Today J and I went to put up the signs commemorating the John Kim Sanctuary.  John Kim was a mountain climber who died much too young but  living and doing what he loved.  Climbing.  His mother, ES, and her partners in a large tract of land, donated five acres in his name as a community nature sanctuary and our regional district donated the carved signs.  We promised to erect them.  And, today, we did.

That was the plan.  Simple.  We loaded up all the materials and tools and headed up in J’s boat.  As we approached the dock, we noticed one of our neighbours, R, with a ‘fancy’ sport fisherman in tow.  Definitely not locals.  The hapless fellow-in-tow and his buddies had been prawning when their big twin outboards stopped running.  The alternators must have crashed and the batteries were dead.  Both engines.  Odd, but that was what was happening.  As we were tying up so were they, and so we assisted in pulling the boat against the dock.  And, of course, we offered our help.

Long story short: after ‘jumping’ the engines with J’s boat the engines conked out again, so J simply loaned the strangers one of his two batteries and his jumper cables.  They put the battery in, exchanged names and numbers and, with a wave of goodwill, took off for home.

C was just coming down to the dock as we were pulling in with our load of heavy stuff to haul up the hill.  “Hey, C, can we use your truck to schlep all this crap up the hill?  We would sure appreciate it.”

“No problem, I’ll just unload it and bring it down for you.”

With his help, we got all the tools and materials to the worksite and got the job done in a couple of hours rather than spending twice as long with a lot of ‘Sherpa’ time.

This kind of ‘unplanned coordination-thing’ isn’t so unusual, really.  Serendipity is, ironically, a pretty regular occurrence around here. And, in a strange sort of way, we almost rely on it.  We don’t ‘count on it’ of course but, on the same theme, it is also true that we headed up with a ton of stuff and we really did not want to carry it all up hill.  But we went anyway.

What were we thinking?  That some guy who is rarely there at that time would be?  And that he’d have his truck?  And that he’d be willing to do all that at precisely the time we needed it?  How stupid is that?

The guys out fishing could have been floating around for hours but they were lucky.  R came by just as their engines failed and he pulled them in to the dock as efficiently as if they had driven up themselves. Coincidence?  Of course it was coincidence!  Like the truck being there for us.

In less time than it took for us to carry our tools and materials from J’s boat to C’s truck, J had jump-started them and then given over his second battery.  What are the odds that you get a battery and go about your day without so much as a hiccup when you are 30 kilometers from anywhere even remotely ‘civilized’?

If we didn’t show up, how the hell were these guys going to get home?  Even their radio was dead.

And it was a Sunday.  We don’t often go up on Sundays.  C is rarely on the dock on a weekend.  But he was this time.  And he was there just as we arrived with our junk.  The timing was perfect.  What are the odds?

I know it isn’t ‘magic’ when this sort of thing happens.  I know it was just fortuitous.  Luck.  Timing.  Good joss.  But I have to tell you – that kind of luck happens a lot out here.  Quite a lot actually.

Sally and I often remarked over the years how unbelievably lucky we were when – just as something was needed – it showed up.  Time and time again when we were building without knowing what we were doing, we would come to the end of a job and start to worry about how in hell we were going to do the next thing.  And then, almost as if by appointment,  someone with the right knowledge would drop in at exactly the right time and show us how to do it.

Maybe it is just the people out here.  I really don’t know how all this works.

But J thinks he knows.  “You know what they say, eh?” 

“What?”

“The further you go from the centre of civilization the more civilized the people get!”