The whiskeyjacks just make the world a bit brighter

Up behind the Comox Valley there’s a goodly sized hill known as Mt. Washington. Why a Canadian mountain is named after the first US president remains unknown to me, and cared about even less, which is why I’ve never bothered to check out its nomenclative origins.

Anyway, it’s an impressive little mountain of about 5,000-plus feet and it provides a fine backdrop. It is also a major destination ski resort and general winter sports venue for the entire Pacific Northwest. It’s biggest benefit for those who choose to pay a call is that it takes a little over a half-hour’s drive on an excellent road to attain the recreation sites.

While wintertime Mt. Washington is a big draw for those who like sliding down hills, getting wet bums and fracturing assorted limbs, for me it is primarily appealing in the summertime. Fortunately, those who run the winter facilities have endeavoured to make it equally inviting in the summer.

And on a bright summer’s day it is a superlative place to be. So, since Saturday was a bright summer’s day, that’s what we did. We go up the mountain at least once every summer and we walk the trails through the Alpine Meadows and, if we’re feeling ultra-ambitious, we hike into one of the lakes. On Saturday we only felt moderately ambitious, so we stuck to the meadows.

I think my impulse tied in with my previous blog about souls and a need to take to the hills, just to change my perspective by ‘communing’. And then there were the ‘whiskeyjacks’. The whiskeyjack is more accurately known as the gray jay.

They’re wonderful and gregarious birds that watch for hikers so they can beg. Remarkably tame, for whatever reason, they take food from the hand and show absolutely no fear as they tramp around all over the feeder, always demanding more. The only wild birds I’ve ever known to come close in their lack of fear of humans are the little zebra doves of Hawaii.

Here is a bit of ornithological/etymological info which may or may not be true, according to sources, but it’s worth pondering:

In modified form, Wesakachak has been part of English for centuries. For the gray jay's most common nickname is "whiskey jack" (also spelled in several ways). Reference books agree that whiskey jack is derived from a Cree or Innu source. Some of them, however, describe the term's origin in an unlikely manner.

Katherine Barber, in her 2007 book Only in Canada, You Say, suggests that whiskey jack comes from the Cree word for blacksmith, "wiskatjan." The bird's colour supposedly made people think of ashes and soot. Hudson's Bay Company workers in the 18th century, who heard the Cree word as "whiskeyjohn," then altered John to the more informal Jack. A similar account appears in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, among other places.

Whatever is the case, they’re cool birds and they did my soul (old, young or middle-aged) a world of good on Saturday.

Now, to completely break stride I do need to do a Monday morning rant about the haphazard and cliché-ridden nature of some of the journalistic endeavors I see around me these days. I still do and always will consider myself a newspaper guy, and in that calling I am an anal and uptight perfectionist. I believe that sort self-discipline is a mark of professionalism.

So, as Wendy will attest to, I regularly fulminate against sloppy spelling (Spellcheck doesn’t do the job and papers should bring back proofreaders), and hideous usage (there is a big difference between ‘exasperate’ and ‘exacerbate’, not to mention ‘flaunt’ and ‘flout’. Nobody ‘flaunts’ the law unless he or she is a bragging lawyer or judge.

But, the one that ground me down last week was three headlines in virtually as many days referring to a sad amalgam of negative coincidences as a ‘perfect storm’ Come on, folks, even as applied to a third rate film is was a tired and silly expression, and when applied to anything else it is, at very least, a really lame cliché. Get to work, boys and girls of the press and develop a genuine love of the language.

There, so endeth my imperfect tempest of Monday spleen.