There is something slightly obnoxious about promoting one’s own lifestyle. Especially at the expense of others. And Dispatches From Off The Grid (DOG?) is guilty of that in spades. Apologies. Honest.

It is not, of course, the intention of this journal to be offensive (I can achieve that in any number of other social interactions without breaking a sweat) but such a result is inevitable it seems when discussing life, lifestyle, people and other personal matters – especially the interesting ones.

Say something nice about something as benign as living differently and the implication is that the other, more normal and ordinary life sucks. It is a relative/comparitive thing and it can sound faintly like a competition or something. Or, rather, it might sound that way.

Keeping up with the Jones’s can morph into keeping up with the Hatfields and the McCoys and dissing the Jones’s in the process.

So, let me apologize again and now for past and future references to a lifestyle I like better than the one I came from. I do not think that ordinary life sucks (which is not quite true – I kinda think that it does but I am trying not to say so too often). I am just saying that it really sucks for me and that, for me and Sally, this lifestyle currently feels much better.

Disclaimer: the above does not preclude future rants against the MAN, the system, the cul-de-sac, the rat-race, the madding crowd, politicians, authorities, institutions and/or similar elements of society, conformity, control and political correctness just to name a few. It just means that I apologize in advance.

That point of view might be a hard sell at this very moment, however. I can barely stand up and my back is excrutiatingly painful. Backpain happens for me now and again with an annoying frequency. The Alternative Lifestyle is limited by mobility and finances and, this time it is mobility (mind you, it is hard to spend if you can’t move!).

A physically healthy lifestyle is physically more taxing and sometimes we break. Well, I do. Sal is an Amazon-of-steel! I hate it when backpain happens. It always feels as if I won’t ever heal.

But I do.

Then I hurt myself again a month or so later.

Thank God there is an answer: Kim. Kim is my neighbour’s daughter and, when she comes up to visit, she brings her massage stuff and somehow, magically, consistently, blessedly, she heals me. She is literally the angel of pain relief. And, thankfully, she is here this weekend. I am glad. I have a schedule this summer and I have plans to hurt myself again soon.

But just to put a ‘spin’ on this blog: it is amazing how frequently an answer or solution presents itself just when you need it most. I hurt my back a few days ago twisting and lifting at an odd angle and have been whining and complaining ever since. Voila! Kim comes for an unscheduled surprise visit. Like an angel.

Honest – so often have we been confronted with an insurmountable obstacle just to discover the solution in the form of a surprise visitor or a talented neighbour that I confess we are now almost expecting miracles. That they come whenever I need them does not disuade me in the least in having this weird kind of faith.

In fact, I may chastise Kim for taking so long!

It is the middle of July and it has felt like late Fall for the last few weeks. Especially for the last few days. Wet, rain-forest misery. It has just poured. Thursday was so bad it felt biblical.

It is unseasonably cool and rainy most of the time these days and it seems that has had an affect on our mood. We are both a bit frustrated in our daily to-do plans and Sal, in particular, feels the deprivation of light. Like the flower she is. You don’t get rosy cheeks from being indoors, you know!

I confess that I am somewhat less bothered by the damp. In fact, really bright sunshine (especially when it is also hot) is usually unpleasant for me. I actually prefer a few clouds and a cool wind as a rule. I am exceptionally well insulated and do not require any extra BTUs in my life until the temperature drops into the 40’s (F) or into single digits (C). But even I expect the sun to shine now and then and it has been remarkably absent so far this summer. Not good.

Writing about the weather is also pathetic. I generally refuse to engage in even common conversations about the weather for the same reason. My life is generally full and, to me anyway, interesting. ‘Surely we have something better to talk about than the weather?!’

Not so much today. Today, it is just rain. And more rain. Then some more………

On a brighter note, I have had more than enough time on the computer. Usually I have to limit myself (you know how hypnotic it can be, right?) but today I have had my fill. I have looked up everything I wanted to and even sent off for some mail-in rebates. You know how desperate you are when you do that! The upside? RIGID tools is sending me two new lithium-ion batteries.

It really does get much better than that. Honest! Just not today.

There are more bachelors living feral than spinsters. It is natural, I guess. Women tend to value relationship more than do men, I think, and so they are not so much alone as a rule. The older men get, the lonelier they are and if they are rural and single, they are often isolated.

And isolation makes you quirky. Many men seem to get soooooo bloody quirky as they age that independence/loneliness becomes the default position for them. That or the sanitarium!

It is just the way it is. There is a long history of the lone wolf male (although I admit that there are more than just a few crazy cat ladies out there as well). Their only live-in is a pet. And some pets are just as independent and quirky.

Nevertheless, however it happens, we have our ‘lone’ characters out here. Len is one of them. I saw him on the dock the other day and inquired as to his health. He has a bad back.

“Not bad, considering I just moved the old fridge out of my bedroom all by myself and I’m no worse for it.”

“Well, I got the old gal down on the front porch, eh? And now that I sees what’s wrong, I am figuring to clean off the nests and crap with a leaf blower and attach another propane line. Once I got the old door on, I’ll fire it up. Just might work fine for keeping prawns, ya know?”

Sometimes when you are driving in the country or maybe watching an old re-run of Deliverance, you’ll notice a country house with an appliance or two on the front porch. If you are like me, you wonder, ‘How the hell does an appliance end up on the front porch?’

Now you know.

Seems I dropped the topic of batteries into the blog (Sacrificial Anode) out of the blue. I was told by my son to ‘go back and give it some context. Then tell us what happened’. So, here:

Living off the grid means generating or harnessing your own power at the simplest definition of the term and we have done so. Our system consists of 8 solar panels on a 20 foot pole next to an even higher tower with a small wind turbine. We can, on a blustery, sunny day, generate 180 watts at 48 volts, enough to keep us ‘juiced up’ and with some to spare for charging the batteries.

That natural electricity (48 Volts DC) is channeled into a charge controller and then delivered to the house electrical closet or the batteries by way of a 100 foot cable as thick as child’s wrist. I have 12, 8-D industrial fork-lift-type batteries which together store about 600 amp hours. That power (still DC) is then ‘inverted’ to 120 volts by way of the Outback inverter (situated in the closet) and fed to the house circuits. I can also feed the house circuits by way of the genset.

The gensets (we have 3 but use only two and only then, one at a time.) not only power the house directly but also power battery chargers so that the batteries remain full. That means that we can turn on the genset only when we need to (when using a heavy load)or when the batteries need charging. Most of the time we run off the stored battery power.

We make more natural power in the summer and less in the winter.

Batteries, however, are the weak link in the system. The technology is old whereas the inverter/charger solar/turbine array is relatively modern and the gensets are technology somewhere in between.

A diesel genset kept up and maintained well would last the rest of my life for the amount we use it. So would the solar panels and the sophisticated side of the system (inverter, etc.) probably. But batteries have a very limited lifespan. Especially the cheaper and more common lead & acid types which are what we have. They die young.

I put on 8 of the 8-Ds last year and added 4 more just recently. Until last year, I was relying on 8 older 6 volt batteries that made up my second bank historically speaking. The first bank we had was 48 x two-volt batteries that were salvaged from BC Hydro after reaching the ripe old age of 15 or so years. They gave me three more years before I had to scrap them.

Some batteries will last five years of light use (car battery) and others will last twenty years of heavy use (large 2 volt batteries that each weigh over 150 pounds and cost over $500 each). I’d need 24 of those.

So the last battery blog was basically about me doing maintenance by way of upgrading the battery system. I’ll have to do it again in about seven years if I do a good job caring for them, ten years if I do a great job and as short as five years if I screw up. Screwing up is easy, especially in cold weather.

Batteries need to be cared for more in cold weather and, of course, that is when we try to go some place warm. We never take our batteries with us in the winter (together the 12 weigh 18-1900 pounds) so I have to rely on something else to keep them happy. That is why we have the relatively poor performing wind turbine. Even tho it does not make much juice, it makes enough to keep the batteries happy in the winter – whether we are here or not. So it is a critical part of the system.

The other day I was taking my eight older 6 volt batteries off-line and putting on the four new 8Ds (12 volt). Connecting batteries so that they add up to 48 volts is critical. That is what the system is designed for. So, I did. So far, nothing too scary although it is all too easy to touch battery terminal ends with a wrench when you are on your back and working under a low counter in a small space. But it went well.

The scary part for me is when I wire in the #3 bank of batteries (the 4 new ones) to banks #1 and #2 that have already been in service for the last year. When I do that, I am basically adding 200 amps to 400 amps and making a potential ‘arc-of-death’ if I do something wrong. I hate that.

So, I checked and checked and then I checked some more. Then I quit and went back at it the next day repeating the checking until I was ready to attach the final battery cable to the inverter and marry up the whole system. And I checked again. When it was time to drop the cable on the battery terminal, I was pretty confident. So, I checked again.

As I was finally getting close to the terminal with the potentially lethal connection in hand, Sal walked by and yelled ZAPP!!

It is always a funny joke. We love that one. Whenever one of us is doing electrical work and concentrating hard on NOT dying, the other waits until the moment of truth and yells ZAP!. Good fun. Hahahaha.

In a few more years she’ll be yelling ‘contact!’ instead as she applies the paddles to my stopped-still heart.

I really shouldn’t be tired but I am. Usually, I try to ignore the fatigue and carry on because Sal is such an Energizer Bunny-type, I feel I have to. She’s a slave driver by example. But lately even she has gotten a bit tired and, for one of the few times in her life, she slept in for an extra hour! Thank God! And so we stopped. And called it a day of rest. And it was good.

I am hoping this catches on.

Quite frankly, I could go for six days of rest and one day of work but I know that won’t fly. “That’s fine, honey. You can rest all you want to but I have to clean and paint the house and do the shopping and the logging and get it all done before my sister comes to visit on Sunday. So, I’ll just carry on!”

And not an ounce of sarcasm or tone when she says that. She means it. I am free to sit and watch her work. Except for one thing: I can’t just sit and watch her work!

She is a slave driver by example!

Mind you, my friend, John, who works harder than anyone I know (or ever want to know) said in passing the other day, “You guys have done a lot already this summer. You’ve accomplished quite a bit!” So, maybe we have been good. It is hard to tell. I am too delirious to know much about anything right now.

And all this brings me to my point – work is relative. I don’t quite know what it is relative to but I know that work is relative in the sense that context, circumstance and age and schedule and how many tasks are involved at any given time makes it relative.

It used to be that we both worked at a full-time job and then came home to raise a family and live our lives and do activities and watch TV and have a social life and we thought we were just normally busy. Now, we haul some logs and take a few breaks and think we are overly taxed. We wonder how in hell we did all that we used to do and now we can only just keep house and home together. It’s an age thing, I guess.

I remember asking my dad if he wanted to play golf in the coming week, “Hey, you wanna play golf sometime next week, dad?”

“Yeah! Great! Can’t Monday, tho. Getting my haircut. Tuesday is out. Picking up my dry cleaning. Wednesday I am seeing John for lunch and Thursday the cleaning lady comes in. ‘Course by Friday, I’ll be exhausted so how about the following Monday?”

I remember thinking that both Sally and I did the equivalent of all his weekly chores times five plus went to work and I could still squeeze in a round of golf. But I kept my mouth shut. Now I know what he was saying. He could only competently do a few things at a time now. And we are getting there ourselves.

Only wine and antiques get better with age.

The more I read back-to-the-land literature, the more I realize that living off-the-grid is an ill-defined term. It is way too general a term to be of much use. Off-the-grid (OTG) can mean almost anything.

Of course it means living off the grid; that one is not residing on the electrical, water supply, sewer, public transit, information, microwave and cable grids.

And just so you know; there is such a thing as a behavioural grid and some people live way off that, too. In it’s extreme form it can be criminal or psychotic.

But – more conventionally speaking – OTG also means many different and equally as defining things for the different authors I have encountered.

As you might expect, simplicity is a big theme. So is going natural (less artificial, fewer ‘chemicals’). Slow (one’s own pace). Local focus (community). Frugal (anti-materialistic). Independent (less reliant on others and others’ systems), peaceful (less ambitious, less aggressive), environmental, resourceful and freedom (from rules and regulations) are just some of the words that seem to come along with the stories and lessons of those writers describing living off the grid.

And, if they were being more truthful, they could add a few more that don’t seem to be as recognized or admitted by usual OTG descriptions.

Rebellion, rejection, suspicion and defiance come to mind. Active non-compliance with conventional mores, behaviours and even dress are common. Discomfort, fear, loathing, disgust and defeat also show up. Living off the grid is not done in a rose garden.

There is definitely a dark side to the OTG lifestyle but, I think, on a lesser scale than in the city. I think OTG living is potentially and more often healthier than the usual urban way. But not always. Of course, it depends on the person and it depends on just how far off the grid, they go.

Some would go off the sane grid regardless of whether they are in the city or the country.

OTGérs can get a bit too far ‘out there’ sometimes. Paranoia, isolation and elitism show up now and then as well. Isolation from the larger village can lead to depression, apathy and even madness. Living off the grid (OTG) is like anything else – there is a yin and a yang to it.

Don’t get me wrong. Living OTG is nowhere near the hellish state that the above paragraphs might imply. It is, rather, that living off the grid does not exempt any of us from the dark sides of life and, in some cases some dark parts might be a bit more pronounced on a per capita basis when you are off-the-grid.

If there is one common OTG feeling that manifests more than another, it is ‘rejection’ of the norm. Almost everyone out here has rejected some parts of life as they are normally lived by the madding crowd. Some more. Some less.

It is true for me. I have a list of things I reject or choose not to participate in that would be considered as normal, common or usual ways. I am, I think, on the cusp of functional normalcy and have one foot in some other place too indistinct to describe accurately. Whatever it is, my lifestyle attitude is not conventional. Nor do I want it to be.

But I do wonder sometimes why more people don’t want to do this………

It doesn’t follow that rejection of the norm is the answer, though. Sometimes rejection just leaves a void and that void can be filled by anything. Sometimes it is the dark side.

Something as simple as rejecting the cul de sac/apartment/condo can lead to loneliness, isolation and madness – not a constructive alternative – rather than a nice cabin with a view of the sea. So far, my rejection of the norm has worked out nicely. But the story is still being writ.

Bear in mind that for every OTG story that carries a happy theme (i.e. Dispatches from off-the-grid) there is a Mad Trapper or Cat Lady tale that may never be told. There are a lot of lonely stories out here and only some of them wanted it that way.

Living off the grid is not always good.

But it is an alternative. And, for the lucky ones, it is great.

This could be my last post. Today I delve into my battery bank hook-ups and it doesn’t matter how many times I do it, I fear it. There are over 600 amps at 48 volts with exposed terminals all over the damn place and I’ll be in there messin’ with a crescent wrench and trembling hands. I can see the arc-of-death flashing up the wrench and melting it and me in the process already.

I am going to have to be extra careful. Mind you, I have been so bloody careful so far, I haven’t gotten anything done! This chore is a year overdue. But, you see, it is hard to get electrocuted if you stay the hell away from everything electrical. And so I did (exception: flashlights, computer and movie screen). ‘Let deep cycle batteries lie’. That’s my basic ‘working-with-batteries’ motto.

But there is no hiding today. A neighbour wants the old batteries and is coming over to get them. Embarrassingly, the new ones have been sitting around expectantly for over a month. And I have no more excuses. My procrastination (fear) has been exposed and is now getting visitors. If I had any way of avoiding this, I would, and this blog would be about something else.

Ravens are a popular theme.

It occurred to me the other day that I should maybe teach more in these blogs. Be more informative, you know? More How-to stuff. As I learn a lesson or two and become fairly sure about it, I should share that knowledge with would-be off-the-gridders eager to learn at the feet of the master? Right? The problem is that I have yet to become fairly sure about anything.

Most of it is all still a mystery.

Well, I am pretty sure about advising the burning of dry fir for your firewood if you can get it but some old hands do recommend dry Alder instead so maybe the jury is still out on that one? I am pretty damn sure that building the cabin is not #1 on the to-do list, infrastructure is. Makes for much easier building when it is the cabins turn. But everybody builds the cabin first and so, even tho I am pretty sure about that advice, few seem to agree with it. I strongly advise having two of everything at the very least. But I would have advised that for the cul-de-sac resident as well.

So, what the hell do I know? Marry well is the only really good advice I can give. Maybe being the Yoda of off-the-grid living is not going to be my calling. But I will advise this: when working with deep cycle batteries, wear thick gloves, use insulated tools, work slowly and hope for a sacrificial fool/anode to come along and do it for you.

I hope to be able to report back tomorrow.

Living out here is a bit of a challenge. But it is not that hard. Mostly it is just different. We are still learning how to be off-the-gridders as best we can. And we have a lot to learn. That is why we garden, buy winches and putz about. We are at the beginning of the learning curve. I’d say we are still at the ‘juniors’ stage, not even sophomores yet. We’ll likely really be seniors (chronological) before we are really seniors (expertise). May not even get there. Ever.

I write about this because I have not seen much on making this kind of a lifestyle change from the convenient and comfortable to the harder and more physical. Urban to rural. Domestic to feral. Most people tend to move in the other direction, I suppose.

I do try to read anything I can get my hands on about homesteading or living ‘alternative’ (part of learning, isn’t it?) and I have to say, most of the off-grid authors I have read so far are dimwits. There was the book by some National Post editor that had her living on an island (with all the modcons) about 60 miles from her Toronto office. She had a hard time finding milk and making the ferry on time. Poor baby. Her biggest challenge: to get her boyfriend to do things for her while she was away writing the adventure novel of her life!

Nick somebody wrote a book about off-grid people and, unbelievably, didn’t understand the basic concept! He wrote about people who live in cardboard boxes and in their cars. He wrote about dope growers who filch juice from the power company and he wrote about house-sitters. How do these idiots get published?

Don’t get me wrong – there are some great stories out there about living feral but they are few and far between. Hell, even H.D. Thoreau only rented a cabin at Walden for 3 months!

The very best: Frontier House by PBS. A documentary.

But Chris Czajkowski writes about Nuk Tessli and is great! She’s cast from the same mold as Ann Mustoe and those other eccentric female Brits who suffer great hardships with only tea and a biscuit for comfort (preferably served under a tarp against a stone wall ruin in a rainstorm in some desolate out-of-the-way hell). But they at least write well and really do have great adventures.

Ian and Sally something did a series on traveling Canada like the old pioneers. They were great, too.

There was the guy who walked across the middle east during all the wars! The other loon who lived alone in the arctic and had to resort to eating mice. There were the two who chased after elk and lived amongst them. And the couple who did the same with wolves. And the maniac who tried to do that with Grizzlies! Now those people had adventures!

Some doofus contracting his new house out in Sayulita (near Puerto Vallarta) drove me nuts with his pathetic litany of challenges (where to find a really good cup of coffee, suffering awkward chairs in which to sit!). His was not an off-the-grid story – it was a lament by a spoiled brat!

But I read it and hate myself for doing so.

To be honest, we live closer to the spoiled brat author than we do the mouse-eaters and I doubt that we’ll ever try to get hardier than we are now. Which is OK with me. It’s tough enough going shopping in town. I can’t imagine having to forage with the elk and scavenge with the wolves. I have bad knees. Hard to kneel. Even harder to crawl at any speed. Lichen for lunch? Yuck!

I am telling you all this because this blog is about the real life adventures of two relatively soft individuals who couldn’t survive in the wilderness for two nights and, after three, wouldn’t want to. We have just the right amount of adventure, thank you very much. Don’t want more. I am looking for easier not harder.

Having said that, I can’t imagine what constitutes an adventure story anymore when people publish accounts of their problems with their new condo in the Bahamas or having to make-do without a dishwasher in the cabin they rented on the Gulf Islands. Puleez……..

In that regard, I have to agree with the editors in the old days of the newspapers: if it bleeds, it leads. Other than that, it is no big deal. Yesterday Sally cut her ankle. Blood. Ergo, yesterdays blog story.

Get up at 7:15, drink tea and pack up for town. By 8:00, I have the boat out front and Sally is throwing in the totes and backpacks. Seas are up a bit. It’s been blowing all night. Maybe a two foot chop. We pound over to the other island, lug totes, coolers and packs up the hill and race for the 9:00 ferry. Miss it. Catch the ten.

First stop is at General Paint for, you guessed it, paint (for the bunkhouse). No luck (we need ‘off-tints’ porch paint for the community’s meager ‘budget’). Then Canadian tire (oil, muffin tins). Next: Canada Superstore (chicken for dogs) and then the Fudge shop (Sal has a serious habit). Off to Home Depot and get the usual 6 out of ten items on the list. Average success rate this time. 8 items is a miracle. All ten? Never gonna happen.

Blitz a quick lunch at the Ideal Café and then race off to Andrew Sherrit for plumbing crap. Sal gets that while I hit up the propeller shop for two new props – one has to come up from Vancouver in a week. Then off to Western Equipment (mallet handle, log dogs, quick perusal of pulleys) and then to the bank. First the Royal, then BoM.

London Drugs is next for us. After that I go to the nearby LCB and Sal heads over to Save-on for the BIG shop. I then divert to Lordco (gas-line fittings) and then back to Save-on to help Sal load the totes and, while waiting, decant the scotch into a large plastic bottle so that I can return the stock glass bottles now rather than carry them back and forth on a small boat). LCB staff more than a bit curious. “Never mind. I’m green! Planet is going to hell! Causes me to drink heavily, being green, ya know, but at least I am recycling my scotch bottles!”

Chuckle to myself as we head up to Baba Ganoush (Syrian restaurant) for a donair and some hummus. They are closed. Damn. Then to Katies for sushi supplies and down to the ferry and catch the 2:30 back to Quadra. Just under four hours and 18 stops. Not bad.

Hit the island and put on a batch of wine at the do-it-yourself store, pick up a few cheap B flicks at the renta-movie place and then head off down the road. That is 21 stops (not counting the coffee shop and the fact that the propeller store took two visits).

Unload the truck into the boat (light load this time) but the seas are a bit up. Been blowing the whole time we’ve been away.

We live on a rocky beach. Not a beach, really. Like Point Atkinson is a beach. The tide is running hard (two knot current) and the wind is at my back at about 20 mph. As I approach our beach the waves are making the bow describe three foot arcs. Sal leaps onto a slippery rockface and turns to grab something from the boat as I attempt to hold it off the rocks by throttle and forward and reverse. We miss. I am swept down stream.

“I’ll come around! You may just have enough time to grab one item at a time!”

And that is what I do. I take the boat in as close as I dare and drift down past Sal who is precariously perched on the rocks. As the bow goes by, she grabs what she can. One hand for her safety, the other for a full cooler or heavy tote. When I go around again, I take a minute to move the other items to the very front for her to reach. Plus the boat needs a bit of a pump out each time because the waves are breaking over the stern. I am soaked by the time we get everything off. Sal has a nasty cut on her ankle.

Dock the boat. Head back to the other side to help Sal with the coolers and the totes and we bring it all up on the funicular. It’s almost 5:00. Feed the dogs and pour a glass of wine. We sit like lumps for a bit and then put all the food away. Eat store-bought sushi and clean up. It is 7:30 pm. It’s only been 12 hours since we started and we managed to do 90% of the shopping on our list.

Pretty efficient this time.

Imagine a set of steep, steep stairs, like a set leading to a cellar in an old house. That angle is around 30 degrees, the same slope as the hill we bring the logs up. Now imagine an imaginary ‘landing’ halfway down the stairs. That ‘landing’ would be the ‘bench’ of rock we have on our 120 foot-long hill. The ledge is about 40 feet up from the beach and is where the logs are stored for drying before coming up later for further processing (bucking and splitting and stacking).

Each log segment is about 12 feet long and 10 inches in diameter or about 400-500 pounds. Sal ‘hooks ’em up’ using a choke and block and taykle and then the winch drags them up to the bench area. There the log is released from the high-line and piled with others in a big heap. Sal does the releasing and the piling. Gravity does most of the work but she has to wrestle the odd one into place and make sure it is situated securely enough so that it does not shift suddenly and take the increasing heap of wood – several tons – on a ramble down the hill.

Yesterday we were finishing the lift up from the lagoon and adding the last few pieces. The pile was a bit higher than we thought it would be. There were about 16 or so on a narrow ledge arranged like pick-up-sticks. They were about four or five logs deep. Logs akimbo. Sal was nimbly dancing across them as she tugged a log to and fro trying to get it to settle down into the right place.

I stood at the winch controls and watched the activity from about 70 feet away and from an elevation of 40 feet higher. It looked to me like an accident waiting to happen.

“Sal! I don’t think scrambling over the pile is a good idea. There are four or five tons of unstable logs perched halfway up a steep hill and you are dancing on top of ’em like a Chinese acrobat. What would WorkSafe BC say?”

“Don’t worry! It’s not hard. I got my balance. And they are lodged in pretty good. I’ll be fine.”

We’ve been together forty years and if there is one thing that separates us (besides appeal) it is her NO FEAR attitude. Sal laughs at danger and piles scorn on warnings. Worse, she takes umbrage at being told what to do even if the message is delivered with tact and sensitivity to her being an adult (in other words: when it comes to safety, she thinks like a 16 year old boy on a skateboard in front of a gaggle of girls).

I am a bit more careful by nature (a flying squirrel is more careful than Sal). But I’ve learned not to warn her directly, I do not instruct directly and I do not criticize her at all. I am also careful about what I say.

And, of course, I have a sense of fear about that, too.

But this was too much.

“Damn it, Sal. Get the hell off that pile! Stay upside the logs at all times and be safe for once! You are freakin’ me out! If you don’t get off that pile, I am coming down to drag you off!”

That little outburst surprised me. Those could have been BIG fightin’ words. I was hung out on a very thin chauvinistic limb. The smell of immediate danger in the air was palpable. Foot was inadvertently put down firmly and it usually ends up in my mouth when I do that – especially when telling Sal how to do something she has been doing well for a long time.

I cringed at my indiscretion………..

“OK, sweetie. I’ll play it safe.” And she got off the pile and completed the job taking the necessary care for her own safety.

I was in shock! I have no idea what just happened there. Everywhere I looked, there was danger. I looked left and looked right and leaped blindly into the fray. And it worked out. Thank God.

It is so easy to make a mistake out here and then someone can get hurt. Logging is a dangerous pastime.

Telling Sal what to do? Suicidal!