Starring Brad Pitt … and Southern Alberta

by Martha Edwards on

Drive an hour outside of the city limits of my hometown of Calgary, and you’re apt to come across some of the most beautiful scenery you’ve ever seen. From rolling foothill’d prairieland to towering, ragged mountaintops that are so high they block out late-afternoon sun to vibrant desert hoodoos, we seem to have it all (well, except for warm winters and beaches — I wish.) So it’s no surprise that Hollywood comes here often to shoot movies which call for wild, expansive, breathtaking scenery.

Ever see Brokeback Mountain? How about The Assassination of Jesse James? Legends of the Fall? Though none of these films are actually set in Alberta, they were all filmed here, under the endless prairie sky. And in each case, the scenery plays a starring role in the film — how can it not?

I’m embarrassed to admit that it took seeing it in the movies to make me realize how gorgeous this part of the world is. Being a habitual city-dweller, it’s hard to see much beyond pavement and rooftops and headlights. It took seeing it through someone else’s eyes to realize that not far from my own doorstep lies pure, divine heaven on earth.

Language and Landscape: Retaining Heritage Through Words

by Jamie Rhein on

When I heard and read about the number of indigenous languages dying off, I thought of the Appalachian Mountains where my mother grew up and where several of my relatives are buried in a small wooded family cemetery in Southeastern Kentucky. It’s not just other languages that are becoming obsolete, certain aspects of the English language are also changing. In the region where part of my heritage stems, as older generations die, phrases, expressions and a certain sentence structures are also disappearing. While people travel to Appalachia to take in the music, crafts and beauty of the scenery (providing coal mining leaves something behind), many people who once lived here have hit the highways long ago for points beyond and an income. Those that have stayed behind can flip on the TV and join the rest of the U.S. in the endless stream of coast to coast media blitz that, I think, is partly responsible for the growth of sameness.

There is an effort to retain the culture and language patterns here. People determined to retain and promote this sense of place through language are an integral part of the literary, music and art scene. I’ve been to the Appalachian Writers Workshop twice now, and Appalachian Family Folk Week once, both held at in Hindman, a town that has dwindled from the bustling county seat I remember from my childhood, to one where you can almost envision the tumbleweeds blowing through town in the late afternoon if this was in the west. The drugstore lunch counter is the one place to get a meal and that closes about 2 PM.

The Hindman Settlement School, established more than a century ago has operated both workshops for years. These endeavors have continued to nurture established writers like Lee Smith and George Ella Lyon while providing a venue for those who have moved from workshop participant status to presenter and successful published novelists in their own right. Silas House, and Gretchen Moran Laskas come to mind. All of them are travelers of the human spirit in this part of the world. This is where they call on words to sustain them and us in this place they call home.

For a wonderful read about one person’s experience with English use in this area, check out this essay, “Where the Creek Turkey Tracks: Wild Land and Language.” It is in the Winter 2007 edition of Appalachian Heritage.

The photo is of Uncle Sol’s cabin on the Settlement School grounds. Fred1st snapped this shot of the house where one of my great greats lived. Uncle Sol Everidge is one of my kin and credited with getting Katherine Pettit and May Stone to come to Hindman eons ago to establish the school and bring education to the mountain’s children.

Band on the Run: Re-United with Lost Guitars (The Precipice of Air Travel)

by Ember Swift on

Ember Swift, Canadian musician and touring performer, will be keeping us up-to-date on what it’s like to tour a band throughout North America. Having just arrived back from Beijing where she spent three months (check out her “Canadian in Beijing” series), she offers a musician’s perspective on road life. Enjoy!

So I got on a flight out of Maui, Hawaii at 9:30pm island time on Friday and arrived in San Francisco at 5:30am PST. A quick transfer to my (already being held) Vancouver flight and I was back in the air and heading towards my band and the next gig…

without my guitars.

What is it with United? I have had more mishaps (re: lost baggage or stolen luggage) with this airline than any other.

[I guess in this case the transfer time was too tight because no one from that Maui flight who arrived in Vancouver got their luggage. But still, the stats are stacked against United and me. Am I alone here?]

What’s worse is that the call center is in India. The attendants speak English and are very polite, but they’re in India! While trying to track y guitars, I needed to give a geography lesson on Canada while giving my delivery address:

“No, it’s a province. Canada doesn’t have states. It’s the province of British Columbia. <pause> No, there’s no zip code. The equivalent is a postal code. <pause> Yes, postal code. There are letters and numbers. It’s…”

And still, they couldn’t locate them. They told me to call back in a few hours and hopefully their computers will have been updated.

I was reunited with my band without my guitars and there was no time to wait for them to (possibly) arrive on the next flight from San Francisco. The gig that night was in Grand Forks, BC, in the interior of the province about six hours east of Vancouver, and so we had to hop in a vehicle and drive on in order to make it there in time for sound check.

This part of British Columbia is truly stunning. It’s hard to stay grumpy in the presence of such majestic beauty. By the time we got to Grand Forks, I was long recovered from my sleepless night of air travel and the anxiety of lost instruments.

Mountains heal.

We were kindly loaned a guitar that worked out perfectly (a hollow body electric the same shape and similar weight to my Gretsch) and I just geared the whole set to suit an electric guitar sound as opposed to an acoustic. We had a great time on stage and were well received by the modest but appreciative audience at The Festival at the Forks.

They put us up that night at a hilltop spa called Ponderosa Pines. Three kilometres up a rocky dirt road and it felt like we were driving into the clouds. There was nothing around except the view and a steep decline. This single lane path (or was it a long driveway?) seemed to be etched into the side of the mountain itself.

Adam, our drummer, said “These are the times people accuse you of exaggerating when you re-tell the story. You just keep saying ‘no, it really was like that’ and no one believes you.” And he’s right. Maybe these pictures I snapped the next morning will give it some credibility.

Back in the car again pointing west again towards Vancouver and we were following a Budget cube van. When it’s brakes came on suddenly ahead and it swerved right, we slowed too, just in time for us both to miss the young black bear that had leapt out of the bushes and struck out across the highway.

Just the night before, while sitting beside a British guy returning from Maui to the U.S. with his family mid-vacation, we spoke about Canada and all the cultural stereotypes of our country. He jokingly said, “Yeah, Canada, aren’t you shaking the black bears off your legs up there?” I laughed and told him that our legs have no room for black bears for all the beavers trying to take us out at the ankles. We both laughed then and I added the truthful statement that it had actually been ages since I’d even seen a black bear.

Not so now.

And I’m happy to report that the little black bear survived the highway.

When we got back to Vancouver, the guitars still had not arrived at the address we’d given. Another call to India and I found out that one guitar was still in San Francisco and the other was in Vancouver and was supposed to have already been delivered.

Now the reports were starting to conflict and I had memories of last year’s “missing” (read: stolen) pedal board that resulted in a $2,000 insurance claimed and a long fight with the airline. Also, this summer Adam’s custom snare drum (also on United Airlines) took two weeks to be returned to him. When my anxiety level started to spiral upwards, I knew it was time to run.

Running is my release of choice.

Forty minutes later, all stress having sweated out my body, I arrived back to where I was staying to a message telling me that both “red bags” (my cases are red, but the attendants rarely referred to them as guitars, much to my concern!) would be delivered that evening between 9 and 12 at night.

Nothing to do but wait. My flight back to Ontario wasn’t until today anyway.

11:48 on the hall clock and I got a call saying that they were just a few minutes away. To my relief, at 11:56 I was greeting the delivery man and my guitars at the doorway of the house we were staying in. Now earlier today, I flew back to Ontario with my (hopefully not-to-traumatized) guitars who haven’t made it out of their cases since Hawaii. I was so hesitant to let them disappear down the conveyor belt yet again!

But I’m here to report a great big sigh of relief.

When I picked them up in Ottawa, I loudly and gregariously thanked the special handling baggage personnel for not losing them. They laughed and responded with a hearty “You’re welcome!” while I was letting out my held breath.

And now I’m home. On the ground. Guitars in hand.

All’s well.

Reunited.

A Canadian in Beijing: “No Clamber Over”

by Ember Swift on

I’m from Ontario. It’s a relatively flat province in Canada with lots of rolling hills and some small mountains that most of my west-coast friends won’t even call mountains. That’s fair enough, considering they’re looking at the Rockies all the time. The first time I saw those magnificent Rocky mountains I was sixteen years old and I remember feeling as though I had never seen anything so intense, so breathtaking, so grand in nature. Every time I get the opportunity to go west again and look up at their majestic snow-capped peaks, I am awed all over again. They never get boring to me – this Ontario-born Canadian – and I always feel really lucky to see them again.

Now here I am in Beijing and I was only an hour out of town this weekend and I had a similar moment of complete shock. I knew there were mountains outside of Beijing, but I didn’t know they’d be so beautiful! Of course, they’re nowhere near as high as the Rockies (i.e. no snow and no cloud-covered peaks), but they’re majestic all the same. These mountains are lush and green and they hold beautiful “tan ?” (deep pools), waterfalls and teal-coloured lakes in their various stony crevices.

I am moved by natural beauty.

(I took a lot of photos.)

The mountain we climbed was called: “Yougu Shentan 幽古伸潭.” The path rounded around a flowing stream filled with huge rocks and small waterfalls, mountain pools heated by the sunshine and picturesque views that took your breath away every time you turned around. And, you had to turn around regularly. Why keep your back to the beauty? It made for a slower ascent, but the view was always worth it.

Climbing was, of course, hard work. This was a tourist site, though, and it was set up well with resting spots equipped with sun awnings, railings on steep sections and lots of benches along the way. The “No Clamber Over” signs made me chuckle, too. I explained to my friend that the word “clamber” was technically correct, but it’s just such a strange way to request that people stay on the walkway side of the fence. “Don’t Climb Over the Fence” would more likely be on a sign at home. In fact, I haven’t seen the word “clamber” in print in a long time!

We didn’t bring any water or food with us, however, and made the mistake of assuming there’d be a vendor somewhere. About halfway up, we asked someone coming the other way and discovered that there would be no food at all for us unless we were to invade a stranger’s picnic! Of course, that was out of the question, but we were lucky enough to learn that a free flowing spring was at the top of the mountain and we just needed to get there to re-hydrate. Around the next bend, we found it.

As non-Chinese as it was, I washed my hands vigorously under the spout and then cupped them together and filled them up with water so that I could drink from the spring. I brought my cupped hands to my lips several times and felt refreshed.

I heard a woman exclaim “she’s drinking from her hands!” and I knew it was because here in China it is assumed that hands are very dirty. Perhaps this is a fair assumption, for the most part, but I didn’t have a bottle with me and this method is a way I have known to collect water since my childhood. Different cultures = different practices.

My friend, however, had a different plan. The fact that he’s Chinese meant that he wasn’t going to do as I had done and he, too, looked at me strangely as I cupped my hands together and brought them to my lips. I shrugged and continued. I was too thirsty to change my ways in that moment. When I was done, he leaned his whole face into the spout and took the water directly into his mouth. He came away from the spring with his whole face and part of his hair drenched but smiling. Different strokes for different folks! Either way, we both felt better.

At this point in the walk, we were too tired to continue and started to double back. This mountain path was not a circular one and so lunch was no closer to us the farther we walked. Food was becoming more of a motivator than scenic sights.

After getting back down to the foot of the mountain, we hopped on the bike and drove deeper into the hills where the roads wound around steep cliffs and rose and fell in switchbacks and hairpin turns. Around one corner, we saw a building that looked, to me, like an old gas station. My friend turned in and parked the bike right next to an empty outdoor table and asked the proprietor if we could have lunch there. They said sure and motioned for us to sit.

I was shocked. It didn’t look like a restaurant to me! There were three tables that were sitting in front of two cars. These cars were essentially in the parking lot (or where the pumps would have been had it once been a gas station, which it hadn’t) and then there was an L-shaped building that didn’t look like a restaurant in the least.

On closer inspection, this was indeed an eating establishment. One of those rooms housed some interior tables, one was the kitchen and one appeared to be living quarters for those who ran the restaurant. Simple and nothing fancy, but fully functional.

We ordered some vegetarian dishes, which included vegetables that grow on these very mountains. The food was delicious, the service was kind and it was the perfect lunch for two incredibly hungry hikers. Afterwards, I took several pictures of the surroundings not wanting to forget this nondescript building and its hidden hospitality. After all, it felt to me that we were pulling up at a personal residence and we were treated as such – just like long-lost guests.

This mountain top adventure more than quenched my thirst for beauty and my hunger for nature. I came away humbled by my insular Beijing existence over the past two months (not counting my foray into Shanghai, but that too is another city). I now know that all of this natural beauty is just a short drive away. I’ll be sure to take more of it in on my next journey to China.

Until then, I have lots of photos.

A Canadian in Beijing: A Must Do = A Shidu Picnic

by Ember Swift on

The second last day of the holidays and I was invited to go on a picnic in the outlying areas of Beijing with one of my new friends, Rui, and several of his friends. I was the only foreigner (non-Native Chinese speaker) and so I was a bit nervous. Still, Rui’s English is excellent and I only hesitated for an instant before accepting the opportunity to see some of the outskirts of this city and to meet a new group of people.

We went to an area called “Shi Du” which means the ten ferry district. It’s about an hour’s drive south of Beijing and it leads into ten separate valleys around small, jagged mountains which each include water access and stunning scenery. Because it’s become a popular travel site, there are also shops and various other leisure activities locate in each.

This is a time in Chinese history when people from the city have enough money to actually visit the country as a leisure activity – to enjoy the fresh air, the open skies and the natural wonders that lie outside of the concrete and glass. As a result, we were not the only ones with this idea!

We arrived at the fifth “du” and walked along the rocky ridge of a beautiful lake and scoped out our picnic site. We were about twenty feet from another group and the lake was full of people on leisure rafts with large sticks to propel them forward. When everyone was satisfied with our choice of location, all the men then went back to the cars to get the food and coolers and other items while the women stayed with the dogs. I stayed too, of course, considering my gender and the complete surprise that I garnered when I offered to help too!

When they returned, there was the typical arguing about where to put the cook stoves and then the men all mutually failed several times at starting the fires. I had to laugh. Everyone had a better idea than everyone else and it was just comical. It could have been happening in any country, in any language. Eventually, the coals took and the cooking began, as did the laughter and the good times.

Here in China, it seems as though picnic blankets aren’t the norm. Instead, plastic is used. Large strips of cheap plastic was pulled from a roll and was laid out flat and held down with rocks. The food went on top of it – a veritable feast of kabobs and salads and beverages. My friend had stocked up on vegetables from the market that morning and so I ate vegetable versions of what they were eating. I tried my best to overlook where they had been cooked considering my status as a guest and my desire not to stand out any more than I already did.

Besides, I had a hard time with the language. I couldn’t have explained myself properly even if I had tried. Everything happened so quickly that I often found myself the only one not laughing at a joke I hadn’t understood. It was hard, but they were all really nice and Rui translated as often as he could. Eventually the group was offering to teach me Chinese. In fact, they said “you don’t need a school! You just need to hang out with us!” That felt good.

Across from the feasting, we could see children playing in large, thick, plastic balls that were floating on the surface of the water. It looked like an enormous amount of fun – like those huge indoor walking wheels for pet mice but big enough for humans. They were tethered to the edge of the waterway so that they couldn’t float away and I could hear the laughter bouncing off the liquid sunshine.

After the food, my friend and I walked down to the edge talking about music and lyrics. He sang a few songs to me in Chinese and then started to share all the songs he knows in English, most of which were incredibly cheesy and huge hits from the past. He sang them word for word (sometimes the wrong words in misunderstood English) and I joined in when he sang that Jack Wagner song “Nothing’s Gonna Change my Love for You” (made famous again by Glenn Mederios in the 80’s), Richard Marx “Right Here Waiting for You” and George Michael’s “Careless Whisper.” (I’m pretty sure he was still with Wham at that time!)

Imagine us: me, the only foreigner for miles around and him, a young Chinese man without any kind of self-consciousness, singing his heart out on the edge of a lake. When I sang along, our voices reverberated against the cliffs and echoed over the water. No one stared any more than they already had been staring. In fact, we were even interrupted by someone trying to get us to buy time riding on a horse. So, I guess we weren’t being so “xiguai” (or strange) after all. Either way, there’s an absurdity that I felt in that moment that still makes me laugh at the thought of it.

One real downside to the day was the waste everywhere. I saw so much litter — so many wrappers and plastic everywhere. It was sad to see such a beautiful landscape with such dirty evidence of previous picnics.

The toilets, too, were just cement blocks surrounding pits that were absolutely FULL of human waste. I could barely walk by them without gagging, let alone use them. Eventually, though, I had no choice and I’ve discovered that I’ve become particularly good at holding my breath. Even thinking of it now makes me queasy, though. I’m not immune to disgusting toilets yet and perhaps I never will be.

We climbed back to the picnic site and had more food before helping clean up.

One of the women had laid out plastic “blankets” for the dogs and was desperately trying to convince her dog to lie down on this “blanket” to stay clean rather than laying in the dusty dirt. The dog was not interested and eventually settled right beside the blanket much to her disgust.

(At the end of the day, I watched her clean him with a wet napkin — a “moist toilette” and they’re very popular here. She washed his underside from paws to buttocks while her husband held him in the air. Then he was deposited in the vehicle without much ceremony.)

The group just piled the waste in a large central area after everything of value was gathered, and then left it there for hovering “recyclers” to sort through. Just like in the city where elderly people collect bottles and recyclables, I had noticed several older people eying our picnic and awaiting our departure.

I have such a hard time with this coming from such a beautifully maintained country, especially our forests and provincial or national parks. We have so much education about “no trace camping” and having a “light footprint” on the earth. I am conscious that these recycling people will extract the valuable recyclables but then leave the plastic bags and food waste there to rot (or collect dust because they aren’t biodegradable) like all the other small piles I saw.

I left with my friends feeling a sense of guilt towards the earth and a helplessness to relieve it. I also felt incredibly grateful to have been given such a great opportunity to see a part of China that I wouldn’t normally have seen. Everything is a mixed blessing and I try to feel the balance at the best of times. I’m not sure how to reconcile it all.

We drove onwards and stopped to photograph the “shidu” or “tenth ferry.” There were cable cars here and a bungee jumping platform. There was also a small island and a lake filled with pedal boats and happy vacationers.

One the way home, I noticed that this section of one of the “shidu” lakes is a popular car-washing spot. People drive their vehicles right into the water and then wash the cars right there. You wouldn’t see this in Canada!

The long ride back to Beijing was quiet. Everyone was exhausted by the sunshine and the large amount of food intake. I smiled out the rear window of the vehicle and felt a sense of pride at being invited and included in such an outing. I felt like I had been adopted by this group and given a true modern Chinese picnic.

Next time, I’m going in those water balls!