A day with the grand kids

I managed to score a couple of grandkids for a day. Longer would have been better, but you make the most with what you have.

It took us almost ten hours to make the two-hour trip from Creston to Mary’s place on the shores of Kocanusa in Kragmont.

One of our many stops was Fort Steele.

Fort Steele: where my mother brought me when I was a child.

Fort Steele: where a girl friend was honored, after she was accidently drowned. Lorna’s casket was carried by the huge Clydesdale horses, down the highway to the graveyard that also held the first RCMP officers, killed in the line of duty in the 1800’s.

Fort Steele: where I brought my own children to walk along streets lit up by carved pumpkins. Where an actor, playing the part of a crazy dentist, chased Travis down the street scaring him half to death. Where years later Travis joined the drama club and got pay-back by scaring the heck out of a new generation.

Fort Steele, where I rode the river on a great paddle wheeler with my mom. A boat which floated away during exceptionally high spring water and is gone now.

Where I competed in a race on the train tracks with Debbie, Mary and Margaret.

Where I rode on the steam train with a parade of friends, kids and exchange students.

And now.. Fort Steele: where I took my grandsons.

After checking out the horses, Adam spent about an hour with the blacksmith. It was hard for Nick and I to stay focused on steel forging, so we moved on and checked out a couple of the old shops and went gold panning. Nick scored something shiny I thought for sure was gold, but he assured me it was just iron pyrite: can’t fool these kids!

We did eventually make it to Mary’s, on the shores of Koocanusa: a 144 km long resevoir. The name is derived from Kootenay, Canada and the USA. When I was a kid, the Kootenay river flowed along here, and Kragmont was located where the lake is now, but in 1972 the Libby Dam in Montana flooded out a number of towns and among the Ponderosa Pine and Douglas Fir trees, the Kikomun Creek Provincial Park was born.

In the past, this area was grazing land for cattle of the early settlers and horses of the Ktunaxa First Nation People: also known as the Kootenay, Kutenai or Kootenai and part of the Salish Tribe. A lot of these people still live in the area.

Beside people, there are beaver, muskrats, badgers, elk, bears, coyotes, cougars, deer, osprey, owls, Herons…. Over the years we have met up with them all. Yesterday, the kids and I went looking for turtles: Western Painted Turtles. And we found them: at Surveyors Lake.

Surveyors is one of a number of smaller lakes in the park. It is where I spent a lot of time with my kids when they were younger. For the first two weeks of July for almost five years, I was the Red Cross Swimming Instructor. Monte and Travis took lessons and played with friends. Gabe fished. We had picnics and parties here and always made the trek around the lake.

It took George, Mary’s youngest son, now 25, and Nick, Adam and I about two hours to get around yesterday. The water table was down and we attempted a short cut with only one casualty: Adam failed to walk on top of the deep bird dung, discovering a downside to being twelve.

Ad was up to his knees in white goop while Nickolas danced along on top. Grandma scrambled across on pieces of driftwood and George stayed on the path, and laughed .

We laughed a lot. We also admired the wild flowers and the stillness of the water. We saw fish, dragonflies, Surveyor’s Lake lobsters, and yes, lots of turtles.

Summer is all about family, friends and the water. It astounds me that these seemingly unchangeable items have changed so much over the years!

The faces of my family are different as they get married and introduce new blood, have children, get old, die. New people come into our lives while others leave. Many of the people I love have spread out around the globe. Friends are coming and going, and getting older.

And it is not just the people: the landscape is changing. Areas are cleared, buildings are built, even the water table goes up and down.

It is weird to find the children you play with are now grandchildren and you are going places with them that may or may not have existed when you were a child.

But I guess we are doing ok.. our kids trust us enough to lend out their own children. I really try not to break them when I am in charge.

Sorry about the bird poo Paula.