My last day here.

Well tomorrow I leave Num-Ti-Jah Lodge at 10:00 am, take a bus at 11:00 that takes me to the airport. My flight leaves at 5:50 pm so I will have a lot of time to kill. I'll probably get bored and end up spending tons of cash on overpriced airport beverages and snacks. My flight is supposed to land in Winnipeg at 8:44 pm, it probably won't be on time. I've never even been on a plane before (except in Heidi's dads little two seat'r, which was amazing!) so I don't know what to really expect from this flight. I guess it's a learning experience.

This morning I started packing my stuff up, the room looks so empty now. Oh well. I took a walk up to the lake and sat down on the stone beach. The water was as clear as glass, the sky cool blue. The mountains were perfectly illuminated in the morning sun, with absolutely no haze in the foreground. It was a little cold out so I was wearing a coat, but that is to be expected in October in the Rockies. There should be two feet of snow on the ground right now, but I'm not complaining at all, I love it. I took the path back, jumped the river and went into the Taj to say a last goodbye to its familiar walls. I walked next to the river after exiting the building that was now directly behind me, the fireplace being my next destination. We have a huge fire pit here with four benches surrounding it, the pit was stocked with wood for the next fire. There was bottles on the ground from the last fire pit, left behind from either a drunken individual or the lack of light at 2:00 am in the middle of the Rockies. I took the path that connects the staff house and fire pit together, it weaves through the woods to get back instead of going around to the Taj. There is a low swampy area that has old boards and the occasional door lied across to construct a shabby looking bridge. I love that bridge, it's just so makeshift it makes me laugh.
I continued on my walk through the woods to the staff house, and here we are. I have to go to finish packing now, see you all soon.

A relaxing, enjoyable, and easy day.

Shut down at the lodge, wow. I can go anywhere, anytime I want to, the lodge feels so much more like home now. Last night was really fun because it was movie night in the library, which is the old part of the lodge, we made a nice healthy fire in the fireplace that Jimmy Simpson himself built. Jimmy is the founder of Num-Ti-Jah, he is kind of a celebrity out here. We put on some Clone High which is one of the funniest cartoons I've seen. Some of us stayed in the library to sleep by the fire, some of us went back to our "homes" to sleep. The next morning (being this morning) I got up at 9:30 to take a shower, afterwards I proceeded into the kitchen to pour myself a cup of coffee and grab a croissant. I took my breakfast into the dining room and sat down to eat. We didn't actually get started working till about 11:00, but it was the most relaxing work ever, you could tell that everyone was content and easy going. I was wrapping sets of 12 pieces of cutler and James Keelaghan was singing on the stereo. We cleaned out the entire dining room today but it was fun, and I got off work at 2:30.
Me and Tabitha were sitting by the creek beside the Taj, which is the name of one of the staff accommodations here, when she decided to jump right in for a dip. I would have joined her if I hadn't have done the same thing down by the lake two night before. She screamed pretty loud, well loud enough to hear it echo several times in the mountains behind us. It was such a beautiful day at Bow Lake, sunny and hot, one to be remembered.

A busy day.

I was out taking pictures today around the lodge, I was specifically shooting this little bridge we have here, the sun looked really cool coming through it. I wasn't actually able to take the shot for about 20 minutes because the bridge was packed with tourist (mostly Japanese, well who am I kidding, all Japanese). They would keep walking into the shot as I was about to take it, one of them actually came up to me, walked in front of my camera (on its tripod) and took the exact same picture as I was taking. He then said "looks cool" in very sketchy English and he and his two buddies ran off laughing. I didn't really know what to think but it made me laugh pretty hard.
The next people that come up to me are three Japanese girls that are taking pictures of each other (every tourist that comes through here has a camera and if not, then a cell phone camera) they just handed me the camera, gesturing that I should take a picture (free of charge I might add...hahah) of the three of them on the bridge, I did so.
One of them came up to me and said "Canadian?"
"Yes" I replied, "Japanese?"
"Yes" she said and they started giggling and then just ran off, in a similar fashion to that the three boys previous to their arrival had used.

All in 20 minutes of my day off.

On another note, the lodge has now closed down, yesterday was our Thanksgiving feast (which was huge, amazing tasting and came complete with two 11 lb. turkeys and three different kinds of stuffing). Yesterday was also our staff party, free beer, wine, pool, well pool is always free now because we have the whole lodge to ourselves. We sat around the firepit and played guitar and such. It was a good night. Since the lodge is closed I will be coming home soon, on the 14th to be exact. So I will be seeing all of you soon.

Ill post some pictures to go with these posts when I get back home.
I miss all you guys!

A day in the mountains.

You wake up at 8:30, caught breakfast (which consisted of greasy, yet hard, bacon and okayish strawberry pancakes) and then put on your hiking boots and sling on your bag full of camera equipment. You then grab a long black thing that you use for a walking stick. As you walk down the trail the mornings fresh air fills your nostrils and you no longer feel tired. Rejuvenated is how you describe this feeling to yourself.

Large rocks that only seem to get larger as you get further into the wilderness.
The sun slowly warming your skin.

You decide to take a detour off the worn trail and walk directly towards what seem to be large caves. They are very high up in the mountains so you must bush whack through trees and bushes alike.

The scent of the breaking twigs and the squish of soft moss.
The most prominent sounds being your breaths and occational passing of a brook or call of an animal.

The trees thin as you pass into the next part of the wilderness. When there are no trees at all you must look down the insure a safe foothold on the loose stone because of the long drop that awaits your fall behind you. Search the stones and the caves around the area that you have arrived in. You spot a tree that would provide a great sitting spot and stop for a rest. The sky is clear blue and the view of the valley from under the tree is amazing.

You return home.

This was your trip today before work.
The long black thing you took on your hiking trip was a pvc didgeridoo with three red stripes at the top.

A day in the mountains.

My time in the mountains.

If you know me, but don't know where I went, here is the explanation; since Sept. 2nd I have been living and working in a lodge in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta. My backyard consists of glacier fed lakes, waterfalls, caves, ice caverns, glaciers, and massive mountains that await my arrival. Num-Ti-Jah Lodge is the place that I'm working at, it feels just like home, pictures wouldn't do it justice. It is always warm, there is almost always a fire roaring in the library (yes we have a library!)
Being here is amazing. I love the atmosphere, I even love my job. I am the dining room host but I also do sometimes work in the kitchen department making appetizers and desserts, I get to cook all day, its so much fun. I like working in the kitchen way more than the dining room, I feel way more comfortable in there. Its amazing how the people totally make the place. One could feel totally alone in this type of environment if they were surrounded by the wrong type of people, but there's a good mix here so I'm good to go.
I take a lot of pictures of my spare time, I cant wait to show everyone when I get home. I don't have the time to load them onto this crappy computer and then on to the slow slow internet, so you'll have to wait for when I get back to see them (ill post them on here as well).

Two days ago I signed my first mountain register (which is a little book they put at the summit of most mountains to keep track of how many people have climbed it). The mountain I climbed was Crowfoot, not little crowfoot, not big crowfoot, but TRUE Crowfoot, which is the actual summit of Mnt. Crowfoot. Its a couple hours longer than if I were to climb Big Crowfoot but only about 5 meters higher, but its so worth it. I climbed it with my buddy's Paul and Rachel, Paul had done this summit before. The register on that summit has been there since 2002 and since that point there had only been 7 entry's, which means that in 4 years I was among only 10 lucky people that have made it all the way up there. The view is indescribable. It took us 5 hours to reach the summit from the lodge and 4 hours the return back. I am addicted to the feeling of reaching the top of somewhere only a handful of people have been to, I want to climb more but the weather is really cold sometimes. The weather can change so fast when your on a mountain, especially during this time of year so I had to bring a lot of layers of clothing, but that day we had the perfect weather, even better than during the summer season of hiking. There were blue skies, and I could see for miles and miles and miles, all the way into the B.C. interior.

Well, that's all for now folks, ill try to post more often.

I miss you guys a lot, can't wait to see you!
bye!
-Matt

My bass clef tattoo

I just got this tat yesterday at Soul Survivors on Osborne St. Once it was done I had been under the needle for a little over an hour. It wasnt nearly as painfull as I thought it would have been, it kinda felt like a burning/pinching sensation. The guy that did it for me was in from Toronto for the week, his name was Matt, oddly enough the guy at the front desk when I showed my ID had the exact same birthday as me...weird. Well, here's a pic of it, I'm so happy with it!

Percussion

Last week, or was it two weeks ago...whatever, anyways I had the idea that I wanted to play my Didjeridoo and some percussion stuff at the same time. My original idea was to attach the various instruments, such as tambourine, woodblock, ect. to the didjeridoo itself, by using C-clamps. This wasn't the best idea and I quickly changed my mind while shopping at Mothers Music in Winnipeg. I bought the cheapest cymbal stand they had, an interesting and extremely useful percussion stand that clamps onto the cymbal stand. I then purchased a tambourine, woodblock and VibraTone (a cool sounding bell that you strike with a rubber mallet).
This is what it looks like:

I went out the other day and busked by Old Market Square with this stuff, quite fun!
I'll also keep you guys posted on new additions to this little kit, I think there will be many of them.

On the road.

This is just an experiment of mine, I went out to wander the streets of Oakbank to take pictures of interesting things, but none were found. I then turned my head downwards to see the road and the cracks and gooey filler that holds them together. I actually found these to be quite interesting, and the fact that they were are imperfections that we have tried to fix made it even more interesting. These were not intended to be beautiful or artistic when weathering broke apart the road, or when the workers filled the cracks. I hope you see a few shots that peak your interest or can appreciate the artisticness of this project, or maybe you can appreciate the complete and utter randomness.






















Tell me, what is your favorite shot? (just number it from the top, being 1)

Crayfish...ing

Yesterday, a couple buddies and myself decided to go out to the gravel pits for some ol' fashioned crayfish huntin', Craw'Daddies they call 'em in the south, where the sport is much more popular than here in southern Manitoba. We geared up with our ice cream pails and butterfly nets and hit the banks of the blue waters. We lifted rocks, we scooped up crayfish, we lifted rocks, we scooped up crayfish, we worked our ways in teams of two around the edge of the water getting as many of those little lobsters as we could, sometimes resulting in a pinched finger. After the process was complete we had collected probably around 60 - 70 crayfish, later to be boiled and eaten.

This is a picture of them before we cooked 'em up, still alive and snipping!
Dave looking a little discusted with our catch.


About to toss 'em into the boiling water.

THEY'RE TURNING RED!!

They ARE red.


To shell the crayfish, we broke off the tail (which is the only edible part of them, besides the claws which are too small to eat), this is the remainder...

This is all the meat we got from those little guys, not much is it...but its pretty gosh darn tasty with butter and garlic!!!

This is the four of us before we began eating the small treat of the days labors.

I think we did pretty good for a buncha Oakbankers and boonie boys, what'you think?

On Fire

My timelapse videos.

Timelapse is wiked, its one of the things that I love doing most with my camera, I should invest in a laptop so I can just hook the two together so I can just set up the shot and let the computer take all the pictures. I have uploaded some of them onto YouTube.com, there not the best quality because I had to decrease the file size to fit them onto youtube, but anyways...here they are:
Stormfront
Some People

Conveyor Belt at Dusk

Drace gets published!

You can all check out my bands music now! As of yesterday we now have 3 songs recorded, and thanks to a young recording artist named Jake McFaddin (Goosebump Records). You can give it a listen at www.myspace.com/draceband.

...and in the leaves they played

lay out

Night Flash

and the flames touched the midnight sky...

BBQ

BW Fire

Fences left and right...

This one is fun to look at, see how far you can follow the fence.(above)