Things have changed.

If I close the old eye and just use the new one, I can see in the distance further and clearer than ever.  EVER!  Not only that but when I look at a piece of white paper, I see white paper.  If I close the ‘new eye’ and use the old one, I can see close up but that means from about three feet in.  Anything over five feet begins to blur.  But the real difference is in the paper.  If I look at that same piece of white paper with the old eye, it is yellow!  Like pirate’s parchment!  Ohmygawd, I have been seeing the world for who-knows-how-long as kind of beigey-yellow-tinted.  Think Hong Kong pollution!

Cataract surgery is working for me!  And it has only been one eye and one day.

Yes, there is some difficulty using one eye that sees distance clearly and with it’s own colour spectrum trying to work in concert with an old junky eye that can only see up close and colours everything yellow. It can be a bit disconcerting at times.   But the old brain is doing it’s best to make sense of it all and, thankfully, it is processing the two streams of information and merging them adequately enough.  I’m coping.  But happiness (and Sally) makes coping so much easier.

Sometimes the health care system disappoints and worries me.  NOT this time.

Cataract surgery, they say, is “a piece of cake”.  And I think it is on the second eye.  Especially if the first eye worked out OK.  But that first eye requires a lot of trust.  Gonads and eyeballs.  High trust zones for me.  Authorized personnel only!

The O.R nurse told me reassuringly, “Don’t worry, Mr. Cox, we do this all the time and it is routine.”

“For you, perhaps.  Not for me.  In fact, I can assure you that I will never do this more than twice unless you also do gonads?”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind.  I just want you to concentrate on the job at hand.  No sense in getting ahead of ourselves.”

She looked at me like I was weird.  Somehow, I felt better.

I hadn’t been all that keen on this.  I mean, I am brave and macho and all.  I think we all know that, right!?  But, geez?!  The old eyeball!  I could imagine this guy as he approached my eye with a scalpel and then there would be an “OOPs!” And then the nurse would faint and then someone would start yelling Code Eye, Code Eye!  (like we needed a codeword for a scalpel stuck in an eye).

But it didn’t come to that.  Thank God.

I was nervous in the waiting room, too.  Me and four old women were waiting to get violated.  They seemed to handle the concept way better than me.  They were all having fun chatting about quilts and grandchildren and I was just sitting there like a good boy but frequenting the washroom noticeably more than anyone else.  “You OK, dear?” asked one of them.

“Not really.  They are going to slice my eyeball.  I should think that anyone would be a bit concerned about that but not you guys!  You guys are having a fine old time.  Your bravery is off-putting, ya know?  I am the guy, here.  I should be brave.  But I am not.  But you guys are.  Brave or crazy.  I haven’t decided yet.”

“Oh, dear”, she laughed. “It will be fine.  We have had our first eyes done already, you see.  We know what it’s like.  No big deal.  Really, hon, you’ll be fine.  Can I get you some cranberry juice?”  Of course I tend to associate cranberry juice with the gonad region and that sent a shiver up my spine.  “No thanks, I’m good”.

But we got to talking, me and the old crones.  They asked where I came from (seems the hospital serves a pretty large region) and when I told them about living off the grid, they were all ‘ooohing’ and ‘aaah-ing’ to make me feel good.  And it was working.  Something about being the centre of attention soothes me.  But thank God, I kept the descriptions brief, the story humble and my role in it self-deprecating.  Modesty is not really my thing but, this time, I was very, very understated.  A little joke here, a compliment to Sally every now and then.

They would have adopted me if they weren’t already octogenarians.

And I was relaxing.  They were fun.

I have also learned over 65 years that it is fem-speak-polite to then ask after them.  “And have you ever lived anywhere else beside Comox?” I asked politely.

The first one (the oldest) had immigrated to the Caribou from Germany sixty years ago and, with her husband, began homesteading eight sections of land somewhere around Fort St. John.  She had eight children!  The winters were sixty below.  Then the next confessed to ranching with a few hundred head of cattle just after the war just outside of Edmonton.  Their winters were also sixty below.  And so it went.

After that perspective-changing exchange I was positively looking forward to the operating theatre.  It had to be a piece of cake compared to working 8 sections in Ft. St. John or ranching just outside of Edmonton!!

Well, the eyes used to have it, anyway.  Now they have cataracts, instead.  And they are buggin’ me.  Can’t see a bloody thing which, given the havoc and chaos around me when I work, is a distinct disadvantage to continued survival.  So, I am getting them operated on.

And, so, thus this blog goodbye.

It’s been great.  Really.  Had a really good time.  And we must do this again sometime.  Maybe do lunch?  Give me a ring……….?  Better yet, I’ll call you. 

But not for awhile.  Seems I’ll be vision impaired for a while.  First one eye, then the next.  Healing takes awhile.  I should know.  Right?

So, no blog.  You understand?  OK?

I am thinking late March, early April?  Maybe Fool’s Day?

The doctor’s instructions came and it was very clearly printed out: No heavy lifting.  And No Blogging was specifically handwritten and inserted in to the instructions (mind you, the handwritten part looked suspiciously like Sally’s handwriting).  So I have to take a break.  Doctor’s orders.

I confess that I am not overly upset about it.  I feel a break is needed anyway.  I am wandering from the original focus of the blog which was: ‘old guy goes feral.  The adventures of a fool and his angel in the woods’.    I feel politics is starting to creep back into it.  If I can rationalize a political post as somewhat philosophical, I can yield to my inner political demon a bit but it’s a strain. It is time for a break and I am using the operation as my excuse.

I hope to be silent for at least a month.

Not bloody likely.

But I am gonna try.

No, I have not forgotten my outstanding items.  There are the docks-being-installed to report on.  There is the ‘little houseboat’ progress to watch.  There are the community machinations to observe and share whenever possible and, of course, there is our-life-in-paradise to monitor and record.  Not to mention the invitable accidents.  Plus Spring is not too far away and all sorts of things seem to transpire then.  So, there is stuff-to-come but I will understand if you wander off.  I would.

I currently enjoy a couple of dozen or so regular readers.  Maybe a smidge more.  Well, OK.  There are a smidge more than 500.  But they/you are a fickle lot.  They/you want ravens and killer whales and they/you don’t want politics.  And no one but Annette, Sid and a guy on a motorcycle writes! 

‘Who are you people?’  (Seems I also have a disproportionate number of antique dealers……..and wives whose husbands are similar in their grumpy, lumpy, dofus-ness to me!) 

Anyway, right now, I am raven-ed out.  And the Orcas aren’t due for weeks if not months.  And we are only a few months from a provincial election.  Can you feel the tension?

It’s hurtin’ my eyes.

So, like………………….see ya’……………(personal e-mails always welcome, of course.  I have installed the latest version of Windows Braille Mail so I will still be able to respond to e-mails altho my flat screen poses a bit of a problem for getting a feel for Braille.  Anyway, I’ll try.)

Bye

The weather is acting up.  (That is not news).  It is revealing that our infrastructure is not up to the task or is barely keeping up (and that is not really news, either).  Cities are struggling.  Citizen support systems are inadequate and expensive.  Some of it is crumbling.  Infrastructure decay is even worse in the states and weather extremes are revealing that, too.  This is still not news but somewhat ‘more newsy’ due to the frequency and the new eccentricity of the weather.

Conclusion: the weather is making some things political more clear.  The weather as a harbinger?

Recently several Canadian cities have had a warm period followed by a really cold snap and then that cycle repeated itself causing all sorts of municipal pipes and such to break.  “Get used to it.” says Environment Canada.  “Climate change is going to cause more extreme weather in the future!”

Interesting.  Now THAT seems to be news!  Environment Canada now officially recognizes climate change?  Seems it was only yesterday that our intrepid leaders didn’t know from Climate Change.  They were, if not ‘deniers’, then at least certainly not ‘acknowledgers’.  Certainly not ‘cooperators’.   And Harper verges on ‘denier’ status if actions and initiatives and priorities are considered to be any kind of indicators.  See ‘Oil and Gas Pipelines’. 

Weather as a harbinger?  And a harbinger of what?  Just climate change …..or political change?  Or both?

In other words: things may be changing significantly – in whatever way – and we may not be fully aware of it.

Even Obama, after inauguration, stated that Climate Change is now on his agenda.  The great ‘denier nation’ now, all of a sudden, onside with battling climate change.  Better late than never, I guess.  But, really?  Twenty years after the average Joe learns of climate change, our leaders finally acknowledge it?

Makes me think the leaders aren’t on the ball. 

Can someone explain to me why we call politicians leaders?  How could a group of people so fundamentally behind the times on just about everything be leaders of anything?

Well, the point of this blog is that they are not.

These folks are not leaders.  They are not even capable of leading.  Too much baggage was accumulated getting to that exalted position to be able to lead anyone anywhere.  Even bell hops are out in front of those fools.  Those people are so ‘invested’ in the old way and out of sync with the new, they are not even followers!  They are maintenance men.  Curators.  They seem to sit there indicating where the rest of the world has long passed by.  They are more like milestones. They are history markers, NOT history makers!

Maybe it is climate change that is finally showing them and our institutions up for the anachronisms they really are?

Big-man politics just doesn’t work anymore (even tho it is still practiced in third world countries and symbolically in first world ones).  And it hasn’t for a long, long time.

Life is just too complicated for any one man and so groups of men were needed.  Then groups of men and women.  Enter councils, congress, senates and boards of directors.  And so it went.  As life got more and more complicated the leadership model got more and more diffused.  More people.  More institutions.  More democratized.  More cooperation.

Environmental destruction and subsequent climate change, however, is in-your-face indication that not enough leadership, cooperation or efficacy was achieved but we still progressed somewhat and so the old political models continued.

Weirdly, the answer for the new problems we face might be the same one as before – democratize even more.

But the last bunch of nincompoops have pretty much sewn up the already-in-place and recognized mechanism (which, with voting machines, dirty-politics, robocalls, billions of dollars and the need for vote-monitoring, is also corrupted) and so the old-standard democracy infrastructure is also no longer up to the task.  We aren’t getting leadership choice, we are just getting a rote exercise of endorsement of people we don’t want.

The old ‘leadership’ model is now beyond hoary.  It is cumbersome in the extreme and it is also ineffective and too often corrupted. It seems we need a new type of leadership model. The tall, handsome, rich man with a toothpaste smile just doesn’t seem to work anymore. Nor do his institutions.

Social Networking and ‘sub-groups’ like Idle-no-more, the Occupy movement and the growth of e-media followers are now more ‘hip’, more current, more out front.  They are different.

Admittedly, few leaders in the traditional sense are emerging from this increased democratization of opinion and influence but that may be the next step to emerge.  OR, as the movements themselves predict, the ‘leader’ will be the collective voice of the majority and not manifested in a person or small group of elites.

I dunno.

But it seems to me that revolutions are not likely to look the same as the last ones.  Like wars, the establishment tends to plan for the next one based on the last one and the opposing, revolutionary forces plan something different.

Could social media be the new vote?  Could social media create new leaders?  Could we be in the beginning stages of a political revolution that is so subtle, unconventional and so in-it’s-infancy that we just don’t recognize it yet?

We have young mothers out here.  And young mothers everywhere like to take their kids on outings.  It is part of parenting. Kids need to be exposed to different things.  It’s good.

Sal used to take our kids to Stanley Park, the Science Centre, various semi-distant, out-of-the-neighbourhood events and, in the summer, off camping and things.  She was a great mother.  Still is.  But young island mothers, when going on outings, often take their kids into the city.  They go shopping, swimming and that sort of thing.

And sometimes they do it in the winter.

Not long ago, two off-the-grid, island mothers took several kids into town for the day.  A good time was had by all.  So much, in fact, that they were a bit late disengaging from the last activity.  They were about 30-40 minutes behind as they bundled into the car and headed down the logging road.  And it had just snowed heavily.

By the time they got to their boat, they were definitely a bit later.  It was dark-ish and getting darker.  And it was still snowing.  By the time they cast off, it was definitely night-time.  The snow made it a white dark.  They were blind.

The mother on the helm is good.  She knows her stuff.  But part of knowing your stuff is making sure you don’t get caught out in that kind of thing.  She was not happy with the situation.  Nor should she be.  Still, she knew her route, her boat was good, the compass worked and she had GPS.  She began heading home slowly and carefully.  There was a lot of wood debris in the water and, even tho her boat was made of heavy aluminum, no one wants to hit a log.

Her challenge – if the one I just described was not enough – was that she also had to navigate through two sets of rapids.  And she had a long way to go.  The rapids are from the currents that swirl through constricted passes and can top nine knots.  It is just as hairy going against them as with them when you can’t see.

GPS is good.  But not that good.  The passes she had to navigate are as narrow as 75 feet.  Imagine her situation: it is dark, the current is running.  You can’t see a thing.   And the water is setting you sideways and turning you off compass all the time.  And you have children aboard in a very inhospitable environment.  It is very dangerous.

But she kept her head about her.

In fact, she had to stick that very same head out the side of the boat as she went.  Snow on a windshield in the dark and on the water inhibits all vision.  Sticking your head out the side doesn’t make it much better but, psychologically, it feels as if you are doing all that you can.  And so she did.

She did good.  She managed to get home.  They arrived at their further-out community dock an hour or so later.  Everyone was relieved.  And so there was no drama.  No tragedy.  Just the tension.

And it is a tension everyone out here has faced at one time or another.  Worse, we have often felt that tension even after having made a promise that we would never put ourselves in that kind of position again.  Why?  Sometimes we think: “Well, I am late but the seas are OK.  My compass is good.  I should be fine…..” And so you go.  You stretch the safety envelope.  And 99 times out of 100 you are fine.

Sometimes you just ‘have to go’.  You don’t think you have a choice.

I once left our building site in a raging storm late at night to pick up Sal who had worked in town and left Vancouver late.  She caught the last ferry at 10:30 pm and I was picking her up at about midnight after she had hiked down a remote forested trail with groceries and supplies.  No cell-phone sevice for miles.  Had I not been there, she would have waited in the forest for a long time before probably curling up in the car.  She had no choice.  And I had no choice.  So I went.

I went with the storm as I headed out.  It was blowing about 25 and the seas were high but I was going with it to get to the pick-up point.  Piece o’ cake.  Almost fun.  I was in a small 12-foot inflatable and the fun was kinda overshadowed by the terror.

And that terror held centre stage when we started back and had to head up coast and into the teeth of it.  It was black as pitch and howling.  That was crazy! The seas were insane!  We were soaked within the first 30 seconds.  We got home about two or so hours later, pretty rung out.

That was just one of the times I made the promise, “I will never put myself or anyone in this position again.”

And I have probably made that promise at least ten more times.  And broken it.  My guess is that the young mother I described had made that promise a few times herself.   I know the feeling and I know that she renewed the promise-that-is-impossible-to-keep one more time.

It is the promise that will be broken.

Sal works today.  She’s doing relief at the post office.  It’s foggy.  She can barely see 100 feet head.  She and her little boat will disappear into the mist almost the instant I glimpse her leaving.  It is January on the west coast.

We’ll remain in radio contact for another five minutes but she can’t hear it above the sound of the outboard.  The radio is only really useful if she is stopped.  And we are hoping that is precisely what does NOT happen.

When she gets to the no-electricity, floating post office, her first chore will be to fire up the wood stove.  She’ll get a crackling fire going within a few minutes. But it will still be bleak.  It will still be lonely.  And, for the most part, it will be pointless.  But she’ll take Meg.  They’ll keep each other company.

Meg is never too thrilled about these days.  She thinks it pointless, too.

The mail plane is not likely to fly today.  And we don’t, as a community, usually have a lot to put in the mail – which would not be going out anyway – ’cause there is no plane.  If it is a busy day, Sal will see a few neighbours as they come to check their post office box and maybe, just maybe they will buy a few stamps.  Prob’ly not.

The pay is minimal and, of course, there are no benefits.  She doesn’t even have basic amenities such as a computer, phone or lights.  But Sal likes to do it anyway so that she can ‘be part’ of the community, see people she wouldn’t ordinarily see and just ‘do her bit’ to help out the post mistress.  It’s all very normal.  Healthy, in an unusual way.  And irregular enough that she enjoys it.

It’s also a change from working with me.

She got the job a few years ago when the ‘old’ post mistress was still here.  Before that woman ran off with a hitchhiker at the age of 50-something.  (Love is grand, eh? Romance at 50+ while living remote and isolated………that has to give hope to everyone, eh?)

The hardest part is the safe.  Hard to open.  Apparently it is the combination from Hell.  But Sal can do it.  She has some weird kind of job security as a result.

It is not undeserved.  Sal also takes the postman’s creed about getting through snow and sleet (or fog) to make her rounds or whatever quite seriously.  She’s a great employee.  I’d call her ‘intrepid’ in her execution of her duties.  Well, ‘cept for one thing……..she won’t take a job if they think she is an employee.  She’s done with being an employee.  This job is helping a friend and community work ‘cause she won’t work for such wretched employers as the post office.

“Aaaahhhhh, but Sal, you are, in fact, working for the post office.”

“No, I am not.  I am working for R.  I am working for R ‘cause she needs me to stand in for her.  I am not working for the post office even tho I work at the post office and I do the post office work.  And, OK.  I do it their way.  But that part means nothing.  I am working for R and the people who come in to get their mail.”

Perspective and attitude are everything, don’t you think?

Our neighbours loaned their cabin to friends for the weekend.  Which is good.  The people are nice.  We like ’em and they are sufficiently far away that, if we didn’t like ’em, it would not matter.  Blessed isolation is a cushion of comfort – if needed.

And it is rarely, if ever, needed.

But the friends have four dogs.  And their dogs are not quite as contained as are their masters.  They wander.  And they ‘mark’ where they wander. The guest dogs wander all over.  They explore.  They investigate.

This is still OK.  The dogs are good dogs.  No problem.  Three Huskies and a Lab but only the Huskies wander.  And they have their needs, their instincts, their behaviours.  Their own curiosities.  This is a vacation for them, too.  They are just doing typical dog things.  It’s fine.

Well, those things are fine by me, anyway.  Fid and Meg are not quite so sure.

And a small canine drama has been unfolding all weekend.

Somehow the visiting dogs know when our dogs are inside.  And that is when they come over into our area.  Quietly.  From tree to tree.  Skirting the perimeter.  Avoiding the main path.  Shadows.  I can see them from one of the windows. They sneak.  And they sneak-pee.  A lot.  These guys are doing the equivalent of graffiti.  They are tagging.

They know what they are doing.  And they know the effect it is having.

And then they leave.

An hour or so later our dogs go out and all of a sudden they are hyper alert, super-animated, focused and charging around the area sniffing everything they can.  Fid seems to run with his nose to the ground.  Meg sniffs a bit but mostly she just bounces around looking for a stick or something.  She’s excited and – as always – more than just a little confused but she is ready for whatever!  I don’t think she knows why, what or whom but she knows Fid is on the job and that is exciting enough!

After a bit of trail searching our dogs are on the far perimeter of our area and looking sternly in the direction of the neighbour.  Fid paces back and forth.  Meg has lost focus and is soon following Sal and I as we get about our work.

When we go inside a few hours later for a cup of tea, Fid plants himself in a place he has never sat before.  This new position affords a sweeping view of the back area and he would be quick to detect anyone or anything coming along the previously laid down foreign urine trail that he is now completely absorbed by.  He sits stock still.  And he stares.

Meg has a stuffed toy and is shaking it.  A.D.D. coupled with a new-ish stuffed toy is her go-to state.

Every once in awhile the visitors take a tentative step or two in our direction and, if Fid and Meg are out, they run to the ‘imaginary line-in-the-forest’ they have all agreed to – the U line (urine) – and bark.

But, if they are inside or off chasing sticks, the visitors sneak up and leave a ‘tickle’ for their noses.  Fresh pee!

And the drama continues.

It has taken awhile but Sal is getting ‘into it’. It may be a good thing.  We’ll see.

“Saw a bunch of canning jars for sale.  Thinkin’ about gettin’ some.  Might do  some canning.”

“Wha..?!  You don’t can!  You hate canning!?”

“I don’t hate it so much as think it silly.  I can buy stuff way more cheaply than I can can it”.

“So…………….?  Why you lookin’ at canning jars, then?”

“Well, it is the thing to do out here, isn’t it?  I mean, if people can, then they do, don’t they?  They don’t teach!”

“Huh?  ……oh, I get it.  Funny.”

“Never mind.  Just thought I’d lay in some goods…..ya know………..stock up the larder…that kind of thing?”

Lay in some goods……stock…larder….?

Sal’s been reading Joel Salatin.  He’s the guru of Common Sense Farming and an advocate for common sense in everything.  He’s an American farmer doin’ it the old way and living happy and healthy.  And he thinks he is wise.  He fights the local bureaucrats, doesn’t watch TV and he writes books on farming and gardening in his spare time.  After reading Salatin, you wanna buy a cow.

It is a political statement.

And that is at the very least.  You also want chickens and will probably start to wonder where you might pick up a good ‘hawg-killin’ tub.  He makes it all sound so righteous!

I dunno.  I’m resisting it a bit, myself.

But, he is an influence.  I’ll give him that.  And so we have come up with a Joel Salatin-kind of a plan to try out.  He is a big advocate of farmers helping neighbours and vice versa.  “Know your local farmer.”

So, we are gonna go say ‘hello’, anyway.

And we are going to trade.  We’ll take some oysters to someone who keeps bees.  We’ll take some clams to someone who keeps chickens. We’ll take some mussels to someone with an orchard.  We’ll take a fish to someone who hunts deer.   And, in this way, we’ll have honey, eggs,apples and venison – without too much blood or bee stings.  And all we have to do is work at low tide or in a small boat in the cold and the rain for hours at end.

Salatin is a genius.

No, really.  He must be.  Salatin writes books about it.  He does it all, too, I am sure.  But he also writes about it and I think he writes more than he does.  I think this because JS has written at least eight books.  It is hard to get in all that hawg-killin’, bee-keepin’, chicken-pluckin’ and farming and still have time to write eight books.

I should know.

No, I think he’s mostly a farm marketing genius.  You know, like the real estate millionaires who got so rich in real estate that they just teach people how to do it for the low, low price of $399 payable in small, monthly installments?

Maybe Mrs. Salatin is a realtor specializing in small farms?

Whatever.

Basically, I agree with Joel.  I really do.  He’s got his feet firmly planted in manure and compost and silage and all that crap.  Literally.  But he does make sense.  Kinda.  Trouble is, he calls his farm Polyface.  That’s a bit odd.  Kind of implies being duplicitous, don’t you think?  Farm-of-many-faces?

Still, his latest book is titled:  Folks, This Ain’t Normal.  And insofar as what passes for normal these days, I really agree with that!

We’re comfortably rustic.  Rustically comfortable.  Meaning: we ‘work’ to get our heat (wood) in, we plumb and collect and filter our own water, we have an expanding garden and hunt for and gather sea food.  We make our own electricity and we built our own home.  And we do a lot of physical plain-ol’-grunt work around a huge, wild and irregular ‘yard’ almost every day.  There is no pizza delivery, no quick run to the store, nobody to call for any kind of service except emergencies by way of the Coast Guard and there is very little assistance for anything – we do it ourselves.

Should be considered a hard life, eh?  Should be considered ‘rough’, ‘dangerous’,  ‘extreme’, ‘inconvenient’ and ‘depriving’.  Right?  A real adventure?

And, I suppose it is at times.  It certainly was in the beginning before we learned how to do some of it better and more easily.  There are still some aspects of adventure,  I’ll admit that.  But more than all those negative or scary adjectives there is ‘beautiful’, ‘healthy’, ‘fun’, ‘satisfying’ and ‘interesting’.  It may be a smidge harder out here but it is hugely more satisfying.

Put more succinctly: I am happy and more content than I have ever been in my entire life.  I love it here.

“Yeah, yeah.  Read about that already.  What else you got?”

China.  Seven of the ten most polluted cities in the world are in China.  Beijing has just gone off the pain scale pollution-wise.  Literally.  Their pollution scale goes to PM500 – considered so extreme at the time of instrument installation no one believed it would be possible to even live at that level.  The other day the scale at the American embassy in Beijing registered 776.  By contrast, New York registers 19 on average.  The air in Beijing is lethal.

The Chinese government is taking action.  They are keeping the school children indoors.  Well, they are doing other things too, but really?!  No one should be out in that poison and yet millions still are.  China is gonna choke to death on that stuff.  Some already are.

“So?  What has that got to do with you?”

Well, I can’t honestly say that we came here to get away from Vancouver’s pollution although we did talk about it when it got bad and made little meaningless promises to leave when it got worse.  But pollution is just one of the ingredients in the urban recipe for disaster that we felt was simmering under the surface.  Pollution, crime, regulation, security, GMO foods, factory food, gas prices, transit, airports – you know the list.  The list of personal violations, the list of government invasions, the list of social impositions and breakdowns, the restrictions, the growing and heavy presence of Big Brother and the Holding Companies, it was all becoming too omnipresent to ignore.

We thought we could see some writing on the wall.  And I thought I could read ‘made in China’, too, but it wasn’t that clear at the time.

Living off-the-grid sounds a bit extreme to most of those reading this.  I know that.  But the encroachments on our lives by the systems that are supposed to support us are increasing while the efficacy of those same systems is breaking down.  Western society is nowhere near as eroded or corrupted as is China but it is getting there.  Westerners would not likely stand by while it got that bad, I am sure.  I think.  I hope.

But like the frog being slowly heated in the pot of water, it is often easier to stay in the water and suffer the heat than take a blind jump out to escape.

Can any of you feel the water temperature rising?

…of community.

Community is easier if you live in the city.  Easier yet, if you grew up there.  The city is where the energy is.   It is where the people are.  It is where everything is!   Individuals are absorbed and immersed in the to-ing and fro-ing of the seething metropolis and all involved are somewhat homogenized by the process.

Generally speaking, any arbitrary slice of the urban population can be found to be working on commonality, cooperation, community and conformity most of the time.  They have to.  Or there would be chaos.

Many of us so influenced also enjoyed the socially cohesive advantages of having had a somewhat similar upbringing, a ‘mainstream’ education and, of course, being immersed in the everyday business of the urban work-hives.  A lot of uniformity/conformity is learned by osmosis and such social familiarity breeds confidence, a kind of social fluency, not to mention, ‘networks’, all of which is required reading for a real city person.

To do well in the city, it helps to be born and raised there. It also helps to dive in and get involved. ‘Go along to get along.’  And those people most familiar and comfortable with the ways of the city have a greater chance, as a rule, to find happiness and even success therein.

In other words: experience in the milieu is valuable.

The same is true in a different kind of way with rural life.  To do well in the country it helps to be born and raised there.  A lot gets learned just by ‘being there’.  Experience.  Networks are smaller and stronger but just as valuable  And, for a newbie, diving in is really the only way to get into it. A harder slog, perhaps, but doable.

The thing is, the rural population isn’t as identifiable as the city community in the sense of having ‘just being there’.  Not anymore.  ‘Country living‘ is more ‘new’ or foreign for many people who have been ‘civilized’ even while living out in the small towns.  Today, ‘country’ is often just ‘small city’.  I know many people who I would have previously described as rural who have no rural skills or orientation whatsoever.  They, too, live by their I-phone.

Odd observation: the ‘new’ country people move around more.

City people seemingly move around more than do country people but they move around the city.  The city pool is always crowded and much the same.  So is the store, the bus, the workplace and the neighbourhood.  You can move from four different neighbourhoods in Toronto to six different neighbourhoods in Vancouver and, generally speaking, know your way around pretty quickly. The patterns are the same.

New country people don’t have that kind of sameness, that familiarity, that cultural ‘mass’ to attach to or re-attach to.  Or be shackled to.  There just isn’t as much sameness for them.  Not so much commonality.

Few people currently out here were even born in this province!  Fewer still were raised here and even fewer have more than a dozen years ‘under-their-belt’ as real country folk.

In fact, there are only a few that I can positively identify as ‘real’ country folk.  You know?  Like farming, hunting, logging, canning, gathering and fishing?  Those people are rare.  Very rare.

And this lack of a long-rooted cultural mass is palpable.  If it wasn’t your intention to come for self development almost exclusively, you would find yourself surprisingly more alone.  You’d be different and stay different out here and there is no way to change that, nobody to emulate, no one to teach you.  No peer group. You are going to be different, more alone, more you.

Get used to it.  Country ways are on the endangered list for a reason.

The majority of off-the-gridders are urban transplants – some as long ago as the 70’s (back-to-the-landers) and some as recently as us.  But mostly from different urbans.  In fact, since we went feral eight years ago, I’d estimate at least a half dozen others have arrived but they have come from different cities, different provinces and from at least two different countries. And all from vastly different walks of life. Their west coast, off-the-grid roots are as shallow as ours.  And some of them are clearly different plants!

In many ways, we are a community of non-established, non-conformists who don’t interact much and, when we do, keep it to a minimum.  That does not aid in any kind of homogenization.  That does not make for much of a community.

Mind you, it doesn’t look quite like that.  Not too much, anyway.  We’re all pretty friendly.  And newbies, by definition, try to learn ‘the ropes’ fast.  They have to.  And they blend where they can.  But there simply isn’t that much ‘networking’, business interactions, meetings and the like that accelerates common language, habits, behaviours and community.  Each person remains, in effect, more of an individual. We live and act differently and there just isn’t the cultural force to assimilate us into a ‘common’.

Differences are also more tolerated and expected.  It has to be that way.  We know we are different from our distant neighbour and we accept it and almost celebrate it.  But not quite.  If we are celebrating our differences and character, it is a home celebration.  Most of the others are deemed just a bit too different or a bit too whacked to be celebrated.  But we do accept each other.

And, thank God, we have the space with which to do it.

We may never be anything else.  Not very many of us are ‘buddying up’.  It is just too big a gap to bridge in most cases and, without the economic motivation of youth and a growing family, there is less incentive to do so.  We don’t have to ride the elevator together every morning.  We don’t have to deal with a hundred e-mails a day.  We don’t have to take a lot of meetings together.  And we don’t get a lot of anything by ‘osmosis’ as a result.  If we lose ‘newbie-ism’, or ‘foreigness’, it is because we learned ‘off-the-gridding’ on our own and we learned it mostly the hard way – by doing.

Off-the-gridding is really our only strong common thread – that and appreciating our surroundings.  If we have a commonality it is a love of nature and a desire to reside in it.  And, to be fair, that also forms the community we do have.  Is it enough on which to build a strong, healthy, well-balanced community?  Honestly?  I don’t think so.

Will it be enough if the larger, more homogenized urban community goes sour?  Yes.  If things go all to hell in a hand-basket, then I think our wagons will circle tighter.  We’ll form more of a real community.  But probably not until then.

And I am OK with that.

It is odd what ‘gettin’ better’ means.  Growth is such a personal thing.

In sports, of course, there are measurements like goals, wins, stats and records but, in something like deck-building, well, there isn’t much to compare to.  It is essentially a personal thing.  Subjective.  And, when you are deck-building with your wife (an unholy challenge, if ever there was one – on a par with raising children) you can add the litmus tests of cooperation, partnership, rhythmn and efficiency all of which are hard to measure on anything but a subjective sliding scale of relational growth.

But I know progress when I see it.

And I am seeing it.  We are baaaaaack!

Sal and I have been ‘workin’ on the deck the last few days and we are doin’ good.  She’s doin’ extra good.  I am still somewhat limited in my movements from the latest health faux pas last month with ambulation somewhere between stiff and awkward to pathetic and crippled but, with this work, the stiff and clumsy parts are starting to work out just fine.  It’s been good.

Sidebar: here’s a thing………wood freezes!  Who knew?  I stacked a bunch of joists-to-be and the next day I had a large lump of ice-laminated wood to deal with!?  Sheesh.

Store bought lumber doesn’t do that.  They cook out the moisture content in the processing in the quasi chop-sticks you buy at Home Depot.  But local-made lumber is wetter and denser.  You are expected to air-dry it first as there is a higher water content.  And we did that.  But, I guess, not enough.  Ergo – Fir popsicle sticks.  (Not especially tasty and hard and heavy, too.  Each 16 foot 2×6 weighs about thirty to 35 pounds).  I had to seperate what I could with a large rubber mallet.  The sun finished the job as the day progressed but even the spacer-separated cedar decking was frozen to the spacers!

Never mind.  It was fun.  We measured and stacked, straightened and cut, screwed and scarfed and generally acted like accomplished deck-builders.  And it went pretty smoothly with the hundreds of inevitable disagreements settled quickly at the calm and polite stage.  In those conversations, only the bass tones were employed.  Maybe a couple went into the treble zone.  But they were brief. We did good.

We are going back at it today.  It is decking time.  This is the fun part.  You can see the progress as each plank is put in place.  This is the high-satisfaction stage.  It is kind of pathetic – not to mention surprising – how much I enjoy this.  But it is way better than watching TV, that’s for sure. This is the kind of thing that will stick with us both.  I will enjoy this new deck quite noticeably for at least a few years, probably longer.  I will remember the work, marvel at the magic of it all and, of course, walk on it.

We still marvel and appreciate the hot shower.  Same kinda thing. 

TV doesn’t quite impress like that.

I think that is growth.  I really do.  Sally agrees.  She likes it, too.  She even likes working with me.  And that is definitely growth of the most important kind!  Total magic!