The Pear Tree

Posts Tagged ‘outdoors’

There are two ways I’ve found of getting through the winter. The first is to hunker down in a warm place and bide my time safely removed from the elements. When I get sick to death of that, I force myself outdoors to confront my discomfort with the cold, and attempt to find some pleasure in it.

Last week, with temperatures nosediving down to minus 30C (with the wind chill), it was a hunkering week. We only went out when absolutely required.

This week we needed – all of us – to break the cabin fever and do something, anything, somewhere, anywhere but home.

So we headed to Father Pandosy’s Mission, in Kelowna’s Mission area, with its collections of old cabins, houses, sheds and a little chapel.

My kids loved snooping through the buildings last summer, imagining how Laura and Mary and their family and neighbours might have lived in the Little House on the Prairie days.

While we could still come onto the property and wander around, the buildings were locked up for the winter…

Leaving us to peek through the handsome, heavy windows to glimpse the inside…

Or just photograph them from a distance.

Father Pandosy’s Mission is a popular place for wedding photos. I used to hate the pics I saw from there because they always boasted a heavy country/western theme. But lately, I’ve been seeing the old buildings with new eyes, and find them endlessly inspirational for photographing.

So I thought I’d share some of my favourite shots from today’s visit here.

All these pics were taken with my Instagram app on my iPhone. If you use Instagram yourself, look me up: I’m @MrsPearTree. I’ll follow you if you follow me

These stairs were so skinny and steep, leading up to a little room above the chapel, I couldn’t help but wonder how the person or people who used them daily felt about going up and down everyday – especially in the winter!

There’s an open shed filled with old buggies, wagons and sleighs that the kids love sitting in. I loved all these wheels – layers and layers of them.

Amélie was right at home in this old buggy. It was pimped out with flashy red wheels.

I love the idea of adding to the history of these old buildings by living our own stories in and around them.

Our visit really did help brighten the winter doldrums. And now we’re back home and the snow is coming down again. Time to hunker back down, at least for the rest of the afternoon. At least we have electricity and central heating, which is more than I can say about those poor settlers who gave us those buildings. Another thing to be thankful for!

- Words and photos by Lori-Anne Poirier

I’m not a camper, even at the best of times.

I’ve done it, and survived, and even have a few fun memories out of the deal. But I am a city girl. A small city, perhaps, but a city nonetheless.

Yes, I am one of those cringe-inducing women who startle at the sound of a twig snapping in the forest, who fears a bear or cougar is hiding around every tree, and who moans loud and long at the lack of indoor plumbing. I get creeped out by the absence of car noises and sirens lulling me to sleep, and I am not the least bit amused by the merriment of neighbouring campers (if we’re going to go the campground route) late into the evening.

So it should come as no surprise that I had no intention of taking my own kids camping until they were old enough to take themselves. Why bring two vulnerable and needy small people into a situation that I don’t want to be in myself?

Oh, I know people do it all the time. Hiking out into the wilds to set up camp with a newborn strapped to their back.

My mom, who never took me or my brother and sister camping when we were small, told me all about it when she admonished me for not taking my own younglings out before now.

Last weekend, I succumbed. My niece goes to a boarding school in the middle of nowhere, and begged me (since I hadn’t been before) to come out for graduation. It wasn’t her graduation – that’s next year, but she really wanted me to see her life there, her room, her friends, the things that were important to her in this world away from home. How can any decent aunt say no to that?

The catch was, since it was graduation weekend and the place would be flooded with families and friends of the graduates, I would need to camp out with her family in a big trailer tent.

Mr. Pear Tree, who couldn’t get time off of work, wouldn’t be there, but my two little ones would.

I want to tell you that everything went off without a hitch and the experience was so fan-flipping-tastic that I’ll be out shopping for a tent this week so we can go again at our earliest possible convenience.

The good news is, we didn’t see any bears or cougars. However, my daughter Amélie started showing signs of a head cold shortly after we embarked on our three-hour drive up. By the time we got there, she was cranky, her eyes were red-rimmed and her nose was a faucet. She refused to nap (tell me what other kids besides mine refuse to sleep in a moving car?) and, by the time we got settled and fed and toured around and caught up, it was the kids’ usual bedtime.

But they did not want to go to bed. They wanted to run and explore. Being on vacation, I tried to cut them some slack. So I put them to bed a little bit later in the hopes that they would sleep in, in the morning. When I did finally get them in bed they were so wired from lack of sleep combined with enthusiasm for their new digs, that they opted to bounce on the bed, giggle and throw their blankets around instead. I, on the other hand, had left my sense of humour back in civilization.

Two-and-a-half hours past their bedtime, they finally succumbed – Oliver, for the night, Amélie about 90 minutes. She then proceeded to wake me up every half hour or so. All. Night. Long. She then woke up at 6 a.m., fresh as a daisy and ready to start her day.

I, on the other hand, was a mess, cranky, disturbed and muttering things about how this was a mistake and I knew I shouldn’t have come and how, that’s it, we’re going home today. Except I was in no condition to drive on windy mountain roads for three hours, sleep deprived as I was.

So while I slept a good chunk of the day away, my kids went out for a big explore with their grandma. aunty, uncle and cousins. When they came back, they were so vibrant and alive, dirty, but full of stories about what they’d seen and touched and done.

They went to bed much better that night, after a few songs and some bedtime stories about my own experiences camping years ago. They were that good kind of exhausted – the kind that fresh air and exercise and dirt and discovering new things in the great outdoors brings on.

And I knew that, despite the miserable time I had, we would be back in the woods, to sleep, to camp, to be, sooner rather than later. Because, I remembered when all was said and done, that sometimes, when you’re the mom, it isn’t just about what you like anymore.

- Words by Lori-Anne Poirier