Home

It's finally time for the long-awaited unveiling! :) I've now been in my place for over a month, and it really is starting to feel like home. Here's a bit of a virtual tour:

First, the outside. This complex is composed of two buildings. The first shot was taken from the road looking into the middle of the complex, which is where the visitor parking is located. The building you see is my building, and the other building is to the left of the picture (the buildings at the back are new condos and aren't part of the complex). The second shot shows the other side of the building, which is where my balcony looks out - it's the one highlighted with the black square on the top floor.


You can see almost the whole place when you first walk through the door. Straight ahead is my living room:


To your left is my kitchen (this is taken from the living room - you can see the main door just on the left):


And to your right is my laundry room (that's right, I get my very own washer and dryer!!):


Then there is my bathroom, which has a large 'closet' or storage room in my case, at the end:


And last is my bedroom, which displays my handy drying rack, for all the clothes I don't want to shrink. :)


I can almost see Mt. Baker from my balcony, but instead I have a huge tree to admire :) I've had some pretty good sunrises from here.


Going back to our snowy days, this is my view to the northeast:


and to the southeast:



I hope that gives you a bit of a picture of where I'm living - and by all means, if any of you are in town, you're welcome to visit me! :)

Merry Christmas!

I wish you all a wonderful Christmas.
May you find joy in the little things, wherever you may be.

God bless!










**A small hint of more to come:

a quick update

Wow...time has flown by! Things have been very busy over the last couple of weeks, but it promises to slow down a bit in about a week. Rather than making you wait until then for an update, I thought I'd post a short one filling you in on what I've been doing.

First, I'm sad to say that the weather has returned to normal, or even warmer than normal (today's high is supposed to be 8 or 9 degrees!), and the majority of the snow has melted away leave plenty of sand and grit behind. And with rain in the forecast for the weekend, even the piles of snow in the parking lots threaten to disappear. Sigh. After almost 15 years of living here, you'd think I'd be used to the fact that we have little or no snow over Christmas. But every year I hope this will somehow change. :)

This week, I finished up a 28-page draft of a "Preliminary Environmental Inventory and Summary of Activities" for a property owned by Trinity. This has been in progress for much of November and it was good to get it wrapped up and sent around for comments. Now the biggest deadline that is on my plate is the final report for the research I have been involved in on the Oregon forestsnail, Allogona townsendiana. This is an endangered snail which lives within the Ecosystem Study Area, a green space surrounding the main campus and we've been doing research into the basic life history, seasonal migration patterns and predation issues for the past two years, with funding from the Endangered Species Recovery Fund through the World Wildlife Federation. This report, which summarizes our results from the two years, is due by Dec. 15, which happens to be just over a week from now. Next week will be a busy one.

I have also been keeping myself busy with playing community volleyball one night a week, settling into life on my own, continued involvement at church, and a plethora of other things. This Saturday is the Christmas Open House at the A Rocha Field Study Centre in Surrey, and provided it doesn't choose to pour buckets, it should be a good event. Oh, how I'm looking forward to the Christmas holidays and a chance to relax!

Hmm...maybe this hasn't been such a quick update. :) It seems that once I start writing, there's just so much to say. A few things I hope to post over the Christmas break:

1. Photos of my new apartment (once all the boxes and papers have been put away and it actually looks neat, of course!)
2. Some recommended reading and advice about environmental issues. I've just finished a book called "The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices" and it has some interesting things in it. I've also got a few other books people may be interested in.
3. And of course, photos of life in general, or any exciting weekend adventures I have, or any more wacky weather we experience!

That's all for now. Happy December!

Deep Freeze, Lower Mainland style

It seems like all of my posts this month have been about the weather! :) November has really treated us to some extremes unusual for this area, and a good dumping of snow in November is the icing on the cake. I must admit that as an Albertan at heart, I'm loving the snow. It adds such a beauty to everything, and it's such a treat in this area. Normally, as soon as it starts to snow here, the temperature begins to rise and it changes to rain within 24 hours (although usually sooner). However, this time in snowed from Saturday afternoon straight through to Monday morning! And the temperatures are showing no sign of warming up. As I write this, the Abbotsford airport has temperatures of -9 degrees celsius! While much of the snow has stopped falling, we're currently the recipients of arctic outflow winds, which means the wind chill can be as cold as -20! That's unheard of in this tiny pocket of Canada that rarely experiences temperatures below zero. Today is a snow day for most students from Chilliwack to Vancouver with a few exceptions. Because of all the hills in the area, roads become treacherous relatively quickly. Yesterday afternoon as I was making my way to my parents' place from Mark's parents' place out on the Sumas Prairie, I watched one van spin his way up the Old Clayburn exit ramp from Sumas Way sideways!! Needless to say, I kept my distance and waited for him to make it up before following. I'm impressed with my tires, because as I slowly moved up the ramp, they didn't slip even once! Then, as I approached High Drive (another of Abbotsford's many hills), I saw one car with reverse lights crawling backwards down the hill, and another one sliding backwards with no reverse lights, so I'm assuming he was trying to make it up with no success. But, I made it to my parents without any damage and spent a few hours there before my dad dropped me off at my apartment. Today is a "work from home day" as TWU has closed it's doors.

Here are a few pictures I've taken thus far (for more, visit my Wacky Weather album):

Sunday, 9:30am


Sunday, 9:31am


Sunday, 12:06pm


Sunday, 12:07pm


Sunday, 12:42pm


Sunday, 4:10pm

bad combination

Lots of trees and lots of wind doesn't make the best combination, as the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley learned yesterday. I'm guessing most of you heard about the massive windstorm that swept through this area yesterday, knocking out power all over the place and just generally wreaking havoc. My parents lost power around noon, and were lucky to have it back by about 7:30 in the evening. Others weren't so lucky and didn't get it back until earlier today, and those who are scattered in the country still don't have power as BC Hydro is scrambling to fix the largest areas first.

Here's a few shots I took this afternoon at my "house in the woods" and the neighbourhood (which will soon no longer be my home, but that's for another post). We had a number of trees fall, one narrowly missing the house. [just click on any of the photos if you want to see a bigger version]

This is what greeted me when I first entered our driveway. This sheet metal came from a neighbour, who had replaced the roof on his barn. These are the old pieces, which I guess he had left laying out and the wind decided to play with.

A few other trees down in our yard. It's hard to see the tree in the second one, but you can see the stump on the right, and the patch of ivy that stretches between the other two trees is actually the tree which used to be connected to the stump.

The first of these two shots was taken out of my bedroom window. It used to be a beautiful clump of maple trees, but as you can see, one is no longer. The neat stacks of cut wood was likely the work of our landlord's family, as they set about clearing the mess.

This is another shot of that same tree, this time from the driveway. The second floor blue shutter is my bedroom window. The giant trunk of this tree dropped feet away from the house, and I understand that there was actually a branch resting on the roof which was removed before I took these shots. The second shot is one of a new house that is just being built down the road from our place. As you can see, there are a few freshly fallen trees now in their front yard! Crazy - especially when you think that they haven't even moved in yet!

Pineapple Express

What exactly is a Pineapple Express you ask? Well, I could sum it all up in one word:

Rain.

Or, for those who want a bit more of an explanation, it's when the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, BC) gets hit with warm, moist air originating from Hawaii which dumps copious amounts of rain when it is forced up against the coastal mountains. I know, it's not a really technical definition, but since my brother will likely be reading this, I don't want to attempt one for fear of making him laugh at my lack of knowledge when it comes to weather systems! :)

Yesterday, we were hit with the first Pineapple Express of the season. It dumped about 100mm of rain in East Abbotsford in one day, and 165mm were recorded in Chilliwack! Needless to say, pretty much all the rivers have swelled, fields are flooded, and some homes in the Chilliwack area were evacuated. Here are a few pictures I took of the Sumas River, which runs by my house:



These shots are a before and after, taken from the bridge in my driveway:


Today, the storm blew through, the sky broke open, and we could enjoy some sunshine! Quite nice after the torrential rain - although I will admit that I do love these storms and quite honestly, don't mind the rain when it comes down in sheets. It's all the drizzly days when it's really just trying to rain that I find gloomy.

FALL

I love fall.


While there are aspects I love about every season, and I greatly enjoy watching the seasons change, fall remains my favourite. There is just such beauty to be had in watching the colours change and feeling the fresh chill as the temperature begins to drop. I love going for walks and hearing the rustle and crunch of the fallen leaves beneath my feet, seeing the colours light up from the bright sunshine, the brilliant blue of the sky, and feeling the cold wind run through my hair and blow all the cobwebs away! :) I have always said that my absolute, all-time, perfect weather day is having a vivid blue sky overhead without a cloud to be seen with a strong wind that blows the colourful leaves everywhere and makes you want to bundle up but still be outside...I guess a little piece of "prairie girl" remains in me even after living surrounded by mountains for 14 years.


If you want to see a few more fall photos, visit my Photo Albums and go to the "Fall Colours" album.

A Rocha Pembina Valley

A Rocha Canada has begun to develop a second Field Study Centre in the Pembina Valley in southern Manitoba (the first A Rocha Canada Field Study Centre is located in South Surrey, and I spend one day a week at this site). What a beautiful location...I think I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.


If you want to see more photos, visit the A Rocha Pembina Valley photo album.

The Good Life on God's Good Earth

Such a good conference!

It's now a week and a half since I got back from my whirlwind tour to Winnipeg. I had such a good time! The conference consisted of a number of keynote and plenary sessions with more on the Biblical basis for creation care - they touched on Genesis and Revelation and everything inbetween. I wish I could convey everything that was said, but I think that would make a rather long post. :) Instead, I think I will split it into a few posts over the next week, starting with this little tidbit:

Revelation 21:1-5
Then I saw a new (kainos) heaven and a new (kainos) earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new (kainos)!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true."

You'll notice the word kainos in the above passage behind 'new.' In the original Greek, there are two different words we translate as 'new' in English, but these words have slightly different meanings that the English translation has a hard time capturing:

NEOS means new in time. It represents something that is chronologically new, and just came into being. It is generally used to show that something is more recent than that which began at an earlier date.

KAINOS denotes that which is qualitatively new or different. It denotes that which is not necessarily new in time, but that which has existed for some time and then underwent a change in its quality or character, however slight, that makes it different from what it was before. In other words, something could be a hundred years old and acquire a new and different quality, and it would be considered new in the sense of KAINOS.

When this understanding is brought to the Revelation passage, it's as though God is saying that heaven and earth will be renewed, and that the old earth will not simply be destroyed. Things like this really make me wish I knew Greek and Hebrew - I can't help but wonder how many other passages there are where our English translations fail to convey the whole picture...

Coming up soon: more practical advice and ideas for changes we can make in our personal lives, as well as a description (and photos!) of the A Rocha Pembina Valley field site.

untouched?

I am currently in Winnipeg, awaiting the start of the A Rocha conference tonight. Today, I wandered around the neighbourhood, exploring a bit and finding the bus stops I need to get to CMU (Canadian Mennonite University), where the conference is. I have most of the day to myself, as Heidi is at work, and Reuben is busy with school.

My flight here was beautiful. It was perfectly clear flying from Abby to Calgary, and I took a few pictures as we went (check out the "In The Air" photo album on the right). One thing that struck me though, while I was soaking up the gorgeous mountains and fields, was how much we have changed the landscape around us. I won't get into whether that is good, bad, or neutral for us and our world, but I just wanted to share my reflections. After flying over the relatively untouched soaring, snow-covered peaks, there were times when we reached areas that had multiple logging roads winding through them, with a patchwork pattern of old and new clear cuts:

It happened again flying over the prairies and into Calgary. As far as the eye could see, there was a patchwork quilt of farmers' fields. And then the suburbs of Calgary, sprawling out into these farms:

When you're on the ground, driving amoung the fields, or walking through the city, or hiking in the mountains, it doesn't really strike you. Only when you see the bigger picture from the air does it hit home. We are huge initiators of change on our planet, whether for the good of it (and us), or not. We need to remember that as we go about our daily lives. Our own actions may seem so small when compared to the overwhelming demands of earthly degradation and human inequality - but together, those actions all add up into bigger ones, which can (and do!) have a bigger impact.

Any thoughts?

BC Rivers Day & an all-wet survey

It always amazes me how quickly the days go by. It's already almost been two weeks since I last posted, and so much has happened in that time.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at a park in Langley, taking part in a BC Rivers Day Community Festival. This festival has been going for years, and it's composed of tons of booths for different organizations as well as lots of activities for kids. The theme, of course, is rivers, although it has expanded over the years to include other "eco-friendly" organizations. For a number of years, Chris Hall (my colleague and office-partner) has had a booth at this festival where he sets up microscopes, collects water from the stream running through the park, and has the kids explore the world of stream invertebrates. This has been quite successfull and it would be safe to say that TWU now has one of the largest booths at the festival. Last year, I joined Chris and we expanded the booth to include information on A Rocha. This year we did the joint booth again, and the weather made the event a huge success! It was a gloriously warm and sunny September day, and the kids absolutely loved the microscopes - for many, it's the first time they've used one. No pictures to post though, as I forgot my camera at home. :(

Last week, Glen and I went out and began conducting an overview environmental inventory of the 57 acres across from TWU. I've never done this before, but Glen has been involved in several that A Rocha Canada has done for other landowners so he was showing me the ropes. Basically, we identified about 5 different "ecounits" which are areas distinctly different from each other based on landscape characteristics. For example, this property has a riparian unit along Guy Creek (a tributary of the Salmon River); a field/pasture unit where the old farmhouse is located; a small piece of mixed forest (deciduous & coniferous trees); a lowland, mainly deciduous forest unit; and an upland deciduous forest unit. These units are usually initially defined by looking at an aerial photo of the area. Then we go out into the field and walk through each unit, making notes of the plant species we see, as well as any wildlife or other unique aspects. We also note what plant species are dominant. We got through about 3 and a half of the units before calling it quits because of the rain. We were outside from about 9:00 to 2:30, with a short break for a meeting over lunch. I discovered that my raingear is only waterproof for a few hours, and after 5 hours of being in the rain the water begins to soak through. :) We're hoping to find a drier day to complete the survey. Now I'm starting to go through the data, pulling it into a report.

Now it's prepping for being out of the office for a week, a Geography lab tomorrow afternoon, and then off to Winnipeg on Wednesday!!

Calm before the storm

This past week has been the calm before the normal activity levels return to the campus. Many of the faculty were busy preparing for the start of classes on the 7th, which meant that I was left to my own devises. It made for a nice and relaxing week, although I'm about ready for things to pick up again. :) Last Thursday and Friday, A Rocha Canada celebrated Time Out, which is a time for A Rocha staff to put aside the busy demands of everyday work and enjoy some much-needed time with each other. It allows us to refocus and get refreshed after a busy summer season. Time Out is celebrated at all of the A Rocha centres around the world at the beginning of September.

Then on Saturday Mark and I had the chance to see Measure for Measure, done by Bard on the Beach, which is one of Canada's largest profession Shakespeare Festivals. They generally run numerous performances of four plays from June to September in two tents at Vanier Park by Kitsilano. Neither of us had read the play, but the acting was superb, as usual.

Monday morning, I had the privilege of traveling to the Chilliwack Courthouse for jury selection. It was a interesting process, watching the lawyers choose a jury of 12 plus 2 alternates out of a large group of citizens. I've decided that if I get summoned for jury selection when I am retired, I would greatly enjoy sitting on a jury and letting the mysteries of the courtroom unfold. However, at this stage in my life, sitting on a jury for a 2 week case would disrupt too many other planned activities and I was relieved to be able to exit the courthouse at 11:30 and head home, having done my civic duty.

One of the activities jury duty would have disrupted was a geography lab. This fall, I was approached by the geography department and asked if I would consider teaching one of their first-year geography labs. After some consideration and discussion with my co-supervisors, we decided that I would try it this semester and see how it goes. This is in addition to my regular duties as Field Resources Coordinator, so it will mean a busier schedule for me, but I'm excited at the opportunity. In my fourth year as a student, I worked as a teaching assistant in these labs, so I'm familiar with what is required and I think it will be a good experience for me! So, each week I will help a group of 20 students through a 3 hour geography lab, and hopefully they will leave the class with a greater appreciation for God's creation. Because TWU is a liberal arts university, they require all students to complete a lab science, and geography is often the course of choice for this. This means that not all of the students are excited to be there, and many don't see the point to learning about 'science' - it can be a tough crowd, but we are hopeful that each will gain at least a small appreciation for the complexity of the natural world.

Upcoming activities:
- next week I am scheduled to go across the road to TWU's 57 acres with Glen Carlson from A Rocha Canada. We're planning to do a more indepth survey of the land, which will give TWU more knowledge about the value of this land and hopefully will serve to advise any development plans that may arise in the future.
- BC River's Day Community Festival, Sept 24,. This event is put together by the Township of Langley and the Langley Environmental Partners Society and for the past number of years, my colleague Chris Hall has had a TWU booth there where he runs activities for children. Last year, I joined him there and we had a join TWU/A Rocha booth and I hope to do that again this year.
- Sept 27 it's off to Winnipeg to see Reuben and Heidi in their new home! While there, I'm also attending an A Rocha Canada conference: The Good Life on God's Good Earth, so it's 2 in 1 and I'm excited about both.

Cabin Repair

I’m slightly behind in my reports, but I started putting this together last week and never got it finished. So, here it is, finally!

I spent Wednesday to Friday, Aug 23-25, on Salt Spring Island with two co-workers, Martin and Chris (Martin was one of my fellow TA’s with the Salt Spring courses TWU ran last May). We were fixing one of the three cabins we have put up on the Crow’s Nest property. And by fixing, I mean taking it completely apart and putting it all back together. Why, you ask? Well, unfortunately, it wasn’t installed properly the first time, and the floor was threatening to crack, among other things. So, we caught the 9:00 ferry to Salt Spring and by about 4:00 that afternoon, we had the whole thing taken apart. We then ran over to the local hardware store and purchased more screws and more cinder blocks to support the floor. The photo on the left shows the site with one of the 4 floor sections propped up against the two bunkbeds, which we left assembled.

That evening, we went to a nearby little pond-sized lake and Martin and Chris went fishing to relax. And no, I did not try my hand at fishing, as I don’t particularly like it. Instead, I relaxed on the beach and read my book. Very nice. It wasn’t successful in terms of fish caught, but it was nice to have a relaxing evening after a day of labour. We ended the evening by heading back to camp and teaching Chris how to play Dutch Blitz. After getting all worked up like that game always seems to do to you, we crashed into bed to get rested up for the next long day.

Thursday brought a second sunny day and we managed to get all the cinderblocks levelled (quite the task with a total of 22 blocks!) and the floor pieces put together and in place. The next step was the walls, which went quite quickly. The photo below shows the one side with the walls back up and the bunkbed in place.

We got all the walls up and the door in place before our screw guns ran out of battery power. This posed a bit of a problem as our site has no electricity, but we headed down to the nearby Fulford Harbour ferry terminal, found an outdoor electrical outlet and waited there for two hours while the batteries charged. While we were waiting, we were able to watch a blue heron feeding off the dock and were treated to a beautiful sunset. We then returned to the Crow’s Nest with the freshly charged batteries and worked hard to get two of the 6 roof panels up before the light faded too much.

Once we had the roof panels up on Friday morning, Martin and Chris worked on the rest of the finishing and I took a hike up to the top of Crow’s Nest to download the weather data from our weather station. And by Friday around noon, our shed was complete and as sturdy as could be.
However, we decided to take a later ferry back so that we wouldn’t have to rush, and we could take Chris on a bit of a “Salt Spring tour” since he hadn’t seen much of the island. First stop was the top of Mt. Maxwell, because it had road access and gave a wonderful view of the south end of the island.
Second stop was the Salt Spring Island library which has free wireless internet access and a great used book sale (this library is run completely by volunteers, which is pretty incredible!). Third stop was dinner at Moby’s Pub, which is right on the Ganges Marina and they are famous for their great food.

And the final stop before heading to the ferry terminal was for gelatos in Ganges. I think we did fairly well at introducing Chris to the Salt Spring culture.

Despite all the delays, we were still quite early for our ferry, but that just gave us more time to explore Long Harbour.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable trip, with a good mixture of business and pleasure. Of course, that’s not too difficult when you’re on a place like Salt Spring. :)