Eastend: The Ghosts in our Lives

The pick-up trucks go up or down
a gravel road heading into the Cypress Hills
Ranchers, I assume, all that space 

or to the ghost town of Ravenscrag
which Google tells me has 29 souls

When I leave here I want to drive there
on that winding gravel road to see that place

like the Walhachin Valley in B.C.
where upper-class English immigrants built wooden flumes
to water their orchards in the semi-desert
and played polo and enjoyed elaborate teas
before the men marched off to the Great War
and some, not all, were slaughtered in France
 

 A myth abides but most returned to the Walhachin
but abandoned it by 1922 

It now has a population of 31
some wooden flumes remain
high up on the hillsides if you look
and know what you are looking at