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| Rosemary and Ale with Lloyd McNary |
I have some architect friends in Vancouver who in the summer
go to their cabin. The concept of having a cabin where one can escape the
tumult of living in a city seems attractive. I could never afford such a
luxury.
But Rosemary and I have something close to that. We have our
eldest daughter’s house in Lillooet BC. Getting into our car and driving the
almost four hours to get there by that beautiful and winding road between
Pemberton and Lillooet makes it so that when we arrive we can almost feel (and
we do) breathing that Fraser Canyon air.
That air was nice and hot (heat is something I love) when we
visited Ale last week.
Rosemary makes it like Lillooet is Saudi Arabia’s Empty
Quarter so we take all kinds of food (probably available in town). This time we
also had a trunkful of plants and a couple of hardy roses in our back seat.
It was a beautiful day once we got to Pemberton. From
Vancouver to Whistler there was mist that sometimes turned into a thin drizzle.
In Pemberton it is part of our tradition to stop at the
Macdonald’s where Rosemary indulges in French Fries and I have a thick
chocolate shake.
But this time around the trip there was special because I
put into our little portable CD player (it connects via a USB cable to the car’s
sound system which alas does not have an internal CD player) Neil Young’s
Greatest Hits. All 16 songs lasted until we almost got to Lillooet.
I believe that Neil Young is much more Canadian than Leonard
Cohen. The latter is more universal and the world has adopted him. Young is
special for me as I am someone who came to Vancouver in 1975 and has had a time,
a difficult one, of feeling Canadian. Adopting Neil Young as my favourite
Canadian singer has helped that!
In Lillooet we planted the stuff we brought and Rosemary cut
the wild grass with scissors. With my secateurs I removed over 100 (maybe more)
dandelions. I snipped the dead wood from Ale’s Gallicas and pretty well enjoyed
tinkering in the garden.
Ale invited her 89 year-old cowboy (and miner, etc) Lloyd
McNary and Bruce and Darlene Lohnes. The latter have managed to save money
through the years so that even though Darlene still works as a teacher they
travel a lot and go on very nice cruises.
Going to Lillooet, and returning, has (in my imagination)
that feeling of going to the cabin where one can ruminate in a bucolic and
rustic setting.
And of course our daughter Alexandra lives in the cabin all
the time. I wonder what one calls the act of doing the opposite of what we did?
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| Lillooet train station |