Blossom, bear, butterfly

The road down from Wells Gray Park provided some delightful sights. Wild cherry blossoms leaned over the lip of a precipitous drop, and a bear browsed by the road. And when I parked at Spahats Canyon to look at the waterfall, a butterfly landed on my windshield. Love the open road.

The spectacular Wells Gray Park has many waterfalls

High up in Wells Gray Park, the Murtle River drops in stages over plateaus formed in three stages from hardened lava. Helmcken Falls is one of six waterfalls on this river.

The falls was named by Premier Richard McBride to honour R.S. Helmcken, a Hudson's Bay Company doctor who helped to get BC into the Canadian Confederation in 1871. However, although the doctor lived to 95, he never saw the falls.

Though the width is a narrow 75 metres, the vertical drop of Helmcken Falls is 141 metres, more than two and a half times the height of Niagara. 

It was early May when I took this photo; snow is still visible on the heavily shaded rocks in the gorge.

Wells Gray Park boasts 39 named waterfalls, and many others that have never been given names.

Dawson Falls in Wells Gray Park

The volcanic and glacial sculpturing of Wells Gray began over 200 million years ago.

Dawson Falls, seen below and right, is approachable by a trail. One excellent viewpoint gives a full view of the falls from downriver. The other leads to the top of the falls; from there the mist can be felt on the face.

Spahats Canyon, seen and unseen

The entrance to the high remote Wells Gray Park is from Clearwater on Highway 5. Pyramid Mountain is a tuya, a volcano that erupts under ice during a period of glaciation.

The journey into high country begins with three bridges. Each crosses a canyon so deep that the bottom is invisible from the highway, even from the roadside viewpoints.

The first drop of Spahats Falls (left) is about 60 metres, and a second drop, invisible from the viewing area, brings the total to 73, which is 20 metres higher than Niagara.

Spahats Canyon (below) is too deep and steep for the bottom to be visible from the well fenced viewing area. However, the falls can be heard and the river seen if the observer stands at the top of the closed canyon.

Three visible layers of volcanic rock were laid down in the canyon walls half a million years ago.

Journaling with Claire De Boer at Canadian Authors Vancouver

Last night Claire De Boer was the guest speaker at Canadian Authors Vancouver. After studying originally in the United Kingdom, Claire emigrated to Canada. She is a mentor at Southbank Writers' Program in Surrey and a certified Journal Therapist.

She also writes and edits for SheLoves magazine and teaches journaling for personal development and for memoir writing.

Memoir, says Claire, is a difficult genre to write, and is quite distinct from journaling. Yet keeping a journal is a practice that helps the memoirist uncover the universal themes that move a story beyond its mundane details.

When we allow the pen "to dance across the page" in a journal nobody else will read, we free ourselves from the critical editor and are able to access great material from the subconscious, which is 90% of our minds.

Claire recommended many techniques for the practice of unbridled expression. She also interacted warmly with the audience as she listed her suggestions and then solicited the experience of audience members to various kinds of structured journal keeping.

For those who get stuck when faced with a blank journal page, Claire recommends springboards. These are sentences that can be kept handy for moments when we feel uncertain of what to write. For example, we may want to ask ourselves, "What do I want to overcome?" Or perhaps "What do I need today?" Using the springboard starter "If I spoke my truth, what would I say?" can uncover things we need to learn about ourselves, and help us face conflict and negative feelings.

Another method is to use a dialogue format. There are plenty of choices available; we can write both sides of a dialogue between self and other, self and self, or even self and God.

Longhand is preferable for journaling, she advises. Something magical happens when the hand moves steadily across the page, never lifting until the writing exercise has come to completion, and what needed to be uncovered has appeared in writing.

A moment of stillness is also useful before plunging into the exercise. We may choose to meditate, do yoga or simply breathe deeply. Ask a question and the answer will come.

For a would-be memoirist, journaling can uncover challenging emotions that a writer must face in order to finish the project. It raises awareness of these emotions and helps the writer handle them, and ultimately use them to create a text that will engage the emotions of readers.

Journaling can also help a memoir writer uncover and work with the "stepping stone moments" we all have in our lives. These crucial experiences change us deeply at the core, and are different for different people. Besides obvious life events like marriage or the birth of a child, stepping stone moments may include seemingly small events like hearing someone say something that makes a deep and lasting impression. For a memoirist, knowing what these moments are helps to structure the individual story in a way that others can relate to, giving it universal appeal.

Having the courage to be vulnerable can also help others, even when this is not our intent. Claire used quotations from famous journal keepers to illustrate how this daily practice can deep our lives. For William Stafford, it meant each event of his life "recognized itself, and passed into meaning." Cheryl Strayed said of her popular memoir Wild, "it was my job to make it about other people."

Claire ended her presentation with a reading from a memoir she is currently working on.

Who wasn't there: Absent writers recognized at conference

As writers, we value free speech and do our best to protect this right for ourselves and other writers. At the recent CNFC conference at the Banff Centre, a chair was set aside in each room to display the photo of a writer who has suffered the pain of being silenced.

The PEN photo is Ethiopian journalist Eskinder Nega, who is serving 18 years because he called for freedom of expression and an end to torture in his native land.

Amnesty International has organized a campaign of protest against the unjust incarceration of a man who did nothing more than to publish his informed opinion on matters of great importance to all. It is now possible for interested individuals to show their support for this jailed journalist by signing the Amnesty petition online.

Who was there: CNFC conference at the Banff Centre

The recent conference of the Creative Nonfiction Collective, CNFC, was a blizzard of information, activity and fun.

Commonwealth Writers' Prize winner and photo journalist Deni Bechard discussed writers as citizens. He spoke of civilization's need to explore new ways of doing things. His writing topics range from the Gulabi Gang of women activists in India to the non-aggressive society of Bonobos in the Congo.

Another highlight Elly Danica. Her memoir, Don't: a Woman's Word (1989) encouraged other women to break their silence about abuse and incest. Even so, many conference delegates were unaware of Elly's work. Hal Wake was present to interview her; the two first met when Peter Gzowski had Danica on CBC Morningside when her groundbreaking book came out.

Camilla Gibb, first known for her fiction, discussed her 2015 memoir with essayist Susan Olding, and Beth Kaplan gave a great workshop on how to perform your work effectively. John Barton, editor of the venerable and respected Malahat Review, talked about the value of Canada's literary magazines and advised writers on the how to get their work placed there.

Ethnographer Wayde Davis, another thinker who believes we humans must change our outlooks and approaches, gave an evening lecture that was open to the public as well as to conference attendees. Davis, who is not against mining per se, spoke in a calm and factual manner about Red Chris mine. During the lecture, Davis showed slides of the stunningly beautiful and formerly pristine Sacred Headwaters of three of BC's great salmon rivers, the Skeena, the Nass, and the Stickine. The breathtaking beauty of this wilderness area made his talk all the more poignant.

Davis described the ill-informed and ill-starred decision-making process that has led to the opening of the mine on Todigan Mountain. This uniquely gorgeous natural landscape and wildlife habitat of the largest population of stone sheep in the world, as well as various endangered wild mammals habitat is about to be sacrificed to "resource extraction." This rash decision was made by people who had never visited the area. After BC taxpayers subsidized the enormous cost of hydro delivery to this remote part of the province, the government gave the contract to the mining company that was responsible for the disastrous and preventable toxic spill at Mount Polley in 2014. Things could be worse; the original idea was for several mines in the area; however only one has gone ahead.

Overall, this interesting and informative conference, run by a lively and devoted group of organizers, offered more sessions than one person could attend. A late highlight was the Literary Cabaret, which included a hilarious session of impromptu storytelling, was ably led by Annie, who hosts a similar event at Blue Metropolis in Montreal. And speaking of Montreal, that's where next year's conference will be held. I hope to be there.

As a first timer, I found CNFC Banff a great venue as well as a great conference. The rooms were airy and spacious, and there was even water (with real glasses!) and tissues on each table. As Beth Kaplan quipped, "in case I make you cry." Before the conference ended, Devyaneh Salzmann visited delegates to discuss changing programs and residencies at the Banff Centre.