Maxed Out

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. This is one of those seemingly simple life lessons most everybody learns in childhood and then spends much of their adult life forgetting.

There's an eerie calm settling over Dodge, a stillness not entirely unlike the low-pressure stillness that blankets an area like a damp cloak just before a destructive summer storm barrels through.

Fifteen's tough. It's one of those unusual odd numbers that seems kind of even and round, owing to its triad grouping of fives, and therefore worthy of celebration. Yet, 15 isn't really an age most of us celebrate to any great extent.

There is a game that used to be popular - before all popular games required expensive play consoles plugged into TV screens - with both children and tipsy parlour partiers called, variously, telephone, broken telephone or, less politically correct, C

Spring forward. Yeah, I know. We did that a couple of weeks ago, plunging ourselves back into morning darkness to save a bit of electricity later in the day. I'm referring more to springing forward into spring, the season.

If you're anything like me - and you should be happy you're not - you've probably had a hard time keeping track of the news.

Hey boys and girls, let's have a party! Cake? We gotta have cake. Ice cream? Mmm... maybe too messy. But maybe. Mascots? Oh please, can we? Can't get too much of those cuddly fur balls. Besides, I hear they're out of work and nearly desperate.

"Is it safe?" The more I asked the question, the more I felt like Dr. Szell, the sadistic Nazi dentist from Marathon Man . "It" was an early season snowpack in the Cariboo mountains west of Valemount, B.C.

SCENE: The interior of an office. A silver-haired man sits in an over-stuffed club chair, furiously scribbling in a notebook. Another man lies on a chaise that looks like it belongs in Madonna's boudoir.

There was an eerie feeling heading into the village last Sunday, a stillness in the air. The roadblock at Nita Lake Lodge was abandoned, no police, no security personnel.