Sal has bird feeders.  Cute birds come and Sal watches them flitting about and pecking.  She likes it.  They are pretty.   It’s nice.

The feeders are by the kitchen window.  The squirrel also comes.  It, too, is cute.  It flits about and feeds as well.  But it is not the right kind of cute and so Sal tries to wave the squirrel off.

Waving from behind the window doesn’t work even tho the feeders are just a foot away.  So Sal tried opening the window and employing a water pistol which was effective for a few squirts but the little rat simply adjusted after awhile and took to eating while showering.  So Sal started getting Fiddich involved.

Fid’s not too bright.

With a shriek and a scramble, Sal and Fid would race from the front of the house to the back where the kitchen window had revealed yet another rodent trespass and the chase was on!  Except Fid doesn’t have a natural ‘chase’ instinct.  He has a fetch instinct.  Apparently there is a big difference.

Fid does not know from squirrels.  I am not so sure he even sees the squirrel but by the time the two of our domestic security team have closed the gap on the perp, he is pretty excited and is pretty much ready for anything.

He hasn’t the faintest clue as to what that might be.

So Sal makes ch-ch-ch sounds and points at the squirrel.  Unconsciously, I am sure, she kind of hops in place while doing that.  The squirrel sits on the feeder and makes ch-ch-ch sounds back at her and Fid, now worked up into a frenzy, streaks by to do his duty.  Past the squirrel.  He races off into the forest.  Barking.  Looking fierce.  And not just a bit stupid.

The squirrel continues to dine and watches Fid run around.  He occasionally glares at Sally as if to say “Now look what you’ve gone and done!  Poor ol’ Fid is all worked up and confused.  Not good!  Why not just leave well enough alone”.

After having been suitably embarrassed a few times Sal eventually decided to face her foe head on.  She went at him with a light wand, like a chop stick or something.  That worked.  For a minute or two.  But he came back.  Then Sal lost her cool.  And she rushed out the last time without her wand and, caught up in the excitement of the hunt, as it were, she actually reached out and gave the little sucker a finger-tap on the squirrel-bum.  That surprised him.  And Sal.  And me, I must admit.  And off he ran.

But he’s come back again.  Of course.  And I swear he is now eating the bird seed with his butt purposefully aimed at the window.  I think he is wiggling it.  In fact I know he is wiggling it.  And he is looking over his shoulder to see if Sal is there!

Sal is tempted to go out again but doesn’t like to encourage that kind of behaviour in the wildlife.  She doesn’t like to even think where it may lead.  She is quite horrified at the possibilities.

This whole fiasco began because Sal likes to watch the wildlife.  I thought it was a bit silly in the beginning, to be honest.  But I was wrong.  NOW it is getting really interesting.

Over the past few decades, maybe a bit longer, boats have evolved to become power boats.  We don’t row so much anymore.  Too hard.  Too slow.  Can’t carry enough.

Of course, we have also evolved some pretty efficient sailing vessels but 99% of them are powered by an auxiliary and when the boat has to keep to a schedule, the motor is often employed.   Wind is not dependable.   In effect, these motoring sailors are very often used as inefficient power boats especially in the general area of the Salish Sea.

Bottom line: we are now dependent on powered boats.  Especially if the boat is employed in work rather than recreation.  And powered boats are dependent on oil.

The writing is on the wall.

We coastal off-the-gridders are even more dependent on powered boats and, for a variety of logical reasons, we choose outboard powered boats most often.  Altho today’s outboards are much more reliable than previous iterations, they are also a great deal more complicated.  Your basic off-the-gridder, so handy in so many ways, hasn’t got a clue how to fix a modern outboard.  We are not only dependent on outboard motors but we are also now dependent on the outboard mechanics.  And they live and work on-the-grid in the city!  

This is an Achilles heal of the first water, so to speak.  And we are going to have to address it.  If not now, then not long from now.

The kinda guy who thinks along these lines is the creative (or, in my case, the fearful) type.  He or she wonders how to design a boat that will be more useful when oil becomes too expensive.  Something efficient, something that can do work and carry people, something that is safe in a nasty sea and, if possible, something requiring as little maintenance as possible.  Such people are, by the nature of the challenge, more likely to be found in either marine design studios or out here living the life.  And the ones out here not only design their creations but they also build them.

Our little community is a veritable hotbed of marine design on a per capita basis.  We have a sleek little proa-type slipping around.  White, fast and beautiful.  It is also odd and somewhat restricted in function but it is very easily driven and quite adaptable to sail.  We have an admirable effort at a light weight aluminum power cat that has yet to make a successful debut – but the idea is good.  We have more than a few long, narrow, skinny boats that seem like cousins of canoes and they are very efficient, very fast and quite rowable in a pinch.  For practical reasons (they are cheap to build) they are the current leader in the practical boat stakes.

And there are more including old tradional designs, a reverse hull design, a modified, older-style displacement design and any number of modified runabouts.

The ideal boat would, of course, be efficiently functional under all means of power – motoring, rowing, sailing and/or any combination of the above.  But functional includes – first and foremost – weight carrying.  Bulk.  People and stuff.  And that requirement limits rowing.  It also limits the design in so many other ways.  In fact, there is no design that does the job as desired.  Such a vessel is the holy grail of boat design.

“Shouldn’t sea-worthy be first and foremost?”

I suppose.  But our area is usually traversable in small, cheap, less-than-great boats and the people just pick their weather.  You’d be surprised how many light, tippy, car-top type boats are in use.  Sea-worthy is a close second but getting the job done is the whole point of getting in the boat in the first place so the work is likely deemed more important (until a heavy sea is encountered, of course).

“Why tell me?”

Because if you are ever to consider getting off the grid and moving up the coast, choosing the right boat is a much bigger decision than you might first think.  In fact, it is a HUGE decision if you also include the future ‘oil’ factor.  Just as I have come to know about the giving and taking, the balancing of components, the better-way-to-do-it when it comes to alternative energy, I am also learning more and more about something as simple as ‘the boat’.

There has to be a better way to do it than we have been doing.  And we have been doing designs based very much on cheap oil.  Time for something new.

And all of us out here are trying to figure that one out.

I made a small promise to myself and to you that I wouldn’t rant and rave about political issues anymore and I intend to keep that promise.  But I don’t consider the following observation a breach of that trust.  I think I am just pointing out the obvious, callin’ it as I see it.  Still, fair warning – there is a hint of politics about it.  I admit that.

Even tho Sal and I left for the outback primarily as a way of seeking to ‘feel alive’ again and to have-to-learn once more and to have adventure, there has always been a sense (for me, anyway) that eventually there would be some kind of revolution.  I am a child of the 60’s after all.  A romantic.  In retrospect, I think that such an expectation or vision of revolt is overly romantic in nature, though, and not likely at all so long as gas flows and there is food in the fridge.  Nobody is going to be running rioting through the streets – not anytime soon, anyway.

One can only hope.

I am always encouraged by the ‘Battles in Seatle’, the Occupy Movement, Idle No More and other forms of demonstration that puts the spotlight on world powers, institutions and corporations.  Although I can see why they were created in the first place and I can even see some merit in them at times, I tend to believe that, by the time the organization has become the establishment, it is time to tear it down and renew it.  To me, life is constant change and institutions are not.  Ergo – change them.  All the time.

Even better, tear ém down and build new ones.

Imagine my surprise when I read that Chairman Mao said the same thing!

Anyway………the Occupy movement isn’t dead but they no longer have momentum on their side.  Not media momentum, anyway.  The Arab Spring is still alive but not doing anyone much good at the moment.  And the common people’s rebellion is no more potent at this writing than it has ever been.  Or so it seems to me.

Possible exception: First Nations.  We currently have chief Spence on a hunger strike and she seems to be winning – whatever that means in a hunger strike situation.  For me, it would be weight loss.  For her, who knows?  But her dispute with the Feds is over her particular reserve at Attawapiskat in northern Ontario and she is clearly rebelling and getting somewhere.

Add to that the recent court decision of the Metis and off-reserve natives being  included as First Nations.  Whatever that comes to mean, it is a unifying decision.  First Nations just got bigger.

And then we have the First Nations-of-the-North resisting the Northern Gateway project.  While that is a non-united front of resistance, the majority of the reserves are speaking as one.  And so is much of the mainstream community. That is another ‘front’ in the rebellion.  And yesterday, some group self-described as ‘grass roots’ Indians threatened to “shut down the Canadian economy” if they don’t get what they want.

Of course, we have had the ‘at-the-trough’ chiefs of the Assembly Of First Nations (AFN) for years demanding more and getting some of it.  They would have to be seen as standing on the other side of the line even if they are taking as much as they can while standing there.

Bottom line: the natives are restless, getting more so and getting some support from mainstream Canadians.  Could it possibly be that – given the majority of Canadian’s dislike for Harper and his way of doing things – that resistance will grow beyond the First Nations?  And could those resistors – given that it was First Nations who stood up first and loudest – become the leaders of a larger Canadian revolution?  Are we seeing the people who have been dealt the harshest hand historically leading those whose middle class lives have been also thoroughly disrupted into some kind of political conflict with a very vulnerable government?  Could the Indians manage to recruit the cavalry to battle against Custer?

Frankly, I doubt it.  People, it seems, vote and act entirely with their wallets. See HST.  Long term vision, morality, common cause and decent human values don’t seem to move us enough to act.  Not usually.  Harper first has to tax us a few more bucks to get our juices flowing and, even then, we simply complain.  Rebellions just aren’t us.

But if there ever is one……….?  Well, I am thinking it might be the First Nations who lead it.  Do you see anyone else?

Sal and I worked yesterday.  It was good.  Did some deck stuff.  Swung boards, operated saws, measured, cut and stacked.  Cracked silly jokes at each other (she is getting funnier all the time and, for the last few years, it has been on purpose!).

You know the drill.  Weather was cool, a smidge drizzly.  We were bundled.  Gloves and hair got wet. Took tea half way through, changed gloves.  Then went back.  We’ll resume again today.  Still have about 50 rough boards to process.  We are both looking forward to it.

Weird, eh?

I mean, I’ll soon be officially old at 65.  The ol’ Puddin’ is only trailing me by a few years and yet, we entertain ourselves by building a deck extension in the forest in January.  Who woulda thunk it?

“Don’t be a dickhead!” 

I broke up.  I had just made a minor error and Sal promptly reprimanded me with a typical (male) worksite jab.  And I was laughing.

“Well, that is what worker-guys say, isn’t it?”  she said with a lovely smile accompanying.

“Yep!  You’ve got it.  Goofy man-at-work-talk.  The stupider the better.  You’re learnin’ fast.”

“What’s to learn?  You screw up.  I cus. And then I call you rude names.  It’s easy.  The hard part is watching you screw up!” 

“Now, now.  The art of goofy man-talk is somehow finding a way to make it funny.”

“Oh.  Sorry.  …………You dickhead!”

I crack up again.  Somehow she made it funny.  I dunno.  Hard to explain.  Maybe you had to be there.

We are not the best team when working.  Not as a rule.  We prefer to do our own job rather than assist or cooperate with the other.  But as we get older, we need an extra pair of hands or a bit of extra strength now and then.  We seem to need each other more.  And so we are having to learn teamwork.

Sometimes it is hell.

Sal likes to ask a lot of questions.  She likes to plan the work.  She likes to know what we are doing and what comes next.  I hate that.  ‘Cause I am wingin’ it as a rule and I don’t really know what the hell is going to happen next.

But necessity is the mother and I have been doing more ‘splainin’ to my Lucy.  Of course, to ‘splain, I have to think it all out.  I have to plan.  And to plan, I often have to talk it over with her and so, reluctantly, slowly, inexorably, tortuously we are starting to work as a team.

Good timing, eh?  Eight years late.  Oh well.

Sal makes a mistake measuring.  We cut the board wrong.  I say with a grin, “Well, you wanna measure it again Hawkeye and I’ll re-cut it?”   She looks at me with eyes like a doe.  I think I see a tear.  “You don’t have to be so mean!”

I am thinking, ‘Geez.  Dickhead was considered funny’?  I guess these work-site jabs just go one way.

Like I said, we are both still learning to be a team.

I don’t think there is any doubt that the world is heading for some kind of crisis.  Probably a combination of climate-change meets peak oil kinda thing.  We’ll run out of energy, oil, water and/or civility at much the same time as billions try to migrate away from the ever-hotter sunbelt.  I mean, you can see that happening already, can’t you?

And it will get more complicated by food shortages and currency earthquakes, economic shifts and increased national and cultural tensions not to mention the weird inclination of governments all around the world to be more oppressive. 

The times, they are a’changing, eh?  And FAST!

But some things are good, right?  I mean, we have Green consciousness now.  We have eco-movements.  We have blue-box.  We save whales.  We are (the righteous and pure of heart) at least shouting the right message from our Prius.  We are trying do to the right thing.  Right?

Not according to Elizabeth Nickson in her book Eco-fascists.  Lizzie doesn’t like the green movement.  She doesn’t like the organized, institutionalized efforts being made.  She hates ’em.  And she makes a few good points in her criticisms.

Basically, Liz says that BIG GREEN is like BIG PHARMA or BIG BROTHER.  BIG GREEN is elitist, bureaucratic, Machiavellian, corrupt and gets the opposite results from what people and the planet want.  She debunks BIG GREEN as corrupt, myopic and rolling in dough (spending 10’s of billions each year just on propaganda). Worse, they are driving people from the land!

One of her examples is the Island Trust.  She was, of course, a victim of it because she lives on Saltspring and wanted to subdivide but that doesn’t negate her points.

She claims that the unelected trust and it’s required ‘hoops’ is slow, expensive and sports a staff of 45 bureaucrats whose main focus for the southern Gulf Islands is to ensure that nothing can happen.  She states that a landowner with waterfront can’t plant a garden within 100 feet of the ocean (or any body of water) without getting a $2500 environmental study filed.  And she goes on and on about that kind of madness not only in little political fiefdoms like the Islands Trust but also in Green Peace, the Sierra Club and other champions of our planet.  She really doesn’t like land trusts and she especially criticizes the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States.

But, then again…….is that news?  I am not so sure.  I confess that I have always attributed good motives to those organizations even if they were a little over zealous or bureaucratic at times.  But the truth is, just as power corrupts in the usual sense so can Green power.  There is no greater enemy to reason than the righteous and the pure-of-heart and, as a member of the Greenies I, too, have cloaked myself in righteousness and purity now and then.  And I felt more powerful as a result of it.  And I am capable of making mistakes with that power, too.

She claims that is exactly what is happening throughout the environmental movement and worse, they are exercising that power in ways that are destructive and prejudicial to rural life.

And, I admit that I see that there is an erosion of the ability of people to live rurally.  I see an invisible hand guiding most people to the cities.  Stack ’em and pack ’em is the plan it seems.  She claims it is not only the plan but that the plan negatively impacts the planet!

I find it hard to like this author.  She tends to write in a fast and loose manner and she draws negative conclusions everywhere she looks.  Worse, she is debunking some of my favourite entities.  To be fair, though, she has looked in a lot of places.  She has done her research.

I will think about what she has written.  It is definitely a different message.

Our neighbours came back from their Xmas vacation overseas.  And they practically dropped to their knees to kiss the ground they were on when they returned to the island.  They really missed being here.  It is a feeling I know well.

I used to love traveling.  I no longer do.  Not as much, anyway.  I am losing my wanderlust.  I am even losing my ‘Indiana Jones’ gene.   Real adventure is not as attractive to me anymore.  I prefer to be here.

Mind you, my island life seems to be adequately satisfying my waning need for any adventure albeit usually with more painful outcomes, I must admit.  This is enough for me – sometimes a smidge too much.  I have to be careful but I am content.  I guess it is just age.  But I think it is partly about having found a place I truly feel is home.

(I guess anyplace with a large, fully equipped first-aid kit would do for me but I prefer this one).

My neighbour said, “I just looked at my cabin and marveled at the beauty and, surprisingly, the size of it.  It seemed huge!  I think it was the stunning view rather than the cabin itself but it felt vast and open after a few weeks of smallish hotels and planes. I just love the feeling of freedom and space.  Ya don’t get that in cities and certainly not in the Asian ones we went to.  Ohmygawd!  This is great!” 

“Would you go back?”

They both looked stunned.  The question just hung in the air.  They answered slowly….. “Well, yeah.  It was good.  Interesting.  I’d go back.  I think.  But, I dunno……..”  

I know that feeling, too.  Even tho the trip was good, it was NOT as good as the feeling of returning to the cabin.  At least not at the time of the question.  Maybe later…………..

We all, of course, still feel a bit of the travel-bug and the lure of greener grass on the other side of the planet.  Marketers are good at what they do.  We succumb.  And it is hard to admit a simple preference for home.  Feels dopey.  But I can feel it coming.  So could they.

We are very close to quitting the hostel, the chicken bus and the cheap air-fare searches.  I never really liked backpacks, anyway.  And I doubt that we’d last very long at the resorts and the luxury insults to the local communities that are the next most logical travel choice.  Or cruises.  Nor can we afford the experiment to find out.  I don’t think I could do that for more than a week anyway and, even at that, only once.  Maybe twice.  Mint juleps served at the infinity pool was never my thing.

Sal, of course, is keeping an open mind.

This is all coming from the fact that we are into January and the dead of winter.  If it was as bleak and cold and dreary as it can be, I wouldn’t be talkin’ so big.  I’d be scanning the ads for a way out.  I know that, too.  Easy to talk big when the weather is mild and we can still play (or hurt ourselves) outside.  But, that is the point, really.  Right now, we can still be outside.

Partly it is because the weather is relatively mild but it is equally because we have acclimated somewhat.  We are accustomed and set up for winter.  We have adjusted.  Part of living out here is adjusting and winter is the last obstacle to overcome and we are getting there.

Don’t get me wrong.  I haven’t gone all Jack London on you.  I can’t play in sub-zero, arctic conditions unless there is a ski chalet nearby with hot chocolate and a flight home on the schedule.  Blizzards are not us.   But we are not facing blizzards.  We are not cold.  We are comfortable.  Maybe it is global warming?  Maybe it is just getting our systems in order?  I dunno.  All I do know is that winter is easier to handle this year.  And I like it more.

So do my neighbours.

There are not just a few academics and journalists out there studying us.

Well, by ‘us’ I mean those of us who endeavour to live off the grid.  Seems we are considered numerous and peculiar enough these days to study and analyze.  Not like your basic lab rats, so much, but more like something a bit more unusual, like lemmings, perhaps, or Kangaroo rats.  We ‘bunch up’ some (enough to be considered social animals) but are still individual enough to warrant being different from the larger species.  We off-the-gridders are clearly a sub-species of homo sapiens to the academics and they are trying to understand us.

I like it.  Mostly.  It is fun.  Firstly, I like getting the attention without actually being one of the studied rats.  You have to understand: off-the-gridders want their privacy but everyone likes attention.  I do, anyway.  So how do we reconcile that?  Get a professor at a university to study other off-the-gridders and then bask in the feedback and limelight by association. 

Kinda sick, I confess, but fun. 

Professor Phillip Vanini of Royal Roads University in Victoria is, it seems, a recognized observer: (the following is a series of excerpts from an article in the Calgary Herald by Jamie Kormanicki in interview with Professor Vanini)

Back to normal.  Life is good.  January 03 and all is well, quite quiet on the western front. Quiet on the eastern, too.  And north and south.  Blessed silence is the norm.  You can just hear the occasional wing beats of the birds flying by.

Well, Sal is on the computer upstairs.  The rhymic thumpity thump of her hitting keys is the loudest noise by far, followed by the crunchity of her repositioning in her chair now and then.  Me?  I am downstairs just listening.  And thinking of art pieces.

As you know, I am building a deck (with too much blood and tears but not enough sweat to be getting anywhere right at this time – but it will happen).  The deck will eventually accommodate my studio.  I want to call it a workshop but Sal is trying to encourage my ‘artistic side’ and she thinks that if we call it a studio I will use it in that manner.  She may not want to do much in the way of actual construction but she is willing to support me in any psychological way she can.

“Just think, sweetie.  When you have your studio you can come out here and make stuff, paint and do sculptures.  Oooh………it will be so much fun!”

“I am not so sure.  I did artsy stuff mostly when I was young trying to attract hippy chicks who liked that sort of guy.  I also did sports for those athlete-preferring girls.  Neither tactics were overly successful.  And I just lied about stuff for all the others.  I was never any good at any of it.  Mind you, my lying got better and better.  I was at the peak of my deceit skills when I met you.  Hmmmm…..maybe that is why I write, eh?  You know, to keep the fabrication skills up?  Fallen for anything lately, have you?”

“You are not as good a liar as you might think.  Trust me.  And anyway, you are not half bad at some of that artsy stuff.  I like the paddles you paint and you still have some soapstone under the house.  C’mon, let your inner Michelangelo out.”

“And there is the added benefit of my being out of the house for hours on end, eh?  You gotta like that!”

“Denying is lying.  So, I admit it.  But I still like to see the artwork.  Honest.  Getting you the hell out is just a bonus, I swear.”

“Well, maybe.  I admit that I am looking at that rock under the house in peculiar ways.  I am starting to see something in it.  Maybe by the time I get the workshop……oops, studio…….done, I will be inspired.”

“Great!  And while you are at it, why not install a bit of heating for the colder months.  Maybe a small bathroom?  I’d also suggest a modest kitchenette for making a bit of tea, ya know?  You like tea.  Are you capable of constructing a Murphy bed?  Just askin’?” 

“What can I do to help?” asked J.

“Well, we have a couple of females here that need to go back and then there are all the heads that have to be tossed.  Wanna go down to the beach and free the mamas and the heads?” 

(Sounds a bit like a 70’s rock group, don’t you think?)

One of our guests went to the beach with a couple of prawn-mamas in one hand and a small container of prawn heads in the other.  The rest of us were back at the house cleaning up after prawn-ripping.  We were putting the tails in small bags and splitting them up. 

If you come across a female with eggs, you let her go.  Everyone else gets their head ripped off.  Kinda like life-in-general…….. 

She came back a few minutes later.  “Wow!  All hell broke loose!  I tossed the heads and freed the mamas and a flock of gulls came swooping in followed by a big eagle.  And then a huge sea-lion cruised by watching it all while Fid checked him out.  And then the ravens came in to see what all the fuss was about.  Sheesh!  One minute it was quiet and calm and then there was a wildlife melee going on.  Pretty neat.”

“Wash your hands.  Eat your breakfast.  You have to get moving if you are going to catch your ferry.  We gotta leave in 15 minutes.”

“I can’t believe it.  We were here almost three whole days and I was sure I was gonna spend most of it reading.  And I haven’t read hardly anything.  Is it always so busy ’round here?”

“It is with ol’ Sal running the show.  If it was me, you’d have read and then napped.  Maybe a few extra snacks.  But that gal is a hiking, kayaking, prawn-setting maniac.  Here it is January second and you are out in her boat pulling traps before breakfast.  Yesterday was climbing the nearest mountain. Day before that, hiking in the forest. The woman is mad!  Mad, I say!”

“Well, we had a lot of fun.  Thanks.  It was a great New Years.  Just great.”

And so it was.

Our last guests of 2012 and our first guests of 2013 have parted.  It was good.  It would be even better if they came up to settle in the area or, at least, came by more often.  Being with good friends is a great way to start off the new year.

When your basic inspiration for writing is to compare off-the-grid living to urban living it seems a basic requirement that you actually know something about the two lifestyles.  And I do.  Or, better put, I used to.

I am not so sure anymore.

It is true that I lived urban for over 55 years.  And hardly regretted a minute of it until the last ten or so (even then I couldn’t put my finger on it).  It is also true that I used to think that camping was simply a form of masochism-in-dirt-with-bugs and that everything not a Xmas tree was likely just more dirt and rocks with a bear thrown in for colour and mosquitoes for additional aggravation.  I didn’t really appreciate the nuances of nature.  Not at all.

But, as you know, I do now.  Now I am a country guy.  Not a particularly good country guy but I am learning.  And I am enjoying the learning even more than the actual rocks and Xmas trees.  I am still mostly a cerebral country guy.  Real country guys kill things and don’t shower.  I don’t expect I’ll ever get that country. Yuck!

And that, I thought, would be the basic story: country enlightenment for the still-urban-afflicted.  Poor innocents learning from the overly enthusiastic newbie-of-the-glen.

Now, I am not so sure.  It is true that I am learning country and it is also true that I am willing to share it but I have learned that the urban playing field is changing faster than ever.  I may not have enough of an accurate perspective on the city anymore to do a fair comparison.  The city is moving too fast for my comparisons to be worth the pixels I am expending.

This is a surprising turn of events.

For instance: I really hadn’t grasped how ‘smart phones’ had infiltrated modern life.  Of course I knew of them.  I see them.  I have even used one or two.  But I was somewhat shocked to see them everywhere all the time when I was last in Hong Kong.  It was amazing to see millions of people associating but NOT in person.  Millions of people removed from one another despite being pressed together like sardines.  I thought it weird then.  But I thought it an Asian phenomenon.

It is not.

Last night six mature (over 50) people had a quiet New Years Eve going on at a remote island up the BC coast.  Think- Dan’l Boone and friends plus dogs.  No one else around within a five mile radius.  Halfway through – a cell phone rang.  Two of the people made automatic moves for their hip pockets.  Like gunfighters in a saloon.  Both resisted the urge.  We all looked at each other.  I could almost hear the theme song from the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.  Doo dee dum!  Eyes whipped around.  Hands remained frozen.  And then they both decided to ignore it.

Conversation resumed.

The ghost cell phone rang again…………………….doo dee dum………the two phone owners locked eyes.

“You on call?”

“I am always on call.” (ooooh…shades of Clint Eastwood)

And I was thinking:  I am never on call!  Hell, no one even calls me regular-like!  I am no longer one of them.  I am different.

So then we had a quick chat about smart phones and their features and ‘what kind do you have’ and ‘do you have wi-fi here’ and all that sort of thing.  And I was thinking………..”It is New Years eve.  Nobody is a doctor here.  And yet, my friends are still in touch.  They are still in touch even though they can’t see another light for miles and they are not needed by anyone.  They are connected despite being remote.  But, more to the point – this is now normal!”

I know, I know……….there is not a helluva lot of difference between that and  e-mail.  I know that.  But it struck me that the real difference was one of altered realities. I am truly living in a different reality.

I came to live out here and was eventually pulled back ‘down to earth’ from my previous madding crowd mind-set by the sheer physical-ness of what my life had become.  From not actually even seeing them before I moved up here, I had come to know and like the different rocks and Xmas trees.  I had even come to know that not all Xmas trees are alike.  Not all rocks are alike.  Even the dirt was different in different places.  I was like a young Inuit being taught the various kinds of snow!

I had come to feel a new reality and I was quite amazed at how insulated I had been from all this.  But part of that new awareness of the country was by way of a new awareness of the city.  Urban, for me, was starting to look more like fantasy.  It was, of course, more managed.  Less wild.  It was just more artificial in some kind of way.  The city no longer struck me as real.  Not really real.  Not physical.  Not hands-on.

But now I think that the last ten years has made it even more unreal.  It is now even more invested in fantasy.  People in the city are more insulated and, in a way, more isolated from the real and present by yet another ‘grid’, yet another way of demising, yet another way of insulation.  They seem to live in layers of veils.  Now they can actually live on and in their pixelated screens.

“So what!?  Modern life.  Technology.  Things change.  Life evolves.  Get over yourself, Dave!”

OK.  Sorry.  But it is just that all this technology is mostly a kind of magic that obfuscates what we really want out of life.  I think.  We want to communicate with each other and so we develop communication devices and, in so doing, seem to end up not communicating as well as before.  I would argue that a tweet is not as communicative as an e-mail which is not as communicative as a phone call which, in turn, is not as communicative as a conversation.  Somehow our new, magic technology seems to be missing the point.

Like Monsanto misses the point of agriculture.

I guess what I am saying is this: technology is, for most of us, a form of magic.  And a weird by-product of this magic is that we are living more and more in a fantasy world.  Coming out here is, I think, more real.  More of a grounding in a personal-sized reality, anyway.  Maybe it is just the physicalness of my new lifestyle but I think it is more than that.  I think it is the physicalness on the one hand coupled with the opposite force of increasing the fantasy on the other.

One thing is for sure – one feels more alive out here than one does staring at a screen in the city.  That has to mean something.  Doo dee dummmm……………doooodleeeee doooooooooo…………