.
May 31
Getting smart about the birds and the bees
Sex. That’s right; what you’re about to read is all about the “birds and bees,” or at least what it takes to teach our kids about it.
Often a complex topic that many parents find difficult to broach and more kids find totally embarrassing to talk about with their moms and dads, sex can be a subject of intense curiosity and mystery.
Teresa Weatherhead, the newly-minted official sex educator in Nakusp, has been bringing “Sex Talks” to schools in the area for years. Now that she has completed her training, she can help more kids get a good education about the facts of life.
“Parents can have a hard time talking to their kids. It can cause great anxiety to a parent to have to know quite how to go about the task,” said Weatherhead. Kids who get education in school can go home with specific questions that can make The Talk a little easier to navigate.
Aug. 24
Anthropological research starts with local artifacts
If you travel up and down the shore of Upper Arrow Lake enough, you’re likely to find artifacts of first nation people who populated the area long before Europeans came here. In fact, you might have already held an artifact in your hand and not known it.
Picking a small, flat-bottomed pestle from the table full of shaped stones, Charles Maxfield told me it had been painted green and used by a local family as a door stop.
“Most people would just walk by these,” Maxfield said, but their subtle shaping caught his eye, so he picked them up.
The arrival of Nathan Goodale and Alissa Nauman, anthropologists, and David Bailey, geologist, and a handful of their students was announced by the barking of the dogs.
Hailing from Hamliton College, a small college in upstate New York, the researchers were spending three days in the area collecting data and visiting private collections like Maxfield’s. Goodale and Nauman have been working on uncovering the site of several pit houses south of Slocan, and each year they invite the public to visit the site in July during their summer school.
Oct. 25
‘Jet-propelled chess’ available in arena
The faded pink flamingo clock in 80s art deco style tells the right time twice a day: five minutes to eight. The clock is a reminder of the faded heyday of racketball (back before squash got big) and the opening of the Nakusp squash court.
Rod Dahlen remembers those days. He was one of directors on the board who built the new arena, and he remembers it was Dick Chambers that encouraged the building of a squash court. The decision was made in 1983, and the court was built by Gary Grout, among others. Like many others in town, Grout was soon stuck on squash as a sport of choice.
The surge in squash’s popularity (and the decline of racketball) synergistically dovetailed with the new court, and during the 90s, the Nakusp Squash Club had over 100 members, with some players at the top of the game in B.C. The last tournament the club held was three or four years ago.
Now, however, numbers have dropped to under 20 in the club. Why the drastic change?
“There are no young people taking up the sport,” said former long-time squash club president Dahlen. Current club president Bill Sones pointed out that of the 18 or 19 members, only seven were under 40 years of age.
Nov. 5
The Kootenay means snow, sleds and …fine wine?
Wine making is complex. Grapes must be picked, crushed and pressed, each step having a million variations for a million different types of wine.
There are, also, a million types of things that can go wrong. The wine could be too sweet, or too dry. It could come out hazy.
It could smell of wet dog, or, apparently, nail polish remover. Even wine-making giants still have problems from time to time, which is why Jody Scott’s operation, “The Vine House” is so impressive.
Sunset Ridge Bed and Breakfast sits at the end of a long driveway at the end of a long road. Tall trees line both, rendering it rather somber and dark. The property itself is open, allowing you to gaze at the impressive mountains the Kootenays are known for. It is here, in the cold and the wet, that Jodi Scott makes wine.
