Too Late

It’s winter in Prince George, Full on Fall anyway. We were up to 4,000 feet coming over the ridge to get here and all the leaves on all the trees were totally gone. Instant depression.

Here in PG there are still some, bright yellow, kind of a glowing saturated yellow on the birch trees. And there was frost on the early daybreak fields not beat down by any snow so far. There was a grain combine parked in a wheat field in the rain later on, two or three circuits of the standing wheat completed, the rest doomed to rot in the autumn rain. Too late.

Some of the farmers have those giant round hay bales still in the hay fields where the baler left them already showing a coating of moss in the rain. Other farmers have their hay shrink-wrapped in those same giant cylindrical bales, wrapped like white sausages, all gathered in long rows of tubes in a single storage field, like a vast chenille bedspread for all the cold cows in the winter dark.

There was a momentary crisis in Prince George. Wednesday night a boulder came down on the highway near Terrace, not far from Prince Rupert and made everybody nervous so they closed the highway all night, and the busload of passengers turned around and drove all the way back to Vander Hoof. A sign on the depot door read Highway closed service to Hazelton only when we got off the bus from Vancouver. But as I was trying to decide what to do about it a call came through it was open again. I’ve flown over that coast range and those are real mountains and no joke.

Just past Fort Frazier we saw a big ol’ healthy-looking black bear bounding across the road hauling ass up into the treeline in that peculiar low-ass snout-high sprint they do,

I couldn’t find the camera in time.