The Weather

In case you ever wondered who controls the weather, I will tell you.  I do.

While touring over the course of the last two summers, I have experienced floods, fires, record-breaking heat, record-breaking cold, mudslides, torrential rains…. the list goes on.  You may be thinking: “oh yeah sure.  YOU control the weather.  I thought that it was the wind and the tides and the moon and the sun.”  Well, you’re wrong.  I know that it’s me because at 3/4s of the venues I play, a manager stops me on my way in to apologize for the turn out: “We were expecting a lot more folks but because of this damn [insert weather anomaly here] it’s a pretty small crowd.  We can still buy you a beer, if you want.”  So doubters, let me ask you: Can anyone else boast numbers like that?  

I didn’t think so.

I booked a show in Calgary, Alberta as part of this year’s summer tour.  While I always enjoy visiting my home and native land, I was especially looking forward to this show.  See, my Alberta connections run deep.  When I was a kid, my dad worked away from home in Pincher Creek, Alberta,  laying rebar for the Old Man River Dam.  As a child I used to spend weeks away from home at summer camp near Pine Lake, Alberta, a place 2 hours north of Calgary, 2 hours south of Edmonton and exactly nowhere.  

Those summers.  I remember that after the sun set ’round 9:00, Aurora Borealis would dance most nights, a brilliant green.  I remember that sometimes after lunch, the dining hall would erupt into a rapid fire exchange of “Let’s Go Oilers” countered by “Go Flames Go!”  The Edmonton kids versus the Calgary kids.  Sporks flying.  I remember us rebels sneaking out for a smoke while the counselors were distracted by the chaos.  

I remember the summer I brought my guitar.  There was a tornado, almost one mile wide, that touched down near the camp.  All of us were in the dining hall that evening, confused by what we could see and hear outside of the high, tall windows.  No one knew what it was.  Goodness knows there was no storm shelter.  The tornado was on the ground for 30 minutes and killed 12 people at a trailer park nearby.  

Eventually I moved to Calgary and attended college there.  I did 2 semesters, I burned my bridges, I never looked back.  

But the show!  Yes the show was to be my triumphant return!

Then word came that on June 19, 2013 Alberta experienced torrential rains that resulted in the quick rise of the Bow and Elbow Rivers.  These rivers converge in downtown Calgary.  By June 20th, nearly 75,000 Calgarians were evacuated from their homes, the downtown core was gutted, sections of the Trans-Canada Highway were washed away and south of Calgary, the town of High River was, in essence, abandoned by those lucky enough to get out.  (150 of the unlucky ones were rescued from the roofs of their homes.)

The Saddledome, home of the Calgary Flames (“Go Flames Go”) was flooded through the 14th row of seats.

And all this because I booked a show in town.  

***

I grew up in the remote countryside of rural British Columbia.  The Slocan Valley.  My grandmother once wrote a poem called “The Beauty of the Valley,” her gorgeous protagonist the curvaceous Slocan River.  This summer I booked us a show at the cafe where my parents met 35 years ago.  Between the fiasco in Calgary and the show in the Slocan Valley, we aimed to swim and brown at the river’s edge.  The air in the valley is the sweetest thing in this world, second only to the cool, green waters.

There are no cell towers polluting the airspace there, no wifi, no high-speed.  There are no street lights, no traffic lights, no traffic, strip malls, no strips.  Everything is where I left it 15 years ago when I moved away.  Everything is where my parents found it 35 years ago.  The place is pristine by it’s very nature.

But then Melissa Ruth came back to town and they were having this long, hot summer with those dry electrical storms.  There was a lightening strike, a forest fire.  Then there were the helicopters and water bombers and fire fighters.  There was no rain and only high, tall wind.

There was a fueling station for the choppers back up in the woods.  And then there was a tanker with a driver who was lost.  And then the tanker went into the creek and the 32000 litres of jet fuel leaked from the overturned tanker, the tanker that slid off of the mountain road, and drained into Lemon Creek and rushed through the white water into the arching curve of the sweet, and slow, green Slocan.