There are a number of organizations whose purpose is to promote the fortunes of local businesses, particularly businesses that cater to tourists, one being Nelson Kootenay Lake Tourism. An interesting variant is the job of Nelson’s Cultural Ambassador, a person who promotes local artists.
My website and blog do not lie within this group for, although I present Kootenay Lake, I don’t promote it. I merely offer a collection of personal reflections about where I live.
Yet, while not promoting the region, I am aware that my site does represent it — particularly given that it averages about five-thousand visitors a month from around the globe.
Techie stuff: The pictures to be shown have already been transferred and will be presented through one projector. I will appear through another projector via FaceTime from my living room. My host will provide a running translation into the local language. The interview is Thursday.
The breadth of my site’s footprint was brought home to me when, from a distance of nine time zones, I was asked if I would be willing to be interviewed at a meeting and show some of my pictures of Kootenay Lake.
As such, it appears that I will be representing us from afar. What follows in this first posting are the notes I shall follow when talking about why I explore my locale with a camera. The next posting will be my take on the Lake, itself.
******* Below are the opening notes and images that set the stage. *********
My front yard touches a large lake; my back yard abuts a mountain forest. I explore both.
This is a tiny portion of the extensive lake that fills 400 square kilometres of the valley floor.
The forest sweeps up the mountainside
to alpine meadows, glaciers, and mountains reaching over 3000 metres.
The lake and creeks contain fish.
The forest contains wildlife.
And both forest and lake are awash with birds.
This is Kootenay Lake. It is a minor lake in the Canadian context, yet it has an area larger than the Swiss portion of Lake Geneva. It lies in the Kootenay Districts of British Columbia, sparsely populated mountainous regions that have an area over twice that of Switzerland but with fewer than 2% of its people.
The Kootenays in Canada are Switzerland without the Swiss.
Before I retired to my lakeshore, a corner of my career had been spent making sense of small-scale meteorological phenomena. For example, the appearance of the uncommon but delightful frost flowers. These do not come about from the expected process of vapour cooling, but from vapour mixing.
Then there were steam devils: vortices from obstructions that are revealed by steam fog rising from warm water.
Two of my favourites were the green flash, a momentary island of emerald green light atop the low sun.
And walking on water: a vision where people appear to be strolling out over a water surface and among boats.
Now in my retirement I have sought to learn about the world of Kootenay Lake. It has turned out to be as rich as anything I might have imagined (to be continued in the next posting).
Representation afar 2
This is the second posting where I represent the delights of Kootenay Lake to folks attending a meeting some nine time zones away. The first discussed my situation and my photography, this one presents features of the lake itself.
When I explore Kootenay Lake, I do it with a camera. The resulting pictures enable me to study discoveries at my leisure, and then report on them on my blog.
The pictures I show here are only a peek into the delights of the region.
The interaction of the water and shoreline is endlessly fascinating to me. Here is the beautiful, but uncommon pattern known as beach cusps.
Equally ephemeral delights are the many wild orchids found around the shores. The Giant Helleborine is only found in Western North America.
Kootenay Lake plays host to two species of swan, one of which, the Trumpeter is the world’s largest waterbird. It has a wing span of over two metres.
We also have two species of bear. The grizzly is our counterpart of Europe’s brown bear,
and the Black Bear, which despite its name, comes in a striking array of colours. Here is a cinnamon version,
and a blue one.
Seven species of ungulates (hoofed animals) wander our mountains, two of which I show. Our mountain goat, which is distantly related to Europe’s chamois, spends its time on the protective narrow ledges of mountain cliffs.
The bighorn sheep is unique to the mountains of western North America. They are noted for the enthusiasm with which they fight for their mates.
I am fascinated by the interactions of various species. Sometimes this takes the form of mating, such as these copulating Spotted Sandpipers.
Sometimes the interest is the nurturing of offspring by a parent: This Tree Swallow is bringing food to its chicks.
Often it is food gathering, such as this White-tailed buck taking apples from a tree.
And a grizzly sow eating black hawthorn berries.
Here a River Otter is eating a fish it captured.
For a long time, I tried to get a shot of an osprey lifting a fish from the lake. This picture marked success.
Another delight was watching an eagle eating a large rainbow trout at the edge of the water.
In the end, my favourite shot is of a vole facing death in the bill of a heron. As the vole stares into the eyes of the heron, does it know that in less than a second it will vanish down that heron’s gullet?
My penultimate offering is a curiosity. In the mountain lakes of British Columbia, there are legends of a large serpentine lake monster. It is our counterpart to the Loch Ness Monster. Known as the Ogopogo, stories of it predate European settlement and it has continued to be spotted perhaps in every decade since. I have seen it swimming across the lake from my home on two occasions. On this occasion it caught and crushed a fish as it undulated up the lake.
When it spotted me watching from a distant dock, it headed straight at me with the loops of its snake-like body rising and falling in the water.
When it neared me, it turned out to be a family of River Otters.
It seems that our lake monster is just a distantly seen family of travelling otters, but observed by someone who just does not not understand otter behaviour. Here is the ogopogo when it is not coursing down the lake, but resting on an ice shelf — not all that scary.
I end with a picture I tried to get for decades — and when I managed it, it was taken in front of my home. It is a low-sun rainbow with the circle completed by its reflection in the calm waters of the lake.
