Winching, levering, pushing and pulling, we slowly raised the ramp up the beach to its intended perch.  But the last few inches seemed out of reach.  It was a combination of too many blocks on too short a line bunching up and jamming on a piece of wood that got twisted in the way and denied us the last, say, foot.  At most.  We were hanging by a foot!

And then D drove by in his boat.  Good ol’ D.  He of the mountain-man variety.  The guy who falls trees and then mills them to make his own boat from scratch.  And then lives in it!  In the wilderness!!  The kinda guy who once used a tree to ‘lever’ a stuck pick-up out of a ditch.  Good ol’ D.

“So, looks like you are comin’ along with that ol’ ramp quite nicely, eh?”

“Not so nicely.  Last ten inches or so….(puff, puff)………can’t quite get ér…….(puff, puff) …..don’ wanna talk about it.  Really.  Nice to see ya.  See ya later.”

“Now, now………let’s just let Mr Exasperation settle down……..can’t get much done when your face is all red and all, now can ya?  Thought of a lever?”

“Yup!” (said with a look that could kill while I quietly wondered where my shotgun was).  “Yup.  Thought about a lever.  Yup!  Thinkin’ about something else right about now, tho….!”

“OK.  We’ll just give Mr. Exasperation a few more minutes, shall we……….(tick tock, tick tock)………….so, now how ’bout tryin’ a lever thingy?  Long levers move the world, ya know?  We can just pick it right up.  Easy like?”

I claim maturity.  I claim sanity.  I claim reasonableness.  But those are just claims.  Not facts.  Any maturity shown under trying conditions is really quite the exception, really.  I harrumphed.  I simmered.  I glowered.  And I talked Mr Exasperation back into the dark hole in which he lives.  I relaxed.  I took a deep breath……….“Geez, a lever, you say?  What a great idea.  Just how would you go about afixin’ that lever now?”

A few minutes later D was on the job, the giant lever (made from a beam of steel that I hadn’t considered because it was too heavy to imagine working ‘easy-like’) was expertly put in place and we lifted the ramp onto the perch like a sparrow landing in a tree.  Thanks and congratulations all around and D left to carry on rescuing others.  We cleared up and stopped for tea.

Ramping Up

“Wazza matter?”

“Silly, isn’t it?  I needed help getting that last foot up.  Bugged me.  Just being silly about it, tho.  It was good.  D was great.  Me just being silly.  Glad it is up.  No one was hurt.  D made it simple.  We are good.  It was good.  I am glad.”

“We woulda got it.”

“I know…………but……well……..D is pretty bloody good at thinkin’ outside the box.  ‘Specially out here.  The guy approaches things differently.  It’s like convention never crosses his mind but simple and direct does.  He’s remarkable that way.  And why is it that simple and direct is not conventional?  Should be.  But it isn’t.  That kind of pure thinkin’ is a delight to see.   Guess I am just a little jealous that I was not that far out of the box.”

“Well, lighten up! The guy could teach a course in thinking outside the box but we’d never get him in a boxy classroom in which to do it.  He’d just say, ‘No one learns anything in a room except maybe how to paint walls.  Ya wanna learn about livin’ out here…ya gotta live out here.  Kinda chicken and egg, if you know what I mean?’  So, you OK?”

“Of course.  Better than OK.  Great, really.  Good impression of D, by the way.  I just got another lesson on thinking differently, is all.  Got a lesson on outside the box.  Another degree up on the off-the-grid learning curve.  And it is all being taught in an outdoor classroom.  That’s the best part, really.”  

Dinner party was good.  Guests were about to leave.  It was dark.  Late.  Temperature was dropping.

There was a knock at the door.

That isn’t easy.  How does one get to our rather remote location so late at night and, approaching from the beach, come up to knock at the door without so much as a dog noticing?

It was L.  Her motor had conked out and she was drifting out in the channel and just managed to get to the beach in front of us.  No running lights.  Dressed in pure black, she could have passed for a Navy Seal on a mission impossible of some kind.  Only her pale, white face gave her true mission away.  She was in desperation mode.

Our guests rode to the rescue and towed her home.  But not before she got a piece of chocolate cheesecake and a stiff scotch.  “I am gonna have to break down more often”, she said.  “Right about here!”

We laughed.  Everyone left and Sal and I got to thinking.  Black as pitch.  Tide running north.  No lights.  No radio.  Dressed in black.  Had this occurred two months from now, she might have died from exposure.  There is also little to no traffic at night (not that anyone passing would have seen her).

This is a harsh place at times.  Errors are tolerated but not always forgiven.  More than a few grizzled, seasoned, capable mariners have met their end simply because an engine gave out at the wrong time.  Once again we were reminded of why we do our utmost to come home before nightfall and carry all the safety crap.  Plus – on my boat – I carry a small, spare engine.  It is my ‘get home’ motor.

Of course we take risks.  All the time and every day.  But we respect the sea with a reverence that keeps our maritime risks to an absolute minimum.  “An accident at sea can ruin your whole day” – Thucydides

So, what is my point?  I don’t have one.  Not really.  Just the obvious.  I guess I just looked into the face of an accident that could have happened and it was a stark reminder.  Going off the grid is more than just not having help and assistance, services and institutions, resources and supports.  It is also – at times – a nearer walk on the dangerous side.  Accidents live closer to home.  Danger is a constant and present neighbour with whom you have frequent contact. And relations are not warm and fuzzy.  

No wonder we all feel more alive out here!

Generally speaking, I tend to balk at routine.  It’s just not my style to do the same thing the same way at the same time every day.  I don’t even like to brush my teeth at the same time every day.  After a week or so of some kind of behavioural pattern emerging, I try to change it.  Do things differently.  It’s in the DNA.

It was also a bit of a challenge to holding a steady job.  I even made it a point to drive to work a different route every day or, at the very least, vary my arrival times.  That I never actually did the rote work demanded of me except to break the routine of chaos now and then was a side benefit.  The employer was happy once in awhile.

This is a hard attitude to sustain when working with government or big business.  My so-called careers with such places were typically short.

Which fit the larger pattern of preferred randomness rather nicely.

But, of course, some things demand repeat performances on a regular and predictable basis and, being mature, I have come to accept that.  Not like it but I accept it.  Mostly.

Wednesday is community day.  The dogs must be fed between 4:30 and 5:00, Sal gets a glass of wine poured at 5:00 and, with few exceptions, that is all part of a larger routine to which I have surrendered.  In itself, not so much a big deal or even a great sacrifice.  Still, a challenge.  For me.  I want to balk sometimes.

Hard to fight one’s DNA.

I mention all this because I have finally found a habit I like.  In fact, I like this habit so much it has become part of our larger routine and I have not felt the least like rebelling.  I like it.  In fact, I am the Mother Superior of this habit.

Often after a day (hard, easy, short or long) we finish dinner and I go upstairs with Sal and a small scotch and put on a movie.  Ideally, it is a BBC production but a good Hollywood movie will do in a pinch and a cheap B action-thriller is quite acceptable to me.  Preferable, actually.

Every fifth movie has to be a chick-flick or a ‘quirky comedy‘ for Sal.  We do this thing together.  We never argue.  She doesn’t ask questions except, “Why is that car blowing up and why are the guys flying through the air in slow motion shooting each other again?  Sorry,  I must have nodded off.  And anyway, haven’t we already seen this one?”  It is wonderful.  I love it.

To be fair, I may ask a question about a chick-flick, too.  But generally I just suffer in silence.  It is still wonderful.  “So the kid and his dog are dying from some kind of chemical poisoning from a dilapidated Dupont chemical plant and she and the woman next door are victims of spousal abuse.  Plus she gets assaulted at work by the plant supervisor.  And this is all happening in Karachi?  So, how did we all get together in a slum in Chicago?  Sorry, I must have drifted off.”

One of our favourite movie genres used to be nature shows.  You know, like the Discovery Channel presents two hours on water falls or a ten-part series on wheat?  But something happened a few years ago and we just can’t watch nature shows anymore.  It is not like we don’t want to.  We just can’t.  We both nod off.  Sal can’t usually get past the opening credits.  The Blue Planet series put Sal to sleep before the DVD started spinning.  If I didn’t swap the DVD out soon after, we’d both spend the next two hours comatose in the chairs.

Sadly, we cannot watch nature anymore.

And I have a theory why.  You see, it is a bit like that old routine-thing again, isn’t it?  We get nature all day.  We get the real thing.  Real whales.  Real eagles.  Real ravens.  We get nature in 3D with surround sound.  And, as good as they are, the Discovery channel still delivers on film.  So, it is a combination of our new routine of ‘living, working and being’ in nature’ all day long and then having that supplemented by artificial versions for entertainment in the evening.

It becomes a routine.  It is sleep inducing in the extreme.

Ramp is half up.  Another ten feet or so.  So far, so good.  ‘Cordin to plan.

“Hey!, Sal said, This is working out pretty good.  Coming up like you knew what you were doing!  So, what’s the plan for the last ten feet?”

“Thanks.  Appreciated.  You’ve been a big help if you don’t count asking all those goofy questions.  Still, you’re right.  It has been good so far.  We are gettin’ somewhere.”

“….and the plan…?”

“No plan.”

“But what about the last ten feet?!”

“Gonna have to think on it, I guess.  Got no plan.  Could use a sky hook, I guess.  That would help.” 

In the old days, making reference to a sky hook would have satisfied her.  She would then ask, “So where do we get one of those?”

That kind of humour (for me, anyway) doesn’t work anymore.  Sal is catching on to worksite BS.

“Don’t be daft!  No such thing.  Even I know that!  So, what are we gonna do?”

Questions!  She just can’t quit with the questions!

“Honestly?  No idea.  I can maybe leverage up on the cable tightening or maybe just use a big lever to do some shivelling.  But, so far, I am not sure.  Well, I know what I am gonna do next, anyway.”

“What?!”

“Fix the winch.  It vibrated so much that that the muffler fell apart.  Gonna fix it, mock something up. Can’t hear myself think what with you yammering allatime and the engine screamin’ when you take a breath!”

And so, there we sit – having tea and staring at the ramp that is tantilizingly close to the proper placement.   I’ll figure something out.  I am not worried.  People have been shivelling big things into weird places ever since time began.  We’ll do it.

“Not me.  I’ll try to give you a few minutes tomorrow but I have to cook.  We have dinner guests.  Can’t be fooling around with ramps and winches when I am cooking.  If you want my help, you’ll have to make an appointment!”

It is hard to get good help these days.  It really is.  And when you do get someone who has energy and smarts, they talk your damn ear off with questions.  Like I know what I am doing………..

“Heading home?  Mind giving me a lift?”

“Hop in!”

H climbed in my small boat.  She had been working up at the woodwork shop putting in a new back door.  Seems she’s been ‘in’ construction all her life running crews all around the world.  Tools came easily to hand with her and the kibitzing was classic ‘work-site’ stuff. She could ‘yup‘ and ‘nope‘ with the best of us.

For her, the back door re-fit was ‘nuttin’, honey’ and she decided to build a back deck while she was at it – ‘made it easier to put the door on having a place to stand’.  H is a big, strong woman in her late 50’s.  A grandmother.  She did more in her four hours at the Q-hut than I have done in 20.

I swung the little boat into her bay.  I had never been there before.  She pointed to the shore.

“See those rocks there?  By the big cedar?  They have enough water for the boat to get close.  You can drop me there.”

I did as I was told.  And she got out with her bundles of mail, books and two extra props for her outboard that she had ‘scored’ from a neighbour.  As she pushed me off, I noticed that she was standing in the water up to her ankles.  Her socks and shoes were soaked.

“Geez, H.  Sorry you got your feet wet.”

“No problem.  I’m just happy not to have to hike home the long way carrying all this stuff.  The shoes dry.  Trust me.  This is the way I get home when I am lucky!”

She scrambled across the rocky beach carrying twenty five awkward pounds and headed up to her cabin in the bush.   I’ll see her next week when she shows up at the woodworking shop for another project.

Tough?  Yeah.  She’s tough.  Real tough.  But she’s not alone out here.  There are other tough single women.  The women with partners are tough, too.   Generally speaking, all the women are tough in some kind of ‘outdoorsy‘ way.  But the single women simply have to do more for themselves.

Or pay.  Some of the single women keep it together by paying for some of the heavy work to get done but that is the most difficult way to cope of all.  Money is not the great equalizer out here.  Half, maybe.  People who have to pay to get things done generally don’t get things done.

“So, why do they live there?  Why not go back to the city, get a job or something?  Maybe even a job at Walmart being a greeter?  It would be easier at the very least?”

A few have tried.  But they come back.  Once you are ‘out’ of the city, it is hard to get back in.  Especially when you are older.  And all the people I am talking about are older.  The vast majority of people out here are 50 plus and most of them are 60 plus.

But the main reason is ‘trade-off’.  It is better for them to scramble across a beach in wet shoes than re-insert themselves (or try to) into the normal way of living in the city.  To a person, it doesn’t seem worth the effort.  Shoes and socks dry quickly enough.

.

I fired up the big ol, Stihl cut-off saw and began slicing through the six-inch steel beams that formed the frame for the ex-fish-farm ramp I was working on.   After cutting to length, I was going to drag one end of it up to the new deck extension I had built to gain access to my lower deck from the beach.  The ramp was a replacement for the aforementioned (see previous posts) set of lethal stairs I had been using for the past eight years.

Cutting to Length

I had begun the day’s chore when the ramp was half in the water, half out, with the back half semi-floating by way of a strapped-on old fish-farm float.  I had dragged it from the sea like a whale skeleton using one of my winches (the gas-powered ‘pull-toy’ and 4 blocks).  I figured I was getting and needing close to 6000 pounds of pull.  The tension on the cable was incredible.

Setting up the Pull Toy

The heavy steel ramp slowly skidded up the beach on bits and pieces of flotsam, cedar branches and an old landscaping pole but it still took everything the little winch had.  Had the cable or some part of the rig parted, I would be wearing the snapped-back assembly around my head.  With the engine screaming and the winch straining, it was an unpleasant chore that seemed to last way too long.  I was glad when the ramp was out of the water enough to make my cut.

The cut-off saw weighs about 30 pounds, is gasoline-powered and turns a 14+ inch composite blade at something like 500 rpms.  Torque is something to consider but the main issue is to get the blade dead-on the cut.  Twisting it when it is running in a groove may cause the blade to snap and, once again, the operator’s face acts as the backstop.

Footing, of course, was poor.  Treacherous, actually.  It’s a beach.  Slippery rocks, a few of them under water, all of them covered in kelp, barnacles and irregular in the extreme made the use of the saw harder still.  I hate it when it is like that.  I tend to be less confident.

OK, make that: scared to death!

Cutting Steel with Stihl

I cut through one sidebeam and then sliced through the steel mesh that forms the walkway.  I was 3/4 of the way through the final six-inch beam when the whole assembly shifted a smidge.  It was only a one-inch shift but it came with a loud bang and felt like Fukashima.

I stepped back and, confirming a rapid but steady pulse, I re-examined the wisdom of the whole task at hand. ‘Hmmm……how can I save face (literally) and safely get out of this fine mess I have created…..?’ 

After a good hard look I decided that I could proceed for a bit longer but cutting through would likely release so much tension in the now-sprung-steel ramp all at once that I would likely be thrown from my footing and a sharp edge of ramp or tool might just leap up and cut me.

Or I might just fall down and hurt myself.

I bleed often and I bleed well.  Thankfully, I also heal pretty quickly and I rarely feel any pain while in the accident-causing moment.  The magic of nature, eh?  As it stood, I was already sporting a good-sized gash on my leg from an earlier encounter with a sharp beach rock and I was, perhaps, a little blood-shy.  I was down half a pint already.  No need to contribute more.  So, I stopped short of separating the two pieces of ramp in an effort to halt any further unnecessary violence.

I now had a ramp cut in one-third and two-third lengths.  Almost.  Probably about 3000 pounds of steel on one end, at least 1000 pounds on the shorter end. About 3/4 of an inch of 1/2 inch steel still connected them.  The short end had a float attached and the whole assembly was moving a bit with the waves.

“I’m gonna tie off both pieces and let the tide and currents wiggle the final separation free for me overnight.  When the floating piece rises and the other piece sinks, there should be enough movement that the remaining 1/2 inch of steel will ‘fatigue’ and break.  I just don’t wanna be standing anywhere near that cut when it separates.”

“Wow!  You are being careful.  And overly optimistic.  What’s come over you?  Gettin’ sensible or gettin’ chicken?”

“Well, I don’t mind getting a few cuts and bruises but this could cause some real damage and I’d prefer to keep my remarkably good looks intact.  Buk, buk, bu-awk!!”

“Well, it won’t work, ya know?  You are already too ugly and the steel is too thick.  The sea won’t work it enough.  They’ll still be attached in the morning.”

“Well you may be right about the ugly but I am gonna try the easy way first.  If it hasn’t separated, I’ll come at it again tomorrow.  A chicken’s work is never done!”

Epilogue:  Next morning.  “When you finish this blog, I want credit for being right!  Those pieces are still stuck together, ya big doofus!”

“Give it time.  It’s still early in the morning.  I’ll check when the tide is out later in the day.  But, don’t worry.  If you are right, I’ll write about it.”

THANK GOD!  The theory worked!  Sal was wrong.  Please make a note.  For the record – the chicken was right!

“Unh, Dave…..why are you cutting steel in shorts?  Isn’t that a sure-fired way to get hurt?”

“Well, you make a good point.  But getting the odd cut is not as big a deal for me as falling with running machinery and wearing shorts give me the freedom to move.  So, for me, it is a trade-off.  It may not look safe but, for me, it is.  But thank you for your concern.”  

When we first came to the wilds I was amused by what I deemed to be a new standard for what passed as acceptable fashion.  Our neighbours were a study in dressing down.  Way down.

People seemed committed, practically dedicated, to wearing third-hand or hand-me-downs or worse.  Well, they seemed committed to ‘layering’, too, so that, in itself, made it worse.  It was bad enough to wear threadbare and stained, ripped and faded, no-style and conflicting-with-sensibilities.  But then putting it on three or four layers deep and adding wet-weather gear!  What were they thinking?

It was wild!

The Layered Look

I swear: T used to have me laughing out loud at her outrageous outfits.  So much so that I began to carry the camera in order to record some it.  Pretty funny stuff. Or so I thought at the time.

My further-out (in so many ways) neighbour R was inclined to exaggerate his wardrobe as well.  He showed up in gumboots, baggy jeans with suspenders, old cardigan sweaters and sporting one of his own, self-knit hats with ear-flaps and a ball-tuft on top as his basic go-to outfit.  It would often be augmented with colourful wet-weather gear, scarves and crazy accoutrements.  Plus he sported a perpetual maniacal grin and a stubbly beard.  He would have been ‘well-known to police‘ and likely arrested in the city just on appearance alone.  Lacking T’s extraordinary closet cachet, he still managed to cut quite a dashing figure amongst those on the dock on community Wednesdays.

But, over time, it all became the norm.  One J sometimes wears only a towel.  And not all the time at that!  Another J wears clothes I swear are at least forty years old.  Maybe older.  Others wear paint-stained shirts from the last time they painted and that is so far back, the originally painted item has faded into obscurity.  But not the T-shirt.  It is faded but not forgotten.

And so it goes.  A really clever archaeologist type could establish a historical pattern of the local settlement by careful analysis of clothing currently found in closets, I am sure.  And it would be easy – much of it is still worn out in public every day!

Put another way:  “He’d give you the shirt off his back!” Does not have the same spirit of generosity out here.  Nostalgia, perhaps.  Generosity?  Not so much.

I mention all this because friends were coming up to visit last week.  They were traveling by boat.  But they had little time and they had a slow boat.  It was not a good plan for a relaxing week off and we were unsure if they were going to actually make it.  As it turned out, good sense and a sea-sick dog prevailed and they stayed in the Southern Gulf.

“I am feeling guilty, she said.  “We didn’t show.  Looks bad.  We meant to.  But it just wasn’t in the cards.  Sorry.  Don’t think ill of us.”

“Don’t be silly.  We thought the trek was too much to accomplish in the time allotted.  We know we are far away.  No problem.  And forget about appearances.  You have sailed to the South Pacific and back — twice!  We have learned up here to judge by substance, not appearance.  And, to us, you guys have substance.”

And, after that phone call, Sal and I got to talking about that Forest Gump-like statement she had used; ‘We judge by substance, not appearance’.

“Well, you know when you are on the dock and you are talking to people who have climbed the Alps or lived in Asia or who have built their own boats or volunteered in Africa……?  And well, all of them have also built their own homes……had kids……..survived extreme situations……….raised their own food…….they have some kind of real-life substance.  To me, anyway.

“They are more solid somehow in some respects.  Substantial.  And then three well-dressed bureaucrats step off a plane and tip-toe amongst our tulips looking for cell-phone reception?  Seems shallow by comparison.  Well, I guess I am still judging by appearances but it seems to me that the ‘old-clothing, gumbooted-types’ somehow have more to them than do the ones who show up well-dressed.  Maybe I am just a reverse clothes bigot now but the hand-me-down crowd seems more substantial to me.” 

Fashion, eh?  Pretty strange.  Definitely in the eye of the beholder.

Bugs!  Mosquitoes, flies, midges.  The annoying classes.  We seem to be getting some these days.  Not a lot.  Not Ontario or Northern BC volumes.  Not Winnipeg-in-Spring!!  (OMYGAWD! Have you ever been there?).  But more than usual for us. Seems a bit odd, actually.

I have traveled to many parts of the world and the first question I ask after ‘what’s it like?’ is, ‘what is the bug count?’.  I have never been to Australia and I never intend to.  The bug count is too high.  The deadly bug count is over-the-top.   I won’t be going to the Amazon or the high Arctic in summer, either.  Life is too short to share it with bugs as far as I am concerned.

So, it must be said: I hate bugs!  Well, I hate flying-bugs-in-my-face-type-bugs more than the creepy crawlie ones.  Mind you, a creepy-crawly in the face doesn’t go well with me, either.  Bugs-in-my-face is one of the main reasons I built where did.

We are perched on an elevated slope on a west-by-south orientation.  The prevailing wind is a Southeaster but the Westerly is pretty prevalent in the summer.  Both winds course over our site with more than the average gusto and we have a breeze 99% of the time.  We have a strong breeze about 40% of the time and we enjoy gale-force blows as much as 5% of the time.  It is hard to be a flying, hovering, buzz-the-human type bug at my house.

On average I would say I encounter a mosquito once a day in the summer.  Twice is a bad day for me (worse for them, I can assure you).  Flies are fewer than one a day as a rule.  For some strange reason, this September is blowing the stats all to hell.  We are getting as many as a dozen flies in a day!  Last night Sal and I quit messing about with the ramp down at the beach because the mosquitoes were getting out of hand!  This is mid September, fer Gawd’s sake!

The point?  Well, it must be climate change, don’t ya think?  Mosquitos in September?  The world is going to hell in a handbasket.  We are doomed!  Who woulda thunk it would end this way?

“Unh, Dave?  Don’t you think you are over-reacting just a bit?”

No.  No I don’t.  I think the sky is falling.  Well, to be more sane about it, I think that climate change is real and I think it is showing up in ways unexpected and, well, maybe a few extra mosquitoes at the beach at dusk is a bit over-reactive but, damn it……………….I am buying a couple of cases of RAID the next time I go to town.  Methinks the war has just begun!

Remember: you heard it here first.  Just don’t quote me.

Living off the grid is some kind of personal statement but I am not sure if it is just limited to one simple theme – whatever one might imagine that to be.  One goes off the grid for myriad reasons but, if I think about it, one statement above all – for me, anyway – has to be fear.

I am not even sure that the fear can be well-defined.  It is certainly not fear of traffic or fear of living cheek-by-jowl.  I am not afraid of traffic lights or high-rises.  I am not afraid of grids.  We grew accustomed to all that living in the city until our mid-fifties.  Not much to fear in that mix at the worst of times.

It is not fear of crime, higher prices or even increasing authoritarian rule although those feelings do simmer just below the surface at times – especially as one gets older.  It is not so much fear of any single threat. It is rather more like a fear of an insidious malaise, something felt rather than seen.

Put more dramatically, I think it is mostly the fear of dying before we are done.  I think it is the fear of death by a thousand cuts.  I think it is the fear of losing vitality before losing breath.  It’s probably most easily described as fear of terminal boredom.

Being bored, of course, is not in itself a scary thing.  But, really, who wants it?  What I want is interest and learning and new and different.  What I want is freedom to spend the remaining time I have any way I choose.  What I want is to feel alive.  And there was definitely the feeling that that was not likely to happen in the cul de sac.  Not with a big TV and a remote control device in my hand.

So, in that sense it was fear of not living large enough coupled with a renewed desire for learning and challenge and freedom.  And fear of sloth, perhaps?

I confess to having had a bit of a fear of becoming unhealthy as well.  I simply wasn’t active enough in my fifties to expect any kind of reasonable longevity.  Health fears – the reverse of what you might think for those who go óff-grid’ were whispering in the back of my head.  I am not afraid of not getting medical services – I was afraid of getting them too soon.

Turns out I am not alone.  Sally asked the women at book club what drew them to live remote, to live more minimally and simply, to embrace hardship and to eschew comfort and convenience.  The consensus answer was, “Living out here make me feel more alive.  Being outside, being physical, feeling the weather, facing challenges and learning new ways focuses me, clears my head and makes me appreciate the moment much more than I ever did in the city.”

There is no question that the above captures the bulk of the sense of fear-on-the-negative-side and vitality-on-the-positive side but I think there is more.

Well, there is more to fear NOW than when we left the city – that is for sure.  I now fear the increasing role of government without the tempering effects of democracy much more than I ever did.  I fear the destruction of the planet by way of pollution and climate change, nuclear meltdowns and worse, nuclear tyrants.  I fear the increasing police state.  And I fear being reliant on those terrible forces for my survival probably the most.

But I admit that I had less of an idea of that kind of fear until I became more independent so I am not so sure that it is all real or partly just imagined.  Trust me, most everyone out here shares those fears to some degree.  We are all a little paranoid.  It may just come with the territory.

I am also fearful of OIL and what it has come to mean in our lives.  Of course, oil provides great benefits but it is an addiction and all addictions come with a huge price.  In this case, a huge and life-altering price.  That scares me.  I am striving to ‘be alive’ and BIG OIL looms large and darkly in the background.  It doesn’t feel compatible.

Resistance may be futile.  In a fundamental sense we are trying to run away from something way too big and it is not possible.  In the end, OIL and or the lack of it will get us all.  Living off-the-grid and off-their-radar?  I guess I am just hoping to delay whatever the inevitable is for as long as I can.  Call me crazy.

Disclaimer: Sally doesn’t like it if my blog has a negative feeling to it.  ‘Not nice’.  But, of course, there are negative things in the world and we experience them.  Plus I tend to see the world through a glass darkly.  A half-empty glass.  And I gotta call ém as I see ém.  So this blog went in unreviewed and unauthorized by the editor.  This is a dissident’s blog. 

The community is reliant on a government dock.  All coastal communities are.  Government docks are operated by Transport Canada and the ministry is well into a decades long program of divestiture. They don’t want to be in the business of operating docks anymore.  They want to privatize them instead.

“We don’t need no stinkin’ docks, coast guard stations or lighthouses!  Let’s buy fighter jets instead”. (Stephen Harper, PM of Canada.  Born and raised on the prairies.)

There is not much to running a dock – once it has been built, anyway.  Generally speaking the facilities were very well built and have gone for years without much in the way of maintenance.  Every year a barge comes by and they replace a plank or two, lube up the winch and that is pretty much it.  Mind you, if something big does happen, it is a pretty expensive repair requiring crews and heavy machinery.  Those kinds of repair events are pretty rare.  Once in five or ten years.  But, honestly, it is not technically complicated and the materials are pretty basic.  If you can swing big beams and drive the occasional pile, it is a piece of cake.

But therein lies the rub – not everyone can swing giant beams and drive piles.  So, basically, no one wants to run government docks.  There are a few community groups who try but, for the most part, they just collect fees and then throw their hands in the air if an expensive repair is required.  As volunteers on the marina board, they have no real, personal responsibility.

Divestiture just doesn’t work.  People out here need docks more than people in the city need mass transit.  In fact, this government plan is not divestiture so much as dereliction of duty.

Some budding businesspeople have tried to ‘make a go of it’ administering a dock but they fail miserably and are hated by everyone as a result.  All of a sudden some local yokel is upping moorage fees and acting like a tyrant.  People don’t like that. Taking on the job is a quick way to becoming a social pariah.

And, if a major repair is needed, his/her hands go up in the air and he/she, too, does nothing about it.  Can’t afford to.  All the fees went to wages.  People really don’t like that!  Divestiture just doesn’t work.

Most small communities on the coast don’t have enough people (and/or boats) to warrant a wharfinger, a manager, a mini dock-tyrant or even a dock-boy anyway.  The facilities do not have enough moorage space or the number of resident boats necessary to generate any operating capital.  And, let us be frank; no one wants to pay moorage anyway.

That ‘I don’ wanna pay’ reasoning is pretty sound, actually.  There are no roads that lead anywhere.  You have to travel by boat.  And boats gulp fuel that is heavily taxed for roads so, in light of that, the local boat owners expect that a few dollars can go to minimally maintaining a few docks that were likely built over fifty years ago.  Reasonable, I think.  Mind you, I have to admit to a bias.

Mini rant!  It is not like remote communities get much for their tax dollars as it is.  In fact, they get precious little.  If a few bucks goes to a government dock and the library keeps sending books-by-mail, then most rural-types are content to pay their taxes and keep mum.  Take away either and there is likely to be a coastal backlash – not that anyone in government much cares.  But we coasters would be ticked!

Today three women flew in on a chartered flight from Vancouver to report on the facility.  They work for Transport Canada.  The dock is about 100 feet long and ten feet wide.  Just wide enough for the three ladies to walk abreast.  It accommodates the post office operated by Canada Post as well as providing moorage for a rotating flotilla of boats which, on a busy day, might number twenty.  Typically, only about ten or twelve are there at any one time.  One of the boats belongs to the teacher at the school.  Another to the custodian.  Another space, now and then, goes to the postmistress.  One end of the dock is reserved for the mail plane that comes three times a week.  Percentage wise, the government itself uses the dock the most.

Maybe ten people ‘get away’ with free moorage for their 17-or-so foot boat.  But, over time, everyone in the area ties up at the dock at one point or another.  The dock is the hub of the community.  It is the parking lot, the town square and the sea-port for outsiders.  It is essential.  It is part of our life line to the outside world.

The three workers walked around with a clip board and a camera and eventually hiked up the hill and toured the school and chatted.  And, of course, the charter plane waited.

Given their wages, per diem allowance and the plane-charter time, I would estimate that their visit used up the equivalent of two years maintenance budget.  Maybe three.  I have no idea of their backgrounds but, judging from appearances, they did not seem to be engineers, dock contractors, boaters or even past or present residents of a remote community.  I could be wrong.  But I am probably not.

I am certainly not wrong that three women with a single clipboard are not necessary to walk a 100 foot dock.  I am not wrong that they need not have chartered their own plane since the thrice-weekly mail flight also carries passengers and came in when they were there.  I am not wrong in thinking that these three women will not likely make the decision to divest the facility or not.  They just weren’t ‘senior’ enough for that kind of executive decision.  I am also not wrong in observing that their visit came unannounced.  It was fortuitous that some people were there.  I don’t think I am wrong in concluding that, once again, the government has proven to be an ass.

Mind you, if they just disappear and file a report for the filing cabinet, no harm done.  If they do anything, anything at all…..harm will be done.  Whatever it is they do, it will likely be a screw-up and cause no end of grief.  Gawd!  I hope the government does nothing.

Isn’t it sad that, despite my following politics, paying taxes and voting, the best thing the bloody government can do for me and my neighbours is nothing?