August 29, 2007

CAN YOU SPOT HER?

The grouse stands dead still as I approach, banking on the notion I haven’t seen her, her feathers resembling the pattern of bark on the tree.

I love the sound these grouse make in the woods. I must find a way to explain it — it’s more like a soft pressure on the eardrums, the sound an owl might make if it tried to whisper. Sometimes you wonder if you heard anything at all, yet your brain and body are telling you there is some presence in the forest. The first time I heard it was twilight, and spooky.

My Path: One hour and two minutes (yes, two minutes ) Lost Lake trails, sweat-inducing Nordic walk-run. Those sticks are awesome!

And another chapter down ….

Hope the last days of August are treating everyone well.

August 28, 2007

THORNY

But beautiful. Hmmm … kinda like my writing day. Some little bits went well. Other bits, well, lets just say they need to be smoothed out …

And things always feel better after an hour or so out for a run or stroll. Today I walked for almost two hours with my mum . The thistles are going to seed – silken and glistening strands blowing to the wind. The fireweed is drifting, too, like summer snow. The cottonwoods have started to turn, and the cats are watching bright yellow leaves begin to twirl and tumble to the ground.

There was also a fresh dusting of snow on Wedge Mountain. Told you those bears knew something …. it’s still only August!

August 27, 2007

WHICH WAY?

At a crossroads in the middle of the woods — that’s where I am with my novel …  trying to find may way to home base. Don’t want to pick the safest route. But don’t want to get lost on a run with no patrol or sweep, either

August 26, 2007

DEM BONES

The heroine in one of my upcoming romances (MANHUNTER — Silhouette Romantic Suspense) is a tracker who lives in the northern Yukon, and for research I’m devouring books on tracking and signs.

Now, when out on my daily runs or Nordic walks, you will find me looking downward, at the ground, watching for cougar, or bear prints. Trying to identify squirrel or chipmunk tracks in the soft mud. Finding evidence of feeding sites, dens, holes. The whole forest is coming alive to me in new ways, telling me stories as I grapple with the crude A, B, Cs of a new language. My heroine’s language.

And because I was head-down, scrutinizing foliage and soil, I came across a big old sun-bleached bone. I slowly turned it over in my hand, wondering what animal it came from, what death the creature had met. Why it was there. The novelist in me even flirted with the idea it might – conceivably — be human. I got to thinking of the names of all the people who had gone missing in these woods over the last few years. Just vanished. Searched for, and never found. Like Amy Tam, 33, last seen by her mother July 13, 1996. Never to be seen again. Yet another unsolved mystery of these mountains.

I placed the bone on a stump so that I might find it again. Just in case.

I went back two days ago to see if the bone was still there, and found another not far from the first, this one most decidedly ‘un-human’. I’m thinking maybe they are parts of a buck, and there is probably a whole skeleton scattered in bits around the area. Anyone have any idea what these bones might belong to? (pardon the slug that crawled into the photo)

And in the synchronicity that seems to be a part of my life at the moment, just as I was thinking of missing Amy Tam (I was among the media who covered her disappearance back then), the BC Coroners Service announced it has identified the partial human remains found by a hiker on Alpine Way as belonging to Amy Tam. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Her bones show up in a Whistler residential area 11 years after she went missing, not far from where her car was found abandoned with keys on the seat and the door open, and we still have no further clue as to what really happened to Amy, nor any idea why 40 search and rescue members, RCMP, police dogs and air patrols scoured the area for the missing School District Psychologist for two weeks and came up empty handed … if she was right there.

It bothers me that no one knows her story. That her remains cannot tell it. That she was all alone that day. That she has family out there who still need answers.

And … so novels are born.

August 25, 2007

THE VIEW FROM MY DESK

This is Oscar, the berry bear. I see him from my office window each day now as he comes to feast on a bush of ripe orange berries across the street. I know he’s there when I hear the branches crashing.

And on my runs, I’m coming across one to four bears a day in the woods now, all eating madly and not at all interested in me — apart from two very small cubs I was eager to back away from real fast before they steered mum my way.

There are so many bruins out foraging now that within the last six days nine have died. Most were killed on the small stretch of road that runs through our valley. Hit by cars. Horrible messy deaths. The others were shot for aggressive breaking and entering. 

I’m thinking their hunger-driven bear bodies know something we don’t – that we’re in for an early and cold winter. There you have it, forecast a la Loreth.

August 20, 2007

HE’S HERE !!

I love him — Jean-Charles Laroque, also known as Le Diable, my November hero.

They got his dreadlocks, his dark physical strength and dangerous power.  The hot jungle setting. I am happy with this one  

What do you think?

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