In theory, the rot was always there – inherent malcontentism.  It’s part of me.  But as mentioned two blogs ago, most of that irritation with the status quo was fairly well controlled or, at least, veiled in a grey or blue suit and tie with accompanying car, martini glass and house in the cul de sac.  I was languishing at best, aggravated at worst but swaddled in comfort and I took refuge in golf when it got really bad.

I began to play a lot of golf.   

But there’s always a tipping or flash point.  And for me, it came after we had taken the kids out of school early in 1999, spent a few summer months on the road traveling and seeing the bigger world and then, turning home just a bit late to catch the first few days of next-term school…………I remember that moment well:

“Well familia, we’re just coming up to the intersection with the I5 and I will have to turn right to get to Vancouver.  We are definitely on the last leg of this trip!  I am sorry to see it end…………………………..hey!  Why end it!?  Why don’t I just turn left instead and we can go kill a few months in Mexico.  You kids might even learn a bit of Spanish and at least we’d eventually get home with a tan.  It would be extra good to walk into school on January 1st with a tan, eh?”

Sally nodded an enthusiastic agreement with the spontaneous change of plans, her smile beaming brighter.  I had one vote in the affirmative at least.

Seems the kids had other ideas.  Are you crazy!?  What is wrong with you two!?  We have lives, you know.  We have to get an education.  Where is your sense of responsibility?   What kind of parents are you?  You just can’t take kids out of school, you know.  They’ll report you.  Hell, we’ll report you!”   

I didn’t give up easily.  “Look, you guys are smart enough to catch up on the drivel they teach you.  Read a few books and you are ahead of the game.  Read some classics and you’ve improved on it.  You don’t need no stinkin’ school.  You guys will do just fine.  And, anyway, what has your high school ever done for you?  Don’t you think it’s high time to live life to the fullest instead of vegetating in some stupid classroom like the lobotimized sheeple that are your teachers and peers?  Do you want to become just another brick in the wall? Da da dumm!” (I was humming Pink Floyd at the time)

They would have none of it.  “Look!  Just turn right.  Turn right, right now or I’ll phone the cops on you.  Nobody wants to see two old hippies in an American jail, now, do we? Just give it up you old coots and nobody’ll get hurt.  Now turn right!”  

Emily brandished her cell phone as she spoke and I knew that she wasn’t bluffing.  I turned right.  But it was just another nail in my urban coffin.  I could hear the faint rattle of my premature death getting a smidge louder.  This conventionality was going to be the death of me.  It had already taken my kids.  Screw them!  I gotta get out!

From that day on, I could not wholly commit to the cul de sac, good manners, the work ethic or even, for a period of time, to good grooming and returning my calls promptly.  I didn’t realize it at the time but these are the signs of rebellion, modest as they may be.  When the lawn grew way too high, I could see the writing on the wall.     

A couple of years of discomfort in the sac ensued.  I was unhappy just being there.  I hated cleaning the pool (before, it was like a Zen-thing, ya know?).  Golf was not enough.  I was beginning to rebel in other ways, too.  But, at what?  Where was the cause for the resistance?  I had no idea what was wrong just that it was wrong, wrong, horribly wrong and I was starting to see myself as roadkill on the highway of life.

Actually, I was starting to think I might try my hand at writing and it was sentences like that last one that fed the fantasy.

Plus, Emily, at 17, (bless her beautiful little heart) won a scholarship to York University in Toronto and wanted to go.  The voice that forbade my escape to Mexico just a few years prior was now arguing for a parental permission slip to head East.  It was not hard to say YES!!  A thousand Yes’s on you, blessed child!  Away with thee!”  

Ben had already settled in Victoria at UVic and, with Em’s departure, there was nothing holding me back.

Freedom, Freeeeeedddoooommmmmmmmmmm, F-R-E-E-D-O-M!!!!! (Richie Havens)

“Not so fast, big boy!”

Sally had worked her way up the management hierarchy at the WCB (read: managed to get herself jammed into the gearbox from Hell) and wasn’t so eager to flee the scene.  Not so soon, anyway.  There were meetings to attend, re-orgs to implement, draft proposals to vet and a zillion things to do that meant nothing to anyone.  Heady days for her.  Hard to resist the temptations of Dilbert.  And, quite humbly, that driest, most boring, most useless waste of time on the planet seemed too have more appeal than did I.  She had a briefcase and she wanted to use it.  I had to shut up and bide my time.

I was a patient rebel with a working wife and no real cause from which to argue. I started to fix dinners and even put on the laundry a few times (Sal quickly put a stop to that after things went a bit awry).  How pathetic is that!?   

It was a hard time for me and it became impossible without the salve of scavenging to keep me focused and happy.  I began to haunt junkyards and garage sales, second-hand stores and auctions, scrap metal dealers and crazy, whacked-out collectors of junk and debris that, somehow, I felt a kinship with, a bonding-thing.   We were brothers in this amorphous blob of a rebellion and even though we didn’t know why, we recognized each other.  I made not just a few very weird friends.


“Watch your back, ol’ buddy!” They’d say.  “Stay locked and loaded.” I’d counter.

I really should get a gun.   

I was beginning to relate closely to the old, completely mute geek in Ladner whose backyard was filled with great junk like 64 sft plate glass slabs one inch thick, large S/S barrels, old hand-logging paraphernalia and various motors and gearboxes, tools, gizmos and all sorts of great stuff.  He did not discriminate in any way. The guy knew something.  He was like a junkyard Yoda.  I didn’t know what it was but I wanted that knowledge.  I wanted the force.  I kept at my training……………whatever it was for.    

Pretty soon I was doing some serious collecting of my own.  The garage was full of large steel things, old greasy tools and boxes of weird stuff that promised to be of crucial importance at some not-so-distant future.  I frequented Popeye’s almost every week.  It is a marine second hand shop.  I was also a regular frequenter of BC Hydro’s salvage department.  I got some great stuff.  Even greater stories.

Bunch o’ crazies attend Popeye’s and BC Hydro so watch yer back, bro! 

But here I have to stop and remind the reader that all of this was happening at an almost unconscious level.  I had no idea that I was going to build a cabin in the woods.  I had no idea I was going to go off-grid.  I was really just giving vent to a weird urge.  Honest.

OK, not-quite-so-honest.  Somewhere along the line, maybe half way through this collection fetish, I started to visualize building stuff.  And the inspiration for that was Mother Earth News.

For some unfathomable reason, I googled Mother Earth News sometime around the year 2000.  They had forums.  I joined.  Over the next five years I was to meet all sorts of personalities from NRA freaks to dreamers, from urban roof-top gardeners to Old Order Mennonites (OOMs) in remote enclaves.  I met ranchers, poor people in rural Mississippi, long distance truckers, farmer’s wives and lonely old hermits.  And we talked about ‘getting out’ and living off the grid.  I had a community. 

And so that was another part of the answer to your question…………..

“Stop with the answering already.  I am not asking the question.  I do not need to know why a nut-bar goes nutty.  I just accept it!”

“Well, it helps to know the nut-bar’s motivation and inspiration.  And, anyway, I have to start this book in some way.  So just bear with me.  There’s more to come.”