Carbon Colosseum

The best abandoned house explorer/scavenger I know, took me to the burned down motel in Williams Lake this past June. It was unreal. Sort of like a time capsule, like the people covered in pyroclastic flows from Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii. But instead of casts of melted people there were perfectly preserved burned stereo systems and a fridge with identifiable food still inside. Part of it looked like the Colosseum. The motel had burned down sometime last February I believe. It was subsidized housing. Apparently the only one who died was a cat. I scavenged a helmet for biking. It had weird moldy ash covering the foam inside in a thin film. Amongst all the finds there were computer speakers, a jean jacket and a crazy Navaho print leather jacket. The back of the truck smelled like burned motel.

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Within a few minutes of entering we heard voices and things crashing about, the source: this very drunk man. He was one of the former inhabitants of the motel. I'd probably be drunk too if my life could be represented by a burned skeleton (ok probably not). He stumbled around the motel falling on shattered glass and giving us a free historical tour. He took us to his uncle's room, where apparently the fire had started.

 

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This is the shoulder cat that started it all.
This kid was walking around the St. Laurent street festival in Montreal at the end of August a million years ago (actually maybe 9 years ago), and impressed the hell out of me. His cat was just hanging out on his shoulder and he would feed it from there. Look how bad ass that cat looks! I've wanted one ever since.
Shoulder cat.

Yay! More gifs!

Planting Group Shots

 

In the year 1988...Toyota.

 Annah and Jenny in William's Lake. Gorgeous.

 

BFFs F  

Band photo.

Before. The after never was never captured but it happened.

 Evarino and Roxanne looking out the Fraser River.

 

 Matching sister birthmarks.

 

Taiga Ad.

Byron's last day double exposed with The Rock Block.

Planting Portraits

I'm at a weird point in my planting-photography career where I can't tell what a good/cool tree planting photo is anymore. I've seen it all, taken them all, but at the same time, don't they all kind of look cool?, but also who cares?, they're not that special. As a consequence, I had a really hard time choosing what to post, so I just posted a bunch. Tree planting 2012, year 10. Here it is. 

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Annah Tierney Mackay 

aka Rookieannah (in a Russian accent)

Here comes the excavator.

 Annah's first bad day.

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Jenny

Bad ass Jenny in the shittiest land I've ever had. This was our piece.

 

Dandylion babies.

Let's never start planting again.

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Others

 

Byron never looks like a tree planter.

 

Happy retirement. Yeah right.

Williams Lake. Gorgeous.

Self portrait at the Chinese restaurant payphone in Willies.

 

Evarino in Molly and Criole's flower field.

Stevarino and his Delica. Just picture him in a business suit and this is exactly what he will look like in 5 years but with a parliament building in the background.

The Wall

It came up and then it came down.

Garrett and his crew of fine looking fellows built us a lovely jam space/screen printing studio. A wall was built in front of the garage door with a window in order to insulate the space properly. All this would probably have been fine if our neighbor wasn't rebuilding his house and having tea with inspectors all the time. Turns out it's illegal to block a garage door without wasting all your hard earned money on permits. 

So down came the wall.

This is my first gif!
 Now they can put and up and take down the wall forever again and again.

Elliott and The Bear