Back home and running hard

Sorry about the long delay in posting. Things have been busier than usual.

About two weeks ago we lost a matriarch. Grandma Edna passed away at 99 years old. She was much loved by many and my heart goes out to her children.
Goodbye Grandma, thanks so much for teaching me many things.

Our family has been in for the last two weeks with coming for the funeral, and camping. There's a large forest fire near here (Fire N50229 ) that knocked out the whole area's power for a few days. I'd been here working here at the house during the day and going down to join my family camping in the evenings, but moved to camp once there was no power. We simply cleaned out the fridge, bought a bunch of ice with whatever cash we could scrounge up, and set out to wait it out at camp. There was no power to our part of the grid as the main line had been burned. No power to Nakusp, New Denver, Hills, Trout Lake, Burton, Fauquier, Needles (and maybe more communities that I don't know about).

There are other fires near here that are threatening nearby communities, notably N50372 and N70139 . Silverton has been evacuated and there is concern that the fire will continue up into New Denver. There's a meeting at our Royal Canadian Legion Hall tonight to discuss emergency measures. Currently our community is not at risk. We'll be happy to open our doors to the other communities facing such grave and devastating loss.

Amazingly enough, this year we're not so badly affected by the smoke in this valley. We've had an ongoing prevailing north breeze (and some days, wind) that has blown the smoke southward, toward the nearest fire. In 2003 we spent most of August in the dark, in an eerie red-ish light from the vast amounts of smoke from the Ingersoll fire. (Ingersoll is the mountain in the centre of the picture above. It burned almost totally in 2003. It was terribly scary.)

The active fires right now are huge: two of those listed above are currently thought to be 2000 and 1200 hectares, respectively.

I returned home last night, to 159 emails and 16 phone messages. Please have patience with me! I started returning messages last night, and will keep going with it today.

All the best,

Lisa