I am a bit overdue for a post.  Sorry.  My only excuse is so unlike me as to be unbelievable.  I am not so sure I have anything to say……..

.…doooooo………dooooooooo….doooooooo..dooooooooooo  (image of Rod Serling looms in digital fashion in the background)

Part of the reason is that I am busy doing work and getting ready for spring.  Part of it is that I have a small, temporary eye infection and it inhibits screen work.  But the largest part of this writer’s malaise is a mild state of confusion re topics.  Whales and Ravens?  Politics?  Building? 

Waddawedoin’here?

I am just reading Al Gore’s book, The Future, and it is, so far, kinda bleak.  My kinda book, really, but this one is dark.  Ugly dark.  Seems we are all likely doomed.  All to Hell doomed. Globalization, computerization, robotization and wealth inequality together with climate change and we are soon about to enter the perfect storm.  This kinda thing somewhat dampens one’s plans for the future, ya know?

Well, it changes them, anyway.  Gore is saying that the playing field is altering.  And altering quickly and radically.  What we have come to know as ‘normal life’ is going to change.  He claims this is not a prediction but rather a report on what is already happening.  It is changing.  Most of us just don’t know it yet.

I won’t bore you with the details.  Suffice it to say, he overwhelms you with information and so far, it is convincing.  I have no idea what the answer is – I am only 1/3 of the way through the book.

But one factoid made me think…………seems we were stone carvers and spear-chuckers for some 200,000 years before we learned to plant a garden.  Then we were ‘agriculturists’ for 8,000 years before we made some machines to ramp up production of consumer goods.  The Industrial Revolution is only 200 years old and it is already being replaced by the Digital Age (read: computer, robot, no-need-for-humans era).

That part is not hard to follow.  We are rapidly changing the way we cover the basics of life.  He cites 3-D printers as being the forerunners of Star-Trek based ‘replicators’ and that we can all expect to have one relatively soon.  Those of us who can afford to buy them, that is.  He is easy to understand.  We are changing so fast as to be caught confused and unaware. And many will be caught poor.

I get it.  So far, so bleak.

But think of this very minor point: when we chucked spears, we did so outside.  When we planted rice, maize and wheat, we did so outside.  When we began making model T’s and big screen TV’s, we moved inside and went to the park or the beach on the weekends.  A little bit of outside.  Maybe.  But when we work online, shop online and are soon to ‘produce’ entirely online, we are not outside in the fresh air at all.  In fact, there are a number (in the hundreds of thousands) of people who seemingly never leave their screen ever.  They have full-time lives online.

That can’t be good.  Put aside for the moment the matter of money and all that crap.  Forget about your RRSPs and 401Ks and financial plans for a minute.  Waddabout your body?  Doesn’t that need some basic attention?

I just read that one in three Americans die with some form of dementia.  They do not necessarily die from some form of dementia but they have it when they go.  Not good.  And we all know of the increasing prevalence of cancer and heart disease. Maybe we should spend a bit more time outside doing some basic healthy, physical, natural things?  It is definitely healthier and more fun even if it does not add to your aggregate wealth.

More importantly, perhaps, and according to Al Gore (so far in the book, anyway), being able to live simply and off the land may be a requirement for survival in the very near future.  Seems the elites and the robots won’t have a great deal of need for the billions of people that used to provide cheap labour.  Not anymore, anyway.  They just won’t need us.

And, honestly?  I am hoping to not need them!

We caught the early (8 a.m.) high tide and hauled Big Surf onto the beach.  We do this by dragging it up two large logs that are run parallel into the shallows like a marine ways.  A winch (as you’d expect) is attached at the high and dry end and, with a little pull and tug, she comes up pretty easily.

Good way to start the day.

But, tragically, Big Surf may be there forever.

When you live remote, looking, sourcing, finding, buying, procuring, acquiring,  and obtaining stuff is a challenge.  We work hard to get. The internet helps but, generally speaking, shopping (comparing and pricing) is too difficult logistically.  Basically, you take what you have time and opportunity to get. My window of access and time is short.   And we hermits are obliged to make fast, executive decisions when it comes to shopping.  “I don’t care what the price is, I am here.  And so is it.  That is magic.  A sign from the Gods. Gimme dat!”

When I am at Home Depot the clerk always asks, “Did you get everything you wanted today, sir?”   I laugh.  “Five out of nine this time.  Not bad. Anything over 50% of what is on my list is a lucky day!” 

As I have said, shopping is a challenge.

But selling!?  Selling is impossible!  Think about it……………

I put an ad on Craigslist: 17′ Surf, good shape but not pretty.  Dry.  No engine.  To view take several ferries, and drive a 4×4 15 kms down a remote logging road, launch a similar boat to the one you are coming to look at and take the following compass bearing until you hit a distant island.  If you have not found me by dark, fire off some flares.  Price is negotiable.

Unsurprisingly, things on islands tend to stay on islands.  It’s the way it is.  Most of my neighbours, for instance, have several boats.  They have to.  It is de rigeur for life abroad.  But, when they get a new one, the old one often just gets ‘hauled up’ and becomes part of the landscape.

This is especially true for vehicles.  Some folks even include appliances in the phenomena.  In fact, anything that is heavy enough to sweat over or invest barging fees in is likely to remain ‘in the remote’ forever.

Boats – because they float away (if they can) – have a theoretical chance for re-use but selling them just requires too much in the way of synchronicity.  Buyer and seller are literally too far apart.   Boats with a chance for a second life (actually, island boats are like cats – they have nine lives) usually go to friends, neighbours and/or family.  They can check out any time they want but they can never leave.

Many are just given away.

Bottom line: I may be the proud owner of Big Surf for a long, long time.

We haven’t been able to get off our butts much these past few days.  The weather has been wet and uninviting – but that isn’t it.  Not really.  We just don’t have the juice right now.  We are a smidge sluggish.   I just don’t wanna go do, ya know?  I dunno………….the idea of a nap keeps cropping up for me.

Which is just fine.

Sal never stops but she slows down and she is in a bit of a slow mode now, too.  Mind you, everything will still get done but ten little ‘side-jobs’ probably won’t.  Not today.

This is not an unusual state for me.  It is for Sal.  She’s not yet used to just sitting.  I am.  I like to sit and stare at the sea and just think every once in awhile.  Thinking, for me, is a treat, an indulgence.  For years I just seemed to have seconds to think something out, much of the time reacting to the moment, the stimuli of the city, my work, my family, driving, TV and the like.

Any empty spaces were filled with catch-up phone calls, checking schedules, finishing half-done chores, side jobs, etc.  There were no truly empty spaces.

Pausing to think, reflect, ponder, contemplate was simply a luxury I never seemed to have time for.  Now I do.  A woman’s work is never done, they say, but Sal is catching me up in the slowing down department.  Ironically, it takes a while to slow down.

I, however, can lay on the bed and just day-dream for an hour now and enjoy the whole process immensely.  I often use that kind of time to plan out a building project in detail in my head. Then, when the time comes to get to it, the work just seems to flow.  It is a nice way to get things done. Feels right.

But I was stunned to discover this ‘weird way of being’.  It was about four years ago just as we were slowing down from having built the house.  We had tons of projects still to do but the ‘big push’ was over and, amazingly, we could start to work at a more relaxed pace.  That meant not rushing, not working as fast as we could, not thinking-and-working at the same time.  For the first time in my adult life – it seemed – I had real down time.  Real time.  Real time NOT already spoken for in some way.

It was amazing.

Still is.

Highly recommended as well, by the way.  But this ‘head space’ is not something you can achieve by simply having a vacation, taking time off or interrupting a normally stressful life.  I should know.  I tried.

Stressful or just plain rapid-living is like a heavy fly-wheel.  You may stop the engine but the flywheel keeps going and you just can’t really slow down.  Not right away.  You might get a rest but ‘slowing down’ and reflecting, contemplating and pondering – well, they don’t come easily to a usually-stressed mind.

Honestly?  I don’t think I achieved even a partial mind-state of ‘nothing’ until the second year of having actually slowed down.  And I am still not there.  Not fully.  But mostly.  Hard to explain without sounding all Maharajah guru on ya.

The point: peace is a state of mind.  And pace is a major influence in it.  The words are similar because they are.   The city has pace.  The country does not.  It has seasons.  We have managed to achieve some peace by reducing our pace.  And it is almost seasonal in it’s rhythm.  It’s a good thing and something not really understood until you get some of it.

Some time ago I told you of my small-city-guy neighbour’s houseboat project.  Well, it is underway again.  Last weekend he came out and all hell broke loose, lumber flyin’ around and getting erected.  Makin’ off-cuts.  Saws whining, hammers hammering.  Whoosh!  Bang!  Typically, this guy works hard and fast and, once he gets going, he is a machine.  Things get done.  Makes me tired just watchin’.  I half expect him to be finished by the time I’ve written this.

Pictures will follow.

The other ‘Big-city-guy’ came up this week.  He works hard, too, but he brings rain.  Unbelievable.  If he goes to town, it rains.  If he comes up, it rains.  The guy is a regular Joe Btfsplk.  It’s a curse.  But, I confess, it amuses me.  In August, in the middle of a ten-day streak of sunshine, he announces he is going to town for supplies.  And I watch the storm clouds gather.  By the time he has shopped and returned, the rain lets up.  This is true well in excess of 80% of the time.  He is a true rain-maker.  We could rent him out to California.

But it is nice to see him up here.  He loves it.

First W’fer of the year wrote looking for a place to volunteer.  We’ll likely take her in for the wood-cutting week.  Makes things go easier if we can get a labour-chain going.  Plus I like having a young person to boss around.  Makes me feel good, ya know?

So Spring is almost here.  All the signs are showing.  It’s all good.

I can’t believe it!  A regular reader suggested that the occasional political rant would be appreciated!?  Ya gotta wonder…….?

But, of course, I’ll oblige.  But I’ll make it quick.  First off, what the hell is going on with the stock market?  The Dow is at a record high, the NASDAQ is higher than it has been since 2001.  Where is the confidence coming from?

Here’s my theory: there is no true outpouring of confidence.  Not popular confidence, anyway.  Confidence is not what we are seeing this time.  This time we are seeing the rich investing because they have no other place to put their money and, since the rich have gotten richer, they are a bigger influence than they have been in the past – proportionally.  Wall street used to manifest the confidence of Main street.  Today it manifests the disposable income of Park Place and Boardwalk.

That is what I think.

Canadian politics is finally getting interesting.  Harper is an all around pariah.  On just about every front, too.  Even the CBC are taking shots at him.  The lapdog has turned.  They have been beaten and starved for so long, the CBC has no teeth so the battle is far from fully engaged but, for the first time in a long time, the CBC is finding stories that are a negative force on the government.  They gave up that kind of criticism with the first government cuts decades ago.  They may be too weak now to even be heard.  It may be too little too late.  But it is good to see Ol’ Yeller getting it’s voice back – weak as it is.

Christy Clark (Premier of BC) is starting to look like Rocky Balboa without the juice to make a last-minute rally.  The blood is pooling at her feet.  And she is reeling and teetering from the beating – all self-inflicted punches.  The NDP will win the next election.  But with what?  What have they done, said or even tried to do in the last ten years?  It wasn’t the NDP who punched her out.  It was shadow-boxing with the shadows winning this time.  Were the NDP a vital opposition or a mute, neutered pablum of a party who simply sat back and watched the Liberals self-destruct?

It was the latter.

The latest figures indicate that the earth is warmer (climate) than it has been in 11,000 years.  The threat of climate change is no longer a threat – it is now underway.  And it seems to be underway at a quicker rate than even the most pessimistic forecaster predicted even five years ago.  Yesterday, March 10th, I got too much sun working outside for about four hours.  Got a sunburn.  March.  In Canada.  Who woulda thunk it?

I got more.  I got tons more.  I am a veritable cornucopia of political and universal opinion.  My biases runneth over.  But that should be enough.  That should satisfy my reader friend.  For a while, anyway.  To the rest of you, my sincere apologies.

Now, on to a quick local update……………

Pod of Orcas yesterday.  Five or six of them.  Heading north.  A red-headed Woodpecker of immense size (well over a foot long) on the rotten tree out the kitchen window.  Gorgeous.  Prawns seems to have left the building……..no one is catching any.  Weird.  Now is their time.  Sump’n’s wrong.  Sal and I got all our lumber for the new studio (frame) in and up the hill.  And, in one more afternoon, we’ll have all our logs up the hill, too.  Should be all set for choppin’ and stackin’ for year three’s heating supply.  It is good to get your wood supply in that far in advance – and then keep it there.  Means you burn dry wood.

And I can start on the studio soon.  Things are lookin’ up.

Sal’s putting in the garden.  Things are already starting to grow.  March in Canada?  By July we may get avocados and pineapple if we plant ’em in now.  Who knows?

State of the union?  Mixed with occasional rain, cloud and sunny periods. Maybe sleet.  Maybe not.  Winds gusting and shifting from all points of the compass, possible volcanoes and earthquakes.  Tsunami warnings.  BC Ferries are stuck in MarineSec One but we are at DefCon 2, confused and wondering.

Be careful out there, anything can happen.

New boat is in the water.  I like it.  But, OMG, is it an ugly boat!

Wasabi is 16.5 feet with a walk-thru windshield and a pretty nice hull shape.  She’ll do well.  She replaces Lolita, the 14.5 footer that I had temporarily while I fixed up Big Surf, the 17 foot Whaler-type knock-off.  Yes, I got boats!

Wasabi

But I traded sweet little Lolita to my mechanic ’cause she needed a new home now that Wasabi is here and she was just too small for me anyway.  So she is gone.

And now I have to find a home for Big Surf.  It is also a good boat and practically perfect for a builder-on-an-island ’cause it is almost rectangular, ultra stable, handles seas beautifully (Whaler style hull) and is completely open which makes loading stuff easy. The problem with Big Surf is that she is so heavily built, she takes a larger outboard for any kind of efficiency.  I have a 50.  She needs a 70.  I took her apart because I thought there must be water trapped between the two hulls but no, she was dry as a bone.  Just heavy scantlings.  Great work boat.

Wasabi is old.  Circa 1980.  But the hull is in very good shape and so is the deck.  The deck/interior is all a faded green that, when cleaned up a bit, looks like wasabi paste (horseradish flavoring used with sushi), thus the name.  We went down yesterday and ‘chucked’ the sleeper seats that were wrecked with age and permanently wet.  We’ll use Dairyland milk crates as seats instead.  They are light weight and they don’t get soggy.

While we were down there ‘chucking and cleaning’, we checked Wasabi out more closely.  Sal removed an unnecessary deck fitting and the original colour of the hull was revealed.  “Oh my Gawd!  Nuclear puke green.  Worse than day-glo pus!  That is soooooo ugly!  The dirty, faded, blotchy colour is a blessing by comparison.  Who could have possibly bought this boat new?  Yuck!”     

Lolita cost $500.  Wasabi the same.  No one uses the term ‘beater-boat’ but, essentially, that is what many of us have out here.  We are definitely no longer amongst the teak-varnishing, bronze and stainless-polishing, yachty-set.  We tend to use our boats now like old beat up pick-up trucks. 

“Don’t care what she looks like so long as it runs good and carries a lot!”  And it is the engine that determines that for the most part.  $500 for the boat, $5,000 for the engine.

That statement would have been heresy when Sal and I lived on our boat when we were in our twenties.  (Three different boats, actually).  Now, it is just practical.  We don’t do SAILPAST out here.  We just commute. And carry stuff.

Wasabi came with an old cracked vinyl roof on an aluminum frame.  Completely wrecked.  Probably original.  We put it up.  Wasabi is now – hard to believe – even uglier.  But Sal will make a new canvas top soon and that will make it look better and provide some much needed winter shelter.  Sometimes speeding along in an open boat in the winter sleet and storm spray feels like a ‘bit much’.  We are getting soft.  But soon, we’ll be comfy.

Ahhhh, yes.  Does it get any better?

Yeah.  It was sad.  Distressing, actually.  The funicular was down and there was no way of getting it up (no, this is not an innuendo).  We need our funicular.  More than you might think.  It is especially vital when you get to our age to have a working funicular.  A non functioning funicular is just a real downer.

“What the hell you talkin’ about, Dave?!  What’s a fin-nuclear, anyway?”

A horizontal set of tracks with a cart on it is called a railway.  A vertical set of tracks with a cart running up and down it would be described as an elevator.  A funicular is a cart on a set of tracks running on an incline.  Victoria peak has one in Hong Kong.  The Swiss employ a few in the alps and the Italians often have mini-funiculars on their hillsides to service their vineyards.  We have one from the beach to the house – approximately 80 feet of inclined rail at a 30 degree angle.  The cart weighs about four hundred pounds and, with the electric motor, I can pull up about 1000 pounds on it….maybe more.  It was the funicular that made building up on the ridge possible.

Funicular Tracks

In fact, it is the funicular that makes a lot of things possible.  Even shopping.  When we go to town ‘on a shop’ we buy for a month or a few weeks, anyway.  We often bring home over two hundred pounds of food, supplies, materials and such.  Occasionally I’ll bring a big load such as thiry bags of Reddi-mix concrete at fifty-five pounds per bag.  We usually pack the food and other goods in plastic Rubbermaid totes and schlep them from the store to the truck to the boat to our beach.  But, at our beach, we are still quite a hike from the house.

Funicular at Work

Thank God for the funicular!  We load the stuff onto the cart and it pulls everything up to the deck right beside the house.  It is literally a lifesaver.  When the unit went down last week we went to town anyway and shopped (we had to).  A light shop is only two totes and one large cooler and five gallons of fuel.  Total weight: about 150 pounds (not counting the 350 pounds of lumber that stayed in the boat).  I carried it all up eighty-eight stairs (in three loads).  It was a workout.  Five loads and it would have been a myocardial infarction.

Today we made an effort at fixing the funicular.

We don’t know what we are doing.  The problem was a mystery.  To us, electronics is pure magic.  I don’t care what the geeks say, it is all the result of the dark arts.  Nobody can understand all that stuff.  Even my guru, Bill, says things like, “Geez, Dave, I dunno.  It’s all weird science, ya know?  Ya just gotta connect the wires to the right places and then step back and throw the switch. If the lights come on, you did good.  We call it a miracle where I come from!” 

Well, he is better than that, but that is the way he talks.  The voice of confidence.

So, with Bill advising by phone, we took to taking things apart and putting the multi-meter to other things, throwing switches, looking mystified and cleaning up connections.  The first few hours produced zilch.

The system is a marvel of hill-billy ingenuity.  And, sadly, part of it is mine.  And I have no idea.  Not a clue.  But, when we built it, Bill married up my crazy collection of mechanical stuff to an electrical smorgasbord and the cart went up and down the hill.

But then he went home and a few years later (last week) it stopped.  Ergo: the phone calls, the worry, the stress and the stairs.

It is complicated.  There are at least 5 different voltages used. Plus single phase and three-phase power.  The power we use comes from the sun, the wind (12volts DC) and/or one of the two generators (120VAC).  It is run through a charger and stored in the batteries (48VDC) that are then connected to the house by way of an inverter.  The inverter takes the 48 volts DC and turns it into 120 volts AC and we get lights.

Siemens motor controller

But the funicular runs on 240 VAC three-phase.  To get that we take the 120 VAC and convert that to 240 VAC single phase through a transformer I bought for ten bucks at the BC Hydro salvage yard.  That transformer is activated by a smaller DC transformer that uses something like 3 volts DC.  The 3 volts DC activates the switches.  The switches turn the transformer on and that sends the single phase 240V to the German-speaking Siemens motor controller (a mini computer) which then transforms it into three phase to run the 3 hp electric motor.

Confused?  Ha! That was the easy part.  The hard part is the damn motor controller and the micro switches.  That little assembly looks like one of those terrorist bombs you see on a cheap B movie.  A gazillion little wires going all over the place.  While I stare at that hodgepodge, Sal usually starts asking questions like, “Hey, see that thingy?  Is that supposed to be there?  What about that wire?  I am sure I have seen that wire somewhere on the fridge?  I know they aren’t connected, silly, but why are they the same?”  

I just slowly look up and stare hard.  My eyes get dark.  She shuts up and does something else.

The real problem is when she is right.  Sometimes that ‘thingy’ is in the wrong place.  Or whatever.  Gawd, I hate it when that happens! 

Anyway, the story for the day is that, despite all that, we managed to fix it.  Yes, we replaced the ‘thingy’ and followed the wire that looks like the fridge wire and did a lot of other stuff.  No idea which action worked.  When we were done and it was running, Sally didn’t say anything.

I had to.

“Ya know, I have no idea if it was the ‘thingy’, the fridge-like wire or the connections we cleaned.  Maybe it was the new switch we installed.  I don’t know what the hell we did.  But the chances are at least 50/50 that one of your suggestions did the trick.  Now that I have said it, we’ll let the matter drop.  OK?”

Sally just smiled.  Smugly.  She thinks she has a real knack for the dark arts.

And I am just going to let the matter drop.  OK?

Scott and Helen Nearing, in their book, The Good Life, make a pretty good case for living off the grid (although they did not, in fact, live off the grid but rather ‘out of the system’). Still, off-the-grid and out-of-the-system are pretty much the same thing in many ways. Scott and Helen were islands-in-their-time.

They lived near a small town in Vermont and later, another village in Maine.  And  they were minimalists in the extreme.  Social isolationsists.  But the Nearings did this crazy, organic, self-sustenace, healthy-living thing in the two decades leading up to WW2 and then for thirty or more years after. They became the poster parents for the back-to-the landers in the 70’s.  They were way ahead of their time.  And they made this big leap when they were in their forties and found themselves not liking living in New York city.  Scott died at 100.  Other than being dead, he was as healthy as a horse at the time.

I am surprised by how little this way of living has changed, really.  Their story is our story except, of course, they had a much harder time of it, worked ten times harder and became so much more adept, skilled and capable in the process. Plus they seem dedicated to doing things the hard way.  We are spoiled-brat baby-boomers by comparison to their austere, Depression era roots.  Not only that but they were vegetarians and didn’t drink wine or scotch.  No wonder Scott died young!

But there are considerable similarities, too.  They worked only 4 hours a day at projects.  They worked with found materials as much as possible.  They grew most of their own food and they ‘harvested’ from the wildness when in season.  Scott and Helen also had a generous open-door and open table policy and honoured it faithfully despite preferring to be alone.  Only Scott would ‘hide out’ now and then when people came and – even then – only in the later years.

The loved their life.

What struck me as surprising, though, was the comparable disfunction of their community – as a community.  We are similarly afflicted.  I think.  I am still trying to figure it out. 

Now don’t get me wrong – I am not unhappy with our community.  It’s fine.  And it does pull together now and again. In the community in Vermont, the Nearings experienced a stubborn tendency for their neighbours to ‘go-it-alone’.  Generally speaking, the community did not cooperate.  They chose to be separate from one another even if they were doing the same work in the same way and needing the same help.  They remained independent.  Each aspired to be an island.  It seemed the only time the community came together was for entertainment (potlucks, etc.) and when the war happened and everyone did their part.

We are like that.  We tend to unite against things like some government or corporate initiative to rape or poison the land or ship oil down the coast.  We may cooperate on a community building or something but those efforts are short and frought with petty clashes.  And we will all stand around and eat burgers and drink beer at the drop of a hat.  But community cooperation initiatives are hard.  Too much ego.  Too much history.  Too much difference of opinion.  All that and busy at-home schedules makes most neighbours opt out of the co-op.  Co-ops just don’t seem to work.

Everyone, it seems, wants to be an island unto themselves but, at the same time part of a community.  It is a conflict of the spirit.   Maybe.

I mention it only because most of us go through the same such cognitive dissonance as did the Nearings.  We come to a new place, we establish and we connect with others. We work hard around the home to get it all together. Then, in an altruistic manner, we offer to help out, add to the community, do our part to make the larger community better.

Cooperation.  It turns out that it is – even in Vermont and Maine – a surprisingly difficult thing to do.  The Nearings blame the way society is ordered.  They blame mostly the cash economy (money based values and comparisons) and the fact that specialists are rare in rural areas.  They blame the erosion of the rural population causing less investment all around.  Whatever.

It is all true today even more so, I think.

Part of the reason, of course, is that technology has allowed us to remain independent.  We have better tools, more access to information and the materials we work with are better, more durable and effective.  Even foodstuffs are more easily and cheaply accessed.  I guess we just need each other less.  Like urban condo dwellers who don’t know their neighbours because there is no reason to, we are running out of reasons to know our own.

There will always be some reasons to cooperate.  Survival is one of them.  Sometimes you just need help out here.  There is bookclub.  There is the odd- work-crew-job that requires others.  And there are the smaller community building efforts as difficult as they are.  That will all continue.  And, of course, beer and burgers will always draw a crowd.  So we are still a community and likley one that is more cohesive than most.

But make no mistake, modern life and benefits has a ying and yang for everyone and one of the social downsides is less traditional community.  And we are getting more modern all the time.  Computers and smartphones isolate – we know that.  But so does a cash economy.  So does income disparity.  So does rural/urban differences.

It was true for the Nearings back in the day (well, not the computers) and it is true for us as well.  We came out here to be islands living on islands and we may just get our wish.  On the other hand I am reaching out to a different community by way of the blog.  And the Nearings became extremely well known because of their book and subsequent speaking tours.

So are we becoming more isolated or becoming more connected?  I dunno……

Phone rang that night – the one ending the day in which I had posted my wood need.  “Heard ya lookin’ fer some wood, eh?”

And so my need for dead vegetative matter in the form of planks was answered promptly.  I went up yesterday to pick it up from the public dock.  Fir.  Thick and heavy.  The 2×12’s must have weighed 10 pounds a lineal foot.

Tide was out.  Of course.  So the boards came down the ramp the hard way (carried one at a time) and then schlepped along the wharf to the boat where I placed them specifically so that the boat was loaded properly.  After loading it, off I go.  Slowly.  Down the coast in a mild sou’ easter.  Not rough.  Just a little cold and wet.  Eventually I got home and tied the boat up.  I’ll unload and sling ’em up the hill later today.  I got about 18-20 pieces.  It is a start.

This made me happy.

How weird is that?

There is no question that I am happier living here and there is also no question that I am made happier by simpler things.  Wife, whales and wolves, for starters.  Water and wood coming along next. And that is just the ‘W’s.  And not all of them!

The ‘D’s are good.  Dinner is always BIG.

It is probably just age.  But, honestly, it takes less and less to make me happier and happier.  That may be weird but it is also pretty good.  Bodes well for the future. I don’t see too many fancy doo-dahs in my future.  But I see dinner.

Like I said, it may just be age but I think it is partly a function of living simpler and living in the forest.  Somehow – and I have no explanation for this – just living in the forest is happifying.  Kind of a natural therapy.  Henry David Thoreau wrote about that.  And he was right.

Works for me.  Works for Sal.  And I was talking to the wood guy and it works for him, too.  In fact, I was talking to another neighbour the other day and we were comparing notes on town trips.  I said, “If I never went to town for the rest of my life, I would be happy.  Just as soon stay here.  All day.  Every day.  Doesn’t sound healthy but it is what I feel.  I hate going to town.”

“I feel the same way but that has to be some kind of weird, don’t you think?  I mean, shouldn’t we want to see people and stores and new toys and stuff?  Wouldn’t staying away make us hermits, kinda?  And aren’t hermits weird?”

“Not to me.  Not anymore.  And, anyway, I’ve always got you.”

“OK.  NOW it’s definitely gettin’ weird”.

OK……………This is weird.  But I really need some wood.

I know!? 

I know what you are thinking, too,  “Dave, you got wood up the ying yang!” and that is true. I do.  I got logs on the beach, on the pile, in rounds and as firewood.  I got logs.  Hell, sometimes they just float by!  But I need usable wood.  Builder’s wood.  I need planks.  I need beams.  I need plywood.  It’s a weird thing, this.  It really is.  I feel deprived not having wood lumber at my disposal. I feel constrained.  I feel poor.

Worse, I feel lost!  I need wood to do my projects and, now that I am no longer disabled by blindness, smashed hips and other stupid (mostly self-inflicted) obstacles, I wanna get a’buildin’.  A man’s gotta do. But a man’s gotta do with wood!

It’s not just me, either.  Sal is kinda ‘itchin’ to get back on the worksite.  Well, maybe ‘itchin’ is stretching it a bit but she is saying, “Gee, ya know, we really need to have more of a wood supply.  I mean, we don’t have any 2×6’s!  What kind of a gong show we runnin’ here!?  Shouldn’t we always have some 2×6’s at the very least?”

(To fully appreciate Sally’s different take on this, think of what most women would be saying….“Geez, this place has no flour, sugar or salt.  I can’t even find tea bags!  What kind of a place is this!?” ).  Sal now sees 2×6’s as a staple, like raw tuna, rice, wasabi and soy sauce (yes, she has a different perspective on a lot of things now).

Two by sixes are the staple of DIY building.  But only by a small margin.  You really need 2×12’s, too, if you are going to do stairs.  And, when you live on a slope as we do, you have to do stairs.  So, for us, 12’s are almost a staple, too.

Plywood.  Ya need plywood.  Lots of plywood.  And we have used up all our plywood.  I feel naked without plywood.

The other day we needed some 6 inch lag screws for some log assembly and I went into my pile of junk and came out with what we needed.  Exactly.  Then we needed some long carriage bolts.  Back to the supply shed and voila!  There they were.  Brilliant.  Having stuff on hand is a necessity out here.  You just can’t ‘run to the store all the time.  Not very easily.  Much better to buy a hardware store and bring it all here in the beginning.  And I practically did.  But it is hard to buy a lumber yard and bring all of that in the beginning.  Lumber is one of those things you buy-as-you-build.

Still, you should have a good, generous amount of ‘general purpose’ lumber on site at all times. You just should.  Hard to explain.  Trust me.

This could be a hard time for me…….over the next few days……………got no wood.  Nice weather.  No rain.  Feelin’ good.  Got a partner.  Got a plan.  Got a project.   (now cue in the accompaniment with a 12-bar blues guitar)………

My baby done left me.  So did my dog.  But I tried to do the best I could. Oh yeah.

But now I got no, got no, got no wood.  Got no wood.  Lord a’ hep me, I got no wood.