You know, Kamloops has some beautiful mountains around it. Occasionally, the weather will be just right to get a good shot of clouds hugging Mount Peter and Mount Paul, just as the sun sets.
Author: Keenan Fitzpatrick (Page 1 of 2)
Looking out over Kamloops Lake from a nice viewpoint, a lone boat moves across the surface of the water. It’s pretty cool to see how that one boat can have such an effect on the lake, sending ripples through the water, obstructing the mirror-like surface the lake had once been.
Not much is better than getting out into the Canadian wilderness with an old VW Beetle and a couple buddies.
Greenstone Mountain is an absolutely gorgeous view, if you ever take the adventure to the top. Atop of this windy mountain, is this small hut, which I can only assume was a forestry fire lookout. Nowadays it has a couple bunkbeds, a table and a chair for visitors to use, as well as a logbook to write down when you visited this place and see who did the adventure before you.
Taken the same night as the photo of my friends. A lot of people say Kamloops doesn’t have much to look at, but I’d say our summer sunsets are killer.
Ah, an attempt at an actual sunset photo, starring two of my good friends, actually! They hadn’t been dating for too long at this point, but I thought I’d snap a photo of them anyway. Cause, why have a relationship when you can just take photos of your friends’ relationships… Right….
I know, I know… ANOTHER gold panning photo… This photo was taken just a week or two after the last post of the cans, even further along the trail. By this time, my buddy Brad and I convinced three other friends to join us on our panning adventures. After an hour or so of walking (including walking up the creek itself) we came to this absolutely gorgeous spot. Although this spot was terrible for gold panning, it gave us a nice little island almost to relax on, and just do what teenage boys in the wilderness do: mess around with the scenery. We stayed at this spot for an hour or two, skipping rocks across that little open water area you see in front of Brad, and discussing whatever was going on in our lives at the time.
Another photo from gold panning adventures, this taken a month after the first one. As I stated in the last post, this area that we gold pan in has a rich history of gold panning. As you walk deeper and deeper into the canyon that the creek is located in, you begin to find massive piles of tailings left over from the mining. It’s just hundreds of square meters covered in stones. Among these stones are some garbage piles left over from the mining days, and this photo of a pile of old cans is one of the many little garbage spots around the area.
This photo is a bit of a throwback to February of 2016, when my buddy Brad and I went out for my first time gold panning. Heading out into a bit of a chilly late morning, we hiked about two (maybe three, my memory is pretty bad) kilometers down the path, looking for a decent place to pan when we settled on this spot. The area that we gold pan in has a rich history of gold mining, with a couple decrepit old mineshafts here and there to see. The photo doesn’t really show it, but it was pretty chilly that morning, and with the cold, wind, and frigid water, my fingers were having a tough time working.
After finishing my first year at university, it’s interesting to see how my views on the past have changed. I’ve always been very interested in learning history and learning about many different points in the past that have occurred, but I’ve found I’m getting more and more into it. Before I started university, my main point of interest in history was military history from around 1900 to the present day. While this has not exactly changed, I have found that I am getting more and more interested in events far before the period I’ve been focused so intently on.
Even the title itself, “Reflecting on the Past,” has so much more behind it. Anyone living in this current era can look out their window or around their house and find something sitting there and wonder, “How did this object get here?” That’s the brilliant thing about history; it explains how cultures, objects, countries, and almost everything around you has gotten to the point that it is currently at. As I sit here typing this, I can see my barbecue out on my patio and I can easily look up the history of the barbecue and it’s influence on peoples lives. It is even hard to know yourself, in a way, without looking into history. Without reflecting on my past, I would not have known of my French-Canadian past on my mother’s side or how a part of my descendants on my father’s side came from a German colony in Russia many years ago.
As my studies continue, I have no doubt that I will continue studying history, and continue to be amazed by all the different topics. My main outlook on it right now is simple:
Reflecting on the Past.