Two weeks ago I took a break from writing my blog while I was on summer vacation visiting with my mom. It was a surprisingly easy decision to make and I didn’t regret it at all. But that vacation is over, and I still feel like I need a break from blogging. Part of the issue is that I’m working on my book more regularly, which makes it hard to fit blog writing into my…

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Last week it rained at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet. That’s right, it rained, at 3000 m above sea level in the middle of a huge mass of snow and ice. Greenland itself has been breaking summer temperature records this year, with temperatures in the 20⁰C+ range, which is one of the reasons it was warm enough to rain at the ice sheet summit. According to researchers, temperatures have only been above zero…

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Last time I was in an airport it was 2013. I was still used to flying then, even though I hadn’t flown in a year. Now it’s been 8 years since I’ve been in an airport. I’ve taken the float plane to Vancouver, but that’s a completely different experience: no check ins, no security, no line-ups, no waiting to get out of the plane. I’m feeling a surge of anxiety about travelling that I can’t…

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Time is a capricious beast, stretching out for long periods of time that seem to creep by very slowly, then whipping back with a snap that makes a week pass in a matter of seconds. Time was especially tricky during the pandemic, when every day was much the same as the other and it was as though the world stood still. It was during the pandemic that my dad passed away, one year ago last…

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I feel like I’ve been waiting for lots of things lately. Waiting for the vet to call with Silah’s biopsy results. Waiting for Dave to call on the satellite phone from his camp at Klinaklini Glacier in the Coast Mountains. Waiting for inspiration to strike so I feel like working on my book again. Waiting for my mental health to improve. Waiting for rain. Waiting can be tiring, especially when you’re waiting for a test…

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This past week we had a health scare with one of our dogs. We discovered a growth in her mouth that really shouldn’t have been there, and that looked suspiciously like pictures we’d seen online of a cancerous tumour. We scheduled her for surgery to remove the growth and send it off for a biopsy, and are crossing our fingers that it’s just benign. None of our dogs have died of old age. Our first…

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After last week’s heatwave passed, I took stock of the damage to the gardens. The Japanese maple had some burned leaves, while the sugar snap peas had withered flowers and drying stems. The raspberries were triggered into early ripening even though they hadn’t yet fully matured. Our hemlock and grand fir trees had orange needles along their south-facing branches, scorched by the heat because they’re used to cooler temps and more precipitation. The dogwood tree…

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The big news that everyone’s been talking about is the major heat wave that formed this past weekend over western North America and brought record-breaking heat even to such unlikely places such as the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest. It’s only the end of June, yet we’ve had air temperatures in the high 30’s—unusual for this time of year and unusual in general. What’s worse is that the nighttime minimum temperatures dropped only to…

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Two weeks ago I read an article in our regional newspaper about the drought on Vancouver Island and I thought “drought, what drought?” It seemed to me that we’d had a pretty good spring, enough rain to keep the garden going so we didn’t have to think about watering that much until just this week. But then I looked at the weather data in our local paper and saw that we were below the average…

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Recently I got a diagnosis that I had been dreading for years: diabetes. I have been taking certain psychiatric drugs that increase your risk for diabetes by causing you to gain weight (40 lbs is standard, according to my psychiatrist), messing with your metabolism, and increasing your insulin resistance. Those medications finally caught up with me, and I am what is considered pre-diabetic—in the danger zone but not diabetic yet. Testing blood sugar with a…

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