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Bull Ridin’
By Peter Christensen
Op-Ed Commentary
Bull Ridin’ is on, bands are playing, Melissa Etheridge is singing, Blue Rodeo is coming, a resident bass player is playing in three ‘local’ bands proving it is possible for musicians to make half a living in the East Kootenay. It’s valley appreciation ‘daze’, the Rotary club is flipping free flapjacks.
Summertime and the livin’ is easy.
The Hero of “the valley” is a wild bull rider, an enticing speaker, a rising hockey star, a renaissance man who can build and sail a boat, climb Everest and sing in a way that will move others to tears.
Heroines must be transexual when called upon, grow a garden, belong to a dozen identity organizations, be strong and feminine and if by happen stance they miss out on attachment to a high school sweethearts reluctantly join a single’s online group and peruse the ‘market,’ meet prospects only to find that the human who described themselves in stimulating language is shorter or taller than supposed, has bad breadth, expensive dental problems and is better a friend than a mate for life.
21st Century mating rituals are complicated.
On the pleasant shore of Lake Windermere, next to a community art gallery, once the lakeside home of aristocracy, lies a short stretch of sandy beach where dazzling teenage girls clad in uncomfortable pink string bikinis tan and giggle, feel safe and are beheld by young men cruising their open straight pipes while eating burgers.
Behind the beach 13 trains a day carry freight and coal to Vancouver, make the large round bend below rows of townhouses where the screech of iron wheels on laid tracks and the roar of massive red engines is blocked by the view, or so it seems?
From time-to-time young families arrive and position themselves on fresh blue blankets. Young husbands break away from nursing mothers and swim to a raft the village anchored where the water is deep enough one can dive and return, climb its ladder, stand on its platform, shake droplets from the torso, squeeze water from their arms before lying quietly for a moment on the white granular deck, their eyes shut, let the hot sun dry their bodies while they daydream about past courting rituals and remind themselves that rearing children is important for commerce, family and the future.
Summertime is upon us. Whole towns are on evacuation alert. We close our windows.
Reunions abound, stories are told by ‘cottagers’ about renting 12 beds to drifting winter sports teams; wake boarders surf rollers emanating from the rear of speeding boats, evening brings the purr of powered rafts, everyone aboard sipping insulated troubles.
I love valley life, am distraught by people who lived here for 45 years selling out and moving to The Island, a quiet house with a creek in the back yard. With furrowed brows we share our concluding time over coffee and memories, recite what we liked or not, know that with time all revelry passes and soon it will be fall.
– Peter Christensen is a Columbia Valley based writer and poet.
