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A ray of sunshine amidst water torture

It was raining in Tiny Town. A steady, persistent, rain somewhere between drizzle and deluge. An ornery rain that had overstayed its welcome, like some tiresome politician trying to grind out one more vote in a pointless election.
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It was raining in Tiny Town. A steady, persistent, rain somewhere between drizzle and deluge. An ornery rain that had overstayed its welcome, like some tiresome politician trying to grind out one more vote in a pointless election. Grey clouds blocked the sun, rumoured to be somewhere in the heavens, and painted the world in muted shades of dark and light, a damp charcoal drawing starting to run together and lose its definition at the edges. Wisps of fog — cloud droppings — cascaded down the many drainages like mosquito netting over beds in a malarial jungle.

I noticed it most walking around the village; it was easier to ignore sweating over a computer screen trying to write pieces about ski trips that seem like distant memories, blocking out feelings of being cheated out of what should have been an epic spring skiing season. But in the village, people danced the dance of misery. They hunched their shoulders, snuggled down into their overcoats and parkas hoping to keep the trickle of cold water sliding down their necks from reaching their backs. They looked at their shoes, just beginning to get squishy and sodden. They talked to themselves as they walked along. When they looked up — if they looked up — their faces were screwed into scowling grimaces. Especially the tourists. “Guidebook didn’t say anything about raining all the time, dammit.”

Some long-ago time, back in the days of the bourgeois dynasties, the ancient Chinese were reputedly the first civilization to recognize the demoralizing, deranging effects of persistent rain. Over the course of many centuries, they realized the slow, steady drip of simple water could wear down great mountains. If rock eventually capitulated to dripping water, certainly men would do the same… and since it probably wouldn’t take centuries, it’d be way more fun than watching mountains melt.

This geo-cultural insight arrived just in the nick of time. Grasping the obvious, they immediately realized just how useful this knowledge would be when the British showed up to trade opium for tea. Reputedly, the first English Gentleman they guinea pigged water torture on laughed and called them crazy. After several hours, he was in a more conciliatory mood. By the end of the day, he was reluctantly willing to eat chow mein and not call it “filthy Woggie swill”. After a couple of days, he actually admitted Chinese Checkers was a superior board game to chess. When a week’s worth of drips had dimpled his forehead and he was completely starkers, barking like a Yorkshire terrier and speaking in tongues, he finally capitulated fully to their outrageous demands… agreeing to bathe.

Dripping water. Insidious.

Dripping water tortures our concept of time, itself an insidious, unstoppable force and simultaneously a slippery concept. Wasn’t it just six months ago that we were stuck in the rain, waiting around for winter to arrive so we could start to ski, wondering if winter would arrive or if this might be the year it was cancelled on account of global warming? We offered sacrifices, burnt skis for Ullr, in our own way petitioned whatever we think of as holy, crafted craven images to pagan gods, agreed to be kind to tourists if only it’d snow.

Six months later, we’re stuck in the rain, waiting around for spring to show up so we can flash a little ghostly white flesh, culture a new batch of skin cancer at Lost Lake and enjoy the bike trails around town without packing along bags of guilt for ripping them up while they’re mostly mud, at least the parts that aren’t still snow. Oh spring, why hath thou abandoned us?

Depending on your perspective — and you’re relatively dryness — time weighs heavy, or flies right now. You can waste it, save it, borrow it, bide it, tell it, kill it, buy it, mark it, make it, and run out of it. Time can be in or out, on your side or against you. You can be on time and under time constraints. But you can’t stop it. Two-thirds of spring is gone, one more month ‘til official summer; somewhere people are wearing shorts. Somewhere, not here.

So time marches on. It’s just the direction that seems fuzzy. Some science guys who deal in theoretical physics have written a lot lately about how time can mobius back onto itself, breaking what we like to think of as the time continuum and actually allow for the possibility of time travel. This raises the ever-interesting question: If you could time travel, when would you go back to? And if you did, would you screw up the universe by changing it? Of course you would. Who wouldn’t?

Those with a more poetic bent have likened time to a flowing river, glittering in a silvery sheen and meandering off into an unknown sunset.

I like to think of time as being more like my hair in the morning — kind of all over the place. One moment, I’m in the here and now, the next moment, I’m somewhere else, a trip triggered by some random synapse, a smell, a snatch of song, a word, a touch, a lucid thought, a drug flashback. Who knows?

When time allows, I’ll use the comb of planning and try to organize myself to its relentless rhythm. Usually though, time doesn’t allow for such niceties and it’s just easier to throw on the ball cap of crises management and cover up as much of the problem as possible.

But the time is now and with any luck, there’s going to be a change in the weather for the unofficial Canadian kickoff to summer — Victoria Day weekend. Despite the bad rap of history, Vicky was a party girl and it is in that spirit we celebrate her weekend. It wasn’t all tight corsets and high collars around Vicky’s palace. Every year on this very weekend, she and her courtiers would party like Romans. There was too much food, too much flesh, too much merriment and way too much to drink. So much in fact that Victorians spent the rest of the year in somber, sober dullness just to make amends and detoxify themselves.

With sunshine and warmer weather promised for this weekend, we should honour Vicky’s spirit and party like there’s no summer coming and this is our only chance. Given current climate change models, it just might be. Here’s a notable list of this weekend’s top five things to do.

5. Walk the Valley Trail.

4. Peel down at the Lost Lake dock… you know you want to.

3. Go for a bike ride.

2. Spend quality time on a sunny patio.

1. Have a ski-in picnic up on Blackcomb Glacier.