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Gray Matters – Nelson News |
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Nelson, jewel of the West Kootenays, was overtaken by flower children in the late sixties. They came to dodge the US draft or to simply hunker down with Mother Nature in that spectacular setting. Far from government snoops and proponents of water fluoridation, they intended to live off that land with flocks of kids, of both the goat and human varieties, all unvaccinated and born the natural way.
They home schooled children with names like Star Child and Karma, and they clambered to those homes in clunker trucks over rough logging roads. To tame plots of paradise, they learned to use chainsaws with three-foot blades, draw knives, adzes, froes, and gin poles with a cross hauls. They canned organic vegetables that often competed for garden space with marijuana. To stretch EI benefits, they sold dried herbs in their cooperatives, called parents for loans, and defeated public referendums.
My neighbours hewed home improvements each summer. Losing the gumption to even chop firewood in winter, however, they fired cast-iron ranges with furnishings and siding shakes to heat shanties and venison stew. Although a few persevered to build notable homes and lives in those woods, most merged with the mainstream as realtors when their children needed money for college. Suits and ties replaced beards and gumboots when they sold their lands and dreams to the next generation of those who would improve this world by dropping out of it.
Dread-locked, tattooed and pierced grandchildren of those hairy originals today pump fresh and funky life into Nelson’s enduring counter-culture. These contribute novel crafts to the artsy shops along Nelson’s historic Baker Street and they loiter in its outdoor cafes to ponder profundities and self-fulfillment. They appear as scruffy and scary to codgers as did my neighbours of the sixties.
Consider actual samplings from Nelson’s newspaper, The Express, dated Wednesday, August 29, 2007:
Notices
Celestina Hart provides “88 hours of profound play” at the Om Yoga Studio, involving “self exploration via the making and wearing of three masks into clown, Sound/movement, beingness/spontaneity, initiatory & transformational.”
The Chant Choir of Studio Cantilena will focus this season upon “Modes Communicating Wisdom…. Participants will work on a selection of texts of archaic but timeless wisdom literature set to the ancient Gregorian chant modes…. The accompanying sounds of Tibetan singing bowls will complement the mystical perception of timelessness in chant.”
Support the “Signing Choir [for the deaf?],” the “Community Drum Circle” and “An Amazing Peer Support Group” with its “young womyn’s [sic] hour.”
Classifieds
Will sell “2 Cuban Tree Frogs” — $12 for both.
“Lost … a garbage bag containing my sleeping bag and clothes.”
“Female Wanted” to share house “with two dreadlock males.”
Wanted —“Leather jackets, pants and skirts you no longer wear.”
“30’ Yurt Owner Seeks small acreage.”
“Young women home steading [sic] raw land needing any building materials to make it through the winter.”
“Straw bale house for rent.”
News
The Kootenay Career Development Society will receive $1.6 million in government funds to “guide people to self employment, a popular option in Nelson.”
Horoscope
“Mystical wonders you have seen the bottom of all your troubles. At least for now. Swim around and take your ease. The whale knows the secret.” [Where’s that whale?]
October 2007 Barb Shave
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