Today is a day off.  It has to be.  We’re too tired for it not to be.

Sal worked at the post office yesterday and so the laundry is still hanging out on the line for the third day in a row (until she saw me writing this and now it is in!).  I worked on the boat yesterday and I will do so again tomorrow.  I am getting closer but I am not finished.  This evening a load of lumber comes by mini-barge (herring skiff) and after dinner we’ll go to the high-line on the back beach and unload it.  I think I’ll fire up the gas-powered cut-off saw and cut the two-ton ramp so as to make it just a ton-and-a-half and then we’ll try getting it into place tonight on the highest tide this month – probably just before or after the lumber arrives.  We may have to to tie some extra floats on the ramp today to try and float it further in.  I also have to adjust those damn solar panels – they are simply pointing too high in the sky while the sun has moved lower. They are not doing much for us.

It is a good thing we are taking the day off or else we couldn’t get this stuff done.

Actually, it is a timing thing.  Seasonal.  This morning there was a marked snap in the air.  A bit of a chill.  We feel as if the clock is ticking down to winter and some things just have to be accomplished.  Day off or not.  Of course, some things won’t get done anyway and so they’ll just have to wait til spring but some things are necessary for us to comfortably cope with the winter.  They really have to get done.

Getting my boat back in the water.  Getting all the new lumber up and stacked.  Rotating the panels.  Placing the ramp.  These are important items so that the other late fall and winter projects can continue.  ‘Course the garden has to be dealt with, too.  And……..well……………the list goes on.

I asked Sally, “How in hell did we manage to hold down two jobs, raise two kids and have a social life in the city when we can’t seem to keep house and home together when we are answering to no one?!”

“I have no idea.  I guess we relied on others for things.  Hired people.  Did less around the house.  We never had hobbies or projects. And, of course, we ‘bought’ convenience, didn’t we?  From laundry and dry cleaning to delivered pizza on Friday and restaurant meals during the week.  Face it.  We mostly just worked”.

“Yeah.  Now we don’t work.  We just have projects.  What is the difference again?”

“When you work, they pay you.  When you do projects, you pay them!”

It is the journey – not the destination.

There is a 100 foot difference in elevation between the school and the dock where the road that joins them starts.  Maybe 120.  The distance to travel from one to the other is 200 to 250 yards.  The trek uphill is approximately a 15 to 18 degree slope.  The surface of the road is rolling scrabble-gravel and ruts.  Bad footing.  If one is going to the school, one is invariably carrying something even if it is just heavy weather clothing, lunch and a book or two.  And it is often more.  Going to school out here is a bit of a workout.

Going to the Quonset hut woodworking shop is a smidge easier topographically.  It is about 30 feet lower in elevation than the school.  But visitors to the Q-hut are usually carrying much more.  Tools, building materials, lunch, fuel for the genset.  Going to the Q-hut is every bit as much of a workout.  And usually Q-hut visitors are much, much older than school visitors.  I always arrive huffing and puffing.

Yesterday Sal and I delivered the new genset to the Q-hut.  It weighed only about two hundred pounds, maybe a smidge less.  But it was not easy.

I am not complaining.  Not really.  It is all part and parcel of living out here, isn’t it?  Lifting.  Carrying.  Dragging.  Hoping for a passing pick-up truck on an island with only about five of them? It’s what everyone does all the time – throughout the year – with just about anything and everything.  This post is really about an ordinary event experienced and repeated daily by just about everyone out here.  It’s called work.

The good part of this kind of schlepping?  It is likely part of the reason my blood pressure is now 120/60 rather than the 140/100 it was eight years ago. 

Anyway, we bought the new Honda EM 5000 in Campbell River and me and two burly mechanics lifted it into the back of the truck and, with it further filled to the brim with groceries and other miscellany, Sally and I drove home.  At the end of the day, we were pretty tired.  Too tired, in fact, to do the additional genset delivery to the Q-hut.  So we left it in the truck and did it the next day.

Sally got her little 11 foot whaler (and two dogs, of course) and nosed up to the cobblestone beach early the next day.  I came down from the parking lot and backed the truck right up to the bow of her boat.  We put two 2×4’s down from the inside of the truck and slowly lowered the genset to the beach and then, reversing the boards, slowly lifted and pushed the precious load up onto the boat.  Sal, Megan, Fiddich and the genset slowly headed out to sea.  They were on their way to the community dock a mile or two away.

I drove the truck back up the hill, parked and then got into my own boat and zipped ahead to meet her.  When she got to her destination, we used the boards and got the genset out of the boat and over to the dock ramp which, of course, was at a steep angle because the tide was out.

It is always out when you are doing heavy work.

The postmistress came out to lend a hand and the three of us managed to drag/pull/push the generator up the ramp.  A friend, knowing of the task before us, had kindly placed his little ATV with a small trailer at the dock for us and we lifted it in.  I drove the little Honda ATV with the Honda genset up the hard scrabble hill and we put the genset in the Q-hut.

Cost of genset: $3000.  Delivery time: two days.  Elapsed time from carpark to Q-hut: about an hour, maybe 90 minutes.  Elevation difference (two locations) about two hundred feet.  Distance covered (not counting the part done by truck) in total (land and sea) about 2.5 miles.

I really wish we could have used Mastercard.  But this kind of thing is priceless.

It has been a good summer but especially so for sighting Killer whales.  They came, they went and we saw.  All summer long.  They repeated that spectacle every two weeks or so it seemed.  Whales to the left us, whales to the right….

Whale watching from the front porch

But yesterday was another exceptional day.  Or, so it has been reported.  I was on boat repair duty but Sal was home and she saw another pod of orcas throughout my absence and this time they were up to some new tricks.  One of the tricks was similar to what grey whales and humpbacks do – they blow bubbles deep underwater that rise in a bunch and bring with them to the surface some kind of feed.  It is like they are fishing with giant breaths of air and the air, like a net, sweeps up their target and takes it to the surface.  We haven’t seen orcas do that before.

And this time one of the pods split up.  Kinda strange.  There were whales across channel, whales in front of the house and several distinctly separated groups going up the middle.  Usually they stick pretty close together.  For some reason we have determined that this pod is the itinerant one, not the homeboys we usually see.

Fiddich may be, officially, a Portugese Water dog but, unofficially, he is a whale watcher.  Whenever he hears them blowing as they come up or down channel, he alerts us.  He is ‘into’ whales, that boy.

To be fair, he also alerts us when boats go by if they are not in the main channel or further out.  Should a vessel venture a bit close to our shore, all Fiddich breaks loose.  He isn’t so much a watch dog or an attack dog but he is an alert dog, or so they say.  Regardless, he is on the ball when it comes to whales.

Seals, sea lions, logs, planes, really big boats like barges and American yachts…..well, not so much.  Not a peep, actually.  I’d like to think he just knows our interests but we have interest in logs and he just doesn’t seem to care about that.  Meg?  She notices dinner and that is about it.

The ravens have been pretty good neighbours this year.  They come when called, occasionally drop in on their own but, generally speaking this summer, they have gone about their business doing raven stuff.  They have not been as large a presence this year.  We think it was because of Fletch, their latest offspring.  We think they are a bit ashamed of him.  No question – that kid was a trial.  Trouble on the wing.  He was a rebel, a rule breaker, a hellboy.  He is a raven without a cause except bad ones.  Ooooh, that Fletch!

‘Course a nice, cute Ms raven might settle him down some day but, right now, he is the black sheep of the family, so to speak, and we are not sure we will ever see Fletch again unless it is on a poster somewhere.  My heart goes out to the parents. They haven’t been the same since he arrived and they weren’t the same after he left.  Kids, eh?

It is time to turn the solar panels down………….the angle is too high for a sun that is carving a lower axis.  We adjust the angle of the panels about two or three times a year in an effort to maximize their output but, to be more honest, we are really doing it to minimize their inefficiency.  There is a difference.

When the sun is high in the sky and we are not getting a big charge, we know it is the angle of reception on the panels.  Usually, we don’t notice until the batteries start to show a bit flat.  “Hey, it must be time to increase (or decrease the inclination).  We better get on it!”   And we do……….usually within a few weeks……………..we are always a bit tardy at that chore.  And we have been so to the point of delinquency this year.

We blame Fletch, actually.  He was a bad influence.

Despite a town day awhile back, we have been continuing our progress on the many fronts on which we have chosen to engage.  The battle rages in our favour but progress is slow and, I must admit, not just a little tiring now and then.

The two ton ramp has been floated around front and awaits further attention.  Which it will get as soon as I configure some kind of heavy duty winch-with-blocks for dragging and lifting. I have the theory.  I have the concept.  I even have the blocks and powered winch.  But I have learned now that that is less than half the chore.  The rest of the challenge has yet to reveal itself but, trust me, I am less than halfway there on that one.

The boat is largely done.  All sealed up, dry and now with beautifully fiber-glassed seams.  But it needs a bit of sanding for aesthetics and prior to painting so it is not quite launch-ready.  I may get to some of that today.  I confess to feeling a bit less than enthused about working today.

All the new-deck foundation wood has been gathered, lifted and stacked near the site at the back.  All the rest of the wood for the actual decking and workshop framing has been ordered and is on its way.  A few string lines and holes have to be drilled next and then work on that essential project can begin.

Got some work done on the community shop too, including getting and placing the new genset.  That project is still not done but I have been keeping up my end.  It feels good.  (NOT actually ‘my end’  which I still hope feels good but rather my task in the project).

We even bought a wine kit in town day.  And we have everything else with which to make a giant purple mess of things.  Someday soon Chateau Sal will produce 23 liters of swill.  Swill de Sal.

But that is not what I mean by progress.  Not this time.  This time progress means ‘book’.  Sal decided to gather up all the posts and print them out in hard copy.  Her reasoning was pretty simple: “I better get on this while it is still manageable.  I think you have been rather prolific.  I better start organizing now and that needs to be done in hard copy”. 

Better to organize and edit and critique in that way, it seems.  Better to visualize real paper.  Better to use real scissors and real paste.  She’s gonna chop it up!

The local printer-guy took our memory ‘stick’ and printed up what was on it.  Not counting the last half dozen posts or the couple dozen articles, we have 996 of full one-side, 12-size font pages.  Two of those small cardboard boxes full.  It is daunting.  Intimidating.  Talk about searching for some wheat amongst the chaff!

This is of a size that requires getting the scissors re-sharpened before starting, going to Costco for the amount of scotch tape that will be needed.  This is a real project.  Workshop construction?  Ramp lifting?  Boat repairs?  Those are trifles!  Mere hobbies. They are minor diversions compared to compiling a book.  OMYGAWD!

Lucky for me this is Sally’s part in the project.  Even more lucky for me that there is still work to do on the aforementioned simpler chores.  I may be able to hide out on the back deck construction until the compiling is over.

Sometimes you just gotta face facts and delegate.

We are not on the ferry route.  Not directly, anyway.  We have to travel by small boat and then drive across another island to get to the 10-minute ferry that takes us to Vancouver Island (and another ferry to Vancouver) and that ‘extra’ distance gives us a buffer from tourism and conventional developmental expansion.

It seems most people prefer to tour or move in a manner of least resistance.  No ferry boat, no paved road, no touring, no residential development.

We prefer it that way.  All the islanders do.  Being ‘buffered’ from the madding crowd is part of what defines the lifestyle out here.

It is not like the island on which we live couldn’t do with another few young families, tho.  Love to have ém.  And a few young families would not change the ‘buffer benefit’ at all.  In fact, it would help sustain it.  The school is always ‘marginal’ to the school board but important to us.  So a few new families would be part of our ‘sustainability’.

Plus, being able to re-open the now-closed store would also be good.  But our population is currently just not enough to warrant a store.  I suppose the island would not lose a thing – and it might gain a bit – if the population doubled (from 50 to 100). But that is not likely to happen in my lifetime.

Put more succinctly: more residents would add to the life, more systems would not.

Island life would likely change completely if we had a ferry.  For the worse!  Seems that is the way it is down south.  The more ferries you have (Saltspring has three routes), the more development, people and politics you get.  Islands such as Texada that are huge (it is the largest of the gulf islands) requires three ferries just to get there from the city.  Development, population and politics is minimal on Texada.  And therefore, our island which cannot be accessed by ferry at all has even less of all three.  Given the trade-offs, we’d prefer to remain unserviced.

More people is not quite the same as more residents.

But some so-called service providers are out to get us!  Imagine this: BC Hydro is offering rural electrification to our island.  As if that was a good thing!  They propose to stick a huge genset somewhere and run it 24/7 and then string poles all along the middle road.  Very few people live anywhere near the middle road (essentially, a meandering logging road that goes nowhere).

The staggering cost of that so-called amenity would be amortized through raised taxes even though most of us couldn’t access the main line even if we wanted to.  If you did want to and try to attach to the BCH grid, each pole installed from the main road is in excess of $2,000.  Then you have to upgrade your house’s wiring system to the standard approved by BCH.  The irony?  We already have genset-sourced power and we use it minimally and very frugally.  In other words, we can provide our own power, thankyou very much, better, cheaper and with less of an environmental impact.  We really do not need (or want) BC Hydro.

……………..unless they propose to do it with wind, solar or existing hydro-power…………but, even then……?

Thankfully the BCH proposal is not likely to proceed if 100% of the population is against it.

And, finally, there is the internet.  It’s a system, too.  Like cellular phone coverage.  Both of these ‘grids’ are weak out here.  But they’re here.  The phone calls have static or the calls are cut off or don’t come through.  Our internet is limited and expensive.  We are on both those communication grids but we are at the unravelling edge.  And, given the impact that a grid can have, maybe it is best this way.  Maybe barely adequate is just right.

Anyway, the point is simple and not just a bit scary: one cannot be totally off the grid.  It’s impossible.  But there is such a thing as being more (or less) immersed in the matrix and we’d prefer less.

Is it because we want inconvenience?  Absolutely not!  Islanders, of all people, have come to appreciate convenience more than they ever did in the city.  Convenience is good.  Inconvenience is very hard.  We like convenience.  It is just that the price of convenience is too high both in financial terms and in social terms. We don’t want any of that retail, store-bought convenience.

Put more bluntly: I’d prefer to struggle with a bad internet connection than have community hall meetings on the proposed new subdivision expansion.

I mention all this because the grid is insidious.  It can reach out and get you.  It has already reached out and grabbed most people.  Be careful out there (if you are out there).  And be extra careful if you are on the grid already and immersed deeply.  It is not always a benign or good thing.  Regardless of how you view those services, it is the grid that changes everything.

I’ve never been really big on parties, myself.  Don’t like ém, actually.  I think they are boring.  Chit chat, banter, short conversations with people who talk about their appliances, the price of real estate. Or worse, the weather.

Mind you, those are urban party topics.  Out here it is definitely the weather, motors and gardens.  And I have some interest in those but still, they are dealt with superficially at parties and I need real answers on those topics!

I don’t like encountering those with short attention spans either, the eyes of the person with whom you are speaking constantly searching for better company.  I don’t blame them, of course.  How can I?  My eyes are bobbing around, too.  I just don’t like it.

Seeing people you know but can’t remember their name?  Food like ‘nuts and bolts’, chili dogs and macaroni salad?  On ultra-thin paper quick-fold plates?  Pastic wine glasses?  Home made wine?  Huge trays of unidentifiable mush passing for a potluck contribution?  Am I missing something? 

How did this sort of thing become popular?  Well, I think I know……..it’s the gene pooling effect, isn’t it?  We needed excuses to get together to find willing mates.  Ergo: the par-tay!  But, sadly in some ways, and with relief in others, that topic is now ‘old’ isn’t it?  ‘Cause we’re old.  We’re long done searching the pool for attractive genes and chromosomes and the life guard is now ordering us from the pool.  “Get out!  Seniors swim is over!”

The exception to that observation on short-attention span people, of course, is the guy more boring than Cliff Claven who desperately needs some attention and with whom I am trapped in the corner.  God help us both!  “Have I told you that I got a grant to hold nature-walk courses?  Yea, the local museum and the local library are gonna arrange groups to walk through the forest and I will be the leader explaining different flora and fauna.  Why, did you know we have two hundred and thirty species of mushroom on this island alone?”

Life goes into painful slo-mo in such situations.  My joints ache.  My bad knee becomes crippling.  Both my mind and my body want out and my body is doing something about it!  In effect it is saying, ‘If our only way out is to call an ambulance, let’s do it!’

“Can you hold that thought?  I seem to recall seeing some of those mushrooms in the kitchen being stuffed with mayonnaise or something.  Want me to get you one?”  And I try to leave.  But I’d have to bowl him over.  He is standing firm……..

“They are called Boletus, actually, or more commonly, fungi…………blah, blah, blah………”

Parties with more than four others just ain’t my thing.  Six on holidays.  I like short, small dinner parties with real conversation and real food.  And scotch.  Call me crazy!

My friend, J, feels the same way.  He has the added disadvantage of not being able to hear and so much of the party conversation is lost on him anyway.  Worse, he is one of those with a short attention span.  Combine all that with a personal abhorrence of alcohol and his party time is double hell.  He figures three hours is all he can take and after two he is counting the minutes.  He doesn’t have to – I have a watch and the alarm is set for three hours.  We usually come and go from parties in the same boat.

But we are equally curmdgeonly on the matter.  The three hour rule is applied if he is visiting me.  And it is equally enforced if I am visiting him.  We are both more relaxed knowing when it will end and we are both grateful for the time limit agreement.  “Right!  Been great!  Nice catching up.  Thanks for the pretzel-things.  Time to go!”

We are blessed with another neighbour just a mile away who feels the same and is equally as hard of hearing.  The three of us get along famously by not seeing each other and, when we do, by not listening.  That keeps it short.

The women in our lives?  Not so much.  They can linger at the door, one fully clad for the winter weather, the other shivering while the rain hits her, talking about the seeds they are going to plant next year or the best source of lemon grass in the area.  The guys head to the boat, fire up the engine, untie the lines and hold onto the dock with one hand.  There is the unacknowledged contest of wills hanging in the air………..will he leave or will he wait…………?  Can she start a conversation about painting the bathroom or is that pushing her luck?

The unspoken rule is that the reluctant partner can drag her feet for about ten minutes.  Then the boat leaves.  It’s harsh out here.  The air is electric with tension at the nine-minute mark but so far no one has been left standing at the beach.

Anyway, the women are united on this issue.  They always are.  And, of course, they win in the end.  They simply schedule another get-together sooner rather than later.  The men?  We simply don’t know what to do.  So we go, champ at the bit for three hours and then start the engine.  What a ritual, eh?

Yesterday was simple.  Lift wood, carry wood, float wood, stack wood.  Then lift some more.  A chore difficult to get wrong.  It would be a challenge to screw it up, really.  But we managed to flirt with danger at least and, at the end of the day, found ourselves only half-way done.  Some things are more difficult than they look.

This pile of wood – about 24 pieces of big 2-bys (wet, of course) started out at my neighbour’s dock where they had been dropped by the barge last week,  We intended to take the bulk of them to the bottom of our highline for lifting up to our site later that day, along with a few salvaged logs that were already waiting at the bottom end on the beach.  The balance of the wood would be taken around the peninsula to the shore out front of our house.  Both of these actions required loading wood on a boat.  Sally’s little whaler was the boat selected.

‘Course the dogs had to come, too.

I also have to float a 40 foot section of steel catwalk out around the peninsula to the shore in front of the house and get it high enough to beach and then remove the attached floats with a mini-grinder.  After that is done, the catwalk is to be flipped over and dragged and lifted up onto the small steel base that I described building last week.  It should sit at a 23 degree incline and give us better access from the beach than does the lethal stairs currently employed as the main access.

Deadly as they are, I have yet to hurt myself on those stairs in eight years (one of the few places on the site that has no blood stains).  I may not be able to say the same thing for getting a two-ton ramp in place.

None of this is rocket science but all of it is bull-work.  It seems that everything has to be lifted and carried at least several times.  If there is a continuing theme to living remote it is that ‘you spend a lot of time carrying heavy things’.  It’s like a curse.  It’s like some primitive God of the forest has condemned you – for the rest of your life – to carry double your weight again and again every day.  I swear I carry, on average, 600 pounds over the course of any given day at the very least.  If it is an official lifting day, then you can triple that easily.

Have I mentioned my mild obsession with winches? 

I shouldn’t say ‘I’.  Sally is lifting right along beside me and, to be fair, proportionally more.  She is half my weight and, although I take the bulk of the heavy stuff, sometimes she simply has to take the other end of something too heavy for just me.  And even if I carry three one hundred-pound beams, she might have to carry ten thirty-pound pieces to help out.  It all adds up.

Sally is fit.  She is also strong-like-bull.  And she looks healthy and beautiful.  By comparison, I am a little chunky and look like a bull.  Hard physical work seems to affect us differently.  And, as I said, we are only half way done on this one chore.  Who knows what I will eventually grow into…….

Anyway, it is Sunday and we have downed tools and muscles.  We are going over to the neighbouring island.  They are hosting a traditional-cum-hippified Fall Fair.  They compare quilts and pies and have a petting zoo.  They put wheels on zucchinis and race them.  Everyone sees their neighbour.  It’s a day off.  Way off!  No heavy workout except for the smile muscles.

This is NOT really a post.  It is a diary entry.  I was ‘messing about’ with keeping a journal in 2002/2003 and tried this on…………..It is not particularly good but it was written in the moment that was then and kind of illustrates what we were going through in the early days. 

“We have enough food to feed an army!” I said as I hoisted the second large cooler up the stairs to the deck.  Another large box of dry goods and a few more bags of impulse purchases filled the larder to the point of excess and, given our lack of refrigeration, clearly indicated poor planning.  We had too much.  Or so I thought.

“Sweetie, don’t forget Sue is coming on Tuesday and Doug said that he’d come by the following weekend.  And Emily  will be with us for the next few days.  I think we’ll be fine”.  I assumed that she was right.  She usually is.

We had packed and prepared for two weeks working at the site.  We had recourse, of course, to the store on the next island, but we already had more inventory than they did so I relaxed.  We settled down to a heavy schedule of recreational building (please refer to previous articles for a definition of recreational building and the first-aid tips that accompany it).

Early the next morning after breakfast I dragged out the tools, the generator, the materials and I began the random series of steps I undertake when trying to build something. I never really know exactly where to start so I often start the genset first just to create the right atmosphere.  As a consequence of all that noise, I failed to hear the footfalls of my neighbour coming to greet us.  Genset shut off, we all sat down to a nice cup of tea and Sally broke out a few cookies and bits of fruit. They left just before noon.

On went the generator and, since I had passed the time planning my next few steps, things got underway – until Linda passed by and I made the mistake of waving.  Linda is a more distant neighbour and tends to interpret a hand waving as an invitation to lunch.  Her timing was perfect and we enjoyed her long missed company until she continued on her way an hour or so later.  I tentatively lifted a hammer and, checking to make sure that no one was approaching, began to hit things – some of them were nails.

Just as I was getting my hammering sighted in and could claim more nail hits than misses, we were hailed from the shore once again.  Neghbours from the North this time.  Nice people.  Long time, no see.  More tea.  More cookies.  Lots of nice chit chat.  Hammer rested with the nails.

Day one was a big social success.  We were genuinely pleased to see everyone and, despite no progress on the cabin, it was a good day.

Sue came the next day.  She’s great.  We love her.  Haven’t seen her for months.  Catching up with all the news was priority number one.  Hammer developed slight patina of rust.

Day three: Sue’s co-workers from nearby dropped in.  Brought cake.  Needed refreshments.  Wonderful company.  Great guys.  Noticed spider web on genset.

Day four: wife’s co-workers drop by in their kayak.  Nice couple.  Hungry.  Stayed overnight.  Everyone went for a nice hike.  I sprayed WD40 on all tools and looked longingly at the starter cord to the genset before hiking.  I figured there was something wrong with me – I kept fantasizing about sawing two-by-fours.

Day five: took daughter to greet friend arriving from city.  Returned to camp with two more people who had been looking for us as a result of mutual friends.  Lovely couple.  Wanted to work.  Sadly, they could not.  Did not know which end of the hammer to use.  They, too, got hungry.  Took them back to the other island hours later.  Feeling spiritually weak, I offered genset to them ‘cheap!’

Day six: Sue left.  Daughter left.  But Doug arrived.  Ferry logistics takes most of the day.  Neighbours come by bearing gifts.  Day gone.  Food stocks low.  Contemplate garage sale but don’t have a garage.

Day seven: Doug has a business vision: “We can sell this!  It’s beautiful!  You’ll be a millionaire! I can see it now!”  I carefully explain that the only thing I would use the millions for is to buy property like this and build a cabin. Contemplated hiring some local help to illustrate the concept.  Day shot.

Day eight: major gale restricts shopping trip.  Too dangerous.  Does not deter visitor.  Sally said that I was beginning to look a bit dangerous and so the visitor left in the middle of the gale for safety reasons.  Hunger sets in.  We ate a lot of canned rice pudding and washed it down with Vodka.  Weird.

Day nine: nine visitors so far.  Food gone.  Booze gone (my fault, mostly).  First Aid kit 100% intact.  These are bad signs.  There are no signs of anything else.  No work accomplished.  Desperation enters the holiday equation.  So do two more visitors.  We serve toast and last drops of wine.  Pretend to be Catholic.

Day ten: went shopping.  No hammering.  No nailing.  Just shopping.  Living remote means that shopping is a day-long chore.  Returned home in time to admire my tools and the long shadow they cast.

Day eleven: “We have got to get away.” said my wife.  “If we don’t, someone will come to visit!”  I agreed.  “What do you want to do?”  “Let’s go kayaking.  We can visit Ralph and Laurie!” 

The insanity of going visiting to get away from visitors didn’t hit me until we were launched.  I contemplated throwing myself on my paddle but the blade was plastic.  I hoped that Ralph was in the middle of building and couldn’t entertain or, at the very least, suffering from a contagiuos disease.  It was my only hope for not visiting.  No such luck.  We visited.

Day twelve: No visitors.  Unless you count the gale and the accompanying 50 mph winds.

Day thirteen: had a good day.  No visitors……..until 6:00 pm.  A guy rows by and I forget myself, “Hi!” I said from the deck.  Then I shut up.  I averted my eyes and quickly looked away.  But it was too late.  Damn.  He turned his rowboat toward the shore.  ‘Oh my God!  I cannot entertain anymore.  I’ll have to shoot him.  I have no choice.  No one will blame me…..’

“Hi, I’m John”, he said holding up a plaster cast of a very large foot.  “I am a Sasquatch hunter and I heard that there were some sightings in your neck of the woods.  Can you tell me anything?”

“Yes, John, I can.  Come on up and have some tea.  Why, Yeti himself visited just the other day………..”

We have a malaise out here, a kind of sickness.  It is weird, actually, because it seems healthy but I’m not sure it is.  It makes you stronger in a way but it might even kill you.  I call it ‘obsessive project syndrome’ or OPS.  And, while it is not contagious in the city, it is remarkably common out here and it has annually recurring symptoms.  Like malaria in a jungle.

To be fair, I don’t believe the disorder originated here.  I think the sufferers came with it.  The disease likely incubates in the city, and festers for a time, but it is held in check by other obligations in the early stages.  It breaks out when there is less resistance or demands from others.

Those under great stress suffer from a similar syndrome – they keep it together until the pressure is off and then they allow themselves to let go, give in to the feelings.  Go nuts.  In that way it’s a bit like post traumatic stress disorder, only the symptoms center on projects and it mostly afflicts men.

Early signs of onset include tool-gathering, workshop building, junk collecting and a growing collection of out-of-print how-to books.

And out here the ground is very fertile for the confluence of just-the-right chemistry of issues and projects as the disease takes hold, the symptoms grow unchecked, the disorder expands and, eventually the sufferer is consumed by it.

Mind you, a lot of stuff gets built during the virulent phase. 

I, thank God, am largely immune.  I was born that way.  Some people are just lucky.  Call it laziness, attention-deficit or just plain lethargy…whatever…….I am blessed with a natural resistance to hard, physically demanding projects.  And, where I might succumb, trust me, there is no sign of discipline or even continuance, let alone obsession.

I struggle to finish projects and I am aiming for smaller and fewer, not more.

OPS is the irresistible desire to undertake yet another project.  In severe cases, this desire becomes an obsession and the victim’s life is consumed by larger and more challenging projects as the sufferer, of course, ages and the needs for such projects diminish.

There comes an embarrassing time when an 80 year old is discovered gathering materials to build a bridge from one island to another or is designing the 50 foot historically correct wooden Viking sailing ship he wants to build.

“Not using power tools this time.  Gonna build it like my great, great, great grandfather in Norway- ‘Leif‘ somebody or other –  – just using wooden pegs.  Got the keel laid down last week.  Giant, old fir.  Gonna use an adz, a mallet and a chisel to shape the keel right where the tree lies.  Build it right there.  Just like the old days.  When boats were boats!”

Typically, physical suffering seems unexperienced (as if the brain is numb) and the afflicted simply die with a hammer in their hand. It is tragic in a sense (the boat remains unfinished) but, by and large, it is as good a way as any to go.

But it is not actual death we have to lament or fear.  It is the consumption of time, the energy depletion and the bank account exhaustion that causes the most suffering.  For the wife, anyway.  The afflicted seem to be enjoying themselves.  Kind of a demented state of bliss.  And the more the sufferer delights, the more his partner suffers.

“Old fool has been out there since dawn!  Whacking away at that old tree.  We don’t need a replica of a Viking ship!  And I am NOT making helmets with horns!  What the hell is wrong with him?  Can’t get him to go to town or out to dinner with friends.  What am I gonna do with him?”

You think I exaggerate?  You should get out here sometime.  My next door neighbour is building the equivalent of a small battleship.  The other neighbour is vying for a slightly larger one.  Old guys in their 60’s whacking and chopping, bolting and cutting, drilling and sweating out in the sun all day.  They start just after sunrise…….sometimes work in the dark…….sheesh…….

Everybody changes and yet, they remain the same.  I am no exception.  Or am I?

I am the same guy who lived and worked a modern life in Vancouver but I live and work out here now.  And I live and work differently out here.  I talk and think differently, too.  And it isn’t modern, that is for sure.  So, am I really the same guy?

In Vancouver, I made my living by talking, thinking and addressing unusual challenges from working with delinquent youth to helping to assimilate refugees, from building a boutique market for kids to running a medical clinic in skid row.  In Vancouver, I talked and planned, convinced, cajoled and tried to manage different types of people.  Work was complicated.

Small example: I have had a cell phone since the eighties.  When I call up and talk to customer service and mention that, they often say, “OhmyGawd!  You have been a customer longer than I have been alive!  I wasn’t even born when you signed up!”

Today I do not have a tablet or a smartphone.  Couldn’t work ’em if I did.  I do not even carry a cell phone anymore.  I am a Luddite.  Hell, I don’t even wear a watch!  I never talk on the phone if I can avoid it and I can as a rule, except for an average of two calls a week.  Going from over a hundred calls and e-mails a day to less than 100 a year…………..how different is that!?

Out here, there are few people to talk to anyway, let alone having any to manage and cajole.  And, anyway, out here, the single sentence conversation is the rule.  If the conversation goes on for more than a minute, the person you are talking to wanders off.  They don’t have time for a gabfest.

I suppose texting might work out here if there was service and peoples hands weren’t all beefy and calloused from hard work.

I don’t have time for long conversations either.  Not anymore.  Now it is ‘yup’, ‘nope’ and ‘how much?’  But the work is significantly more simple, too.

Well, simple in concept anyway.

“Heard you need some wood?”

“Yeah, building a deck.”

“How much ya need?”

“About 750 board feet.”

“Cedar or Fir?”

“Both.  Fir structure.  Cedar deck.”

“I got enough.  Ya want it?”

“How much?”

“Same as always.”

“OK.  Deal.  When can you deliver it?”

“I’ll figure it out.  Let ya know.”

“OK.  See ya.”

“Yeah, see ya.”

Elapsed time: four to five minutes.  Conversational time? 20 seconds.  The balance of the time was spent looking off into the distance, shuffling a foot or so, lighting a cigarette and ‘pondering’ the complexity of it all.

So, with all the other stuff goin’ on, obviously we have to keep the conversation short!

Any further details will be covered off with a few well-phrased grunts on Wednesday’s community day. Sometime in the next month a boat will pull up and the requisite amount of wood will be dumped above the high water mark and I’ll come down and hand the guy an envelope.   Then we’ll suffer a few pleasantries and he’ll be off.

“So, gonna get on this deck job right away?”

“Well, you know me.  Right away could mean next Spring.”

“Ha ha ha.  OK.  See ya!”

“Yeah, see ya!”

So, I dunno……….am I the same?  Or am I different?

Feels different.