Click 'snaps' to see full-sized images
These 400x300 "snapshots" all correspond with 1200x900 "wallpaper-sized" JPEGs averaging about 100kb in filesize. use the Back button on your browser to return to this page The location: 1km south of the Highway 93/95 bypass intersection just north of Wasa, BC..

The photo at right doesn't have a full-sized image; it's here merely to provide contextual proof that these photos really were taken through my front window.

I left Vancouver in 1998 hoping to find some place to heal my shattered nerves and re-establish myself in a less demanding and stressful environment. As I passed the Wasa/Cranbrook cutoff heading into Kimberley, BC on the easternmost north/south highway in British Columbia, I arrived at a valley which evoked strong memories of a dream I'd had at age five or six...a pastoral scene which had stuck with me for decades...this was that place. It was six long years before the only decent rental property in that tiny area came available for rent, and it was just sheer luck that I happened to notice it. I didn't get the rental; someone had beaten me to it.

But three months later, the home I did end up finding turned out to be a hellish mistake (my hard-drinking, gun-loving neighbor insisted on boarding wild Canada geese in cages below my bedroom window...try sleeping through that), and the couple which had beaten me to my "dream" rental had been forced out of their home. I didn't blow that second chance. The property itself is a dilapidated, 30-year-old single-wide trailer with frightening wiring, leaky propane fittings and a half-dozen mouse nests built from what was once insulation. And I love it. Because every morning, I get to go to my front window, open the curtains and look at this. And you can bet that I've set up my office in the front room to take full advantage of this vista.

I'm pretty confident that this is the best view in the valley for at least a five-mile radius, and I'll have to look damn hard to find another home that gives me this kind of feeling every time I pull back the curtains. The mobile home itself requires about an hour a day of upkeep and hassle that wouldn't be necessary in a 'proper' rental, and sits on a three-acre lawn which must all be mowed, but which is only about 1/4 usable. My landlord neighbors are terrific, but this is an extremely insular area, and in seven years I've yet to make a serious friend within 15 miles. It's in situations like these where you discover just how much peace of mind is truly worth to you. How much irritation and inconvenience would you put up with to have this kind of view from your front window?

These photos were all taken with inexpensive Canon PowerShot cameras...three of them, in fact: I began in 2004 with a 360, and upgraded in 2007 to a 480 which was lost just months later and replaced with a 580. I'm not sure what I'll end up with next, but it may be hard to replace my 580. I love having a rangefinder lens for landscape photography, and newer PowerShot's rely exclusively on the LCD screen.