I have never spent a summer on the Chilcotin before.  Although I have been over 30 years in the area, I have always been at either Lonesome Lake or Nuk Tessli at this time of year.   They both have very different ecosystems.  True, last year I could not fly into Nuk Tessli until June 14th – it was the latest spring ever.  Today is only June 5th, but because of the extremely mild winter, everything has happened at least 2 weeks earlier and so the season is in fact more advanced.

For three weeks we had very little but gloom and rain.  We welcomed it at first – everything was so dry.  but we soon got tired of it!  So did the ants.  They had to make little volcanoes around their ventilator shafts to keep from getting flooded out.

The mountains were rarely visible.

Then we got a gleam or two of sun.  Everything was very green.

I have now graduated from crutches to hiking poles for my bush walks, but I still have to creep about very slowly, particularly on rough ground.  Still, I cover more than a kilometre most days and am beginning to visit my favourite viewpoints.

The river is still high but it never reached full flood size because there was so little snow on the mountains.

Yesterday, the sun broke through, and today was gorgeous.

Spring flowers are suddenly in their prime.  Jacob’s ladder.

Kinnikinnick

Some amazingly early paintbrush

And an absolute treasure I have seen only once in my life before, that tiny relative of the iris, blue-eyed grass.  How lovely to know it is growing at Ginty Creek.

The hot weather has stimulated the aspen leaf miners, too.  Yesterday there was no sign of them: today they are munching away.

 

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