What Now?

The thing I unquestionably love most about our cabin in the South Chilcotins is the deck.  I have a bit of a thing for decks, actually, and this deck, though rudimentary and looking slightly the worse for its years, is blessed with all day sunshine. Combine that feature with a deck surface wrapping three sides of the house, providing shade and a cool breeze when the temperature tops 30 degrees, and you really have the ultimate wonder-deck. And of course, unlike Whistler, where spring drizzle and cold temperatures tend to predominate, the South Chilcotins, nestled in the rain shadow of the Coast Mountains, offer up generally drier, warmer weather, providing a cornucopia of deck-sitting opportunity.

So I sit here - it’s been cloudy most of the day, but for the moment the sky has cleared and I bask in late afternoon sunshine. To say it is peaceful would be an understatement, but to suggest it was quiet would be entirely inaccurate. Gun Creek thunders in the background, the wind hisses through the aspens, and the birdsong is cacophonous and continuous. These sounds, however, blend together in a sensual symphony, massaging the spirit and re-booting the soul. And the smell... snow brush flowers, newly minted evergreen shoots and wild roses... a combined fragrance paradoxically both delicate and over-powering. (Amazing how much time and money is devoted to trying to recreate the perfume of fresh air).

In short, a splendid afternoon. I’ve been on vacation for a week now. You might question the sanity of taking vacation time in June-uary - not really famous for consistent, fabulous weather, and, of course, too early for bike riding in the higher mountains. (In fact, I think you could say that June is pretty much famous for consistently cold damp weather.) However, the man known simply as Geoff, having pulled the pin on the day job and filed to collect his pension, was moving his base camp to these parts for the summer, and I just felt the need to tag along. 

Retired. Weird. How freakin’ old are we??? When did that happen? I know, I know - not specifically retired, just reassigned (I mean, retiring to become a mountain bike guide doesn’t exactly scream ‘decrepit’). It’s still a watershed moment though; a point in your life where you realize just how much life has happened, and that you are somewhat precariously balanced on the fulcrum of age. I guess I would be fine with that if... if I had any clue on where I go from here. (a friend of mine put it most succinctly - ‘I’m trying to figure out what to do with the second half of my life’). I wasn’t banking on having to resolve this quite so soon  - crap, I only just figured out what to do with the first half of my life! At this rate, I’ll be 100 before I can confirm my personal retirement plans. And I’m not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing that I have this existential continuity crisis in common with my twenty-something kids. (I don’t think they find it all that comforting either).

So I take a breather on my deck in the South Chilcotins. I listen to the birds, smell the flowers, soak in the sun (though a rather grey cloud has obliterated it for the moment...literally, not metaphorically... I think it might rain.....). I delight in the brilliant greens of spring, the small bear foraging around the yard, the patches of grassland offering the first lupins, balsam-root sunflowers and Indian paintbrush, and the tireless avian choristers (though even in my lyrical reverie, I have to say that the crow is very like that one voice in the choir, who, try though they might, can NOT actually hit the notes...). As the saying goes, ‘you’re only as old as you feel’. Today, that makes me about 86. Maybe I don’t have to worry about the second half of my life...