Gather

Harvest season is like a time-machine to me.

As I gather in the fruit, vegetables and herbs that spring up around my home, with or without my help, I feel like I'm moving in step with generations upon generations of women who have gone through the same motions each year.

It feels mystical and significant.

It also makes me think about community.

There is always more than I can use myself, and so the obvious thing to do is share.

Yesterday one of Matt's coworkers sent out an open invitation to pick sour cherries from the trees in his back yard. As we picked we chatted with his wife, sharing recipe ideas. The evening was a blessing to all of us in many ways. Now I'll share my pies and jams, sauces and breads with others through the fall and winter.

Harvest is not just about food.

Imagine if we shared our surplus of other things.

Oasis

Cycling with Caitlynn in Cypress Hills had a different feel than Revelstoke. The trip to BC was laid back and focused on friendship, but cycling with Caitlynn was just as much about pushing our bodies to the limit as it was about enjoying each other's company.

Caitlynn and I are pretty well matched in our technical skills, so neither one feels like they're holding the other back.

The trails in this park were created for cross-country skiing, but work well for biking, too. The handful that we picked were not too technical, but they were physically demanding, with grueling climbs to lookout points before rewarding us with roller coaster descents. Evening rains made things a little messier. I'd say we tackled about 30 kms of trails in 2 days.

I felt really proud of myself, especially after the muddy, rooty, rock-strewn ride down the Beaver Creek trail. More advanced riders will have a blast on that one.

Cypress Hills is an amazing anomaly; a mountain getaway smack in the middle of the bald prairie. It's like a trompe l'oeil. Everything looks normal and then suddenly, as you come over the crest of a gentle hill, boom. The lookout points are breathtaking. I bet we could see for 60 kms. It looked like a fairy tale kingdom, all shimmery in the heat and humidity.

Lodgepole campground was the nicest one in the Elkwater area. There was a cute little forestry museum dedicated to Tom Trott at the top of the Beaver Creek trail, and the wild flowers were in bloom everywhere. The biggest highlight for me was seeing the swarms of dragonflies along the Horseshoe Canyon trail. Every time we rode into a little clearing they filled the air. There were hundreds and hundreds of them. I could hear the hum of there wings all around me, and see the sun glinting off their transparent wings. It was other-worldly.

weekend warrior

This has been the summer of weekend road trips for me.

We started out with a wedding in Calgary, then Drumheller, then mountain biking in Revelstoke, BC, and Cypress Hills Park.

It was wonderful to avoid the crowded major national parks. In Revelstoke we did not come across a single other biker or hiker on the trails. Just us and a whole lot of trees.It was so much fun having our own little tent city in the KOA campground. We were camped right under a cherry tree loaded with ripe fruit and an oak tree with cute little acorns. There were about 15 of us, all sharing meals swatting mosquitos off each other.
Ironically, it was just as hot in the mountains as it was at home in Medicine Hat. It was good to spend the hottest part of the day at the lake before a cooler evening ride.

on a grand scale

The city of Nara was the first capital of Japan, for a brief 30 years in the 700's. Now it is a tourist hot spot with 8 Unesco World Heritage sites. We went to visit the Toodai-Ji and Daibutsu-den - the hall of the Great Buddha. This site is located in a large park filled with cute but smelly deer.The deer are quite used to people and spend most of their time begging for food. You can buy deer biscuits for them from vendors, but watch out! If you don't feed them fast enough for their liking, they get violent. In the photo below, the deer at the bottom is about to bite Matt in the leg.
The Daibutsu-den is the world's largest wooden building. Photos just don't do it justice. To stand there in person, looking up at it from any distance is awe inspiring.
The giant Buddha inside is one of the largest bronze statues in the world. It's eyes are a metre wide each. I can easily imagine the wonder it must have filled the people with 2000 years ago.
There were several other scary and wonderful statues inside, as well as a plethora of truly tacky souvenirs.
It was a deep experience for me to be surrounded by so many strange and ancient things on this trip.

enchanted forest

My favorite place in Kyoto (one of my favorite places in all of Japan) was the bamboo forest in Arashiyama on the northwest edge of the city.
Ten minutes down a perpetually shady road is the villa of a famous silent film star named Okoochi Denjiro.

It was so relaxing to tour his beautiful gardens and enjoy tea looking out into the bamboo.