…and now I am back.

Went to Vancouver to help out a friend. Stayed a week.  And I got a little caught up in the ‘business’ of it all and could feel the lure of the place again.  Money was offered.  Jobs were offered. Friends gave greetings. Challenges presented up.  I actually felt the thrill of it again.  Whoa, Nellie!

By the time I pulled my head out of the thick of it at the end of the week, I was neck deep in negotiation, strategizing, planning, math, execution, business models…..and I couldn’t stop, actually.  Thinking.  Thinking.  Thinking.  Ooooooohhhhhhh….it was goooooood.

It was fun, actually.  I enjoyed it.

But I was also exhausted.  And, like many town take-aways, I got a head-cold and that was plugging up my brain.  I was completely ‘done’ by the end of the day.  After a week, I realized that I could not keep this kind of pace going.  Nor did I want to.  It was fun while it lasted.  But it was over.  “Thanks for the offers but the answer is no.  I would start falling asleep in meetings by week three and you’d regret making the offer.  By week five, I would die from a jammer and, in so doing, I would regret taking the offer.  I see only disappointment here for all of us. Only Sal can see an upside….buying more shoes and maybe taking that mourning-widow cruise she has been planning a little sooner rather than later. ” 

So, I am back after having done my best to mess things up for as many people as I could.

It is good to be home.

His name is Howard.  He’s the smartest man the world.  I have known him for pushing 35 years and usually, when we get together, I just sit in awe and listen.  Occasionally, I chime in only to regret it a minute later while he recites the law, the Magna Carta or the Canadian Constitution as if it were as common as when we used to quote Chandler Bing on Friends.

But smart has never really been defined by me as knowing details, facts, history, technology or anything academic.  Not really.  To me, most top academics were so universally inept at so many things, it was simply not possible to attribute any real intelligence to them regardless of their grasp of psychiatry, macro economics, physics or even history.  If you can’t work a doorknob or drive a car properly, you simply can’t possibly be all that smart.

Howard doesn’t drive.  No one will let him.  He’s THAT bad a driver, it seems.  But he STILL registers as the smartest man I ever met!  So that gives you some idea of how smart he is.  I judge everyone else in the world by how well they drive.  He’s exempt from that.  The guy is a guru.  The quintessential, non-handy, non-driving professor who can tell you more about anything than you thought possible.  Any topic!

And he is smart in a practical way when he wants to be.  In anything.  If he needs money, he just goes and ‘makes’ a million or two so that he can go back to doing what he loves.  If he wants to impact the world in some way, he just does it.   And he writes.  He saves refugees these days and then he writes some more.  Sometimes he will clean. Seems he is allowed to clean house now and then.  Other than that mini-hobby, he is pretty much a thinker-guy, a writer-guy.

I once hosted a piece from him on my blog.  You may recall….?

I also mentioned to him that I had written to an ex-US president some years back but got no response. “You missed nothing. Stupidest man I ever met – given his position.  I was there once with him for four days.  Mind numbing!”

“I spoke with him/her/them and………….”  It is a common phrase to start a conversation with for Howard.  Congress, the senate, the Knesset, the PM, the president, corporate heads…….it’s just boggling.  I stopped asking him about various famous people and places because, after awhile, I was too stunned to hear the answer.

Is he really the smartest man in the world?  He is definitely the smartest in my world.  By a HUGE margin.  So huge, it is scary.  But the thing that makes us friends is that he is a also a good guy.  Always does the right thing.  This is a guy who has moral and ethical and goodness down pat.  He’s a rock.  If you ever get in that space where you think the world is going to hell in a handbasket, you should be so lucky as to have a ‘Howard’ to talk to.

He smiles and laughs as he tells you stuff you didn’t know you didn’t know.  You come away from that not knowing MORE stuff so much as knowing that whatever you are feeling or thinking, whatever mood or fear you have, whatever worry or concern is troubling you, it is based on totally incomplete information.  You are worrying based on 5% knowledge.  Howard knows 80% of that topic (any topic) and he is still smiling.

May as well not worry.

One of the blogs I read is another off the grid site.  Off grid Islander.  I read several OTG blogs actually.  I find them all interesting.  But, like mine, they do not strictly adhere to just off the grid topics.  OTG Islander kinda wanders around their remote community (another island – don’t know which one) and talks about personal health issues and visitors and shopping and other somewhat prosaic topics but the author has a good style, each blog is short and she addresses issues I can relate to. It feels like neighbourliness if not friendship.

But now she thinks she is boring so she is going to quit.  “I have been writing about our adjustments getting off the grid for four years and I have covered much of what I had to say so…….goodbye.”

That is embarrassing for me.  I have been writing my blog for over six years.  I am guessing maybe as long as 8.  I know that I have become more boring as time went on but my writing has also improved somewhat and so there was some compensation in that.  I hope. I am getting increasingly more dull but I convey it better.  I think.  I was not YET going to say, ‘goodbye’.

Whatever…

I mention all this because writing, for me, was just something I wanted to be able to do better. And, while Attwood and Angelou do not have to check over their shoulders, I have become somewhat better and so I, too, can also NOW quit. Or, at least I can think about it.

What exactly is the point anymore?  (feel free to chime in….)

Well, part of the point is just what I felt when the other OTG author quit.  It is not so much the news she was imparting that attracted me to her blog, it was the niche ‘community’ we all belonged to.  And I am assuming I have a small (but more deviant) community, too.  I doubt that anyone reads me from which to learn anything; they read me to ‘stay’ in touch, to remain friends, to be part of something ever-so-slightly larger.

If I quit, their knowledge of OTG life will not likely vary one whit.  There are tons of books and blogs out there.  If it’s all about OTG for them, they can keep on going on better paved paths than the one I am working on.  But their connection to this blog will be a small loss of some kind.  Something personal, I should think.  Just as her quitting was a small personal loss for me.

Another reason for continuing is that OTG’ers are NOT as isolated as they were even just a few decades before.  With modern communications, internet and such, we can still have a foot in the larger community (the grid) and comment on it from a near but unique perspective. Our view of things may be deemed somewhat crazy to a condo dweller in the west end but it comes from a different place and we see things a different way.  Crazy or not, it’s different.

I think she is also right to assume that gardens and eagles and seals and storms are no longer really good fodder for too many more blogs.  Especially for long time readers.  But, if there is something really interesting happening out here in the natural world, most people would still like to know about it.  And, if we build something or fall down another flight of stairs or set ourselves on fire, most readers feel enough of a vested interest that it at least makes for interesting reading.  It may be dull but it is OUR dull.

So, I get it.  I know what she is feeling.  I resist that feeling as much as I can.  But I get it.  I get close to ‘ending it all’ now and then, too.  But I am still here.  And I think I know the main reason why…………

Knowing that I have readers allows me to write a book.  A second one, in fact. Having readers allowed me to write the first one.  And maybe there will be a third.  Like Dumbo had a feather, I have a clutch of readers I can cling to for confidence. It’s pathetic, I guess, but really, blog readers are a kind of test market.  If you can write something and someone will read it, then that someone might read the next thing, too.

And the next thing is another book.

As most of you know, book 2 is in the works.  It is not really all that new or great.  I am shooting for mediocre again.  And it’s not because I have underdeveloped aspirations.  I would like fame and riches and groupies, I am sure.  For a week, anyway.  Maybe two. Depends on the groupies, really.   But book 2 is really just the fill-in that we dropped out of book one.  Book-two is literary Spackle.  Gap-filler.  Bondo.

The critics bemoaned the fact that there was nothing really in book one that told them what to do – just what NOT to do!  Book one was basically just a litany of foolish acts.  Book two will not be a list of how ‘to do it right’ type instructions either (because we don’t know how to do stuff right) but it will fill in some of the basic questions raised by the critics. Once that is done, we can move on to yet another book, the third one.

The third one will be different.

Maybe not even OTG at all…?

You’d think an invitation had been sent!  https://goo.gl/photos/uCzcUhstaEJit6Xd7

We have wildlife all winter but, for the most part, things are pretty quiet around here before Daylight Savings/Spring Break/Easter time.  Things go south, some things hibernate…whatever….I don’t really know.  I just know that, on any given day in December/January/February there is scant evidence of life out here save for some little birds and the odd fellow passing-through who is usually all alone and looking it.

But March 17th was like a party!  A large school of dolphins, sea lions (2), eagles fishing and screeing, wolves howling at night, the ravens making a family of themselves again and, of course, gulls, seals and flocks of various small birds.  It was like a parade.

They were a bit early.  The first official day of Spring is March 20 but I am not quibbling. Early is better than late.  It was good to see.

Every year we become more attuned to the seasons but, to be fair, Spring is the hardest to nail down for me.  It seems every October, there is a single day that is different enough to notice the change in the weather, “There’s a nip of Fall in the air, today!”  The start of Winter and summer are difficult to nail down, too, but I don’t really care that much.  By the time Spring has played out, the weather is warm and by the time Fall is done, it is cold and dark.  I am basically a two-season kinda guy.  But I do wait for Spring.

And not only do I wait for it, it seems I get some kind of ‘new energy’ when it happens.  Sal and I have been rebuilding the back deck and stairs for the last few days and, amazed at ourselves, we’ll finished up within the four days we had planned.  “Geez, we figured four days and that usually means six or seven.  But we’ll finish tomorrow.  That’s great. Sunshine sure helps.”

“Well, you weren’t napping, either!.  That really helps!”

I have largely avoided the Donald so far.  Not really worth my time, I figured.  But, I was wrong about that.  He is a force.  No question.  He is winning the hearts and empty heads of the angry, ignorant and bigoted.  And there are a lot of them, it seems.  The dark side is strong in him, Luke.

But rather than just look at the surface rot and stench, I thought it behooved me to consider what else he might be saying and what else he might be doing and how that might actually affect me.

But, before I do that, I just want to share one minor factoid as published by Forbes or Bloomberg. ‘Trump inherited $200 million dollars.  He is now worth $5 billion.  Had he invested his $200 million in an average mutual fund over the same period, he would be worth more.’  The point being: Trump is no genius nor is he a good businessman.

But what else is he?  Any good stuff?

Well, for starters, he is a symbol of anti-establishment.  It’s very weird that a rich guy living in New York can do that, but he has.  He has positioned and marketed himself as a rebel of sorts.  It may speak more to the dysfunctional American dream and their culture’s unshakable faith in the almighty dollar that a rich guy can still be seen as anti-establishment.  I really don’t know. I never believed in the dream, myself.  But I do know that ,many, many people who can barely feed their kids, pay their rent and run their car after working 60 hours a week still believe in the Horatio Alger fictitious myths regarding rags-to-riches stories.  They think it can happen to them.

It can’t.

And, ironically, these are often the same people who so often do not now believe in God. “Why that’s just a silly myth, a superstition!”  To my mind, you are much more likely to bump into a miracle a week (I do) than you are to ever get rich (unless you happen to own a house in Vancouver or win the lottery).

“So, Dave, what’s your point?”

Trump is a symbol (an erroneous one) of a desire for revolution.  His prominence, his style, his angry message is a sign of massive discontent.  He is the wrong person for such a revolution in the same way Rob Ford or Caitlin Jenner was or is, but he/they are ‘celebrity rebels’ nevertheless.

And, as misdirected as it is, it is actually – in a sick kinda way – a healthy sign.  Like Howard Beale in the movie ‘Network’, “I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore!” , that speech was delivered because, “Things are bad.  Everyone knows things are bad….”  .  Beale was insane at the time but the message rang true.  That same message is being pitched by Trump (also close to insane) and bought by the hoi polloi because ‘the establishment is bad for your health’ has a loud ring of truth.  “Things are so bad we need to build a wall!”

Another reason is that Trump is not politically correct.  Most people hate political correctness.  They love to poke fun at short people, coloured people, poor people, hill-billies…….anyone different than they are.  If you don’t believe that, listen to any popular comedian doing stand-up these days.  It is all essentially politically UNcorrect rants followed by swear words.  It may not be right.  It may even be bad.  But it seems to be human.  And stifling humanity will only grow hair on your palms and give you pimples.

Trump is just such a pimple.

A third reason is a scary one because it is a reason that might carry the day for him.  He is preaching hope.  It is an ethereal hope, a blind hope, a hope without details or plans or even so much as basic principles but it is hope, nevertheless. It is just an evangelical-style, come-to-Jesus, white-people-type hope that faith-in-Trump will somehow deliver the promised land.

He won’t.

Real plans, real details, real promises can be judged and analyzed.  No one – especially Trump – wants that right now.  They just want hope that their team will win the championship this year. Trump is the owner, manager and quarterback of team White Trash and they haven’t won in a long, long time.

It’s pathetic.

Kinda.

We are re-building our back stairs and deck.  Some parts were getting punky, some parts were actually rotting.  It has been ten years.  And they are in the shade – they do not get dried out properly sometimes.  It was time.

No biggy.  We can do this.  And we are almost half way done, actually.  What we could have done in two days before will take us four now but that just means ‘double the pleasure, double the fun’.  Fun with Sally changes meaning as you age. Now it means much more carpentry than it ever did.

But it is our own fault.  We didn’t know what we were doing the first time….the carpentry, I mean.  We know more now but likely not enough to have the assembly stand for more than another decade. There is always another lesson to be learned and we could study and investigate wood and work forever. Better to just get on with it and just plan on doing it again in ten years.  Hopefully it will last a bit longer this time.

But – so that you know – the chore started by first finding someone to buy milled lumber from. That is not easy in the winter.  Most people hibernate. I do, too.  But looking for lumber did not really disturb my winter somnolence.  I did it slowly.

I found some.  But actually getting the lumber did disturb my semi-hibernation.

C is a young man ten or so miles away and he had a mill that needs paying off.  So, he was at the ready.  He delivered four or so loads by way of his small (same as mine) boat. Some deliveries were delayed by winter storms.  We then reloaded it into Sal’s boat and floated the loads under the highline.  We hauled the loads up the hill and stacked them. Then we took the 12 and 16 foot 2×6’s along our irregular path to the worksite near the back of the house.

Funny how muscles seem to wake up from semi-hibernation at a much slower rate than do plans and concepts, don’t you think?

The two decks and stairs are supported by 6 inch logs.  One of them was also rotten. One other was suspect.  So that meant cutting and carrying two logs and adjusting the plan on the fly to accept different posts.  But that was just part of the fun.  Whoopee.

“Geez, Dave!  Why are you only getting ten years from your work?  I thought you built to the 30 year rule!”

Yeah.  Good point.  The main reason was that the back deck was one of our first.  We didn’t know enough to separate the planks by a generous 1/2 inch.  In the rainy season the planks swell up and form a tight surface.  That surface collects the rain and that promotes rot.  We promoted rot right up to the rank of major.  Those deck planks that we did later in other areas (when we knew better) are still good (a couple needed replacement but 90% are fine).  A simple error like plank spacing came back to haunt us.

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Also, we don’t use treated lumber.  Partly that is because local fir and cedar is almost as long lasting but mostly because we knew that we would have to re-do what we did the first time. We worked fast ten years ago.  We worked without knowing what we were doing. The only thing we DID know was that we would have to re-do it.

And, so we are.

And we are seriously considering hosting Woofer’s again…………..

*Epilogue below.

A very capable woman friend of ours is single, in her sixties and lives even more remote than we do.  Breaking a leg in three places would be much more than an inconvenience for most people.  Not her.

Down at the beach a kilometer from her home, she was dragging a dinghy up past the high water mark the other day.  When her left foot accidentally wedged in a rocky crevice, she fell back with the boat and heard her leg snap three times.  She knew instantly that it was broken.

Her island is small, miles from ours.  She is the only full-time resident.  In the summer it is more populated.  In winter it is usually just her.  She has homesteaded there for the last thirty plus years. She keeps it all going by herself.  Her home is neat, clean, functional and welcoming. She is an excellent cook.  Her exceptionally large garden is lush, diversified and bountiful.  So is her orchard.  She can and has done everything that needs to be done to live off the grid and she does it well.  J is capable, competent and is the archetype of this lifestyle; tough, independent and, not just occasionally, a bit single-minded and stubborn.

You’d think a broken leg would challenge anyone and one broken miles from any help would pose a major threat.

And it did.  But not so much for her.  First she just lay on the beach for a few minutes and contemplated her situation. Which was, by any definition, dire.  So, she concluded that she had to act and she had to act alone.

And so she did.

First she bum-hopped, dragging the broken leg, the fifty or sixty feet up the beach to her ATV.  Then, standing on her one good leg, managed to mount the vehicle and ride it up the steep, bumpy goat track of a road to her house.  Dismounting back to her derriere, she bum-hopped again up the stairs and in to the house where she managed to get seated in a rolling chair.

My guess is that she took a few minutes more to gather herself together…..

Then she made an elaborate aluminum splint with padding and managed to set her leg in proper support.  She made some calls to arrange some help but managed to get herself back to the beach and into her boat.  She cleaned up and did the dishes before departing.

She then picked up a friend a mile away and they boated ten miles to get car keys from another friend.  Then the two of them went to the community dock where the vehicle was parked.  Her friend helped her into the car.  ON THE DRIVER’S SIDE!

He took the boat back.  She drove herself to the hospital.  “My left leg was broken. My right leg was fine.  And the car was an automatic.  I could drive!”

It was splinted again at the hospital but, as she said, they basically just replaced what she had done and she spent the night in town with friends.  The next day her son took her to another hospital further south and she underwent surgery with pins and screws embedded in the breaks. Then she went back to the northern town and stayed for a few hours with the same friends to rest.

And then she decided that she needed some supplies so she went shopping.

The store provided her with an electric scooter.

With her supply of groceries she drove back down the incredibly bumpy (after a bad winter) logging road to the community dock and her friend and a couple of neighbours helped her into her boat.  She got home that evening and cooked dinner for her friend.

Is OTG always that hard?  No.  No.  And no!  If it was, I wouldn’t be here.  J has been here decades.  She has faced this kind of challenge several if not many times.  For J, it is just a damn nuisance.

So, do ya think you are tough?  Really?

Epilogue: two days later a public hearing was being held regarding a zoning issue J cares about.  She hauled herself down to the beach (ATV, crutches), got in the boat and attended the meeting (no idea how she got up the steep hill to the community centre).  She presented from a chair with her crutches and cast propped beside her.  Some of the locals helped her to and fro. But not THAT much.  Please be reminded the broken leg is fresh and NOT yet set.

So, do ya think you are THAT tough? 

ACT one, scene one:  two friends but distant neighbours meet at the community centre one day.  I am one of them. The other approaches me, “Jeez, I remember reading in your book about how much lifting and carrying was required out here.  At the time, I just read over that quickly.  Now that we have come out here, too, I know how hard it is.  Oh my God!  Next time write more about that!”

“Yeah.  I know what you mean.  Schlepping is a huge part of it.  But Sally edited out my whinging and complaining because she thought it off-putting for the reader.  I would have dedicated a chapter to Tylenol threes alone.  Couple of paragraphs on the merits of opiates.  Could have done a trilogy on sleep.  It is hard to pass on that kind of painful experience in a meaningful and entertaining way.  I eventually just came to describe it as: ‘like dragging a dead hippo up a flight of stairs’.”

“What I don’t understand, though, is how you learned how to actually do stuff?”

“Well, how are you learning about stuff now that you are out here?”

“ I ask the locals.”

“You don’t ask me very often.  And I am now a local.”

“Yeah, but one of the first things I learned from you was that you don’t know anything.”

“Good point!  You are learning quickly, grasshopper.”

Act one, scene two:  Attempting to learn stuff.

I walked into the local gas-products shop years ago.  “Hi!  I am building off the grid and want to buy all the stuff I need to install propane gas to my stove, my fridge, a small freezer and a demand hot water heater.  If I draw that system out on paper, can you tell me what I need?  I wouldn’t mind buying a small do-it-yourself gas-fitter’s manual either, if you have one?”

“Unh, I can sell you some bits and pieces but it is against the law for anyone but a provincially licensed gas-fitter to install a system like you are describing.  You are going to have to hire someone.”

“Well, I could do that if I could find someone who wants to travel into the wilderness for however long it will take and scramble up and down mossy slopes in the rain while doing it.”

“That’s gonna be expensive.”

“The fitter’s rates are not the half of it.  I will have to transport them and feed them and likely give them a place to stay overnight.   That will be in a tent unless they want to sleep in the boat shed with my wife and me.  She snores.  Then there are the bears.”

“Bears!?”

“Yeah.  Place is crawling with them.  But not to worry.  I have an extra gun for him or her to carry.  Just a precaution.  It would help if they are gun savvy, tho.  And not afraid to kill ’em if they have to.”

“Let me get Sam.  He’s a gas-fitter.  Sam’s almost retired so it won’t be him.  But he may know someone.”

Sam and I spoke.  He laughed out loud when I repeated the bear and gun story.

“Ha!  That won’t be me even though I don’t believe the bear story for a second.  But I know the mossy slope thing is true.  I’ve been out there.  And no, no one is going to go and do it for you.  You will have to do it yourself and break the law but, just so you know, the law was written so some doofus doesn’t blow his neighbourhood up.  You don’t have a neighbourhood to blow up.  So I’ll sell you the parts.  I’ll even tell you how to do it.  Do what I say and then test it.  And, if you blow yourself to smithereens, don’t come whining to me.”

“Smithereens don’t whine.”

“Good.  We understand each other.”

And so it was I got a half hour lesson on flaring tools and regulators and liquid soap testing and all that.  That was twelve years ago and so far, no smithereens have resulted.  If I was to add anything to Sam’s instructions, it would be to put all your gas lines under the house in a well ventilated place where any leaks will blow away and none can collect.  NO enclosed spaces.  Where the lines enter the house, a gas detector is a good idea, too.

Nothin’ like learnin’ on the fly, eh?