Had a few appointments in town and we had run out of dog food, milk and cheap B flicks so, today, we headed over to ‘end-of’-the-road’ to pick up our car and head in.  It has been 15 days since we were last in town.  

Eor is so-called because it is the end of the logging road on the next island over that, at one end, leads to the first smattering of on-the-gridders (the ones who have TVs and telephones, garbage pick-up, fire protection and police traffic harassment presumably in exchange for the the convenience of a store).  The other very end of the Eor is an incline of about 250 feet of gravel road at a 20 to 25 degree angle.  It is a steep hill that is relatively easy to negotiate if you have 4WD but it becomes a bit more problematic if there is snow.

And there was.

A 4WD neighbour had made an attempt earlier to leave the mid-slope parking area and his truck was at the bottom of the hill.  He didn’t make it.  It didn’t even look like he made much of an attempt at getting up, really.  I assumed that he slid down the hill and realized at once that getting up was not going to happen.  The truck was abandoned with it’s wheels in the beach water (high tide) and he had gone home. 

Since I was currently parked next to where he had been, I decided to pass on my attempt.  No sense in two trucks being there. We went back home in the boat that brung us.

We have been trapped before by weather but who hasn’t?  You can be in Richmond and get ‘snowed in’.  But this was the first time we kinda needed to get out and couldn’t.  This was the first time I felt a bit trapped.  I mean, really…….no milk for my tea, dogs get nothing but kibble, no movies and a missed appointment or two……….hardly anything to complain about.  Still, I felt a bit trapped. 

But it was notable that, in the past 5 years, we have not been restricted completely by our remoteness except this time and maybe one other (can’t remember).  Generally speaking, we can get out or get by without any real inconvenience.  And, even this time, the inconvenience is mostly to the appointments (they have schedules) rather than me.  I mean; I am not complaining.  I am kind of surprised.  Five years on a remote island and inconvenienced so rarely I can’t even remember the second time…..if there was one.

Don’t get me wrong – there have been storms that only fools would go out in and so we didn’t even think about it.  But neither did we have to.  There have been storms that eliminated travel to places we wanted to go but they weren’t pressing – we could go another day. And there have been storms that limited us but not others whose vessels were more up to the challenge – so, in a sense, we were not ‘cut off’.  We could call a neighbour if it was that pressing.

There are obstacles out here that you can’t get past.  To be sure.  But the main one is the logging road on the ‘connector’ island, not so much the sea.  Trees regularly fall across that road in big storms and, when they do, they don’t fall alone.  In big storms it is not uncommon for a dozen or more big trees to block the road.  Even with a chainsaw (some guys always carry one after a storm), there can be too much fibre on the road to make a town trip worthwhile.  When that happens, we let the road crew do it.  And travel a few days later.

Today, we will let the milder temperatures and the rain do the job for us.  Maybe we can go tomorrow.  

Living off the grid has connotations.  For some, it is seen as just a benign lifestyle choice; an appreciation for nature or a respite from the hurly burly.  For others it is perceived as a bit of a moral choice to live more simply or less materially – sort of like being a vegan or ‘going green’.  I am sure there are other ‘points of view’ on it depending on the person.  And, for many, there is the implication that the off-the-gridder has ‘abandoned’ society and gone feral in a bid to survive the coming apocalypse.  Or something like that.  Something desperate, something primal.

All of those are reasons to change as we have done but they miss the most obvious reason: change for the sake of it.

None of those things listed first above were my primary motivation. My primary motivation was boredom.  I like change more than stability.  Change is my muse.

Sally and I had done the cul-de-sac to death.  We had lived on boats, in apartments and houses – even mansions.  We had traveled.  We had pursued a variety of career choices, too. We have, in fact, enjoyed a series of life changes without any of them being imposed on us by family, health or politics.  Those were all life-altering choices and we chose them freely.

For us, it was about interest, learning, curiosity, personal growth and the exercise of freedom.  It was not philosophical in any particular way other than in the sense of learning, meeting manageable challenges and feeling alive.  In a word: change.

If that continues to hold true for us, then we are likely to change again at least once more, maybe two more times given that each ‘lifestyle’ change so far has taken about ten years to cycle through.

But I have a feeling that the need for ‘changing it up’ is not quite as true for us anymore.  It may just be our age.  After a while of living, especially one that we considered was full and satisfying, there is the sense of ‘having done it’.  Been there, done that.

It may be that this is so far and away the best place to live that the big search is over.  We have been looking for something and now we have found it – whatever it was.  Now, maybe, the searching will be for small improvements only; refinements on a theme, as it were.

Or it may be that the world seems to be going to hell in a hand-basket and who needs any part of that!?

I don’t know.  I do know that I am more content than ever before.  I do know that this lifestyle suits me better than most other things, places and activities, especially at this age.  And I do know that it seems like the world is a very hot hand-basket these days.  But I also know that I have felt that satisfaction before and it eventually changes to wanting something different.

If those same old feelings will again revisit us, what could the next thing be?        

Beautiful day!  Cold, bright, sunny.  The sea is calm.  It is the kind of day you say to yourself, “Wow! Today would be a good day to go and do such-and-such!”

And then you bundle up, get your tools and head out to undertake the task-at-hand only to feel your hands go numb and your nose-hairs get needle-hard.  Then your ears fall off.  It is really too cold to do anything and, like the bunny-kins you really are, you quickly retreat to the warmth of the cabin and make yourself a nice hot chocolate. 

Well, I do, anyway.   

I know, I know………..all you easterners and prairie-types think you know cold and -3F is NOT cold, you say.  But it is!  Cold near the water is colder than the dry-ice type cold of the interior.  That’s what everyone says and this time I believe them.  Hell, that interior kind of cold isn’t really cold until it is 25 below.  You want real cold?  Try 25 below in a storm on the coast when the ocean freezes spray on your face!

‘Course, I am just talkin’ big because I don’t even think about going out when it is -5 degrees.  I mean, ‘who am I trying to impress?’

I mention all this because I have been checking in lately with Chris Czajkowski, the author.  Chris Czajkowski of Nuk Tessli goes out in this and doesn’t think twice.  She is the intrepid, gettin’-on, single woman who has carved a lifestyle and reputation out of the wilderness for the past thirty years up and around the Caribou/Chilcotin area.  It gets to 50 below up there!  She used to hike by snowshoe for four days into her cabin alone except for a dog for company and built her cabin by hand and axe.  She is a tough chick – one of those eccentric, bicycle-across-the-Himalaya English-types who do it alone and live on only crackers and cheese.  Like Sal.       

CC was one of the inspirations for the adventure Sal and I are currently on.  Sally and Ian Wilson (two adventurers in the 80’s and 90’s) were two more and the gang at the Mother Earth News forum added to the urge-to-homestead, off-the-grid madness we have embraced with their encouragement and knowledge. 

In other words, we have plenty of people on whom to spread the blame.

It’s January and time to start planning the crops!  The last of our seed catalogs has arrived and we have to order in the seed to till and plant the back 40. 

Feet, that is.

Talk about transplanting the yuppie view of the world, eh?  We have something like 48 square feet of garden all ‘sitting pretty’ in the planters I built and, counting all three seed and garden catalogs that have arrived so far,we have approximately 250 square feet of fancy-coloured printed page!  That’s right…….5 square feet of glossy catalog for every square foot of garden.  I call that the yuppie ratio.  Magazine space vs the real thing.  The YR shows up in Lee valley catalogs, too.  I have almost enough LV catalogs to build an Adirondack deck chair.  

Given our pathetic gardening track record there is no way we can justify taking a tree to make the paper to publish the catalog to make us buy the seeds that grow virtually nothing edible but Marigolds and the squash from Hell.

It ain’t easy being green and a hip consumer but Lee Valley and Versey Seeds are trying to bridge the gap for us all.  And I am having to build another gardening box this year in an effort to justify their work.  To me, this is just an exercise in exercise. 

Sally is hooked, however.  She poured over the latest seed catalog from West Coast seed reading the write-ups on turnips, vintage grape strains, multi-hued tomatoes and heritage apples and pears conveniently ignoring the fact that we are located on solid granite and any  apple trees grown in raised planters produce very little in the way of pie filling.

“Oooh, I think we should plant spinach and kale this year.  What do you think?”  

“Well, we grew kale last year and fed it all to the dogs.  We also grew Marigolds that grew like billy-o and we didn’t eat any – but they were at least very pretty.  And let us not forget the squash from the little shop of horrors that we not only didn’t eat, we were afraid to make angry!  And then there was the half ton of green tomatoes that covered the living room for a week waiting to ripen that, come to think of it, I have not seen hide nor hair of since.”

“Yeah.  We have to pick more carefully this time, I guess. I was just surprised that anything grew at all.  It was so much fun!”

I love her attitude.  But it is not a reality-based view from behind those beautiful eyes.  She sees the garden of Eden.  I see a box not much larger than a coffin………beckoning.  Our visions conflict.  I suspect that we’ll have a ‘mixed salad’ of things that we toil over and yet our diet will change very little.  It is Save-on based if you must know.  We’ll buy organic, of course, and be sure to get our produce from within 100 miles but somehow not very much will come from within the nearest 100 feet.   Of that, I am pretty sure.

Maybe some squash. 

The Marigolds, however, will grace the table almost all year and for that alone, it is all worth it.      

As you might expect, me being all ‘mountain man-ish and all’, we heat with wood.  What you may not know is that we get our wood as it floats by.  None of that lumberjack crap for us.  Delivery to the front door, if you please.

Sadly, nature has not complied with our expectations as much as usual this year.  The log count is down.  The logging industry is virtually shut, mills closed, very few booms being formed and thus, fewer booms coming apart in storms.

But whatever there is in the way of flotsam, it shows up in December and January.  Makes sense actually – all you have to do is think like a log.

A log makes a break from the confines of a boom and, not being nimble of foot, simply goes with the flow or the current in this case.  The flow, however, has a ‘high’ and a ‘low’ tide and a log, lacking sentience, can easily get caught up on a falling tide.  Of course, the tide continues to rise and fall and, tho the log makes sporadic attempts at freedom, it is usually caught and trapped somewhere along the freedom path (i.e life becomes a beach).

Sometimes it is collected by the local bounty hunter – the log salvager – and sometimes it just sits on the highest point of the beach ‘hiding out’, as it were. 

January and December bring the highest tides often supplemented by forceful storms.  If a log is ever to get free again, this is the time for it.  In fact, the new year usually sees a virtual carpet of loose, natural and man-liberated wood on the inner channels and some choice logs are amongst them.  This is our opportunity to hunt and gather our years wood.

Typically, there is enough that we don’t have to go far.  A few hundred yards this way, a few hundred that way and, so long as we are watching carefully, enough choice pieces float through the ‘target area’ and we simply ‘go get ém’.

Gathering those doggies ain’t so hard.   Stick a ‘log dog’ in one end and tow it to your near-the-house spot and tie it up.  That part is quite do-able.  It is the log-wrangling that gets a bit dicey at times.  After awhile you have six or eight thirty footers floating in an untidy raft and it is time to cut them into manageable lengths and haul them up the slope.

Sal’s work is cut out for her. She ‘beaches them’ and then organizes them.  I am not convinced organizing is all that necessary but, when she is done, Martha Stewart would be pleased at the radial display.  It is lovely to be sure. 

We choose to take only the 8 – 10 inchers as a rule.  They are poles, actually, and much easier to handle than some of the salvager-preferred bigger logs.  Still, a 30 foot, 10 incher is a heavy piece of wood and we wrangle ém on the rock-strewn, kelp-covered beach where the footing is poor and a slipping log can easily put you in harms way.  Add the required chainsaw, ropes, block-and-taykle and peevee-use and cutting-to-length is a sometimes nasty chore.

I tell you all this because sometimes people ask, “What the hell do you two do all day out there?” 

Went up to the Q-hut today to add my barely-significant contribution to the renovation we are undertaking.  We are changing the old one-room schoolhouse into a community woodworking shop.  I’ve been somewhat delinquent in my duties these past few weeks what with all the fun and hoopla of Xmas. Too much giddiness to work. 

While we (Hugh, Doug, Bruce and I) were standing around trying to figure out how the new door latch worked we were visited by Tim, a new neighbour.


But first the latch…..  Doug examined it closely but it was too confusing so he gave it to me.  I stared at it for five minutes until I looked in the packaging and found two more parts.  That helped.  It took four of us about 15 minutes more of analysis and we had to run through it a few extra times before Hugh believed the rest of us were right…..and this was just for the door latch! 

Anyway….. 

Tim seemed very nice.  Perhaps bit too clean for our standards in a day-glo red full-survival suit.  “Nice to meet you but you’ll have to stand aside at the photo ops”. I said.  “Excuse me?”  “Sorry.  Nothing personal.  Clothes are too new, tho.  Too shiny.  No dirt.  No rips.  Waddya think this is, a Vanity Fair shoot?”

Everyone chimed in, “Yeah, that thing new this morning?  Right out of the box, eh?”  “Not really an islander yet, are ya?”    

Tim laughed.  It was OK.  Being teased is a sign of acceptance (I am clinging to that otherwise my life is too tragically cruel).  I love that kind of male worker goofiness.   It really is the best part of the job. 

As Bruce was whacking away at something in the corner, I asked over the din, “Sheesh.  What the hell is Bruce doin’?  Doug replied, “No idea.  Not part of any plan for this building.  But don’t disturb him none as he is the only one doing anything!”  Hugh chimed in, “Lunch time yet?” 

Hugh asks about lunch at least three times a day and at least once after lunch has been had.  It is one of those timeless jokes that doesn’t lose a thing in the re-telling.  I guess you have to be there………..

At one point I was standing alone looking into a darkened corner where the floor boards have yet to be put down.  Then I saw it.  Movement!  As I adjusted my myopic, blurred and fading vision, I saw the last of a long tail disappear under the building.  It was black, it was hairy – but not bushy – and it was at least 18 inches long!  Some critter had been watching us and it was no house-cat!  “Hey!  Hey, guys!  There was some kind of animal over there.  Something with a long tail.  Big.  I think.  Hey!”  

“Gotta expect animals in the forest, Dave.  They come with the territory.”   
“Yeah, but……like………….this………huge………….like……………”

“Lunch?”