Adventure Archives -

The Chilcotin River Flood and Cody Brandon

By now, most folks are aware of the Chilcotin River flood, in the interior of British Columbia.

A landslide dammed the Chilcotin River. The water finally surged over the dam and headed downstream where the Chilcotin flows into the mighty Fraser River.

The flood is expected to reach Hope, where the Fraser takes a hard right and heads for the Pacific, on Wednesday.

In the late 70s we lived four miles from the convergence of the Chilcotin and Fraser rivers. In Someplace North, Someplace Wild a young Texan named Cody Brandon will have his life changed in that same neck of the woods.

The Chilcotin is huge ranching country, including the Empire Valley Ranch, owned and operated in the 70s by a Christian couple who quickly became lifelong friends.

Tom wrote that story in Mountain Ranch at the End of the Road: horses, cows, guns and grizzlies in the Canadian wilderness published in 2019 and also available at Amazon.

The chilcotin country

The Chilcotin is a huge area of mountains, vast ranches, and forests. My first novel, Someplace North, Someplace Wild, encompasses the Fraser a few miles below the Chilcotin, where the August 2024 flood took place.

The story begins when Cody Brandon, the protagonist, leaves the Texas panhandle to seek his fortune in a remote mountain ranching area. Disaster meets him almost as soon as he enters Canada, and he is led finally to the Grand Valley Ranch (aka Empire Valley), west of the Fraser River.

He meets a beautiful school teacher, lands a dream job, and sits on top of his world, climaxing with a ten-day ride into the mountains to recover lost horses (where he also encounters a grizzly up close).

But on his return from that ride he hears some very bad news that will change his life.

What’s the point of the novel?

The story could be considered a book-length commentary on Mark 4:26-29. Jesus tells a short parable about a farmer who plants seeds and harvests the crop but in between the seed somehow grows without any effort from him. “The kingdom of heaven is like …” Jesus says, and then tells that story.

I summarize that parable as “The kingdom grows as God and man work together.”

If you read the book, you’ll see what I mean. 😊

National Day of the Cowboy … and some big news

It may have escaped your attention that today, July 22, is National Day of the Cowboy.

Likely, you already marked this on your calendar. But just in case, I thought you might appreciate a reminder. 😎

An event labelled Day of the Cowboy might evoke images of John Wayne or Clint Eastwood.

For me, it’s the perfect opportunity to make a big announcement: I recently signed with Elk Lake Publishing to produce my novel, Someplace North, Someplace Wild!

That’s the fruit of a six-year project, and a big answer to prayer.

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Of Cancer, Pharaohs and Horses

This page has laid dormant too long; it’s time to wake a sleeping blog. And a new adventure is the perfect moment to do just that.

Tomorrow I’m scheduled for the first of 38 radiation treatments for prostate cancer left over after I surrendered the gland itself to a surgeon in July 2020.

Two years ago a blood test reported my PSA number at 24, six times greater than the upper limit of 4. As I recall, my wife and I stopped whatever we were doing and looked at each other. For maybe a half hour, a mist of fear washed over me. When I quickly reviewed my PSA history, it showed two years without testing. Now we knew it was aggressively growing during that time. (Brothers, get a PSA reading every year!)

My fear morphed to a few minutes of anger toward my doctor. But the anger dissolved when I remembered my theology: God holds us responsible to care for our bodies, never mind the doctor. A 66-year-old man of average intelligence has no excuse to allow two years to pass without such an important test.

As for the fear, it was soon gone as well. I asked myself, what’s the worst that could happen? An early promotion to glory! My family would miss me, especially my bride, but they would survive and move on. For the time being, death is part of life … but a day is coming!

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Stuck in 2020

My wife and I recently read Rocket Men: the daring odyssey of Apollo 8 and the astronauts who made man’s first journey to the moon, by Robert Kurson. (Thanks, Mark Moffat, for the tip!)

Page 282 describes the astronauts, on their way home, crossing the point “at which Earth’s gravity [becomes] dominant.” From there the spaceship gradually accelerated until, days later, entering the earth’s atmosphere, they topped out at 24,500 mph.

“But that was a long way off,” Kurson writes, “and for now, when the crew looked out their windows, with no landmarks in sight, they seemed to be standing still.” That was an illusion. They were not motionless, they were flying at 5,720 mph.

“A good metaphor for life,” my wife said when she came to that page. Sometimes it feels like you’re stuck when you’re actually flying. Maybe you’ve had seasons like that.

Baby bird from America

In 1993, I spent two weeks in Ukraine teaching Cross-Cultural Communication of the Gospel at Donetsk Christian University, invited by Dr. Ray Prigodich, DCU academic dean at the time. It was my first overseas trip—after fifteen years as a missionary long overdue—and full of wonder and worry: the wonder of a foreign culture, the worry of a new assignment. My classroom skills were limited, my experience even less.

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