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Rain blows in off the Atlantic across Tràigh Losgaintir on Na Hearadh at the end of a May evening in 2009.
Evening Grosbeaks are unexpected visitors to our back-yard feeders. We have had the Black Head variety before but a first for this beautifully patterned bird. These heavy set finches are ferocious seed-crackers in the wintertime, in summer Evening Grosbeaks eat insects such as spruce budworm, a serious forest pest. The grosbeaks are so adept at finding these tiny caterpillars that the birds often provide a first warning that a budworm outbreak has begun.
Flying over the Shushwap as evening approached. Some smoke around as people were burning stubble and foliage before winter.
The morning mist clung to the towering Douglas firs as Jack Morrison stepped off the coastal steamer at the makeshift dock. The smell of salt water mixed with wood smoke and the acrid tang of copper ore filled his nostrils. Before him, carved into the mountainside like a wound, lay the Yreka copper mine.
"You the new engineer?" A gruff voice called out. A stocky man with ore-stained overalls and a face weathered by Pacific storms extended a calloused hand. "Tom Nakamura, shift foreman."
Jack shook his hand, surprised to find a Japanese man in a position of authority. But this was the edge of the world, where the old rules bent like cedar in the wind.
"The boys call this place 'Yellow Boy' on account of all the copper," Tom explained as they trudged up the muddy path toward the mine entrance. "She's a rich vein, runs deep into the mountain. Company's been pulling ore out steady for three years now."
The mine camp sprawled across a cleared plateau—a collection of rough-hewn bunkhouses, a cookhouse belching smoke, and the imposing headframe of the main shaft. Men of every description worked the site: Finns and Swedes who'd drifted down from the logging camps, Chinese workers who'd stayed after the railroad was built, local Kwakwaka'wakw men who knew every inlet and passage of the intricate coastline.
Jack's job was to keep the new mechanical hoist running. The company had shipped it in pieces from Vancouver, and it had taken two weeks to haul it up from the beach. It would triple their daily tonnage—if it worked.
"She's temperamental," warned Old Pete, the Scottish mechanic who was retiring. "The salt air plays havoc with her gears. And when the winter storms blow in..." He shook his head.
The days fell into rhythm. Dawn broke late in the rainforest shadows. Men descended into the earth, following veins of green and blue oxidized copper. The new hoist groaned and squealed but held, hauling ton after ton of ore to the surface. Barges arrived weekly to carry the treasure south to the smelters.
On Saturday nights, the men gathered in the cookhouse. Someone always had a fiddle, and despite Prohibition, mysterious bottles appeared from coat pockets. Tom Nakamura's wife made sake in a hidden still up the creek. The Finns had their vodka. The Irish miners somehow always knew when a boat carrying "medical supplies" was due.
It was during one of these gatherings that disaster nearly struck. Young Billy Thompson, barely eighteen and fresh from a Prairies farm, had been boasting about setting a new record for ore loads. Full of bootleg courage, he'd gone to prove it on the night shift.
The alarm bell's clang cut through the revelry. Jack raced to the headframe to find the hoist jammed, Billy's crew trapped below. The main cable had jumped its guide wheel—one wrong move and it would snap, sending the cage plummeting.
"Cut the power!" Jack shouted. In the lamplight, he could see the cable fraying where it rubbed against the housing.
Tom Nakamura appeared at his side with a length of ship's rope. "We do this the old way," he said. Together with a dozen men, they rigged a manual pulley system, muscles straining against the weight. Inch by precious inch, they hauled the cage up through the shaft.
When Billy and his crew emerged, pale and shaking but alive, a cheer went up that echoed across the inlet. Even the mountains seemed to approve.
The Yreka mine would run for six more years before the Depression and falling copper prices shuttered it. The buildings would return to the forest, the shafts would flood. But on that night in 1923, none of that mattered. They had copper to mine, wages to earn, and lives to live on the wild edge of Vancouver Island.
Jack Morrison would stay until the end, marrying Tom Nakamura's daughter and raising children who spoke English, Japanese, and Kwak'wala with equal fluency. He'd often tell them about that night, about how men from across the world came together in the lamplight to save their own.
"That was the real treasure of Yreka," he'd say, looking out at the inlet where the old dock posts still stood at low tide. "Not the copper. Never the copper."
It was the evening of Urs at Hazrat Nizamuddin dargah. A great surge of crowd...all with their own personal wishes...some must have been sufis...perhaps.
A-Line/Princess Sweetheart Floor-Length Chiffon Evening Dress With Ruffle Beading
www.jjshouse.com/A-Line-Princess-Sweetheart-Floor-Length-...
As it makes its way to the sea, the Hutt River, silver in the evening light, slides quietly passed a clump of Toitoi near Totara Park bridge.
To tired to look for a poem tonight .... tomorrow ...
I was so delighted to find so many words added by my friends on flickr! Thank you all!
In order of length....
From Fred (BIRD):
"screaming at the wind
swept up as the sun falls
speaking journeys
days of work
nights of joy
to hear the emotion
of the dream awake
waiting before
finding peace
in the sky"
BIRD
Poem Copyright
©2008 Frederick D. Perry, All Rights Reserved
How wonderful - thank you, Fred!
From Ab:
"bird silhouette
wet sand takes it away
into the ocean
the tired evening calls
the lonely crow "
~ AbAberson, ~
Ab - if these are your words then I am astonished at your amazing prowess in English - thank you!
From RR:
"And what spoke that strange silence
After his clamour of caws faded?"
~ Ted Hughes, 1930-1998 ~
The whole of Crow's Theology"
This last contribution from RR brings a different feel to the scene. I hadn't read that poem before. Thank you, RR.
I can't think of anything nicer than having a collection of words contributed by flickr friends .....
An experiment with crazy colors
May be someone could give any advice on editing this shot so it wouldn't look like nuclear autumn?..
son set
my mother
(as mothers are wont to do)
grew old
as a “boy” in my fifties
i would visit to talk of this and that and yesterday
then
on many autumn evenings
in the glow of burning logs
we would play music
she would plug in an old keyboard
which had once belonged to my daughters
(now hers by way of some emotional osmosis)
i would join in on wistful woodwind
we would begin with the hymns of her childhood
how great thou art
abide with me
jesus loves me
and
i would lose my lack of belief
in the melody of the moment
yet
so often
we would graduate to our favourite
you are my sunshine
a simple soulful song
on what once was
then
as we played
she would sing a tremulous descant
and
there we were ...
together in a chapel of firelight
……………………………………..
Should you wish to listen to the song, here is my favourite version - by Elizabeth Mitchell.
Rapidly shifting from late afternoon to evening night before last at the marina adjacent to Paris Landing State Park, Henry County, Tennessee (3-12-2012).