The island is gorgeous right now! Garden is growing. Birds everywhere. The Hummingbirds are back in droves. Even the Orcas have been around more often. And, of course, we have our Ravens!

OMYGAWD!

They’ve had their offspring, fledglings now. Everyone is in the air. And the instructions delivered to the young are unbelievably ear-shattering. Some teen-aged doofus sits in a tree and his mom and dad sit nearby just a-hollerin’ and squawking as loud as they can until the youngster ‘does as he is told’.

You can call that anthropomorphizing if you like but the sounds, the delivery and the resultant reactions pretty much proves it. Raven parenting! They are pretty funny. And not just a little loud!

The Ravens have trained us as well. Normally we feed them as we see fit. On our own time. On our little square feeding platform. At our discretion. Not so at hatching and fledgling time. When the new family is present and accounted for, Liz and Jack come flying over and just bloody squawk until they are given something for the babies. Then, when the chicks fledge, they bring them over to our house to show the young úns how it is done.

“Just yell at them and stand on that little square. Do it loud now! Louder! That’s it. They’ll come. Bloody slow sometimes but just keep it up. You’ll see. After them, we hit up the neighbours. Come on now!”.

Sometime in the near future the elder Raven delivers the hard news: “OK, now about that little square – that square is mine. NOT yours. You have go get your own little square. So, get off the square. Now! And stay off all the little squares in this immediate neighbourhood. I am not telling you twice!”

Sorta like me and my chair!

And that is the beginning of the end for the family. By late June, it is back to Liz and Jack only. The kids have flown the nest.

And it is quiet again.

But still active. This is the year of the ant! Quiet, yes. But the ants are still thriving and multiplying like, well, ants. We’ve had big ants, medium ants and itty-bitty, teeny-weeny ants (I didn’t even know they came in that size!). We’ve had red ants, black ants and I am pretty sure I even saw a red and black ant, some kind of ‘play-it-both-sides’ colouring.

And they are all over. We have managed to keep them out of the house but that is due more to the good weather than good security. They prefer the outdoors but, in a pinch, our kitchen is a reasonable alternative. For them.

Not for me.

I confess that I have softened my revulsion for bugs over the past few years. Somewhat. They used to make my skin crawl. Especially when they crawled on my skin! But, as I have aged, I have become more tolerant (plus my skin is less sensitive and so I don’t always feel them – which is pretty horrible in itself). I still kill ém, of course. Mans gotta do……..But now I feel a bit of regret – like maybe I should have carried each one outside and ‘set ’em free’ or something incredibly time-consuming, difficult, pointless and likely to result in killing them anyway.

So now I just kill ém with guilt rather than pleasureful revenge for crimes unknown but strongly suspected.

That new-age respect for life does not extend to mosquitoes, of course. We know their crimes. They deserve to die. No doubt about that.

Other than the above-described mayhem, murder, infant abuse, threatening behaviour, house invasion and blood-sucking, things are great out here these days!

We had done our daily chores. Dinner was over. It was about 7:00pm.

“You ready?”

“Let’s get her done!”

The tide was a high one. Now was the time to get the really heavy stuff up the hill but, of course, we still had to load that stuff on to the boat back at the dock. Which we promptly proceeded to do. 10 minutes later, we were in position, in the boat, loaded with a huge winch and three huge batteries.

The boat floated gently along from the dock, through the lagoon and eventually nudged up against the beach directly below the highline and the ‘pull-line’ (that line which rides on the highline and is attached to the old Xmas winch at the top of the hill). The tide level was perfect.

We were in position.

Sally retrieved the old cargo net and we spread it wide across the bow of the boat and then loaded into it two of the 150-pound batteries. Using the attached block and taykle, we lifted them up off the boat and high enough (we thought) to ride up the hill without hitting outcroppings.

It was dusk by the time I climbed the hill and fired up the Xmas winch. But up the load came. Slowly. Carefully. 20 minutes later, we had two batteries up to the top of the hill. 300 pounds of heavy, dead weight and only a little lifting and shifting on our part. Waiting a few days to let the tide lift us into place saved a lot of effort not to mention making the whole exercise safer.

We repeated the process and took out the two other weights, the third battery and the winch but, as it was getting on, we just lifted them to a high part of the beach and made them stable. Sally took the boat back to the dock and then we went home. It was 9:00 pm. We’ll get the other two pieces later today.

It’s a funny thing: I’ve had the batteries for almost a month. The winch came a week or so later. The whole schmozzle sat on the dock all that time awaiting the right tide. It finally came and the chore got done…..at just before 9:00 pm on a Friday night! But the batteries had been ordered 10 weeks before that and the winch had been part of an obsession for at least three months prior.

First there was the long-distance shopping. Then we had to wait for the shipping and the barging. Then we had to wait for the tide. Finally, we had to wait until we were ready with the equipment. But it got done.

“Good job! Efficient. No one got hurt. Rather quick, don’t you think, all things considered? Only about three months!”

“Yeah, really, eh? Go, go go. We gotta take it easy. Slow down some. Those things coulda waited a bit. Next time let’s not rush it.”

“Deal!”

As you know, I am writing a blog to build a body of daily entries none of which, in themselves, is much in the way of writing or of reading interest. It is mostly just an ‘exercise’ for me. And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate those of you willing to follow along. I love it. Thanks.

The hope is that, after a few years, there may be enough stuff to distill into a short book that, with some very liberal rewriting and considerable lying and exaggeration may be of some interest to someone other than me.

The theme of the book I envision is that of people making the leap from their long established urban routine to a new rural learning experience despite being of the ‘awkward age’ (boomers retiring) instead of the younger, more adventuresome generation that usually undertakes this sort of thing. I dunno. Call me crazy. But life changes are interesting, don’t you think?

As you know by your ongoing suffering, the regular entries need extensive work, editing, polishing and improving. I’m hoping Sal will do that.

But I may have to help and so I have been doing some research. Never having written a book before, I have been reading a few lately that claimed to follow not dissimilar themes as the one I am claiming.

Turns out I hate those guys!

I read about a couple last month who escaped Connecticut and their Starbucks habit to ‘rough it’ while building their own place in Mexico. Turns out the hardships they endured were mostly in finding good restaurants, good workers, good mod-cons and entertaining while living in ‘temporary’ accommodation. They built nothing! But they did choose the doorknobs, the curtains and much of the lighter furniture. Ooooh, the pain and hardship were almost intolerable.

A real page turner.

And now I just finished a book by a woman who left Toronto for three months of residence on a nearby island in a rented house. Didn’t have cell service! The challenges of not having handy grocery stores, fresh ground coffee and enduring the presence of eccentric neighbours brought her to tears. Poor dear!

I was more glad than she was when she finally went home. It was a relief!

For the record: making the move from the city is not that big a deal. Yes, there are logistics. Yes, there are discomforts and yes there is the requirement of using muscles not always previously well maintained. But, really?!

Trust me, the experience is well worth it! The rewards are even greater!

Has it come to this that the modern person, grown so incredibly inept by the urban lifestyle that renting a cottage and living in it for three months is challenging enough to warrant writing a book? And having it published!!! Complete with Canada Council grants!!?? Get this: this last woman had a need-for-shopping attack. She needed to shop and there weren’t any stores on the island! She wrote a chapter on it! For the NATIONAL POST!

OHMYGAWD!

Do people really think that when they hire an architect and pay for a contractor and ‘choose’ the finishing details that they have built a house?! They ‘ordered up’ and ‘chose’ a house. They didn‘t build it!

Of course the challenge of building is huge and most people opt to have it done for them. Even out here. It is difficult. But that is not hard work. It is just expensive. I don’t care how bad the experience might be, it is a walk in the park compared to doing it yourself, from scratch, without skills and working with the aforementioned neglected musculature. Like most of the people did it out here.

But even that is do-able. None of this is rocket science.

Mind you, it is also true that if you DIY you will likely have to do it again a few times before getting it right. OR, like most of us, you’ll learn to live with it ‘done wrong’. But is that so bad?

You expecting Better Homes and Gardens to drop in?

And, yes, there is a difference to the lifestyle and yes, you do have to do more for yourself. It can get difficult. There is no one to rely on and even basic services are miles distant. It can be a bit inconvenient. There will even be things that you can’t do. At times.

But, so what? So one is ‘inconvenienced’ a bit or made a smidge-less-than-comfortable at all times. Is that so bad? Isn’t that, actually, kinda good in a ‘makes-ya-hardy’ sorta way?

I’m sorry – this is a rant. I apologize. But I am reading published books by spoiled brats who haven’t done diddly-squat towards learning about the non-urban lifestyle and whose definition of off-the-grid is too far away from a Starbucks. That’s pathetic.

Breathe, Dave…………….breathe……………breathe…….

There are over 200 people out here the vast majority of whom have had it rougher, faced greater challenges, built their own homes, accomplished more, faced greater dangers, did it alone, did it without money, did it without even neighbours nearby sometimes and did it in a glorious confrontation with the natural world and all that that entails. Every single one them has a greater story to tell than I do.

And every single one of them gets books by mail from the library and some of them may even get the ones I just read. Makes me cringe just to think about it.

I wasted my time on those books. My neighbours teach me more every day.

It is not often I get requests. (‘Cept to stop writing and remove people from my mailing list). But I just got one. “How about a bit more on those Woofers?”

So, I’ll write a bit about our latest, Dave and Lindsay but, of course, I am not fooled. The request came from them!

D&L left us a week ago and went to J’s up the coast. There they did the chores, ate the food and generally got to know more of the BC coast in the process. Then they headed to L&R’s place. And more garden work.

But, if there is news about them, it is this: this couple were basically ‘footloose’ and looking for ‘something’ and I mentioned the Hong Kong teaching situation to them. They thought about it for a day or two and decided that they wanted it. The timing was good, if not serendipitous. Recruiting time was running out!

So this is a good thing. They both have degrees, they are both English ‘nuts’ (scrabble, crosswords, excellent vocabularies…….) and they are both ‘into it’. I am sure they will do well.

Mind you, it doesn’t rain but it pours and we also got several other good candidates immediately thereafter. And I mean, immediately! So, I have an abundance of riches (applicants) all of a sudden.

Woofers are an interesting ‘variable’ in the life of rural folks. They come from all over the world. They range in age up to and including sixty-year-olds and there have even been some ‘families’ apply. Typically, tho, they are the 21st Century version of the kids who went to Europe with backpacks in the 60’s and 70’s. They are young people who are just not quite ready to ‘settle down’ and who want to see a bit of the world without the benefit of having a lot of resources available except their labour.

And that is what makes it so interesting. These people are good people in the sense of willing to work for their supper. But they aren’t going to get work permits. So they ‘volunteer’.

Because of their youthful energy, they are basically good at most everything but sometimes very good at one thing or another. Christian worked like a Clydesdale. Aline worked hard, too, but was also a real ‘sweetie’ who spoke with a sensuous French accent. Two young, female English school teachers were both raised on farms and ‘knew stuff’. Leo, from Japan, didn’t know anything and could hardly speak English but put out the attitude and the energy to make up for it. Every one of these W’fers has been good for us despite bringing young, bottomless appetites.

As we’ve gotten older and a bit more experienced at the W’fer game, we realize that the best time for W’fers is in mid to late Spring. It is then that the wood needs getting in and the garden needs work. It is then that the bigger chores are started. We need the muscle and the energy in late April and May.

By the time summer is on full blast, the guests come and less work is accomplished which is the way it should be.

So, if you are thinking of W’fers,“Git your W’fers in early!”

First real day of summer. It was warm verging on hot. Larry and I worked on the front deck and Bert and the gang continued on the back extension. We worked til 2:00 when the big beams were finally in place.

“So, what’s next?”

“Well, that’s one major hurdle out of the way and I can’t see starting a run at another now. We are old geezers. We’re gonna fade in an hour or so. I say, ‘let’s fade early!”

“Good call!” And so we packed up and headed home in the sunshine, happy with a major step accomplished. As we were all leaving, tho, there was a trace of guilt lingering in the air. ‘Maybe we should have put in another hour’ was the unspoken thought……………

When that happens, guys tend to say, “Yeah, well, getting off early is good. Gives me time to get home, fall a few trees and buck ém up. Gotta get some more wood in for the winter!”

“Yeah, me too! Gonna move some of those boulders on my road there. Gotta get the surface ready for some new gravel.”

“Yep. Gonna go home and paint the house, myself. Glad for a little extra time.”

Larry’s the youngest of the bunch but he knows BS when he hears it. He leans close to me and says, “They are all going home for a nap, right? I am!”

“Yep. ‘Course they are. Those guys are getting on. They are pretty beat. A nap will do ém good. Like to have one myself but I gotta get the logs up the hill and then attach those rails before this weekend. But a nap sure does sound good!”

I’m lying, of course. I can see the pillow already.

But I walk the walk. And I talk the talk. And I am glad that both ended by 2:00 today.

Bunkhouse work day. 10:00 sharp. Ish. Don’t forget my lunch!

Sal may have the day off. Hard to say with her. Most of the cleaning is done. This weeks baking is done. It’s a nice day. No logging without the ‘winch guy’. Could be a day off.

Never gonna happen.

Sal doesn’t do ‘days off’. If she has a day off, she hikes up a mountain or paints the house or goes gold panning or something. A ‘day off’ for her is a misconstrued construct that involves work. We’ve talked about it…..

“Maybe you should just get a box o’ bon bons, turn on the tube and read your book while sipping mint julips while your dogs lounge at your feet? Seems to work for most people? Waddya say? Gonna take it easy today?”

“Absolutely. I got a new Vanity Fair and the lounge is outside and it has a reserved-for-Sally sign on it! I am there! Just gonna fix you lunch and do breakfast and the dishes but then lookout cushions!”

“I am gonna defrost the freezer, tho. And do the laundry since it is such a nice day. Plus there is all that paperwork I have to get finished for the group. Plus the newsletter for book club. But that is nothing. I am gonna spend some serious horizontal time today. You can bet on that!”

“Want me to take the dogs?”

“No! Me and the dogs will go for a nice walk. I was going to go up to the old cabin and give it a bit of a clean. Plus they like to chase sticks for a bit. No, I got the dogs.”

“OK. But, ya know I’ll be back by four. How ya gonna ‘take it easy’ if you do all that while I am gone?”

“That!? Sweetie, that and tending to the garden, working the compost and sorting the recyclables plus hanging the laundry is taking it easy! Maybe you can help with dinner?”

“Nah, I’ll be too tired by then. But I’ll pour the wine.”

A man has to know his limits.

As I mentioned before, I am not overly fond of my chainsaw. I consider it a necessary evil that will eventually do me harm. OK, more harm! Chainsaws are accidents running to make it happen.

As I also mentioned, Sal and I have been ‘into’ gathering logs these days. Got another two yesterday. Firs. “Hard firs are good to find” (Mae West during her logging camp era). And it is there that today’s story begins…

Sal and I are on a remote beach up the coast doing the log-salvaging thing. We are ‘peaveying’ logs and wrangling them to the waters edge where we will hook them up to the boat for eventually towing home. Larger logs are easier to wrangle if cut by chainsaw into thirds or so. And that was what I was doing when a small aluminum boat with two of our neighbours comes in to see what ‘Dave and Sal are up to’.

We chat. Crack a few jokes. And then I say, “Well, gotta get some of this cut up………” and head off to do some cutting, firing up the ol’ killing machine at the same time as I skip golightly over the slippery and rocky terrain of a wild, rocky coastline.

‘T’ is a first aid attendant to the really, truly remote logging, mining and other Northern work site locations. She just came back that day from a few weeks in the Yukon. “Gonna get your safety chaps on, eh?”

I was in shorts and a t-shirt.

“Unh, no. Not gonna. Don’t have any. Don’t want any. Safety equipment is too dangerous. Every time I wear some, I get hurt. Too encumbering.” She and ‘D’, her husband, who knows more about trees and wood cutting than MacMillan Bloedel, nod sagely as if to say, “Well, we know how that guy is going to die!”

I cut into the wood. My chainsaw works harder than it should. The chips are not flying. I get through the log but it is a painful exhibition especially considering the audience. “Sounds like that saw could use a bit o’sharpening, eh?”, says ‘D’.

“No!” I say a bit too emphatically. “I sharpened it. But I may have left the rakers too high since I don’t really know how high they should be.”

“Well, bring it on over to the boat. Let me have a look. Soon sort that out!”

“No!” I say with panic and desperation in my voice, “I’ll do it.”

Then I realize how stupid that sounds so I explain myself, “I can’t bring my chainsaw over to you, man. Too embarrassing. A man’s gotta do his own chainsaw, ya know? Can’t go exposing oneself like that. Too humiliating. Like flipping your penis on a table for comparison purposes, ya know?”

‘T’ laughs and says with a grin. “Well, come on over and flip your penis out for comparison purposes then!”

That is not an option at the best of times (of which there are precious few in life and most of them are in Asia). ‘D’ is 6 feet 8 inches tall if he is a foot. This is not the best of times. There will be no flippin’ dicks around here, I tell her. “And I am not showing my chainsaw either. Same thing!”

She laughs again but ‘D’ knows. He says, “C’mon, T. A man has to do his own chainsaw. I was wrong to offer. We better leave him in peace.”

Mercifully, they leave me to butcher myself with a dull chainsaw in ‘piece’. In the circumstances, it was the decent thing to do.

Logging ops interrupted for the day. It’s Book Club! All the women down tools, up aprons and grab bottles of wine for the latest gathering of rural bibliophiles. Up to Maurelle Island this time, by way of Surge Narrows, various docks and pick-up points – all in small boats. The flotilla is accumulating as I write and soon a babbling gaggle of 15+ will be hiking up the hosts trail for a good time in the afternoon sun.

‘Course the book will be some kind of bleak misery depicting the slow death of a crippled child born in Calcutta during the First World war and having to live in a culvert all their life. Or, perhaps, a 400 page exposé on the death of the Whistler sled dogs as experienced by Elsi, the only dog to not die (she just knew something was amiss and hid under the porch). Author: Margaret Atwood, of course. These gals thrive on that stuff!

“Ooh, I heard of this great book! Blind Inuit children stricken with leprosy are sexually abused by the Post office but they struggle to lead an ordinary life by bonding with the seals and whales like their ancestors!”

“I heard of this other great book where some woman lived thirty years disguised as a man working in a steel mill in Philadelphia as their union leader. She had two children she had to raise in secret so that no one knew while still practicing Tibetan Buddhism and teaching Yoga.”

In an odd sort of way, these books share similar themes: Men are stupid, bad, really bad, evil, violent, addicted, absent or gay. Sometimes all of the above. If only the latter (gay), they become the heroine’s best friend even though they die of AIDs half way through the book. If the men fall into any of the other categories, they go to prison, sit in a state of addled stupor, die or leave.

Women, of course, are the victims of outrageous misfortune, evil men and Residential Schools. But they are essentially unvanquishable, outliving the pedophiles, rapists, supervisors, landlords and boyfriends that made their lives miserable. Then they write a book. I am pretty sure we spell them, W-O-M-A-N.

Slight exception: it seems father’s can be all of the above and still be loved at the end. Stipulation: they can be loved only at the end and only if the end is mercifully short (this exception is primarily for literary purposes) – it is a common enough theme that I am encouraged about my own future family relations with Sally improving with age.)

The guys out here will soon have ‘Woodworking Shop’. We’ll probably gather on book club Sundays, hopefully with some lunch prepared by our wives and stand around looking at our feet and mumbling about ‘building boats someday. Maybe’. There might be as many as three of us. A crowd. Bert might succumb to the social pressure and start talking politics. If so, then, and if it is not raining, we’ll go home early and wonder what the hell all that was about?

It’s a great life, isn’t it?

That description (last post) requires a bit of elaboration. Cars don’t shrink. But space within them can. Especially if you fill the space up yourself. Continuously.

So, that might be a partial answer right there; as I continue to personally expand (like the universe), I occupy more space. Ergo, when I enter a fixed space, the fixed space has less space available for other things. Logical. I am part of the problem. Quel suprise!

But it is not just me. Sal, of course, is not expanding like the Milky Way that is me but she is remaining her original (17 year old) size. So she is not the problem. But she is a taker-of-space, consistent as she might be. There are the dogs, of course. They average another ‘Sal’ in weight and volume but another Sal and Dave in space requirements (although we have, at times, encroached on their space to a point of absurdity; Megan more than once riding on Sal’s lap!).

But the real culprit is our lack of a garage. That means that the car carries tools, ropes, blankets, water containers, electronics of various types, maps, books, telephone books, flashlights, spare changes of clothing including shoes and sometimes, a spare battery. And a spare tire.

I carry some spare oil in the engine compartment along with some antifreeze and windshield cleaner. There is the ‘jack’. We usually have ‘jumper cables’. There is the tow-hitch that lives ‘inside’ the car so as not to be stolen. And we have the dog toys, of course, jammed into the front-seat back pockets along with a towel, the windscreen wiper, Armor All and ‘wipes’.

And that is the car when it is ’empty’.

When we leave the house to go somewhere in the storage-shed-on-wheels-we-now-call-the-car, we fill it up some more, naturally. Firstly, with the aforementioned life-forms some of whom are also sentient. Then their ‘personal bags’, purses, phones, walkie-talkies and VHFs, computers, traveling bag, dog parephenalia, lunch, thermos, water bottles and, if traveling in the winter, more clothes, some extra tools and occasionally the chainsaw (for fallen trees). Whew!

If we are going for more than the day, we also bring luggage, gifts, wine, food and dog food at the very least.

And then we bring in the empty totes and coolers for the shopping that will take place on the trip. They are space occupiers empty or full (so we fill them going out and coming back. Different stuff, tho). And we may have the garbage, the recyclables and the other ‘take-backs’ (items that need to be returned to stores, friends, movie stores, libraries and various waste management bins).

NOW we are ready to shop!

And people don’t think we need an SUV! Truth: we need a 5 ton step van with four wheel drive and air conditioning, freezers, roof racks and a diesel engine. A footman or swamper would be a nice addition.

Plus a winch!

I can’t believe how much I rely on venting my spleen on the blog. This blog. It’s like a respite for me, for sure, but also a habitual one. Like a coffee break. It’s a mental thing (in both senses of the word). And I seem to need it.

For the last few days I have been ‘off’ the blog except when I went to use Sal’s access. I kept thinking, “I’ll just re-load this, delete that, upgrade such and such and scan for other things. Should work.”. All to no avail. Hours of frustration. And it felt like I was letting people down.

It’s silly, of course. I am not disappointing anyone. I know that. A blog is just a blog. But a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh and well, who knows what kind of movie this may turn into, eh? Casablanca 2? Two Flew Into the Cuckoo’s Nest? Diary of a Mad Handyman? Oceans Two?

Anyway, I am back. Reloaded an old version of Firefox and things fell back into place.

Today was a town day. Shopped and schlepped a few hundred pounds up and down slippery slopes, packed it all into the ever-shrinking Pathfinder and raced for the ferry at the end of the day as if we had an appointment or something. Inventing stress.

Everything is pretty do-able, really. It is that last 150 feet of stairs, barnacles, seaweed and gravity that is the hard part (I am sooooooooooo far behind on my lower funicular and everything will be fine once that is in).

Yesterday we got logs. Yep. That’d be more logs to those of you who have been keeping up. We found two big ol’ firs along the beach and we peaveyed them into the water after I had cut them into manageable lengths. We then slowly towed the seven pieces back to the lagoon. Took an hour of towing to go one long mile (with the current is a short mile. We were running against it). We’ll easily finish up the wood rows with that and have a couple of bits left over. Our shed runneth over. A full woodshed is truly like ‘money in the bank’.

There’s more. But it’ll wait. Good to be back.