Book club Sunday.  Twenty or so women will be gathering by boat and vehicle to a host site on the other island today.  Lots of comings and goings, to-ing and fro-ings, all by small boat from all the local islands.  The little, mostly open boats will be carrying ‘puffed up’ winter-clad club members clutching various pot-luck entries and a few bottles of wine in an irregular but interesting rag-tag flotilla.  Pretty funky, man! 

Not too many books will make the voyage, tho.  It’s too late for that if you haven’t read it, unnecessary if you have.  Two women are even coming down from Port Hardy by bus, ferry and pick-up.  That’s a trek!

These gals are dedicated.  Most of them are perenials.  I’ve been here almost seven years and I don’t think a single month of book club has ever been missed.  In fact, I would opine that they haven’t missed too many in the twenty five or so years the club has been meeting.  It’s remarkable.

Couple of locals are leaving for parts south and urban, too.  Bit early, methinks.  They’re the ‘seasonals’.  Like Canada Geese.  These are the first clear signs of winter.  When the wussies fly south. 

Well, that and the recent pillaging of the finally-stacked-completely wood pile.  I think the wood shed was full and remained so unmolested for about only three weeks before we started in at it.  It’s a little known law of rural physics: what gets chopped and split soon gets burned and disappears.  It’s like gravity.  Immutable.  Resistance is futile. 

Just get on the wagon and try to stay ahead of the curve.  Or head south.

Sal wrangled another free-floater log in yesterday.  So we are keeping up.

Seaweed has been spread and rinsed in the rain.  It will go in the garden boxes soon.  The only thing left in the boxes are a few bunches of hardy flowers.  Marigolds.  Still beautiful, full-bloomed and resisting the inevitable.  We’ll let them expire on their own time.  “Do unto others…..“

It will soon be brush burning time.  We do that when it is pouring.  And that kind of weather misery is just a smidge over the horizon.  The island is too vulnerable to forest fire to take any chances earlier in the year so this is the time to clear out old paper, cardboard, off-cuts, branches, bushes and other únsightlies’. 

Sal determines the latter category.  Surprising what she deems unsightly.  I dare not stand too close to the bonfire, myself, when she is in that ‘clean-up’ frame of mind.  The woman gets on a real kick, fixated with ‘tidying up the forest’.  It is just not safe for the bad, the ugly and the unsightly.

Regular socializing is making the ‘shift’, too.  Dinner parties are now mostly out of the question.  Too late.  Too dark.  And often too dangerous.  So we’re having guests in the afternoon, maybe lunch.  It’s called: adjusting for the weather, accommodating the dark and still having a good chin-wag now and then.

More winter evidence: there are more than a few chores that have been ‘put off’ because the BBQ was on or the so-and-so’s were coming over.  That kind of work schedule was in force all summer, actually.  So, we are going to have to ‘get on the last few’ or put them off again for another year.  I am embarrassed to admit how many of my chores will likely end up back on the to-do’ list without ever having gotten started.  I blame Sal.  She’s the slave driver and, if the slave gets away with it, blame management!

But you’d be surprised by what has been noticed these past few years as the ‘surest sign of winter’.  It’s less (much less) contact with the outside world.  Weird, eh?  People just stop writing, calling and, staying over. 

Makes sense, really.  The majority of people interested in our lifestyle are much more interested in the ‘nice weather’ portion to all else.  And, even those more interested in us (the miniscule minority) are too damn busy in the winter workin’ nine to five and commutin’ for a livin’ (sing the last few words).  These folks have busy, busy lives and are back on the treadmill.  Full-time.  ‘No time for any of that hippy crap right now!’ 

It’s too bad.  This hippy crap ain’t all bad.  Even in the winter.