Head almost normal – empty. Nose less solid, more like stringy cheese now. I think I am improving. Less disgusting (nose description notwithstanding). Screen windexed.

Into the fray……..

The day the big tsunami swept up into my head, we had gone to town to do our normal two-week shop but with one major change to the usual schedule. It was also the annual dog clean-up date. Long overdue, I must say. Those two shaggy, stinky, ragamuffins went to Tammy’s Canine Emporium for Magical Change and came out like different dogs. Which is good. We needed a change. I was getting fed up with the old ones.

I try not to anthropomorphize the damn things but, really, there is no question they think they are a lot cuter coming out than they were going in. These two dopes literally prance and strut around in circles to show off their stuff. They think they are good-lookin’. REAL good lookin’.

One thing is for sure – they are somewhat better lookin’ and they are clean. Tammy does a helluva job. We (Sal, mostly) tend to them fairly well and they swim, on average, 2 days out of three, so they are never really dirty.

But they also like to be dogs and that means getting a bit dirty and, of course, Meg likes the smell of Otter poop as her signature scent. They can get a bit ‘present’ now and then.

I actually like them a bit when they are really clean. They are allowed to sit on the outside couch then. Give ém a week.

Head cold. Feel like I have a watermelon for a head. Like a there is a Rhinoceros jammed up my nose. It is hard to write while spraying mucous all over the computer.

Will write later when I can breathe.

Whales, that is.

A pod of Orcas came by today. I think there were five or so but Sal thought only 3 or 4. Hard to say, really. They were cross channel and, while Sal was out in the boat dropping a few prawn traps, I spied them from the deck and called her on the walkie-talkies. She finished setting and, with the dogs for company, putted over to have a closer look. She didn’t get too close but she was out there for awhile. So she may be right but I am pretty sure there were five or six.

Heard a single whale yesterday. No dorsal fin either. Just saw the plume-puffs. Maybe a Minke? We’ve seen lone whales before but usually they are humpbacks and not in the least bit small. When they roll past, you ‘feel’ them as much as see them. And you can always see them. They roll at least three feet out of the water just coming up for air. When they breach or feed and come partially out of the water, the big ones make the channel seem small.

Speaking of Minke…..

Our neighbour, Roger, was sitting on a rock at dusk the other day when he glanced to his left. There, sitting but a few feet away, was a mink looking right at him. They stared at each other without blinking for a few seconds and Roger, being the polite chap that he is, offered a pleasant salutation, “Good evening, little fella. How are you doing?” . That was enough species-interactive excitement for the little guy for one day and he zipped off.

We are always getting little wildlife vignettes and encounters. It’s nice. Everyone likes it. Doesn’t matter if they have been here for thirty years or not, they pause and marvel and appreciate the magic of it all.

But wildlife is a harsh life. Some uppity gull decided to filch some treats the other day from Roger’s serving platform. That buffet is dedicated to the Raven. Jack (our big male Raven) saw this and swooped. A tussle ensued with Jonathan coming out second best and missing not just a few feathers in the process. Seems ol’ Jack took Jon down to the ground and kicked gull butt for a few moments and then plucked a few just to make the point.

Those Ravens are something! I’ve seen them harass the eagle. They are not in the least afraid of the dogs and I have even had Jack take a few morsels direct from my hand. They do not invest too heavily in fear, it seems.

But, with that, a few chores and a brief visit from some neighbours (the human kind) that was basically our day.

Despite the presence of killers, it was a remarkably low stress day.

As I mentioned in the last post, we are building the decks on the bunkhouse. What I have failed to clarify, so far to my readers, is that I am the supervisor of the construction crew responsible.

Kinda.

My role is based primarily on the need for a go-between or mediator to be inserted between all the players, major and minor. And my qualifications, work history notwithstanding, are based almost entirely on my ready and effusive confession to not knowing anything.

Such inadequacy may, on the face of it, seem like a dubious and counter-intuitive qualification but it is not. In this case the dummy knows best.

Firstly, you have to understand that everyone up here is a builder of sorts and quite proud of it – save for me, of course, who is, instead, very proud of his wife as she is the real builder in the family. But I digress.

I know nothing and freely admit it. They know everything and quietly believe everyone else is a nincompoop. Thus the need for a go-between not encumbered by any skill or expertise. I am like the filter in the process that strains out the details but manages to pass on the main, basic message without colouring it with instruction, opinion or even basic knowledge. I am truly a simple messenger with the message so simplified that even I can deliver it.

A minor encounter with some Cedar planks illustrates this.

Bert (himself an expert builder and maker of things), standing five feet to my left, offered me some wood the other day that he thought might be suitable for my future boat building project. He said, “Got some nice Cedar. You could use that in the boat you are going to build.”

Dag(who builds boats by first falling the trees and then milling the wood) was standing to my immediate right and knows more about boat-building than Noah. I turned to him, “I might get some of that Cedar, there, Dag. Think it would be good for a boat?”

“Some of it, maybe. Not enough there, tho, for the boat you want.”

I turn to Bert, “Might take some of it. Might need some more, tho, depending on the boat, ya know.”

“How big a boat ya building?”

I turn to Dag, “Have we picked the boat I want yet?”

Dag says, “Nope. Not yet”.

I turn to Bert, “Don’t know as yet. You OK, with that? Can I tell you later what the boat will be and how much Cedar I’ll need?”

“Yup. How much later?”

I turn to Dag, “Unh, how long do you think it will take for us to decide this, Dag?”

“Don’t know. It’s your boat!”

This is where it got tricky. Everyone knows I don’t know anything and that extends to even the boat I want. I have some rough idea but Dag-cum-Noah knows so much more he is like my major consultant and it would appear that we were not going to take this conversation any further at this time. Dag has had enough talking boats for the time being.

“Geez, Bert, gotta think a bit more on it, ya know. You mind if I take a few days to mull this over?”

“Nope. That’s fine. Gotta move it, tho. May as well move it down to the boatworks, eh?”

The air was rife with tension. Moving it was OK. But moving it in the direction of the boatworks was a statement of sorts. A stance. I checked with Dag. He nodded just a smidge. It was approved. We could move the wood in the direction of the boatworks!

“Great!”

We separated. Dag went one way, Bert the other. More progress was made – the boat is getting closer to being made. I’ll refocus on the Bunkhouse decks when the tensions have eased.

We recently instigated a community work group. A work-force at the ready, so to speak. It was cast from the cauldron of hell-fire and brimstone that was the Q-hut crew. That bunch o’ pension-collecting rough-and-wrinkled necks that gather every Wednesday just a-lookin’ for trouble.

Yes, that would be the same group that is barely half-way through renovating an empty shell (Q-hut) into a cleaner empty shell for working in later. Someday. Maybe.

There does seem to be a vagueness to it all but we see progress. We just don’t know in which direction……….? At this point in time we are pointed in the direction of the Bunkhouse.

We are going to build the deck extensions and roofs for the community bunkhouse and I am fairly confident we can do this. After all, these are people who have single-handedly built their own homes from scratch, developed homesteads in the rainforest and who build boats by first falling the trees and then milling the planks. They can do just about anything if they put their minds to it.

Cash is, however, a bit of an insurmountable.

And ironically, we seem a bit lean on tools. I guess cash and tools are related. Anyway, we need some tools. Or cash.

I am quite sure that we are not actually lacking tools. That would be impossible, given the history. But we are lacking extra tools, tools for the common good, community tools-for-sharing. Because people around here rely heavily on their own personal tools and because community projects tend to treat tools poorly, not many are brought to community projects.

Not enough, anyway. We are consistently faced with willing volunteers who can’t participate fully for lack of enough implements. It is also understandable from a logistics point of view – who wants to schlep a hundredweight of tools to a volunteer work-party that requires you to hike and boat ten miles to get there?

I am going to make an effort to fix that.

That is where you might come in. You are second.

The first call, of course, was to the community itself by way of our very own media, the SNOT Rag. “If you have a good duplicate hand tool that can be left at the Q-hut, please consider donating it to the community tool chest”.

We need: Hammers: 4+ ,pry-bars: 2 ,level: 2+ , chalk-line: 2
Shovels: 2+ , rake, nail-pullers: 2+ , sledge: 1
saw-horse/workmate: 2+
Pick:1, big/medium crescent wrenches: 3, axe: 1,
come-along (not cheap Chinese-made ones):1
Ladder: 1 step-ladder: 1
pipe wrench: 1 Hacksaw: 1 (blades, too)
Handsaws (sharp): 2+ tape measures: 4 square: 2 vice-grips: 4+

Of course, we could use much more and the following list of wished-for tools are more expensive and really should be new or very near-new:

18.8v drill/driver with battery and charger (ideally a Rigid with the lifetime batteries). Two of them. Maybe three. Good skill saw (2), battery-powered sawz-all, mini-grinder, cement mixer, heavy-duty hammer drill, BIG vice, medium vice. Wood-vice. Bench top drill press. Portable belt sander. Bandsaw. Clamps of all kinds. Planes, files, sandpaper and block.

“So why tell me, Dave? I am just a reader of the blog. I don’t live there.”

Good point. I am putting this out there because I know what happens to ‘stuff’. We all get ‘stuff’ and then we have a garage sale and give away the ‘stuff’ a few years later. It’s what we do in this consumer society. Sal and I did it. Big time. I remember putting out on the ‘garage-sale’ driveway decades of collected ‘stuff’ that must have cost us thousands of dollars and dollops of time and selling it all for pennies. My BBQ went for $1.67.

So, if any of you on Vancouver Island or in the Vancouver area have ‘practically new’ hand-tools or even really great power tools and you are looking to find them a good home, please save them for my next trip south. Likely within a month or so.

I am not asking for sacrifice – if you are using them, keep ’em. And I am not asking for junk. Can’t use junk. I am asking for good, new, usable tools and I really just expect to get a few hand tools. Bandsaws, routers and such would be a very pleasant surprise and cash?!

Well, a cash donation is an option for the rich and foolish.

Mind you, we are already paying for a portion of our new $35B fighter jets. Maybe if we can afford to do that, we can afford to send money to a little village for tools. If cash is sent, send it to me. But, if you want a tax receipt and an assurance I don’t keep it to buy scotch, send me a cheque made out to the Surge Narrows Community Association.

“I am not going to read this blog anymore if you ask for money!”

I don’t blame you. Won’t happen again. At least not soon. Not in 2011, anyway. Probably. I am pretty sure. Depends, ya know?

John got an electric prawn trap puller. I get to use it. ‘Dem prawns bedda look out!’

Pulling prawn traps by hand is not so hard. The traps seem to weigh a lot when they are down deep, though, and the rope is hard on soft, flabby hands (like mine) but the reward is usually well worth the effort. IF there is a reward.

And therein lies the real obstacle to prawning: coming up empty. It is so discouraging to strain one’s poor little hands and back and not get some reward (spoiled brat that I am). Disney taught me that if I try real hard, I should get some prawns. Ya know? Like the Little Fisherman Who Thought He Could? Sadly, that is not always the case.

Sometimes the prawns are down there ROTFLTAO.

But all that is over. Now I can drop and lift prawn traps on a whim. Oooohhhh…….this is exciting! Worst case scenario: disappointment but without sore muscles. Of course, it does get better than that but saving my back is a close second.

There is no denying the primal satisfaction that one gets from bringing home the bacon unless, of course, one is not allowed to eat bacon anymore. Prawns are the new bacon. Real satisfaction hinges not so much on bringing it home but in being allowed to eat it and not having hurt yourself in the process. It’s why people write about picking blackberries more than they actually pick ém.

Same goes for writing about hunting, gardening, homesteading, log-home building and, well, you get the idea……..

Fact of aging: old people get almost as much pleasure thinking about stuff they used to do or are planning to do someday in the future than they actually ever do. I figure it’s nature’s way of keeping older people safe (until natural culling comes by way of cars, doctors, meds and spouses, of course).

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind a bit of a hike, a few scrapes and a prick or two from the blackberry thorns. That’s OK. That’s where my ‘macho’ comes in. But, when you hike and hike and sweat and fall down and get dirty and then you get bitten by mosquitoes and it’s hot and everything…….and you forgot your water bottle….and then there are no berries……….well, that’s when my macho runs dry. And my tears run wet. Aging also plays havoc with your macho levels.

And so it is with most of this foraging, gathering, hunting thing. The fruits of my labours don’t have to be as easily gotten as store-bought and delivered but they shouldn’t be so hard-to-get that blood, sweat or tears are required in any way whatsoever. Ya know? Who wants to cry over spilled blackberries at our age, eh?

We spoiled old brats (more commonly referred to as SOBs) are just seeking a balance of sorts. Fair play. It’s a tangent off the law of diminishing returns. Like fishing. One ounce of effort should get two ounces of blackberries or the equivalent in prawns. Like scotch! It’s only fair!

Fishing is the ultimate example of a pastime in need of some fair play. If you get your gear, launch your boat and head off all within a reasonable period of time – say one hour or maybe two if you have a lot of time to kill – and you drop your line and return home with a couple of fish within say, an hour or maybe two (if you have a few beers to kill) then fishing is OK. Not great. But definitely fair. You can choose to play or not based on that kind of risk/time/cost-to-reward ratio.

For it to be really great, the salmon would have to jump in the boat and clean itself but they are not that cooperative (not yet, anyway. Monsanto is developing a Frankenfish that leaps into your boat wrapped in cellophane but it’s a few years off the shelves just yet.)

But if you have to go to town to get your license and the motor doesn’t start and, after several weeks spent bored out of your gourd and considerable skin loss due to peeling sunburn and you don’t have one damn fish to show anyone (been there)………….well, the whole thing is just stupid, isn’t it?

And one thing should be clear by now: I ain’t stupid. Right?

Wednesday was ‘community’ day. That usually means working on the Q-hut (the woodworking shop renovation) but yesterday it meant working on the community ‘Bunkhouse’.

The ‘Bunkhouse’ is like a rustic home with a basic kitchen, wood stove and room for some long tables. It sits close-by the school being only about thirty paces away. The current concept for its use is as a community kitchen of sorts but it is also capable of sleeping a few people up stairs in a pinch. It had a bathroom but then it stopped working……….soooooooooo…..

So, the community group decided to fix the biffy, fix up the kitchen and renovate the areas that were looking a bit tired. After a bit of extended planning, the decision was made to expand the kitchen, make a new bathroom, add a front and rear deck and generally ‘spiff the whole thing up’.

The building currently occupies about 600 sq ft down and another 150 up give or take 10%. When we are done, it will be twice as big downstairs with about 400 feet of deck, 300 of which will be at the front.

Money is no object. There really isn’t any.

For the most part, this is a ‘volunteer’ project. We’ll do this project for (we hope) less than $10,000 including materials, labour and ‘equipping’.

On the face of it, you’d think we might have bitten off more than we can chew. You’d be wrong. This community has rallied together for projects larger than this time and time again. You should see the community-built gymnasium! It is gorgeous and the perfect addition for a school (albeit a small one) situated in a rainforest.

The Bunkhouse is a ‘community’ project. So is the Q-hut. This is a group that works! Well, OK, this is a group that mostly works! I am a member, after all. I try to keep my work to a minimum.

What I find really interesting is this: this is a politically sensitive, close-knit, ‘small village-type’ group that has wrestled with relationship issues for decades and yet, it all gets done and gets done well in the end. Any ruffled feathers here and there are pretty-much forgotten by the next project. It is pretty neat to see in action and even neater to see in hindsight. Their (and increasingly our) history is a good one.

Do we know what we are doing? Of course we know what we are doing! We are paying our dues and being part of the community. Think of it as a country club.

John dropped a couple of prawn traps before he went home yesterday. They were for us. Today we pulled them up from about 300 feet down. Netted about 60+ prawns or three pounds. Sal puts them in a sandwich bag with some water and we freeze them in blocks. In that way, we can have ‘fresh’ prawns every so often.

At book club on Sunday, one of the women took Spanikopita made with nettles (stinging) instead of spinach. I didn’t have any of this but I’ve had nettles before. They are delicious. We decided to get some and went on a hunt for the young, wild spring nettle. Nettles are good for you and good to eat if you catch them in their early spring growth and only harvest the top couple of inches. Lower than that and you will get the ‘stinging’ part.

We found some but there was only ‘buds’ so they are a still a harvest waiting to happen. Of course, we can always load up on Oysters and clams but today was already full with other chores. We left them to lie-in-waiting, too.

Eating off the land is not something I am actually too used to. Blackberries, the odd orchard apple, rarely a fish……….that was about it before we came out here. But ’round these parts folks very much augment their food regimen from the self-grown, locally-farmed and the side-of-the-road if not the actual ‘wild’.

Well, the ‘wild’ is represented by shell-fish and fish but not many people hunt game anymore. Sometimes a guy gets a deer but it is not a regular mainstay for anybody out here, really. Maybe the camo-ATV-beer commercial guy and his buddies from the city go a-hunting every year but it is not so much a routine out here.

But harvesting of sorts is still pretty big. All the berries are picked in season. Not ALL the berries, but all the species of berries are usually partially picked by some people, especially the wine-makers. Mushrooms, of course, but most of us are leery of picking the wrong ones so that is left to a few old-hands mostly. There are wild onions and other edibles that we might recognize but there are many more that we don’t. And many more that few but the aboriginals might recognize. There are special botany tours to learn about them all but we haven’t availed ourselves as yet. Just a matter of time, I think.

We do utilize a bit of seaweed now and then, tho. And, of course, some of the locals have fabulous orchards and gardens so, in that sense, we benefit from the bounty of the land. And then there are our own garden boxes that are beginning to supplement the larder. Local food is an ever increasing portion of our diet. I’d guess at 10%.

It may be more. Because as we use more and more local, fresh, wild and free, we are also using less and less processed, packaged and ‘wrapped’ food. The last time Sal went to Save-on she remarked, “I never would have imagined that I would be missing not only complete aisles but I am actually only shopping around the outside edge! In fact, I am not even using the whole edge! More and more I am simply NOT buying what is on offer here. I probably got 10% from the bulk bins, 60% from the produce section and 20% from the dairy and bakery. Boy have our habits changed!”

And we intend to keep it up.

Fire season is over. Firewood season has just begun. They are related.

Just as soon as we no longer need heat in the house – and that seems to be now, now that we have gone the last few days without a fire – it is time to get the wood in for the next season. We already have some in (left over from last year) but not enough and it is de rigeur to have dry wood when you need it. Nice to have the ‘left over’ for Fall start-up though.

So the rule is: chop now, dry in the summer and burn later. Ideally, we would be a season ahead of ourselves with a season and half of drying but it is hard to get that far ahead. Very few manage to do that.

John does, tho.

Of course, this seasonal event has come about when I am currently walking around slightly crooked from an uncooperative muscle group in the lower to mid back region. Cutting rounds and splitting them is made more difficult if you are using most of your breathing to scream out in pain.

And, during these primal outbursts, Sal is reluctant to get too close to help. Oh well, it keeps the wolves at bay.

Doesn’t matter. She doesn’t have the weight, density or sense of rhythmn that is required to split big rounds. It is one of my few abilities – I can swing an axe with just the right tempo, like a Motown Temptation. Dooo wop! Split! Another round in pieces.

I’m going to work on the lyrics.

A spine with an invisible screw driver stuck between vertebrae, however, limits one’s moves and so I am hot-water-bottling as fast as I can. I may have to rely on W’fers.

And so it goes around here. Just when you wonder how you are going to get something done, someone miraculously shows up with the answer. Yesterday, Sal got a present at book club. Seems we have two strapping Dutch boys/young men coming to visit and I will be introducing them to the splitting maul. Of that, you can be sure.

Perhaps, after that, I will be introducing them to the hot water bottle. We’ll see.

But we still have to get the logs up the hill before they arrive and, although I put the winch back together, I am still a bit reluctant to ‘work it’ as that process, too, takes back muscles. A handful of Ibuprofen should get us through, tho. Or two.

It is funny, really. You come out here and enjoy getting in shape, enjoy developing skills and enjoy getting stronger. It is definitely a good thing. At the same time, you realize that you have to get stronger. It is not an option. There is no choice. Get weaker and you have to go home to the city and buy a condo. Eat sushi. Get cable TV.

I don’t wanna do that.

It is a subtle lesson. Of course, we all know that we are dependent on our health but, in modern times, that has a certain general meaning – a minimal standard of functioning one expects from oneself (being able to sit on the couch and talk on the cell phone and make deals and reservations at the sushi bar. Maybe drive a car with GPS and cameras so as to minimize the effort).

Out here, that meaning is different. It is one that doesn’t show up often when you are healthy and going like a train but which stops you in your tracks when one of the wheels comes off. Out here, you can be as nutty as a fruitcake and dysfunctional in oh-so-many ways (not own a cell phone, a Blackberry or have cable or even electricity for that matter. Some don’t have cars!) and you can still get along if you have a strong back.

A good mind doesn’t help much with the wood getting.

And so I have a good mind to get W’fers.

“Yikes! You better get out here. It’s the wolves! They are making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I have shivers running down my spine!!”

Once I am horizontal, it usually takes the power of a billion nuclear explosions (aka the sun rising) to get me up out of bed but Sal looked pretty excited and I could hear the howling through the walls. They seemed very close.

We stood listening to a pack of wolves while in our housecoats standing together at midnight on the southside deck with the stars brightly hung overhead and a brisk SE wind in our face. Romantic in a Transylvanian kind of way, don’t you think?

Fiddich and Meg were hysterical. Running up and down the property, doing their best to join in with the singalong but, without larynxes, it is hard for them to make much of a contribution. So they just ‘struck a pose’ with muzzle pointed to the sky and grated out a Louis Armstrong impersonation of a howl now and then. Meg, of course, just pantomimed it.

It was up to me to answer. “HHHhhhhhhooooooooooooowwwwwwwwooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, HHHhhhhhhhoooooooooooooowowowwowowwoooooooooooooooooooooooo”

Everything fell silent. The wolves shut right-the-hell up and Meg and Fid looked at me like I had just said something completely in bad taste. ‘That was all wrong!’ They were embarrassed for me. Sal just muttered something about old dogs.

Another try (this time with feeling!) “HHHHHHhhhhhhoooowwwwwooooooowoowowooowowoowoooooooooooooooooo”

Meg and Fid were thrust back into the game. Sal looked away from me and back to the sky. And the wolves were set off on a blood-curdling chorus once again. My first faux pas de lupine had been forgiven. (I wonder what I said?)

The wolves were just letting it all hang out and they were less than a quarter of a mile away. There seemed to be a half dozen ‘voices’ but, it has been verified that they have the ability to make a couple sound like a choir so there is no telling just how many there were. But it seemed like a lot.

It was scary.

And, when they are that close, our muted mutts may be heard by the pack. And that would not be good. The wolves would come over (swimming en pac across the water that divides our peninsula from the main part of the island) and send an attractive female over to play which would almost certainly lure Fiddich to his demise. Meg would have caught the next ferry to town so she is less at risk. But Fid would be putty in a female’s paw.

Gee, remind you of anything?

The Call of the Wild. Literally. At our back door. Very cool.