Skip to content

The Loon Lake area is starting to green up again, and the birds are coming back.

However, changes to the climate mean that some plants that used to do well there don’t anymore.
web1_170524-ACC-M-170524-ACC-M-Campfire-PD

The greening has started

The green season has begun. The snow and ice have gone north for about six months, and all along Loon Lake Road green is springing out; roadside plants always seem to green up first. Of course, we will still be visited by the occasional snow and hail storms, such as on the May long weekend, but the green will hang in until about late September or October now.

I still am thrilled to watch the new leaves and shoots emerge and the landscape take on all the shades of new green growth. This year the new growth and leafing out is several weeks later than the last few years. Overall, it seems to me we have just experienced an “old time” winter, one of those that lasted from November until April.

Pushing the gardening zones

The prolonged cold and snow also meant that the Loon Lake Road area reverted to being a Zone 3 gardening area, and I have lost some of the warmer zone plants like lavender that have been doing well for several years. Well, I knew I was pushing the zones, and expected this to happen some winter. The positive side is that it means space for more new plants, and that is what spring is about for this gardener. To my surprise, my young hazelnut bush has decided to bloom, and maybe I might even get a home grown hazelnut, if the squirrels don’t get it first.

Birds are back

The hummingbirds and the eagles are back, so now it also sounds like spring. White-crowned sparrows are flitting everywhere. Unfortunately for the eagles, both Loon and Hihium Creeks are full of water, so the eagles can’t just wade through and get a fish as they have some years. This year they need to be a bit more agile at catching them on the fly. For a big bird, eagles certainly are able to move fast through tree branches and brush. I enjoy watching them as they balance on the very tip of a spruce tree, with the immature ones often having to try a landing several times before they succeed in coming to rest.

What are we?

The wildlife and changes in the natural landscape are some of the major attractions of places like Loon Lake Road. The road is 31km long, winding through parts of the Bonaparte River valley and then Loon Creek valley and following along the northern shore of Loon Lake. It passes through an impressive landscape; but what has been added by human habitation has not been all that positive. The ranch lands are attractive, but the roadside along the lakeshore is so jam-packed with parked vehicles, trailers, campers, boats, and other stuff on wheels that detract from the landscape.

Loon Lake Road is a long, thin strip of roadside settlements with a distinct agricultural air and a lakeside residential area, and does not really qualify to be called a community as such. If not, then what is it? The word rural used to be applied to areas like this, but now towns like Clinton and Cache Creek are referred to as rural; so what is a strip settlement out in the countryside?

I often see the term “back country” now in use to refer to areas outside municipal boundaries. It is a term used by unthinking city folk to refer to the forests and lakes where they go to unwind. Back of what? Where is the front country? This term is quite demeaning and negative, with associations such as “backwater” or “backwoods” and rustic, which all have come to take on suggestions of a lack of culture and education. What is wrong with the word “countryside” if the word rural has been taken up by small towns? I remember as a child that as soon as you went off the cultivated land around your house you were “in the bush”.

The natural beauty of the landscapes in this area is unparalleled anywhere. There is such variety, from the dramatic mesas and open hills around Ashcroft and Cache Creek and the rolling grasslands along the Bonaparte to the forested hillsides and valley of Loon Creek and on toward the forests and small lakes of the Bonaparte Plateau and Arrowstone Mountains.

Turn then and look at the built landscape, that which bears the mark of human hands, the cultured “front country”. Kamloops is one huge, ugly scar of concrete boxes connected by wide slashes of asphalt. People who live in places like that presume to call Loon Lake Road the “back country”. How very silly we have become.

Fire restrictions in force

With spring come fire restrictions on outdoor burning. The slow arrival of warmer weather has meant that only very large burning is restricted at this time. However, things can change fast, and wildfire authorities note it is your responsibility to know what bans and restrictions are in place for your area.

Further, it is your responsibility to know which fire district you are in. For Loon Lake Road, that district is the Cariboo Fire District; so when you listen to local Kamloops radio and they make some announcement from the Kamloops Fire Centre, it doesn’t apply here. We are in the Cariboo now.

You can find information online at http://bcfireinfo.for.gov.bc.ca/hprScripts/WildfireNews/Bans.asp. There have been changes on the fire centre website, and it seems very cumbersome to find information at this time. For those who would prefer to phone the office in 100 Mile House, the number is (250) 395-7831.