Almost done the upper landing deck for the new ramp.  Sal and I worked all day on it yesterday.  In the rain.  It was good.  Kind of refreshing, actually.

It was pretty funny, too.  Two steps forward, one step back.  All day.  Cha cha cha.  The deck is small but our work-out put was smaller.  We have almost as much to do again today.

One thing is becoming increasingly evident in our lives: our work output is generally diminishing.  What used to take us a day (mostly because we didn’t have a clue) now takes us three days (and we have a bit more of a clue this time!).  Mind you, it is still only a teeny clue but you’d think we’d be quicker, not slower.  Of course, we still don’t know what we are doing.  Not really.  But at least we have some familiarity with tools and materials and such now.  We should be better and we are not.  Could be an ‘age thing’.

Mind you, we have also had conventional expectations of efficiency and deadlines stripped from us as a result of island living these past eight years.  We don’t expect to make the schedule or even make an estimate of it anymore.  “Let’s get on that deck, eh?  With a bit of luck we could finish today.”

“Yeah!  Right!  We’ll get on it and then we’ll go for tea and then we’ll have a bathroom break or a friend will drop in.  Finish today?  You must be mad!”

“You’re right.  Even tho we only have a few boards to do, we haven’t got a hope, do we?  Don’t know what I was thinkin’.”

“Want some tea?”

It is hard to explain.  I have lived and worked in an environment of great expectations all my life til now.  Parents, teachers, bosses, friends, society.  Banks.  It seems that expectations were always being created and I made my fair share of them.  But, out here?  Not so much.  Not anymore, anyway.  If you live out here for any length of time, the ‘construct’ of expectations, the actual ‘mind-set of it, gradually disappears.

“I have got to get the garlic in.  I am already a week or three late.  They should be in the ground right now or else we won’t have garlic next year!  Aaaaarggghhh!!!”

“Go do it, then!”

“Right after my tea.  I will.  For sure.  Then I’ll go to the bathroom.  We’ll finish off the deck and then, for sure, I will plant the garlic.  For sure!”

That was yesterday…………..

Wind’s howlin’.  Seas are up.  Bits and pieces of trees are whizzing by.  Winter is almost here.

Neighbours aren’t, tho.  The last of ’em left Saturday morning. Miles and miles without a soul around but us.  Fantastic!

Even boat traffic has dropped way, way off.

That kind of loneliness grows old if extended for long but, out here, it is usually a brief thing.  There are still long term neighbours.  They are just a bit further away.  They’ll come.  We’ll go to them.  Eventually.  There will be companionship.  But there is always a feeling of separation around this time – this time of the summer people leaving.

The rest of us tend to use this time to begin hunkering…..however that shows up.  It usually means getting in the wood from the shed, planning some indoor activities, trying to finish a few late outdoor ones.  It is a time marked by making sure the door is kept shut and the larder is full and all the fuel tanks are up for the first half of the winter.  It is a time of not planning off-island activities although, to be fair, I have been slowly dropping those for years.  Hunkering down for the winter is not what it used to mean in the old days but it is still a phenomena out here.  We still tend to hibernate a bit.

Yesterday I began to fill the indoor woodpile from the outdoor shed.  We stack a week’s burning inside to dry it out a bit more and to have it handy.  It is a tiny chore but marked because it signifies the seasonal shift.  Officially, it is now the ‘cold’ season.

Sal went through our clothes-at-hand and put away the summer stuff and pulled out the long-sleeved stuff.  Again, a minor chore.  But symbolic.  And so the next week or two will go.  Things put away.  Other’s pulled out.  We now seem to mark the seasons quite consciously and even, to a significant extent, live by them.

This year is, however, a bit different.  We are also at that age when some friends are dying.  It is pretty harsh but, I suppose, it is the way of things.  The reason it feels so harsh is that it has not been the way of things for us – not my generation.  Not yet.  Not so much, anyway.  Age taking people in clumps is a loss felt generationally and usually only once albeit drawn out over twenty or thirty years.

With too many tragic exceptions, the basic way of things has the 65 year olds beginning to say goodbye with only a few 90-to-one hundred year-olds around to hear it.  But in many cases we also start saying goodbye to our own generation at much the same time as the one that has preceded us.  Sixty plus is the introduction to exiting.  It is a tough course but no one, it seems, fails to pass.

Of course, I mention all this because we currently have the prospect of soon losing some of those connections.  And it will be hard. It may be the reason I feel that the cold season is so soon upon us.  Seemed like only yesterday it was sunny.

A friend requested a bit of back-story about cutting the umbilical cords from the city.  How did we do it? 

I think the first umbilical that was severed was the desire and/or need to be there.  At a certain point in one’s life, the city has a basic appeal.  But that allure is eventually satisfied and the initial purpose of the city diminishes in many fundamental ways.  It is, after marriage and children, no longer the desired bigger and best gene pool, for instance.  For most people in their say, forties, interest in the gene pool wanes.  But, by then, habit has taken over.  Inertia is often the major influence behind how many people live.

After taking the kids away on a long journey one year, I came back with ambivalence towards urban living.  I don’t quite know how that transition happened exactly but the ‘family adventure’ marked the beginning of my antipathy to the cul de sac. Somehow my inertia was moved.  That was likely step one.

I then kinda aggravated my condition by ‘virtually’ exploring different lifestyles on the internet and quickly settled on off-the-grid-ism.  Part of that attraction was the people I met on the Mother Earth News forums.  I just started to look away from the city after our extended trip in 1999.

To be fair, the actual move was made much easier for us by our children soon being away at school.  Both of them went to other cities to study.  And that helped a great deal.  After making sure they were settled in, we just told them that we were going and that their home would soon be gone.  “You are officially fledged”.  But a new home would soon be available up on a remote island.  They handled that very well (just minor fledgling-like squawking and screeching).

Secondly, I have worked most of my life on my own.  With a few short exceptions, the last twenty years were as a self-employed mediator and arbitrator.  So there was no boss (‘cept Sal) and my work obligations were only as long as the current case.  I really wasn’t tied to a career or a company.

Sal was, though, and so we waited until departing felt right for her.  That took a couple of years.  But the time was spent productively with me learning and salvaging, planning and dreaming.  I put the time to good use.  In effect I was in school.  Put succinctly, even though our umbilicals were many, they were not strong and it still took us two years to cut ourselves free.  More like four when you factor in the mental adjustment and learning time.

The actual umbilicals were pretty simple.  I had eight telephone lines.  Home, business, three cell phones, the kid’s phone, a dial-up internet and a fax.  We had four TVs.  Three cars.  And cable TV.  We had a lawn service, a pool service, cleaning ladies and two needy, insecure hair cutters that expected us every month.  Plus, of course, we had friends and social circles, community activities and expectations to deal with.  We were towing multiple drogues even when the seas were calm.

Probably the most illuminating moment in the whole process was a month or so before we left for our long family adventure around North America and Europe.  Sally told me that we had to leave ‘money for the house’ while we were gone.  We had just paid off the mortgage and so I was caught somewhat off-guard.  “What for?”

After Sal’s lengthy listing of monthly payments from Hydro to phones, from car insurance to BC Medical, from lawn and pool care to personal insurance and cable and miscellaneous, I understood.  We had to leave $1800 a month for five months or $9000 for a house that we were not living in!!??  I estimated that, at current tax rates, I was obliged to make at least $2500 a month NOT to live in my house!!??

It was then and it is still is, complete madness to my way of thinking.  More than that — it is a form of enslavement.  It was not right, healthy or even productive for me to live and work to pay for stuff that was attached to me like leeches. It horrified me.  I was nauseated to think to what extent I had become a host to so many parasites.

You might argue that the umbilicals were not parasites but services.  And the argument would, on the surface, be a good one.  But for one thing: most of those services were only in aid of my being able to work.  I did not have eight phones for fun.  I did not have a lawn service because my legs did not work.  All these umbilicals were supports for me to continue paying for the supports.

By the time I figured out where most of my time went, my gasoline went, why I had the clothes I did and how we lived our lives, I was convinced that, despite the golden hues, the umbilicals, habits, behaviours and overhead of it all were just subtle handcuffs.  I was living to work, not working to live.

It was not in the least difficult to cut the umbilicals then.  In fact, it was impossibly hard to stay after that realization.  I couldn’t cut them fast enough.

Some bureaucrats came out to pay us a visit.  Nice folks.  Friendly-like.  They came to see the final portion of the road on the adjacent island that leads down a steep hill to the shore and our community dock.  This dock is where we park our boats when we head in to so-called civilization. But we also bring our small boats onto the beach next to the dock to load heavy supplies and equipment directly from our vehicles.  Getting down the final hill to the water is critical to bringing out building supplies or taking in an outboard for repair.

But it seems there’s some kind of question about whether the portion of road in question is a road if it is not officially called a road and is thus not recognized as one.  It may not exist.  Even if it is there.  And even if cars drive on it as a natural continuance of the real road.

“Well, this isn’t a road.  And, if it was a road, it wouldn’t be a road we recognized.  And, if you disagree, the best way for us to determine if it is a road is for you to take us to court.  If the judge says it is a road, then it is a road.  Until then, we are pretty sure it isn’t a road.”

He’s talking about the road he just drove down to meet me.

The ‘Phantom’ Road

“Well, I am happy to take you to court.  But I don’t really wanna fight the government.  Too exhausting.  If we take you to court, will you argue with us or just roll over?”

“My job is is just to present the facts.  I don’t argue one way or the other.”

“All right then.  Thanks.  I just may see you in court.  In the meantime, do you want to walk down the road, cross over in my boat and head over to our island? We’ll walk up the other road and go for some lunch?”

“I’ll take this trail here to your boat.  ‘Cause I don’t see a road.  But this trail will do.  Then I’ll take the other trail on the other island.”

So, off we went in a real boat on the real ocean though I may have been delusional at the time.  As we traveled, I was thinking of serving them an empty bowl and calling it lunch and, if they looked surprised, I’d say, “Well, take me to court.  Maybe the judge will see this as lunch.  And if he or she calls it lunch, then it is a lunch.  If it is not officially a real lunch, then I’ll serve a real lunch.”

But I am not a petty man.

In fact, I was having some real (or maybe not) existential angst the whole time.

But it was not so bad.  I kinda like this bureaucrat.  He laughs at my jokes.  And he seems harmless enough.  Some of them ‘crats are pretty evil bastards but this one is retiring soon.  He’s pretty benign.  And that’s how I like ’em, benign and retiring.  Invisible is good, too.  A not real bureaucrat is a good thing.  I kinda hope they downsize the Ministry and there is no replacement.  That would make him really not real.  And then there would be no road and nobody to tell me there was no road.

‘Course, I’d still drive down it now and then.

It’s funny about a trip to town especially one that goes on for a week or more.  Your sense of being changes.  Everything feels different.  Little ‘city’ tentacles reach out and touch you, little feelers, sticky cobwebs.  It is like the ‘urban thing’ is an entity and it wants you back.

This weird feeling of inanimate seduction comes naturally enough by just driving familiar streets and encountering friends and acquaintances.  We part after our brief visit with ‘See you at Xmas!’ or ‘Why don’t you come up?’.  And – there you have it – you are back in the loop.  Not a tentacle so much as a ‘sticky’ of some sort.  Something that re-invests you back in the ‘old world’.

Sometimes it is more direct:  “Oh, we have one of those.  We’ll send it to you.” Or “Can I send you my lease renewal for a quick review?”  Our recent re-emergence reminds people of our existence and we come back into their consciousness.  And then we, in effect, re-entangle with them and the larger grid through that friendship or some small business.  And that is OK.  More than OK, actually.  But, sometimes it is just weird.

When Sal and I got back, she was contacted by a small firm that values her editing services on a piecemeal, ad hoc basis maybe once or twice a year.  We hadn’t visited them, hadn’t contacted them.  But their consciousness was  somehow ‘rekindled’ and they made contact.  Probably just a coincidence.  But it happened to me, too.  An old client is now back in touch.

Sal met an old neighbour while shopping.  Another distant old friend left a message. We dropped in to see someone and they put us in touch with………well, you get the idea.

I know.  It is no real mystery.  Just people connecting.  But it does seem weird sometimes; people with whom you have not heard a peep in three years, all of a sudden in contact.  Out of the blue.  And that kind of thing always seems to follow a visit.  It is like we leave a trail of spores or something and these old contacts sniff them in the air.  Hard to explain.

Well, I did leave my raincoat somewhere last time and so that works as a reminder to someone, too.  But, trust me.  I am not talking about leaving my clothes all over town and then wondering why people get back in touch.  This is more subtle.

And, in an equally strange way, the country kind of rebuffs you as well, like you have stood them up or been late to the party.  Two neighbours went to the hospital.  A baby was born.  A wedding took place.  The ravens got into the freezer.  The water system developed a hiccup.  A bottle leaked in the cupboard.  When we left, we hadn’t had the fire on but, one week later, it was obvious that we needed it now.  Just subtle, weird little natural reminders that ‘you were gone too long!’

“Dave!  You’re going nutty on us!”

“Yeah.  I guess.  This stuff isn’t magic.  There is no giant consciousness knowing and caring about our whereabouts.  It is just coincidence or my  overactive imagination.  The weather has changed because the season has changed.  The summer people just left because, well, the summer is over, not because we had just left.  But everything just feels different and…….well…………I am 99% sure it is just a coincidence.  Probably”.

Came home to a littered cliffside.  The ravens somehow managed to open the outdoor freezer and, over the past week, ate the entire contents.  About 40 pounds of raw dogfood, 3 steaks, a whole chicken, a few pounds of bacon and a miscellany of ‘leftovers’ including three plastic yogurt tubs of chicken stock.  We are pretty sure they are so bloody heavy they walked in for the last few meals and we are going to ‘track them’ by their heavy footprints back to their hide-out  What little, fat bastards!

Still, all in all, it is great to be home.  We may have to forage farther afield and a bit sooner for sustenance – thanks to the aerial bandits – but being home is so incredibly great it is hard to complain.  Ravens do what ravens do.

One thing is for sure: I will give them a vociferous piece of my mind when I see them next and that will be the last piece of anything they get from me for a long time!

A heavy yellow pall hung over the sky as we came home.  No idea why.  Looked like urban pollution from Nanaimo to Comox. Much the same on the Vancouver side.  Got over to the next island at dusk and the pristine air there was literally sweeter.  The view unimpaired.  Water was calm and all seemed right with the world.  And then we unloaded to a beautiful ramp on our side that made the chore a fresh breeze!  House fired up (water, gas, electricity) and it was GOOD.

When we go away for any amount of time, we arrange for a neighbour to drop us on the far side so that our vessel can remain at home.  When we return, that same neighbour picks us up and we take our own boat back over to the island-next-door and we load up and then navigate the last mile or so back home.  This is a difficult arrangement when there is no neighbour.  So, I am proposing that we never leave.  Sal is mulling that over.

Community day today.  So no rest.  Wicked work to get done.  I’ll report again soon.

Still away south. Not for long.  Heading for saner pastures tomorrow.  Thank God.  C’n hardly wait.

No question about it, I am no longer hip.  In the urban sense.  No longer ‘happenin’.  Just NOT cool anymore.  Who woulda thunk it!?  In fact, it is worse than that – I have lost ‘pace’, I am now in the slow lane.  Hell, maybe I should be parked! The city was just too fast for me this time.

You think I am kidding (and to some extent I am) but there’s no question that the city is faster paced and I noticed my having to ramp up to get into the rhythm of it years ago.  But this time, I couldn’t catch the beat.  The urban  tempo and me were out of sync.  I was a smidge slow on the uptake. I was even a bit slow in traffic.  I was like an old guy from the hicks driving an old truck.  Jed Clampett without the oil money.

I am embarrassed to admit that most cars passed me when we were on on the east-west connector.  Nobody ever used to pass me!  Even stranger……this time….I didn’t care!!??

“Well, we have done our chores.  Waddya wanna do now, honey?” 

” I wanna go home!” 

How pathetic is that?

However, some observations were made and worth noting.  Richmond architecture is beginning to look like Hong Kong’s.  Ours was the oldest car on the road. Traffic was hell.  It is hard to beat Sun Sui Wah for dim sum.  Or the Flamingo on Cambie.  Both great.  Lee Valley is a merchandiser’s dream.  TV hasn’t changed.  Neither have Richmond’s drivers (the only place on the lower mainland where my sense of pace was greater than the norm).  Distances are relatively short but transit times are unusually long.  The ferry system remains at MarineSec one still – as it has since the system was employed (how stupid is that system!?).  And somehow, costs are rising pretty bloody rapidly for a recession.  But, to be frank, Vancouver did have the buzz of a city thriving.  Didn’t feel like a recession there.

But it doesn’t matter.  Not anymore.  We are disconnected.  Well and truly.  If not completely separated from the city, we are disconnected by at least 90%.  Only friends and family draw us now and I found myself making a strong argument for them coming to us.  Though – judging from the facial expressions – that is unlikely to happen.

To write about living off the grid, one must also write about visiting said grid when it happens.  And it did so I wrote.  What I found amazing was that we were gone a week and nothing was worth writing about.  That says something in itself, doesn’t it?

Due to technical difficulties associated with the host synaptic system in transit through urban centres, service in Dave’s brain has been halted.  We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and our technicians are working on the problem.  We hope to resume service as soon as we get out of this madness.  Thank you for your interest in Offthegridhomes.org.  Canada’s Leading Waste of Time.

Hardly did a bloody* thing today.  But I still fell down and hurt myself.  How stupid is that!?

No biggie.  Just caught my foot on a baggage strap.  Fell.  Usually when that kind of thing happens, I just jump right back up.   Quick-like.  You know?  (‘didja blink?’)  Sorta like, ‘……….it didn’t really happen?’  But this time I just lay there for a minute.  Horizontal.  Laid-back – literally.  Not so bad.  It was nice, actually.  Kinda relaxing.  I would have stayed down a bit longer but a guy lying on a deck embracing luggage looks weird even if there is no one around to see it.  So, I eventually got back up and carried on.

I find it strange that I manage to find blood in just about everything I do.  Slightly bloody* knee this time.

I was packing stuff down from the deck to Sal at the beach.  She and her small boat were headed off to the post office by way of our parked car and she was going to load up our vehicle for our pending trip south.  It is always a good idea to pack the car the day before in case the weather gets bad.  If the weather is bad on the day of departure, you would prefer to not have to deal with it in a fully loaded small boat with two dogs.  Ergo, the pre-trip-day packing exercise.

And, of course, I used the new ramp.  “How is it?” asked Sal.

“Absolutely wonderful!  A delight.  Easy.  Makes me wonder why I hadn’t done this years ago.”

And therein lies the point of this blog entry: absence makes the heart grow appreciative.  I am currently in love with that old ramp.

I know this weird psycho-phenomenon well.  Sal and I lived on our sailboats for 11 years.  Because boats have limited water storage, we would shower at friend’s houses, the aquatic centre, gym changing rooms and a variety of ‘sneak-showers’ all across the city.  When we moved ashore and could once again enjoy a hot shower for as long as we liked, it was a luxury, a treat, a little ‘special’ gift that, to this day, we still appreciate.

And the same goes for electric lights NOT limited by battery banks, plenty of running water whenever you want, hot water on-demand, a closet full of toilet paper and well, the list goes on and on.  I confess that having a fairly well-stocked food shed is also becoming a comfort of sorts.  Living without those conveniences is no great trial but, when they re-enter your life, you have an increased appreciation for it. And we still get that.

Strangely, I still have no appreciation for band-aids.  You’d think………

Big salmon are jumping.  Really big.  Guessing from the glimpses as they leap, I think 15 pounders.  Maybe some are bigger.  Every year about this time the Chums come and they seem to congregate for a week or so right in front of our house.  It’s wonderful.

We can’t catch them, tho.  Firstly, one cannot fish our area.  It is closed to fin-fish.  The law says.  Secondly, you can’t catch a salmon even in an open area without a special additional license issued (for a cost) just for a salmon.  Ordinary fishing licenses aren’t good enough.  The law says.  And thirdly, neither Sally or I are any good at catching fish.  Fishing, for us, is boring and unproductive.  We just sit there and complain about losing fishing gear.  We don’t like any part of it.  So we don’t do it.

But it makes no difference, our preferences.  The Chums don’t bite.  Whatever is going on in their life cycle, appetite is not part of it at this point in their season.  They leap, they play, they congregate and maybe they even congregate for some kind of reason.  But they don’t get the munchies afterwards.

Then they are gone.

The seals don’t have to obey the laws.  So they try and eat the salmon even in the closed sections.  And they seem to have a knack for it.  The other day, a seal and a large salmon broke the surface of the water fully engaged in a life-battle over who gets dinner.  The seal had the upper hand but the salmon was so large it was flipping the seal about as the struggle ensued. Lots of thrashing at the surface but, eventually the seal succeeded and likely took home a doggy bag (another name for a Chum is Dog salmon).  Pretty amazing.

Salmon, it seems, are in danger.  But what isn’t?  Seems the world is on the precipice of some kind of environmental end game according to everything I read and hear.  And I believe it.  Certainly the climate change people have been proven right.  And that has to have implications all over the place.  I guess we are doomed.  This summer we had something like 60 straight days without rain.  Whatever the number, it set a record.  What a concept, eh?  The rain forest without rain.

Spring was unnaturally cold.  Our wind patterns this summer were different.  The bug count was also up.  The plants didn’t bloom til late and the garden was even later coming in with some plants doing poorly.  The Hummingbirds came late and stayed for a shorter time but there were late stragglers well into the summer – which is odd.  This year saw gobs of whales.  No eagles in our special eagle-tree this year.  Not many anyway.  The jellyfish count is way down.  Oysters didn’t seem to proliferate. but they held their own.  Lots of wolves earlier in the season.  All in all it was a weird season for both the flora and the fauna.  Nothing quite seemed ‘normal’.

But clearly the season is over.  It is Fall.  No question about it.  Cool mornings.  Earlier sunsets.  Sun already lower in the sky.  We are heading for another winter and, to be frank, I am not looking forward to it.  We are well prepared.  We have what we need.  But the lack of light is now becoming a factor as I age.  I really appreciate having longer days.  I guess there is a just a bit of a sense of loss in the air…………

…………don’t worry……………I’ll be fine.