Two days ago as we left the cut-block the weather got weird - which is normal, in this Province. First, the egg-fryingly hot day transmogified into a glumping mosh pit of cloud giants. Dark and bumptious they rolled over the mountaintops, smacking into eachother in bumbles of thunder and haphazard burnbeams of light. The sun was low, though, so the whole valley was suffused with an incandescent, auburn glow which sparked off the snow patches on the surrounding mountains.

A flash of electricity bombed a mess of tree pollen into the air, and a mustard-yellow cloud dragoned it's way down a mountainside, slithering through treed couloirs, bouncing over ridges and shooting off tendrils of sun-illumined smoke.

The wind came in, then, in a big, blanketing whoosh that freed gajillions of pollen particles into the air, enveloping and obliterating the gravity-led dragon before it could reach the valley floor. The tall pine walls surrounding us on all sides creaked and groaned, as trees do, and began waving frantically around, shedding needles and branches in all directions in a desperate sacrificial attempt to lose some upper weight and save the whole.

Rah, rah, ciss-boom-bah! The whole unmechanized world came alive around us, seeming to be screaming, "I'm aliiiiiiiiiiive!" A flurry of activity, an explosion of life and color until BAM! the clouds released a torrent of rain, seasoned by hail.

This is the bush, and even though I'm going to thank GOD with every breath when I never have to do this job again, I'll miss it. I will.