Yesterday it poured with rain.  The first 2 days of mild rain that happened before that were pretty novelties.  Now I am sick of it already.  Bella Coola is cut off again because of floods.  People have been evacuated again.  They have had a rough time these last couple of years what with major fires, floods, and landslides.  I’ve actually lost count of the times that Highway 20 has been closed.  Prior to that, a closure might happen once every 5 – 10 years……

When the rain is heavy, I can hear it inside the house.  When I woke in the dark in the early hours this morning, there was silence and I figured it had stopped.  But when daylight came I saw it was still precipitating heavily.  The rain had turned to snow.

Yesterday evening, in heavy rain, I drove to Tatla Lake.  A wwoofer had arrived in Williams Lake and Christine Peters (author of: The Lure of the Chilcotin) had picked her up at the bus station for me.  Christine lives in Tatla so I met her there.

Marjorie Sawadogo was born in France of a French mother and an African father who came from Burkina Faso.  Several years ago, Marjorie went to work on the tropical Island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean.  It is 450 miles east of Madagascar.  The landscape could not be more different from the Chilcotin.  Imagine the most spectacular Hawaiian scenery, complete with active volcano.  I was blown away when I looked Reunion up on the internet.  (It is 38 miles long and 28 wide, and has a population of 800,000 so has a large town and lots of inhabited areas, but this video shows the bit I am most interested in!)

Anyway, Marjorie has come to work for me for a couple of weeks.

We walked around the property….

….down to the McClinchy River, which was in flood (although not so far at a dangerous level.)

Well, it was all very pretty but now it is thawing and gloomy and rainy and a terrible mess.  Makes trying to work outside a real chore…..