many big events since i last wrote. they all pile up, as usual, and become too large to write about. hopefully the pictures will give you the gist. highlights… 

i recently had a little art show here on the island, which was a visual journey of the 2015 deh cho canoe trip. photos transferred onto canvas along with little tidbits of journalings and thoughts from the trip. it was a fun show, and made me so happy to relive the experience of the trip and share it with my friends. for my birthday this summer john and i took a road-trip to strathcona park and hiked up to marble meadows. i got to do a little bit of canoeing because the shortest way up the mountain was to canoe 25 minutes across buttle lake to get to the trailhead, so there was a wee bit of time on the water, but definitely less than usual. i’ll save the photos from that for a post of its own.

the marimba band played three shows, always fun, energetic and full of joy. one was the dock show which got rained out so we transferred to the hall and somehow had perhaps an even better show than we would’ve had on the dock, we were all just so hyped. another was the annual arts festival, one of my favourite events of the year. violet did the kitchen on saturday and a bunch of us helped out with that. the photo of the tub of beans below a testament to feeding masses. later in july vi & carly put on a sweet little sunday brunch at the hall and john, sean, mark and kaia played music for it.

susanne and el, and then corrina, came to visit. though all visits were short it was so lovely to have them and take a tiny bit of time off of working, which lately has been milling on almost all my days off. exciting! i’m so very excited that we’ve started milling, it will be a long process, building the house, but this feels like a major first step. at first we were milling for my cistern shed and johns lumber shed, but now we’ve completed the cut lists for those and are onto house lumber. we’ve also worked on building a lumber shed at my place to house most of the lumber we cut. another adventure we’ve been on twice so far is beachcombing! it’s great because it’s both work and fun. we get to be out on the water and we find wood at the same time, along with exploring the various shorelines around these parts.

other than all of that, the usual summer of beach dinners, some swimming, canoeing, biking and being extremely social has been rolling along. last night standing under the full moon, remnants of sunset through the trees to the west, perfectly cool night air and tree-silhouettes, i just felt ever so grateful to be living this life.