Day before, right after the big windstorm followed by hail and rain, I was bundled up and down at the water putzing about when it started snowing!  Sheesh.  I did a few more things for a few more minutes and then it stopped.  Ten minutes later it was warming up and ten minutes after that, I shed my jacket and worked in a long-sleeved shirt.  Later that day, I had a small headache and a red face – a sure sign for me that I had had too much sun!

Now, I am adjusting to climate change like the rest of us but that is ridiculous!

Of course, climate change is not what I went through.  I’m only joking.  But I must admit we do have a micro-climate here that is quite fantastic at times.  And, in it’s own way, it is very revealing.

Over the last few days many of our neighbours experienced damage and inconvenience from the big wind storm.  Trees down, roofs torn, things toppled over.  In fact, thousands of people in the area were without power and several hundred are still out!  Seems power poles littered the roads of the island next door and, of course, the ferry stopped running.  Us?  Nada.  We were protected.  We have our own power.  For us, it was just a nice windy day.

Our house is built just a tuck and a scrunch behind a rock outcropping which, at the time of construction, was not even considered.  Turns out it is the world’s best wind deflector.  We live in the lee of southeasters.  The stronger they blow, the more they ‘bounce’ over.  Again – we were protected.

When the weather gets really cold, we get cold too.  But it seems we never get as cold as everyone else.  We are, of course, surrounded by water on three sides and that is a tempering effect and it is also quite remarkable.  One mile away the locals can have six inches of snow on the ground.  Us?  Nothing.

Even the winds here seem to blow less than most places.  Our location, in a manner of speaking, is one of the best in the area weather wise.  We just seem to have lucked out. Protected, you might say.

I suppose the best of it is less rain.  We get plenty (what we need) but we seem to get less than, say, Campbell River.  When it is raining on the next island, it is not on ours – not where we are, anyway.  Of course it all has to do with wind patterns, elevations and other things meteorological and geographical and we were certainly not aware of such things when building.  It was all just fortuitous.  But it was fortuitous.  We are lucky.  Not only protected but also provided for.

It’s weird, in a ‘connected’ kind of way.  As I have mentioned before, we are more in tune with the weather around here.  We have to be.  But being in tune makes you aware of things in ways you never expected.  Holistically, actually.  Weather is a metaphor in this sense.  Wind blows one way and we call certain neighbours to check on them.  Blows another and it is a different set of calls.  We feel the larger connections we have with the area – in all ways.

For instance; weather some days means not getting mail, not going to town and/or not doing chores.  Schedules adjust with the weather.  Longer term plans have the caveat, ‘weather permitting, of course’ added.  Hell, even my e-mail has a caveat attached: IMPORTANT: My ISP is satellite based. Weather affects it. Sometimes e-mails are lost transmitting and/or receiving. If you expect a response that is overdue, please send the e-mail again. The original was likely lost.  

Protected, provided for, greater awareness.

All this is a way of explaining – kinda – my somewhat tiresome ranting on the environment. You see, I am just so much closer to it.  I am living with it more intimately than ever before.  To me, the environment and the climate is not just an idea, a news topic, or an issue to be debated.  For me it is ‘in my face’, front and centre, up close and personal.  It is like the weather. Only bigger.  Much bigger.

It is all so much more real than ever before.  I now – for example – feel personally assaulted by the Enbridge pipeline proposal.  I feel personally threatened by DFO’s criminal negligence regarding the fish.  I am actually living within the results of poor government forestry and fisheries policies.  It is like watching a crime being committed before my very eyes.

I am more aware that my protection and my provisions are threatened.

The point: reality is a local phenomena.  We see what we can see and only what we can see.  But, for government decision-makers that is limited by walls and buildings and highways and airports and meeting rooms.  These people don’t see what they should see.  They don’t ‘get it’.  They are not aware.  And, as a result, they are making bad decisions.

It’s been done before.

I am not in the least religious but I am reminded of the biblical, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do“. (Luke 23:34)