I haven’t written much in the way of description of our area but, of course, the picture at the top of the blog and my constant reference to forests, oceans and everything being set at an angle probably gives a sufficient picture to the casual reader.  But, as I read other books on wilderness, off-the-grid living, it seems the authors dwell on such matters quite a lot.  And so, in the absence of any recent major injuries, interesting humans or charming animal visitors to report on, I thought I’d give this descriptive thing a try.

We live on an island.  It is about 15 miles long, three to five miles wide depending on where you measure.  The island is about thirty miles from the nearest town but half of that distance (by time spent) would be logged by boat.  The other half is on another island and some of the time a 4×4 is necessary to cover that portion.  A conventional automobile can do it when the weather is good and the road has been recently graded but, in the winter and with a heavy load, the 4×4 is pretty much essential.

Our island has no amenities.  No store, no real road, no piped-in water or electricity and relatively few people.  Sixty square miles of island and usually about 60 people living here at any one time.  In the summer, the population might climb to 90 and, in the winter, it sometimes drops to under fifty.  We seem to have two to four people join the community every year and the same amount leave.  Without doing a tally, I would roughly estimate that there are about 12 to 15 young people (under 25) and perhaps that same amount of young to middle aged adults.  The balance of 30 to 40 are well over 50 and the bulk of them are over 60.

Our island is the ‘gathering’ island for several others.  This is because we have a community centre and some community buildings, because of its central location and it is because of it’s accessibility to ‘connecting points’ with the more populated on-the-grid island just next door.  All in all, we draw from three other islands with a total population of approximately 200 or so people.  Maybe 250.

Probably six or even more of the residents in the area are total recluses (hard to count recluses – by definition).  Virtually all are extremely independent.  No one relies on anyone else for anything significant of any kind.  Family members are excepted, of course, but even at that, most of those people are much more independent than their counterparts in the city.  One young man, for instance, was asked to navigate a large yacht complete with a crew from the Atlantic to Victoria because the owner was so impressed with his sea-going abilities and competence.  The young captain was under 25.  That guy is exceptional but, to a lesser extent, so are all the young people. 

I am not saying they are better – I am saying they are more independent minded.  Generally.  

The population, tho minimal, seems to have representation from all socio- economic stratas of the larger society.  We have professors and people who have less than a grade 12 education.  Rich businesspeople and failed ones.  We have pensioners and workers, unemployed, underemployed and unemployable.  We have craftsman and labourers, doctors and writers, inn-keepers and lawyers.  One thing we don’t have is more than one or two of anything.  This is a no-competition zone.

As stated before, the area is heavily forested and it has all been logged at least once over the past hundred years.  And, sadly, logging continues in the rapacious manner of yesteryear.  It has also been fished and, even more sadly, fishing also continues but it has been depleted to below the commercially attractive levels and so the big boats don’t come anymore.  Only prawns and oysters are in some abundance and this year, it seems, prawns have been knocked out.  Oddly, oysters are not a regular food item on the dinner plates of the nation and so oysters are still at healthy populations.

The reason the logging and fishing industry have depleted the area to the extent they have is simple.  Location, location, location.  Even though we are considered off-the-grid and remote by modern living standards, we are close and convenient by resource exploitation standards.  A commercial prawner can be here in a few hours and back home on weekends or even more frequently.  Same for logging.

This close-but-still-remote situation makes it ideal for the adventure tourism businesses although, to be fair, adventure tourism in BC is not an ideal business due to it’s short season and high capital requirements.  Outdoor adventures have a six month window at best and only three of those months can be relied on.  We have kayaker outfitters, luxury tenting, mini-cruises on large, beautiful yachts and no-star to five-star resorts.  They all do well in July and August and the better ones are full from June through September.  (If any reader wants a recommendation please contact me and I would be happy to describe and recommend the right one for you).

This is the west coast of BC.  It rains.  But, for eight months, it is light-to-moderate, infrequent and easy to take.  The four months of winter are a bit more harsh.  It can get a bit bleak at times in January and February.

There is no question we live in a temperate zone.  We get below freezing for say, a week a year.  We might hit ninety once in August for a few days.  Generally speaking the summers are warm, the shoulder seasons moderate and winter is just a bit cooler and somewhat wetter.  I consider it all ideal but, then again, I grew up in Vancouver with rain as the default weather pattern.

There is plenty of interesting wildlife and I find that to be amongst the most appealing aspects of this lifestyle but, to be honest, they don’t just show up like clockwork.  The wildlife populations seems plentiful and healthy to me but I live here.  Visitors often stare hungrily from the balcony expecting a Sea World display just after breakfast or just before dinner and it just doesn’t work that way.  The wolves howl when they want to, the Orcas go by but much of the time they are underwater (duh) and so it goes.  The only wildlife sightings you can count on are beach creatures and birds.  Other than that, it is a world of glimpses.  But still wonderful.

I may do a vegetation piece some time.  Suffice to say, we have a lot of Xmas trees.  But the flora is quite interesting and so I may give it a go in the future.  But that is enough description for now, don’t you think?

Everyone fights.  Disagrees.  Argues.  Feuds.  It is the way of things.  It’s natural.  We aren’t all the same and we have conflicts because of it.  In many ways it is a good thing.

But, in many other ways, it is not.  It is particularly bad in a small community.  In small communities there is just enough separatness to keep the disagreement strong and yet enough closeness to re-encounter the problem person all too often.  In effect it is like a family dispute – an extended family to be sure and several of them should be at least twice removed – but it is all very family.

In the city surrounded by strangers all day long you can have a tiff or a spat with someone and never see them again.  In our small community, you’ll see them on Wednesday.

Aside from the right or wrongedness of any given issue, the matters in dispute are usually petty in the larger context.  Often ego-based and/or destructive to everyone involved including innocent bystanders, they are barely tempests in which to brew tea.  But they can be bitter.  And enduring.  Think Hatfields.  Think McCoys.

Resolution mechanisms are minimal.  In fact, there are none.  Even though disagreement is part of the dynamic tension of life that produces answers and creative solutions, it is also just as often destructive and unpleasant when carried on for any length of time.  Small communities have plenty of time.  Disputes out here fester.  They linger.  They carry baggage.  And there are precious few ways in which to address the problems.  We don’t have magistrates, respected elders or counselors out here.  But we have plenty of different points of view.

People generally rely on time to heal the wounds that come from that.

But fussing and feuding, I think, is even more destructive than just fighting it out to the end.  Fussing and feuding is a constant state of negative energy that has no end in sight.  It is like death by a thousand cuts.  In time everything may heal but most of us are over 60!  Time is becoming less of an option.

Anyway, I mention all this because dispute resolution was (and, I suppose, still is) my job.  I still think about it.  I have an interest in the concepts, the psychology, the mystery of it all.  But I have little time or patience for the practice anymore.

And yes, dear reader, we have a current dispute flaring up out here.  It is why the topic came up.  But I won’t bore you.  It’s a NIMBY issue and, fortunately my backyard is not involved.  So, I am out of it.  And I will stay out of it.  But it is going the way of petty-ugly, that is for sure.

Dispute resolution seemed like a good thing to do when I was younger.  I was helping people.  I was a good guy.  ‘Blessed be the peacemakers‘, ya know?’  Even better, there was a rewarding result when two disputants made amends.  They felt better.  And I felt great!  Getting paid was just a bonus.

Now, I am not so sure. 

Now I think that many disputes hide a larger, deeper problem.  The resolution of one small manifestation of that larger problem – the immediate and current dispute – does not make the real problem go away.  Those people who live out of harmony with others will likely always live out of harmony with others and no jury, no judge, no amount of mediation will ever keep their demons at bay.  For some, being out of synch is a way of life.

I should know.  I think I am one.

Well, maybe not so much a destructive, ego-driven maniac who wants to be king of the world but, well……………… Is there a crown and a pension that goes with that job?  And where do I send my resumé?

You see, I dispute.  I disagree.  I even live off-the-grid, out-of-the-rat-race and sans the cul-de-sac because I don’t agree with most of it.  I am not comfortable there.  And I even think I am right a lot of the time about a lot of things.  Doesn’t really matter what the question is, I usually have an answer. (Yes, moving to a remote island is an answer but to what question, I am not so sure. Doesn’t matter.  I just really like the answer.)

I used to like to debate.  I liked the give and take.  Well, I used to.  Now?  Not so much.  Such parrying and thrusting requires some basic mutual understanding of the rules beforehand and more than a reasonable level of civility training.  There is not a lot of that these days, it seems.

Now that I am older and more mature (read: frail, impatient and not-so-hip) I am less likely to fight over anything but I can still raise my voice with the best of them if I have to.  Or, I suppose, the worst of them.

But this is not the place for it.  The ring is too small, the memories too long, the positions taken too personal.  Lots of ego rides on small issues in families and we are a family.  Facts, figures, objectivity, reasonableness?  Not so much.

The point: I have had to come to terms with my basically contrarian nature out here by learning to shut the hell up.  The tinder is too dry, the houses made of cards.  So, I’ll let even the current topic lie for a bit.  Sleeping dogs are also part of the family and I will be snoozing through this one.

Wasabi on the grid waiting for the tide to go out…

Slowly the water recedes…

Settling on the Grid

Wasabi’s hot!  We finished her bottom yesterday and she is lookin’ good!

Afterwards, we entertained our neighbours at ‘generally-pleased-with-everything hour‘ on the new back deck. (I am a bit too old and jaded for a full-on Happy Hour, I am afraid.  It’s all the politics, don’t you know?)   Shirtsleeves.  Man, oh man.  It is still March and I had to use some sunscreen!

Painting the Undersides

I know climate change is not a good thing but right now the temperature is easy to live with.  We touched 70 degrees F yesterday.  March in Canada!?

But it is not all good.  I am not so sure it is official – the Dept. of Fisheries doesn’t report to us – but the prawns are gone!  It is like they were evicted.  Four months ago we had decent prawn counts, today no one is catching any.  And the commercial fishery hasn’t even started yet!  DFO should close the area but I doubt that they will.  They are way too slow off the mark.  On everything.  We’ll just have to wait and see.

The final touches…ready for the tide to come in

Now that the boulders are in place, we will soon get back to working on the studio.  But Sal’s not really keen.  Not yet, anyway.  “I need a day off!”   Which is fine by me.  When Sal takes a day off, she spends it working.  Just does other chores.  She’ll bake up a storm.  I may even get a pie!  Maybe she’ll do some sewing.  Catch up on paperwork.  Make a nice dinner.  I love it when she takes a day off!  When I work, I work like I was taking a day off and when I actually take a day off, I nap.  I won’t need much convincing on this ‘day-off’ idea.

Hmmm…………..maybe get some fresh-baked pie and tea-in-a-thermos and go for a ride in Wasabi…………..?

Sal and I rolled boulders yesterday.  It was fun.  In an Egyptian-slave-working for-the-Pharaoh kind of way.

Instead of using concrete footings as foundations for the posts that will hold up the small outbuilding (studio) it occurred to us to use some of the boulders that litter our landscape.  ‘Found materials’ is the term for this kind of chintziness.  I prefer to think of it as smart materials handling.  They are already on site.  I don’t have to carry anything.

Exciting Picture of a Small Boulder

‘Course the rocks have to be big enough to act as a footing and that means each one is in excess of 300 pounds.  None of them are in the right place – naturally.  So, they have to be dug up, pried out and then rolled in to place. We need nine.

I had managed to pry most of them out over the past few days but they were still partially in their own holes and as far as thirty or so feet away.  We chose boulders that were uphill, of course.  We had to first prepare the destination spot and then we’d try to roll ’em in.  You’d think it would be a piece of cake.

It’s not.

Sal is a dynamo.  She goes at things like a dervish.  But she barely weighs a third of what the average sized rock weighs.  I’d pry the rock up out of the hole and we’d get it on to it’s tipping point and then I’d stand back to take a breather.  She would then grab it and pull it towards her. Grunting.  Heaving.  Sometimes, if a rock refused to budge or went off course,  the air turned blue.  Most of the time, it would require my added immensity to the force but, sometimes, she’d get the monolith moving on her own.

Found Materials: Rocks and Logs

Then there was no stopping her.  She’d get that puppy moving and throw herself behind it as it slowly toppled down the hill and she’d try to keep it going.  It was a marvel of determination to watch.  And, on a few of them, I did just that – I watched.  I watched the little engine that could.  I watched the little engine that did.  We got seven of them in place yesterday.  We’ll finish today or tomorrow.

But we have to do Wasabi first.  The tides are right.  Time to paint the bottom.  So we’ll get the boat onto the hard, wait for the tide to recede and then paint the bottom.  Lying on the mud.  It is an unpleasant job.  But it needs to be done.  So, we’ll do it.  (Just came back from the boat.  Damn.  We misjudged.  The tide was out just a few inches too much for us to float in to the boat-grid and we missed it.  We’ll have to do it tomorrow.)

And then later, for fun, we may go roll a few more boulders.

Is this better than a Starbucks or a pub?  Or what!?

Dateline: Remote Island

Neighbour one is putting his little houseboat together nicely.

Neighbour two is progressing with his dock and ramp rather impressively. 

Sal is making a new canvas cover and Wasabi (name of new boat) has been ‘tweaked’ a bit here and there and is now doing a pretty good job.

Garden is mostly in (good ol’ Sal) and some things are already growing.

Deck has been finished and now I am attempting to drag boulders around to use as footings for the new attached studio-cum-workshop. 

Visitor season, too.  Early.

Generally speaking the universe is unfolding as it should.  Which is good.  I like that.  Change is good but not always the surprises.  So, we are pretty happy (I have managed to mentally bury Gore’s book, The Future, sufficiently deeply that I continue to think I have one.  Silly me).

Spent part of the day yesterday hiking and climbing around the woods near our parking lot on the other island.  The road will be improved and so we have to drop a few dead trees so that they don’t drop later on us or our cars.  I tied yellow ribbons on the ones that have to come down.  The idea is that I tie ribbons and someone else (younger and quicker) actually does the dropping.  I have found a guy older and slower and somewhat willing but I am thinking of sacrificing him as a last resort.

Falling is the most dangerous occupation in the non-combat world – not counting the drug business which is not included in industry stats.  More dangerous than deep sea fishing in Alaska in winter.  Statistically, anyway.  Loggers get hurt and they die.  A lot.  And, when clambering around tying ribbons, you can see why.  It is bloody impossible at times.  Don’t forget the west coast of BC is basically all angular ground, poor footing and dense underbrush.  In many falling situations you simply can’t move freely or run away very fast or very far.

And the trees are rooted on the angular hills but attempt to grow relatively straight up.  So the stresses in the structure of it are not evenly distributed.  That means that the place in which the tree falls is not always easy to determine.  A logger develops an ‘eye’ for it, of course, but too many branches on one side, a neighbouring tree, a twist in the trunk, a rotten core……all of these and more variables makes it somewhat of a gamble every time.  And the trees we have to fall are all dead, dying and/or rotten.  By definition they will not go easily.

I am looking for a quick, nervous, slight bachelor for the job.

Maybe one who votes Harper Conservative? 

I’ve written a few blogs lately but not published them.  I didn’t like them enough.  Too depressing.

I am not depressed myself, mind you.  Not really.  I don’t think so, anyway.  If I am, I blame Al Gore.  I am pretty much done his book The Future and, to summarize it, there doesn’t seem to be one.  We are not heading for a hell-hole, we are already in one and in a state of free-fall.  The only bright spot is that we cannot yet see the bottom.  But it is coming up fast.  It is hard to write a fun blog about a more natural life when Al has described the currently running and accelerating apocalypse.

Seems mankind is both homicidal and suicidal.  Nature is pretty much dead.  And we are doomed.  Each of his books should come with a Cyanide pill attached to the jacket.

Sheeesh.

I won’t bore you with all the ways in which we are to suffer, mutate and die.  Suffice it to say that we’ll eat Monsanto, live by way of drugs and prosthetics and cook in the advancing deserts as we try to gun down the poor folks from the South. Oh yeah……and the rich will get richer (as if that matters a whit).

The problem with his doomsday vision is that the damn thing is so well researched and the prophesies (more like dire warnings) are so well written.  It is hard not believe what he has to say.  I told my neighbour (a lapsed Catholic) that I was going to join the church.

“What in God’s name for?”  (I don’t think he heard the irony in that question)

“Well, I used to think the church was stuck in the past, had a closed mind and lied to the masses.  I still think that but now that seems like a better route to follow.  According to Gore, the past is way better than now and way, way better than the future.  Seems opening our collective mind is akin to opening Pandora’s box – and it is ugly, dark and greedy in there.  And so I am thinking the lies about winged-cherubs and harp-playing in the clouds are better.  Where do I sign up?”

I am glad I have almost waded through Al’s tome of tombs.  I’ll take a bit of time to heal and then try to put it out of my mind.  Life by way of denial seems to work for a lot of people. I’m going to give that a try.  If he is wrong, I’ll be fine.  If he is right, the climate, nanobots, epidemics and snipers should take care of me in short order.  What’s to worry about?

The following is an incident from our early days.  I don’t think I ever put the story on a blog (if I did it was on another blog written years ago) but in a way, it is a dramatic opening and a not just a bit of a bloody start to our adventure out here.  The reason for writing it is to gauge from you guys what kind of an opening to a book it might make.  Please feel free to comment.  Better put: please comment.  It would be a great assist to me.

It was frigid.  I was in the water.  And I was hurt.  One second I was fine, the next I had been hit in the head by a 20 hp outboard motor propeller as it drove over me at full speed.  It hit my head like a sledge.  Some kind of hot goo was coming out of my skull as I flailed about trying to get back to the surface and I was starting to think that this might not turn out to be such a good day after all.

I had just been injured in a freak boating accident miles from anywhere.

My wife and I were constructing a small wilderness cabin up one of the inside passages on the BC coast on a sparsely populated and un-serviced island.  It was around noon on a hot July day when we left our building site for a trip to the local store.  We are located ten nautical miles northeast-ish from the nearest settlement with roads and telephones, 30 miles and a ferry ride east-ish from the nearest small town and two miles South of our nearest neighbour.  It is isolated by our standards.  Remote by any standards.

I was 56 at the time.  My wife 52.  We are basically healthy and relatively capable people but still citified to the extent that both of us had soft hands and a single day’s hard labour resulted in extremely sore muscles.  We had more fat than muscle, more optimism than experience and more patience than skill.  Building a cabin was our idea of a challenge and an adventure.  Fortunately, we liked doing it and had each other to share it with.

It doesn’t get any better.

That day, my wife and I were riding along in our small inflatable boat at full speed – at about twenty knots.  Sally was at the helm. I was sitting up on the bow.  I was leaning forward into the boat because equalized weight distribution helps level the trim of the boat and allows it to ride better.  I was leaning in towards the center of the boat with my seat on the front tubes, my upper weight on my arms placed on my knees.  My weight was well inboard.  I thought I was sitting safely.

But I straightened to look at something on shore at the exact same instant we hit an inexplicably large wave.  The momentum of straightening my posture together with the deceleration of the boat hitting the wave sent me over the bow.  It was instant.  I remember thinking as I went over, “Damn!  The propeller!”

Then there was a huge ‘bang!’ and I remember thinking again, ‘Damn!  The propeller.”  As the boat passed over me, I was twice struck by the spinning blades.  One blade cut along the part line of my hair and the second cut almost at right angles near the crown of my head.   It felt like a single hammer blow.

A few seconds later, I bobbed to the surface with a view of the inflatable still moving away from me.  I could see Sally’s back.  That was not a good moment.  She seemed so distant.  Worse, she was heading the wrong way.  I could already feel hot liquid pouring from the top of my head.  The pain was obvious and extreme but not incapacitating.

I was conscious but not overly coherent.  I remember instinctively calling out, “Oh, my God!”

It occurred to me at that moment that ‘Oh, my God!’ was not going to convey the appropriate message so I took a deep breath, collected my thoughts, tried to be calm and yelled again.  This time I had purposefully formed the sentence in my head: “Come and get me.”  And so I let out at the top of my lungs,  “Oh, my God!”

Again.

This involuntary and repetitive exclamation struck me as mildly amusing at the time.  It seemed as if I was destined to yell prayers instead of instructions.  Just as well, I thought, considering the situation.  So, I shut up and began to swim slowly towards the finally-stopped boat.  It was about 75 feet away.  It seemed like a mile.

Sally had watched the whole accident unfold in some kind of horrible slo-motion but the boat was traveling too fast to do anything about it.  She stopped the boat rather than try to adjust to the situation right away.  It was the right move.

As I swam I became more and more aware of my circumstance.  I was fully clothed, but injured and bleeding.  My immediate rescue was likely but medical assistance was not.  We were a long way from anywhere.  I was particularly aware of the temperature difference I was experiencing.  I was in 50-degree water and my body was rapidly becoming colder.

In the meantime, of course, hot something was pouring from my head and down my face.  My head was covered in a gooey, sticky-warmth and my body was getting colder.  It was very strange and not just a little disconcerting.  I started to worry.

Sally re-started the boat and covered the distance to me within seconds.  She was very good.  She could have easily come too fast or missed me altogether.  Instead, she drifted up to me neatly with the engine put in neutral at just the right time.  We connected the first time we tried.  After a few futile attempts to get me into the boat, I suggested that I hold on to the rope looped along the gunwale and that she simply drag me to the beach as quickly as she could.  I adopted the harpooned whale position which came somewhat naturally in the situation and Sally took the extra precaution of lashing me to the boat.  It was a good idea.  I was losing consciousness.

Being dragged through the water increases heat loss.  It was scary cold.  After what seemed like an hour but was more like five minutes, we got to shore and I rolled into the boat from the beach, holding Sally’s just-disrobed t-shirt to my head to stanch the flow of blood.  I had inadvertently wrapped one of its buttons against my head and for the next few hours felt what I thought was a skull fragment as I held the shirt in place.

In retrospect, that silly error was the worst part.  I kept expecting brain matter to ooze out whenever I moved the cloth.

We drove another ten minutes to the nearest neighbour and they called the Coast Guard.  Forty-five minutes later two Coast Guard out-station, rapid response teams were on site and thirty minutes after that a helicopter arrived.  Within the next hour I was at the Campbell River hospital and soon after that I was examined and stitched up.  They even gave me a sandwich.

I was very lucky.  It seems the propeller had neatly sliced through my scalp in two separate places for about ten inches of laceration but had not cut into my skull.  There was no skull fragment – only a bloodied button and an overly vivid imagination.

That kind of precision cut is not an easy thing to imagine.  Try pinching your own scalp and see how much skin you get.  Then wonder how two powerful blades could have sliced only skin deep without cutting much deeper.  I was more than lucky.  I was saved miraculously.

I guess I am also hard headed.

I was fortunate in more ways, too.  I met fabulous neighbours who all came to my aid.  People I did not know came to help.  Blankets were volunteered and comfort was extended wherever possible.  The Coast Guard personnel were perfect – just like you want them to be.  They were proficient in the first aid and skills they manifested but also in their caring and humanity.  They were not only skilled professionals but they were also decent human beings.

As I was being carried aloft by the medivac helicopter, the remaining Coast Guard staff turned to assist my traumatized and worried wife.  They took care of our boat and got Sally to the nearby town where the hospital was.  They were excellent.

The helicopter crew and the hospital staff picked up where the Coast Guard left off.  They, too, performed and behaved way beyond my expectations.  In fact, I was catching a ferry back to my cabin four or so hours later.  I looked a bit ridiculous in my blood-stained bandage and I certainly felt a bit ‘whacked’ but, all in all, I was intact and doing fine.

I remember entering the ferry passenger waiting room with a dazed look on my face and wearing a weird looking bandage-cum-turban on my head.  Sally had gone to buy the tickets.  I entered a room with about ten others already seated and waiting for the ferry.  Some looked up at my arrival.  They looked horrified.  Blood was seeping through the bandage and trickling down my neck.  I hadn’t noticed it.

Tipping my turbaned head forward, I said, “I’m the leader of a new island cult.  Anybody wanna join?”  Nobody laughed.  Nobody even acknowledged my existence.  They just looked away or at each other.  The message conveyed clearly to me was that they knew a nut-case when they saw one.  And after a few minutes, everyone left the waiting room.  They decided to wait outside.  I don’t blame them.

I guess my echoing laughter at my own joke didn’t help allay their concerns.  They felt safer outside.  Sally didn’t come in either, now that I think about it.

The sun was setting as we crossed the last body of water on our way home in a water taxi.  I held Sally close for a long time and reflected on the day.  I was very thankful to be there.  And with her.

“You know, Sal, with the exception of the propeller, it was a pretty good day!”

We have a steep hill at the end of the road on the nearest island.  Where we park our cars.  It is really steep.  Black diamond.  And, over time and weather it develops some pretty severe moguls.

A normal car or van can’t make it.  You need a 4×4 and even 4×4 pick-ups (being lighter in the back end) have a bit of trouble.  The ideal vehicle would be a 4X4 with chunky tires and a short wheelbase.  Like a Forerunner or a Pathfinder.  That is what we have – an older Nissan Pathfinder.  It is great.  And that is what most of the vehicles are like.  We all have SUVs.  Mostly.

Interesting lesson: it is better to go down a steep hill front ways and then back the vehicle up that same hill when you want to return rather than trying to back down first and driving up frontways after.  Why?  Weight distribution.  You have better braking going down frontways and you have better traction going up backwards (engine over the drive wheels).  Kinda counterintuitive, isn’t it?

The smallest suitable vehicle is a Tracker and the largest is a Suburban or Expedition.  There’s a Subaru in the lot but I don’t think they attempt the hill.  Not enough clearance for the dips and holes.  A vehicle can get hung up pretty easily.  A few years back a small 4×4 pick-up snapped it’s frame going up. The whole thing was stuck on the hill like a giant half-open jack-knife.

We also have several dead or dying trees looming over the hill.  They will fall.  Someday.  Soon.  And that would make getting up and down even harder.  There’s also a little spring that seeps out of the hill about halfway down.  That constant stream helps the tires erode the surface and so the ruts and moguls get bigger and the road becomes more impassable every year.

The hill almost qualifies for a National Geo picture sometimes – especially in the winter when the snow is on the surface and the ice from the spring has ‘paved’ the bottom into an inclined skating rink. More than a few of us have slid to a stop at the bottom.

That is when we start to use good boots and balance to get up the hill instead of horsepower and winter tires.  When you slip down more than just a few feet, you leave the vehicle at the top.

Four years ago 34 neighbours gathered on a particularly rainy day and with shovels and wheelbarrows resurfaced the hill.  It was a magnificent effort.  We did good.

And it lasted four years.  That was all fine for awhile but life and roadways change.  The hill is deteriorating.  So is everyone else.  We’re getting old.  Carrying heavy weights up and down the hill in the winter is becoming less of an option.  Especially when even good boots don’t afford good traction.  The writing is on the hill.  We have to do something.

I’ll keep you posted.

I was happy outside in shirtsleeves working on my deck.  Sal was up at the bunkhouse learning to make sourdough bread.  Early afternoon.  It was sunny.  Life was good.

When I saw her returning, I went in to put the water on for tea.  She arrived and we sat down to a nice cuppa.  The clouds seemed to roll in pretty quickly after that.  Within 20 minutes it was dark-ish outside. Windy.  And cold.  Ten minutes later it was snowing!

For the next 45 minutes we watched in horror as the wind raged and the snow came in screaming horizontal sheets obliterating our view of the outside.  Couldn’t see twenty feet from the house! It looked like a scene from Jack London.  It felt like Yellowknife in January.

And so we sipped our second cup of tea, put another log on the fire and wondered which episode of the Twilight Zone we were now in.

Sheeeesh!

Forty-five minutes after that the snow stopped and a few minutes after that sun peeked through.  Within the hour, we were bathed in sunshine, sky clear as a bell.  Sal shrugged on her jacket and went out to play with the dogs.  I went out, cleaned up my work site and started the sushi rice for dinner.

The Snow Thug was gone.

Now, don’t get me wrong……we’ve had snow before.  This is Canada. We know snow.  But I have never known Hit-and-Run snow.  Rogue snow.  Snow Blitzkrieg.  I have never encountered a mini, nano-term, snow tempest on an otherwise sunny day.  At sea level!?

What is going on?

OK.  It is not global warming.  It is not global change.  It is not global anything.  I admit that freely.  But it was damn odd.

And I blame the oil companies.

Only kidding.  I can’t blame the oil companies for an anomaly in the weather.  I already blame them for enough as it is.  Just about everything, actually.  Well, them and Harper, the CIA and Globalization.  But I think I can let them all off the hook for that little tempest.  But, of course, like most people, the thought crosses my mind.  It does make me wonder how a snowstorm can hit like an outlaw MMA fighter in the middle of the day.  It really felt like we were being ‘mugged’ by Mother Nature.

What is the world coming to?

Blew like hell yesterday.  Gusts to 50.  Sal was working up at the post office and had gotten there that morning when it was pretty calm in her little 11 foot boat.  Things changed quickly after that.  By 3:00 pm (an hour before she was to leave for home) the seas were three feet high, choppy and the wind was howling.   I was concerned for her safety.

The phone rang.  It was the head postmistress.  “Did Sally go to work today?  I am concerned.  It is an awful day for a small boat.  I am going to send my husband to go get her!”  

“Well, that is very kind of you but if anyone goes to get her, it’ll be me.  And I am thinking of going myself.  Looks pretty rough out there.  My only real concern is that Sal thinks she is the captain of her own ship, the master of her own destiny and that she and her little boat are capable of facing up to force four hurricanes.  If I go out there, she’ll get mad at me.”

“I’ll send my husband.”

“Thanks for that but never mind.  I am going.  I’ll definitely get in trouble but I’ll get in more trouble if someone else’s husband goes.  The best outcome for me is that she flips into the sea and I arrive just in the nick of time to save her.  That would at least shut her up.  Anything short of that and it will be hell.”

“You are weird, you know that?”

I went.  Met Sal as she was just leaving the post office dock.  She glared at me.  We headed out into the teeth of it together.  Separate boats.  When we got home to our dock Sal reamed me out for over reacting.  But when I got home I received an e-mail from a neighbour watching the whole one-act drama from her window play out on the ocean in front of her. “Oooooh, it was sooooooooo nice to see you go out in the storm to get your sweetie!”

“Yeah.  Love that sweetie.”

Like Mrs. Ahab loved the captain of the Pequod…………