Rising Above

I live in a town nestled in a valley surrounded by mountain ranges, at the end of an inlet which empties into the Pacific Ocean.  In 2.5 hours I can be in the provincial capital; in 1.5 hours I can be on a pristine, empty sand beach waxing a surfboard; I'm minutes from my choice of lakes.  Most days it's pretty idyllic.  But during a typical winter the rains can bucket down for days on end and the valley can be socked in with fog so thick it drips from the trees like rain. Mostly us valley folk just stay put and look for signs of clearing, but on the days it gets to be too much it's only a ten minute drive up "the hump" to break out of the fog and into blue skies.

There's also the Look Out, a fairly easy 45 - 50 minute hike.  From the top, on a clear day, the valley is laid out at your feet.  But on days when the Look out is basking under sunshine and blue skies, the valley can be blanketed with a thick layer of fog that is just as spectacular when standing above it.

I hike the Look Out fairly regularly.  The dog loves the freedom of running loose -- even if she does have to endure the dreaded towelling off at the end.  And I need the inclines to get ready for my Camino.  Because the first day of the Camino is the Pyrenees, from all reports a day of strenuous climbing followed by even more strenuous descending.

A day where they separate the men from the boys...the skin from the feet...the knees from the sockets...


Book Review:  Jeffery Deaver is the king of the plot twist.  Just when you think you're getting to the end of one of his books, there's always one more twist.  Sometimes it's one twist too many if you ask me.  The October List starts off with a twist -- the story is told in reverse.  Yep, end to beginning. Took a while to get my head around the story, kept having to look back to get my bearings and to remember who was who in the zoo.  But because so much effort was put into this backward telling, I felt the writing itself suffered. It read kind of like a cheap detective noir novel and the twists at the end (which was really the beginning) weren't all that surprising.  I'm not sure the gimmick paid off.