Focusing on congregations doesn’t require another institutional reorganization, of which we have had several over the past three decades, but the much more difficult attitudinal shift in the people who work within the church’s bureaucracy at all levels from national to local.

I remember the time 42 years ago when Linda, her dad and I went fishing. Linda and I had just bought our first new vehicle, a 1973 Chevy four-wheel drive pickup and we—I should say I—were just itching to show it off and impress someone.

As I remember the legend, this family fortune in silver plates had mysteriously disappeared but that it still existed in some vault in the old country just waiting for a Webber with the moxy to find and claim it.

The title on the card was, “The Nurse, from Cameron’s Pond.” Linda and I looked at the picture together, drinking in the memories it engendered. “How come your family always called that peak the Nurse?” Linda asked.

When bears get into a habit, especially if it involves food, good luck in changing the habit.

“Ok, everybody, I want to meet you in the living room for a conference immediately!” I stomped into the house huffing and in a rage.

I squinted through the droplets of water gently falling on the garden. “My goodness!” I said, “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

In June, two little balls of dark brown fluff are soon cruising the water with mom and dad. The devotion shown by both male and female loons for their babies seems to be incredible.

It was one of those delightful, peacefilled, warm spring days. Linda and I had risen, as is our custom, to coffee and bran in bed, relishing the morning sunshine.

Squirrely had made his presence known by chasing the birds, leading Addy the Labrador on a merry chase among the spruce trees, or sitting on one of our bird feeders shucking sunflower seeds like some kind of maniacal machine. And then he was gone. We couldn’t figure it out.

In the Cariboo Chilcotin, March is calving month. I love this hungry time of year. There are babies dropping on the calving grounds like flies. And not just calves! Sheep are lambing, horses are foaling, goats are kidding (just kidding).

Being an incorrigible schemer, when I first started ice fishing with our two boys about 24 years ago this February, I thought I would add a few Webber improvements to the game.

John slogged off down the snowshoe trail at breakneck speed and I puffed along after him. We could both feel the zeal of our forest service badges almost burning a hole through our uniform parkas.

Overnight, the temperature had plummeted to far below freezing. Our shallow end of the lake must have frozen in an instant. I imagined it happening almost cartoon- like, perhaps to the sound of a single chime from a tinkle bell.

Not all of our days are like this. But for me, this specimen day in some way captures the very essence of what it means to live here. That’s why I call it a specimen day, an extraordinary sample day that speaks its essence into the everyday.

It was a sad day. It snowed the night before, a skiff of the fresh stuff dusting everything. In a grove of large white spruce trees, right at the base of one of them, there was a small patch of fresh blood.

“That good for nothing, conniving, interfering bushytailed bigmouthed chatterbox!” “What on earth has got you so stoked?” Linda asked.

Addy had been watching the geese and goslings from the window and when I opened the door she was out like a shot, a yellow streak launching herself through the air and into the lake like a torpedo. There was no doubt there were going to be serious causalities.

One spring night a fully loaded freight train was derailed on the other side of the lake. It was the beavers.