We have a new winch.  Kinda.  It is really an old winch we had that used a 2hp, 3-phase electrical motor that was too hard to run with the little genset.  Now it is married to a good-sized Honda gasoline motor.  I am very much looking forward to putting this puppy through it’s paces.

I have been using the old weird winch that looks like it was invented in the Dickens era by Gyro Gearloose.  It works but it is slow.  Takes twenty minutes to get a log up the hill. Sal, setting the chokes on the logs at the bottom, would play fetch with the dogs during that time.  I would stand stoically near the old winch keeping the cable laying properly.  Pulling up six logs took hours.

Old Winch

A friend of mine saw the old set-up, “Why are you not using that big winch with the electric motor?”  “Long story.  Mostly about 3-phase power and my small genset.”

“You should have it on a gas engine anyways.  Like a mini-donkey engine, ya know?” 

“Yeah.  But that requires some kind of transmission, clutch and crap and well, I just don’t have the time.  It’s busy out here!”

“I’ll do it.  Get that monster over to my place in town and I’ll do it. Could be fun.” 

New Winch

So, I did.  And he did.  And now we have a new-old winch with a gas motor and all we had to do was schlep the 250 pounds of the steel-framed monster in and out of town and now back up to the top of the hill.  We lift such heavy things off Sal’s little Whaler at high tide using the high line. High tide last night was at about 7:30.

Sal turned out a curry at about 6:00 pm.  This after loading a lot of stuff from the other island and a lot of myriad other chores.  Result? Best curry ever.  Indians can’t make it this good.  Then she washed it down with a couple of glasses of wine and we headed off to lift the monster winch up the hill.

I was at the top of the hill setting the pull-line.  The winch was in her boat down at my neighbour’s dock.  She would paddle the boat over from there. One of our other chores that day was schlepping her outboard into the truck to take into town for servicing.  She untied her boat and, in an effort to get a good push-off from the dock, pushed too hard and fell in.

Gawd, I wish I’d seen that.

But she scrambled into the boat from the water quickly and, soaking wet except for her hair, (she is pretty quick when she needs to be), paddled the boat under the highline and we hauled it up within half an hour.  Job well done.  Sal went back and tied up her boat as I monitored the winch.  As the load was nearing the last few feet up the hill, she approached me from the direction of the stairs.  Clothes are sticking to her.  “Fell in!” 

“What? I didn’t see that!”

“Happened over by the dock.  You were doing winch set-up.  But it was OK.  I fall in on average once every year and so I am probably good for this year.  Might have been that second glass of wine.  You know what they say — drinking and boating don’t mix. I’ll go in and have a shower.”

I couldn’t say much.  Laughing too hard.

So, I wrestled and struggled with the monster at the top of the hill for awhile and finally got it in place.  Sal comes out after her shower wearing a cute little Thai housecoat just as the sun is setting to ‘support me’ in my efforts.  She is gorgeous.

Best curry in the world.  Clown-martyr, winch-wrestler and long-line hauler. Beautiful company.  It simply does not get any better.

I have a friend living up here, a neighbour of sorts.  He moves about somewhat, but in the immediate vicinity, so he is a hard-to-nail-down neighbour but still a friend.  And I find him fascinating.

D has lived most of his life up here. Well, actually, he lived a large part of it in an even more remote area.  He kinda went all-civilized when he came down this way.  He is, by any account, wilderness savvy and wilderness oriented.  In fact, he is stereotypically reclusive at times.

But not all the time.  Winters he sometimes travels to sunny climes and helps others down south build things from natural sources.  Like he is his own branch of Habitat for Humanity or something.  He is a green builder of incredibly practical and minimalist orientation.  D can make a house out of anything.  D is a real life McGyver.

When D wanted a boat, he went into the forest, felled a tree, milled it up with his chainsaw and then put it all together. It looks fantastic!  Robinson Crusoe is a pussy by comparison.  We’re talkin’ Grizzly Adams at his best here.

And D lives frugally.  Less than 10G a year I am guessing.  And that includes his trips to places as far away as New Zealand!  I have no idea how he does all that but he does.  And he does it well.

I mention D because we (Sally and I) are representing a basic, getting-back-to-the-land, minimal footprint lifestyle in this blog and, by comparison to many, I think we are.  By comparison to urbanites, anyway.  But by comparison to D, we are profligate pigs at the trough, wastrels of energy and resources and our footprints are huge.  Like clown feet!

And, to be fair, we are closer to the urbanites or the spoiled brat syndrome – no question.  I don’t think Inuit live with as little impact on the land as D.  Hell, I don’t think bag-ladies in the alley-ways of the city live with as little impact as D.  The guy is an environmental hummingbird in consumption and a Grizzly Bear of production and innovation in construction.

Great sense of humour, too.

Great with kids and Chinese students.

“So, what’s the downside, Dave?  Butt-ugly?  Mean as a junkyard dog?  Weird theories about aliens and the Bush family or what?”

Well, that’s just it, isn’t it?  Doesn’t seem to be one.  No downside, I mean.  Just a McGyver type who likes life and lives minimally.  Alone.  Creatively.  Healthily.  Sane.

I swear to God, you can’t make this stuff up!

I whined a bit about being in the city.  For four and half months, actually.  And I can’t take that back even if I wanted to.  Which I don’t.  I like it here better.  Way better.  In fact, I am appreciating here thanks to my recent urban experience more and more.  I didn’t think it was possible for me to proselytize more about living off the grid but I am.  Get out, guys.  Get out, now!

OK, that statement is not based entirely on my Vancouver experience.  Some of that time was very good.  There are things I like in the city.  And not everything here is paradise.  I freely admit that.  But the ratio of good to bad is so much in favour of the ‘country’ that I have to say it again.  Get out, guys.  Get out now!

I am thinking this way because I just read a book about how urban life is the new revolution.  How cities are the cutting edge of social advancement.  How life is getting better every day in leading edge urban centres and how the world will cure it’s ills through urban institutions.  The book is called the Metropolitan Revolution (by Katz and Bradley) and it is unmitigated BS.  Total crap.

How do these people get published?

I won’t bore you with the premise – ’cause there isn’t one.  It is a civic-boosterism, PR-type book on some urban initiatives that are themselves designed to address horrible and deep-rooted urban ills.  There is basic irony there, folks……….the authors are celebrating some potential cures for some long-standing ills.  Like band-aids for trauma.

For instance, they cite the 2 square miles of downtown Detroit that some rich guy called Gilbert is rebuilding.  Why cite that?  Because the city of Detroit has 137 square miles of squalor and chaos – that’s why.  The two miles looks good by comparison.  Over 25% of the buildings in Detroit are abandoned.  Even the water system leaks so much that only 40% of the water flowing gets to where it is supposed to.  Detroit is a failure of civilization not a model for the Metropolitan Revolution.  What nonsense!

I am writing about this because it is indicative of the BIG LIE.  Part of it, anyway.  The BIG LIE is, after all, BIG!  This part of the BIG LIE is that the city is great and people should go there.  And the lie is working.  Last year or so the world hit that critical balance point where the majority of people lived urban rather than rural.  There are now MORE people jammed like sardines than there are people living more naturally.  Of course, in the first world, we achieved that dubious milestone decades ago.  But now the world has caught up and we now have more bees in the hive than bees flying in the garden.

That’s not right.  Not for the garden.  Not for the bees.  The only beneficiary in that system is the Queen.

I am likely wrong.  I have probably erred.  Headed down the wrong garden path.  But I think that the best time to have lived in the city is over.  Maybe it was good for the last 200 or so years but it is now headed downhill.  Circle of life…kinda.

I think that the place to be (in future) will be small towns, villages and off-the-grid settlements.  I think technology will improve and we will be able to be global without being crammed into cubicles.  I think country will make a comeback.  I think that beauty will be seen in nature and not in concrete.  And I think that people will destroy themselves if they don’t get out.

So, I say, get out now!

Our house stands on stilts.  Mostly.  The back of the house sits on large concrete-merged-with-the-rock anchors but everything forward is on a log leg – shorter or longer as the house projects over the slope we are built on.  I am not an engineer so I planned on putting down the 12 posts required by our design but then, after looking at that plan, decided to double it.  And, well, insecurity being the true mother of invention, we actually have 31 posts holding up the house plus the three concrete anchors.  And, of course, most of that is cross-braced.  There are more posts if you include the surrounding deck.

Did I mention my insecurity?

Last night our area experienced a 6.6 earthquake.  People in Kamloops felt it.  So did people in Vancouver.  We didn’t.  At 8:00 pm we were sitting upstairs and did not notice a thing.  Even Fiddich didn’t bark!

I feel good about that.

Engineering, eh?  I recall talking to an engineer once (they are not easy to engage at a social level as a rule) and asking about what makes them tick and how good are they given that things keep falling down anyway? “Well, we are pretty good, I think.  We do the math.  We do structural tests.  We measure forces.  We approach the whole exercise pretty scientifically and then, when we have all the information we need we decide the specifications required.  Then, when we have all that, we double it!” 

“What?!  You mean you do all the science and then – what the hell – you just double it?”

“Yeah.  Pretty standard.  Do the work and double it.” 

So, when we were building, I figured I could do that.  I’d put in all the logs I thought seemed logical and then I doubled it.  Then I doubled that.  And then I added a few more.  How hard can this kind of engineering be?

“Dave, what’s the point?”  Well, I am likely to get a few slings and arrows over this but here goes: When in doubt about your construction, overbuild.  Since we were deeply in doubt when we started we simply added more mass to everything.  True, it’s more work and more materials but it was cheaper, faster and more personal than hiring an engineer. And, anyway, they are so hard to talk to, ya know?

I figure the house weighs somewhere between 60 and 80,000 pounds.  I have no real idea, of course, but I carried every piece of it at least five times so I’ll go with that figure.  I also figure that one of the logs, two at the most, can hold up 60,000 pounds so 31 will definitely do the job.

Overcompensation or just conservative engineering?   And there is no question that I am easier to talk to.  Call me.

I never thought I’d regard the First Nations as my heroes.  But I am right now.

Don’t get me wrong – anyone is eligible for my hero designation.  No races, creeds, colours, religions or the now-multiple-choice genders are excluded. To me a hero is a hero.  All you have to do is stand up to bullying, tyranny and prejudice against others weaker.  You just have to be a champion.  You don’t even have to win.

First Nations have been whining a long time about a lot of things mostly justified and they have also stood up strong now and again but most of that has been in their own self interest.  They have not been the champions of others.  They don’t even legitimately have the mythical track record of defending the earth as often claimed.  At least not so far as I have been aware. But that changed with Enbridge and Northern Gateway.  The First Nations seem resolute about protecting the planet on that score.  And it is spreading to other issues as well.  Truly, they are idle no more.

Everyone said – whites and First Nations alike – that Enbridge and the oil pipeline should not travel across BC and spill poison into the sea.  But it is native land the pipeline has to cross and the industry is throwing money at them at irresistible levels.  But they are resisting.  Strongly.  And that is pretty good.  It is very good, in fact.

But that was not what tipped me off to the new aboriginal chutzpah.  That came more subtly.  Seems no one wanted herring to be fished up north for conservation reasons.  Gail Shea, the minister for the DFO (Destruction of Fisheries and Oceans) over ruled public sentiment and fishermen and ordered the fishery opened anyway.  First Nations (and the Green Party) fought back and won.  The fishery was not opened.  Gail Shea and DFO lost.  Now that is very good indeed.

And then it went even further.  Seems our own provincial government was in consultation with FN over some projects that first required consultation with FNs (and environmental studies) and yet the government went ahead and approved the projects for go-ahead by order-in-council and when the natives heard about that, they threw the provincial reps out of the meetings. Physically.  In our modern way, throwing people out of meetings is the equivalent of a punch in the nose.

Normally all you would hear is, “Well, we are going to have to sit down at the table and, at the end of the day find a way to go forward.”  Translation: give me more money.  Which is enough in itself to make me want to punch someone in the nose!

In a way, it is a revolution.  Of course, the Indians have been revolting for ages (an old phrase from literature and not intended to offend) but, as I said, it has mostly been about them.  But in defending the coast against oil spills and defending the herring fishery against a geocidal government policy, they have stepped up for all of us.  And by throwing the bastards out of meetings, they have signalled ‘enough is enough’.

Put another way: the First Nations are actually doing something to change the way the government is mishandling just about everything.  Your MLA and MP could take a lesson from them.  And they should.

If I could, I would vote for them. First Nations are my new heroes.

Set prawn traps and a day later, reeled them in.  Got about 100 of the little crawlies – emphasis on little.  They were too small to keep (baby finger-sized) and so they went back in.  Disappointing but the right thing to do.  My neighbour goes out, lays out traps and the next day hauls in.  He has about 100, too.  All of his were the size of bananas!

How is that even possible?

Another neighbour goes by and drops off a log at our beach.  So we have officially begun our quest-for-fire season.  There are two logs down at the beach right now and there seems to be a rule – you can ignore one and just wait.  But, if there are two, you have to get at it!  So, we’ll be on the logging job pretty soon.

A buoy floated by.  Mid channel.  We know what that is.  It is a buoy with several hundred feet trailing out and one or two or even three traps attached to it.  All laid in too deep water so they floated off.  Could be a gift from the prawn gods.  Sal goes out, reads the name and pulls them up.  Belongs to a neighbour.  Sal calls. They’ll retrieve their traps tomorrow.

Another neighbour is over.  He has a pneumatic nailer.  Sal and I are finishing off the interior of the studio/workshop and need to borrow it.  We just finished doing the vapour barrier yesterday.  Interior ceiling and walls soon. So, we’ll get it, do the ceiling and return it before the big Easter dinner for ten the next day.  His house.  But Sal makes something potlucky. I’ll make the potatoes.

During this time, we cleaned up the big back deck, cleaned up the worksite and Sal did our taxes.  Today, we’ll also ‘burp’ the freezer as it seems to be not-so-cold these days.  That will take a while.  I also finished a couple of books and started a third, we’ve had three sets of visitors and Sal had to go into town for a dental issue.

Started the Longmire series.

None of that counts the first five days of schlepping stuff up the hill or the peat moss and steer manure that still has to come up from the beach.  Did I mention the propane fridge repair, the water pump repair?  Or the first dinner party, the doctor’s visits and the trips to the post office?   We’ve been home ten days.

And people wonder what we do all day?

My wife’s idea of a marital aid is an electric winch.  That is how old we are getting.

“How can a winch be a marital aid?” I ask.

Well, if we had to carry all this stuff up the hill, we’d get tired and eventually bicker and fight.  If we fought, I’d walk away and leave you to do it all, you bastard!  You’d be furious and we wouldn’t talk for a long time.  You are so immature that way.  So the winch is a marital aid.  We are still talking, thanks to that winch.”

“I’m immature?”

Of course you are.  You know that.  Now don’t be silly as well.”

“I’m not talking to you!”

See!” 

Sal and I have known each other 45 years.  Circular illogic is the cornerstone of our relationship.  Well, that and sex, of course.  These days there is slightly more emphasis on circular illogic.  Mind you, when you think about it, sex and circular illogic have a lot in common.

When I first met her and asked her out to lunch the next day, she answered, “Of course.  I’d love to!” 

“Great!  What’s your phone number.  I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“I am not giving you my phone number.”

“Why not?”

“You are the type of guy who gets phone numbers and doesn’t call.”

“How will you know that for sure unless you give me the phone number and I then don’t call?”

“I already know for sure.”

“But you’ll go for lunch?”

“Of course.  I said so, didn’t I?” 

Getting past that weird-as-hell little challenge was a portent of things to come. (Her girlfriend eventually gave me the number and, to be fair, I didn’t call.  I watched a football game on TV instead and, when it was over and I did call, she just was just going out the door and barely heard the phone ring.  It was that close). 

Forty-five years of living with Lucy.

Sustainable – our favourite buzzword these days may be in disrepute.  Well, as it applies to the natural world, anyway.

Growing wheat organically may seem like a sustainable and noble activity but if the farmer turns his/her back for a few weeks, weeds and bugs and all sorts of natural invaders will try to take the field back.  The way of nature is to resist monoculture regardless of how green it is.  In fact, the way of nature is to resist almost all our ‘modified foodstuffs’.  An orchard will wither and die and another orchard will not grow up in its place.  Wilderness will prevail in the long run.  The natural world wants to sustain only wilderness.

Most of our so-called natural foodstuffs aren’t natural at all.  We have domesticated them and adapted them to grow where they would never have grown before.  We change the natural way of things in almost every thing we do.

So, how is that sustainable?

The only humans who were ever in total sync with the environment were hunter gatherers.  The primal guys.  They exploited what was there and, when it was there no longer, they moved on and let their impact areas heal naturally.  Then they would exploit another ‘garden’ and do the same until the first one was healed enough to receive another assault.  And they remained small in number, stature and limited in their impact on the planet.

Now that’s sustainable.  Smart-phone living?  Not so much.

“Dave, don’t be ridiculous  We are not going to go back to hunting and gathering.  And, anyway, farming is sustainable.  We’ve been doing it for thousands of years!”        

Well, firstly I am not saying that we should go back to primal living.  We’d all die trying to do that.  Healthy young people die all the time just hiking in the forest or skiing out of bounds.  Hell, most old people would die without their TV or their car.  Individually, we are not all that tough.  So my best advice is to NOT go primal.  We wouldn’t last long enough to get good at it.

My point is that no ‘human modified’ way of food production will ultimately be sustainable….at least not on an industrial scale and that is what is required if we are to remain a population of billions.

In the long, long, long run, we – as a species – may not be sustainable.  Not in any kind of numbers, anyway.

Just a thought…

The water system wouldn’t start up.  It just kept building pressure until we thought it would burst!  Had to shut it down.  So….no water.  “Hmmmm…..something wrong with the pressure switch. I’ll have to go into the manual.  Read.  Try to fix it.”

“Not now.  Let’s keep lifting crap while we have the light.” 

“Hey!  The fridge isn’t working!  Can’t get it lit…not sure if it is getting propane.  We’re gonna have to fix it.”

“Right!  But let’s finish getting stuff over.  Get to that later, OK?” 

Two days later, we pull the fridge out of the alcove, flip it upside down and start to examine the workings.  Everything seems in order.  Clean it all up, blow through pipes, even check Piezo…put it together and back into the alcove.  Still won’t fire up.  So, I use the BBQ flamethrower to do the job the Piezo lighter did while upside down and WHOOSH, the gas lights and the fridge is working.  Seems the Piezo works better upside down.  Who knew?

Go down under the house, repeat similar process with pump.  Find a small blockage on the pressure switch.  Clean.  WHOOSH, we have water pressure that stays within range.  The switch works again.  Showers all around.

Genset won’t fire up.  Weird.  I am pretty sure I did all the winterizing crap right…………hmmmm……part of that was to drain the fuel completely – even the carb.  So, I make sure the whole system is full of fuel and it fires up quite nicely, thank you.  We are good to go.

Shutting down an off the grid home for the winter is not an uncommon thing.  People with cottages do it every year.  It is part of the lifestyle.  But just as much a part is the fact that glitches, blockages, disconnects, and various kinks somehow get worked in to your systems over the down time and you have to weave your way through the mysteries of things mechanical to get up and operating again.  And make no mistake – it is always a mystery!

I admit that most things are simply following the steps you took to shut down only in reverse – so as to start up.  Part of that mystery, tho, is to remember what those steps were.  The second level of mystery is that there is always a glitch that occurs that defies logic.  The pressure switch pipe was blocked.  It was not blocked when we left in November and the system was shut down and drained.  So, how did the pressure switch pipe get blocked up?  And a third part of the mystery is the fact that none of this is stuff you will ever know intimately.  Every time feels like a new challenge.

I once had a rusty, built-in fuel tank in an old boat.  Most of the rust got filtered out by the filter and so, when the boat stalled, I could jump below, clean the filter and have it back on before the boat had fully stopped.  Some rust would still get through so I became equally as adept at ripping off the carb, taking it apart, cleaning the jets and getting it back on and operating well under ten minutes!

Those maintenance habits came from having done it a hundred times.  Most systems in houses do not have to be as frequently addressed and, to be fair, when we do have to address them, it is usually easier and cheaper to buy a new one than have to learn how to fix, say, a microwave or vacuum.

We went to get our mail yesterday and were sharing our start-up up difficulties with a young mother (30’s) living solo out here most of the time (her husband works up North).  “Yeah, I know.  I can’t tell you how many times I have taken apart, fixed and put back together my washing machine.  I can do it now with my eyes closed.  And, anyway, it is a lot easier to fix it than haul it to the boat and take it to town, that’s for sure.” 

The point? People continue to ask me: “Hey!  Now that you are retired and living off the grid, what do you do all day?  I mean, don’t you get bored?  Do you get cable?”     

“Nah.  Got a washing machine and few pumps.  That keeps me busy.  That and chopping wood.”

“Oh.  I see.  I don’t think that would be enough for me.  And my wife really needs her Starbucks, ya know?  I don’t think we would be stimulated enough.  But it must be nice, eh?  No worries, no stress.  Just sittin’ around sippin’ mint juleps and readin’ all day, eh?”

“Yeah.  All that and naps, too.”

Home!  No place like it!  I am very happy to be back.

We left on the 6th.  Got most of the stuff up the hill to the deck today, the 9th.  We have five more heavy loads (gensets, heavy tools, scaffolding, steel) and a few not-so-heavy others before we are really done with the schlep but we have broken the back of it.  We are mostly done.  Everything is out of the car and on our island.  A few long yards more to go.  And our backs are nearly broken from the effort.  I guess it is true – we are getting old.

It’s a dog’s life…

Still, not so old that we couldn’t get it done and that is the most encouraging part. Very encouraging.  I admit that I don’t like lifting anything any more and my limit is now about 100 pounds where before it was at least 150.  I don’t want to do more than 50, actually, but anything less than that doesn’t really count as heavy.  Under 50 is a pillow.  Pshaw!  Sal, too. She throws 50 pounds around like it was basket of flowers.  We don’t count under 50. So much so that when we lift 50 and do it easily, some people are surprised.

I am surprised they are surprised.

Before we left I bought more solar panels.  They are 240 watts each and about 40″ by 72″.  Each panel weighs 45 pounds.  They were in the shop when I went to get them and the guy took the lid off the box.  I reached in and started to pull one out.  “Whoah!  Dude! Those are heavy.  Let’s get another couple of guys.”    

“They are 45 pounds.  Fuggedbout it.”  And I lifted out my six.

I bought a genset, too.  It weighs about 225 pounds.  The guy wheeled it out to my car.  “Just a sec.  I’ll get some young muscle.”  He was under 40.

“Don’t be a pussy!  Just lift it with me.”  And he did.  And we put it in the truck.

Now the truth of it is this: It is no longer easy to do that.  We feel the weight now.  Sal and I are stiff after a day of that.  We are tried.  We ache all over and we sleep like logs.  No question – we talk big and we are still able to do it but the talk is remaining strong while the ability is waning. We are getting old.

Had we stayed in town that ability would have lessened even more quickly.  Being away 4.5 months, I know.  It has already eroded somewhat.  We are 70% as able as we were when we left.  And, with a few months more of physical work, we may get back to 90+% of that.  So we are pretty good but out of off-the-grid-condition.

We will never be 100% again (say; last year as being 100% which is 40% of what we could do when we 30) .  And getting back to 90+% of even that  will become harder and harder as time passes.  And slower.  The key is to keep it up there as long as you can.  Give it up grudgingly.  Do not resign your abilities too quickly.  And stock up on Ibuprofen.

Because we have no choice.  Mind you, we chose to have no choice.  If I had a choice, I would take the elevator and have some ‘young muscle’ carry my luggage. I’d watch TV.  I’d go to restaurants.  And I’d sit in traffic.  I wouldn’t even count the martinis!  How do I know this about myself?  Because that is what I did before we left the grid and that is what I did for the last 4.5 months in the city. It was fun but we need the grind.  I do, anyway.  And now we have it back!

It is really, really, good to be home again.  Phew!