Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Aboriginal Day

In Canada, June 21, signifies not only the summer solistice but also a day set aside to celebrate our Aboriginal People and their heritage. So although family history tells me that there is some Aboriginal blood in my veins it is a long time ago and lost in the mists of time. So without going into a long dissertation of all those connections I can lay claim to being a full blood Canadian, if you believe Canada is a melting pot of the world. Some of my family came over here 10,000 years ago and then kind of hung around enjoying the landscape until the rest came to join them in the last few hundred years.

Over the last few days we have been busy getting ready for our trip to Arizona in early July. They tell me it is a 112F down there right now so we will probably just slip in, drop our stuff, and head north again. We are hoping to do a little sightseeing as we come north. Folks tell me there is a kind of cool canyon in northern Arizona that rivals our Stikine River in NW British Columbia. Is it just coincidence that these great spots are smack dab in the middle of First Nations territory, in Arizona the Grand Canyon is in "Hualapai" meaning "people of the ponderosa pine" as well as the Havsuw’ Baaja (Blue Water People[1]), or more commonly the Havasupai, are an American Indian tribe that has called the Grand Canyon its home for at least the past 800 years. I stole that last bit out of Wikipedia and the links should lead you back there. And Canada’s Grand Canyon on the Stikine River is right at the heart of Tahltan territory. Brenda and I have been to the Stikine many times so we have a shot of that,

Stikine 20

and although it looks pretty narrow here, you can’t believe how narrow it looks at 60 mph in a helicopter 6 feet off the water. Hopefully next month we will have a shot or two of Arizona’s Grand Canyon.

Over the last few days we have been in and out of our rain showers but Saturday my niece Caron and I managed to get in a short ride around here between showers. Then Brenda and I ran down to Caron’s barn to see her new project, Jager, he is a three year old Warmblood, I believe a Hanoverian, which I think is German for tall. Just for reference Caron is 6 feet tall. He is over 16 hands now and still has lots of time to grow.

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Then Sunday I ran into town to meet my brother and Dad, it was Fathers Day, at a soccer game that my youngest niece was playing in. She is pretty focussed and made a lot of great plays, while we were there. I had to use a pretty fast camera speed just to get her stopped so the shot wasn’t blurry. Good game Rem!

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After the game and lunch at brother Brent’s it was time to head back out to the farm.

Once of the benefits of rain, other than the green landscape is of course rainbows and I got a few shots of them around the place.

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Who knew that the end of the rainbow would be in our dumpster. Mack is going up to check it out.

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And the double one above is just Down the Road from Dogpound.

Today was a beautiful day here and as usual on beautiful days it was time to get some stuff done outside. Washed both trucks and the horse trailer and then got busy with the lawn mowers and the trimmer.

Now another byproduct of that rain is our little friends the mosquito’s. Now they seem to like Brenda a little better than me so I just need her in the area and I am A-OK. But there are a bizillion of them around right now.

7 comments:

  1. Nice double rainbow & I particularly like the horse & rider photo. That's a keeper for sure & would look nice framed & mounted on a wall. I would try cropping it just under Caron's elbow or Jager's bridal lines somewhere & just over top Jager's ears. A little work with Picasa's retouch tool would help to soften some of those items on the back wall as well. Might try bringing in the right side a bit to give the photo more of a dimensional portrait look. Yep, nice photo for sure. Right from the first time we met you in Quartzsite a few years back I always thought you had a slight aboriginal look & now I know why I thought that:))

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  2. You guys--mosquitoes don't like Mike either, only me.

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  3. You must have been throwing out some real treasures for that ! :)

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  4. It should have said "for that rainbow to end up in your dumpster!"

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  5. Gorgeous rainbow pictures! They say one man's trash is another man's treasure, so that pot of gold must be at the bottom of the dumpster!

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  6. So you've been throwing away a lot of gold, eh?

    Great picture! ;c)

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  7. The double rainbow photo could be a blog header picture. But why not just send it to Al and let him work on it for you. He seems to be a specialist on those things for sure!!!!

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