Ever heard of Bute Grease?

Me neither. Not til yesterday. Yesterday was our end-of-project construction crew get-together billed as a ‘beer and burgers’ affair. RSVP, don’t you know? It was a perfect day, sunny, windy and warm. Everyone (approximately 15) gathered on the covered portion of our deck and began to make an impression on the gallon or so of Sally’s Sangria and the assorted beers and hors douvres as I fired up the BBQ. Chit chat ensued.

You have to understand that our chit chat is not like most chit chat. We don’t usually do sex, religion and/or politics.

Religion is universally panned and there is no one to take the other side in the give and take of it. No practicing Muslims, Seventh day Adventists or Catholics here. So religion is not a hot topic. It is way below sex and sex is largely discussed only in a historical context if at all these days.

Sex, I gather, was a raging hormone of a subject at one time but not so much anymore.

We – out here – have, for the most part eschewed the political as well. Sometime exceptions: micro-political and macro-political. Everyday political is just not very high on the conversational top ten. Some people don’t even know who the current premier is or care (mind you, she is laying low and trying very hard to put time and distance between her and Campbell, don’t you think?).

BC politics is, for us, either largely uninteresting or unworthy or both. If we ‘do’ politics out here it is at the micro/local level in the extreme (bunkhouse, Steamboat trail, Q-hut, etc.) or very macro (Gaia, climate change, conspiracy theories and the like).

I’m cool with that. Anyway, I was worrying burgers so couldn’t really participate in the conversation anyway.

All that above was to introduce you to the ‘usual’ topics of conversation out here. Number one is construction. Of any kind. Construction is king out here. We can talk old-time log and pole construction to new ‘composites’ and carbon fiber. We can talk plastics, steels, bronzes and wood in every sense of the word (except sexually, of course). We can talk logs, rocks, cement and even the more basic building influences of water, earth, sun and wind. People out here know construction.

Honest to God – take the worst builder out here….ME!…..and take me to a room full of architects and contractors in the city and I will undoubtedly make a complete fool of myself but at least it will be in on a myriad of topics. I will cover it all. I can get embarrassed with the plumbers, the architects, the engineers and the carpenters. I have just enough knowledge for that. Our best people out here could teach the city professionals something.

So building is big.

But second is weather and, because we were having such a delightful time in the breeze and the sunshine, the topic turned to our weather. Amongst a lot of aspects of wind, weather, temperature and, of course, geology, I learned that the waters between Haida Gwai and the mainland are extremely shallow. I should have known that. I also learned all about how and when the glaciers altered our coastline and how the earthquakes added to it.

One of the most interesting subjects shared was the water spouts we used to get.

“Yeah. I was heading to work one day and it was windy and the weather was ominous. I looked ahead and saw well over ten or so waterspouts just a-zippin’ about and all of them on my intended route. I decided to head back home”.

“What’s Bute Grease?”

“Well, the Bute can blow pretty hard. When it gets over 100 miles an hour it whips the surface of the water and the little plankton-like creatures caught up get churned and boiled into a frothy mass. The frothy mass will get blown and tossed until hard balls of Bute grease end up on the beach. The stuff is a fabulous lubricant and the old guys used to prize Bute grease as the best grease there was!”

My jaw was open. Bute Grease! Wadda concept! Waterspouts 300 feet tall! And lots of ’em. And we were just scratching the surface of weird stuff out here.

Just when you start to think you know a neighbourhood, eh?