you know it's time for new contacts when you take yours out and the world gets LESS fuzzy....

*

Yesterday morning, I was packing to head out for a hike. I dropped a contact lens and couldn't find it... as i was looking, I took a step backward and *crunch* stepped on my glasses, which had fallen onto the floor. Wicked [they're broken]. Found my contact, put it in. Banged my shin on an open drawer. Tossed my full Nalgene into my knapsack with my notes, my book, and my camera. Nalgene not fully closed = bag full of half a litre of water. Emptied it all out, and threw it on a towel to dry. Hopefully it will all recover... i didn't have time to look at it because i had to sprint to make it to the bus on time... we were supposed to leave at 9 sharp, and i made it there at 9:02. Relatively speaking, I think i was ten minutes early. *sigh* Apparently, heading west doesn't make you less clumsy.

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Spent Sunday exploring a Metis Settlement and some historic sites (Fort Carlton and Battoche)... As we drove down the highway, I was thinking about how much has changed. 6000 years ago, people were walking the same path on foot. Then the Spanish introduced horses. In the 1800s, the explorers and trappers arrived. And then immigrants, looking for farmland in their wagons. Then the railroad. And the first cars. And now buses, where you can watch the Matrix [in French, godammit], and not even notice the landscape. I wish I could come back in another 200 years. Maybe I'll invest in cyrogenics.

Lots of thoughts about our treatment of First Nations people, about how little is ever said about their history or about their current practices. We speak of First Nations societies as though they're dead, even though so many are alive and fighting and struggling to maintain traditional practices. I think that there's a problem when you render a people invisible except when you're noting all its problems. I don't know what the answer is. Can two completely different ways of life find a way to coexist?

I have spent some time here talking to a guy from Nunavik, which is up in Northern Quebec at the very top of Hudson's Bay. He's Inuit - first language is Inuktatuk - and his experience has been so completely different from mine. I think there are 300 people in his village. He flies six hours south just to get to Montreal. I flew two hours and covered three provinces and landed in Halifax.

It's so frustrating to be limited to the French language, but every day is getting better. I hope that by the end, I'll be able to converse with him without having to ask him to repeat every other word.

*

It's pouring here! First time it has rained in two weeks, and it's so beautiful. Hopefully it will kill all the dust. I'm not looking forward to the ramifications in the mosquito population... I might just find myself a beekeepers suit. Being cool is for losers.

I look like i have the chicken pox, but it's mosquito bites. State of mind, I tell myself, but it isn't helping much.

Life is good. Must go play in rain, now.

2:59 p.m. - 2003-06-02