“What’s on our agenda today?” I asked Sal

“I dunno.  Gotta do the laundry.  We need to load in some wood.  We can try to figure out how to use that new hard drive if you want?”

“Not good enough.  I have readers!”

“Hmmmm, right.  And I don’t trust you not to just make something up.  You whacko.  You are kind of sick…you know that?  Hmmm……I suppose we could bring up some logs from the beach.  Maybe get some oysters…….?”

“Nah.  Tide’s too high.  We’d just get wet.  And I have done a few ‘wet blogs’ already.  Need something new.  I kinda like the idea of makin’ something up, tho.  Sump’n kinda sick sounds cool.  I’ll do sex.  Use really gross key words.  That should get good ratings.  Good suggestion.”

“Stop that!  Stop that right now!  Don’t even think of it.  Don’t make me mad, now.  I swear that, if you do, I’ll go into the post and I’ll delete it.  I swear.  Try to be good for once!”

“Oh, alright.  But I suppose, then, I could do a post on your dictatorial ways…?  You know?  The editor from hell?”

“Yeah, right.  Like anyone would believe that!  Why don’t you just make yourself useful and take out the washing?  Get it started while you are out there.  And what about those dishes….better get on ’em.”

“You sure no one would believe me?”

“They never have.”

“Right.  That’s true.  Man, oh man.  ‘My kingdom for a pretty face!‘

“You don’t have a kingdom!  You got a cabin-on-a-rock!  And it’s a 50/50 one at that, you doofus!  And my half has the kitchen!  So watch it!  Now enough with the stalling.  Go’ on, now!”

“Right.  I’ll get on the chores just as soon as I finish making your tea, mem’ sahib.”

“Just a little milk…………..thanks.”

We went out.  Like I said.  It was blowing again.  Like we expected.  But it all went well.  We didn’t even take on as much water.  Feet remained dry.  And we caught some prawns.  Five pounds.  It was good.

Five pounds is about 250 prawns.  Success is usually anticlimactic.  Not this time.  We were pretty pleased with ourselves.  You know – having braved the seas and all?

If you look at the picture at the top of the blog you’ll see our house on the ‘rock’.  Imagine being just off that rock to your right by about 100 to 200 feet.  That was where we were.  Seems safe enough from that view, don’t you think?  It was.  The second time.   First time?  Not so much.

When we got back, after having cleaned up and put everything away, Fid started barking.  A lot.  That usually means one of any number of things.  I have no idea.  Dog-talk.  It all sounds the same to me.  Sal figures she is fluent, tho.  She began asking him what was on his mind.  It is a wonderful sight – watching them communicate.  Both eager to please.  Both looking blank.  Sally claiming comprehension.

NOT having a clue.

As Fid barked and looked out to sea, however, we saw what the commotion was all about.  A pod of four Orcas were going by.  A big young bull, two females and a baby.  Pretty neat.  The season has started early.

Fid thinks part of his job is to spot Orcas. He is right.  The other part is to chase balls and sticks and then eat whatever is put in front of him.  He’s good at it.  And it keeps him busy enough.  Meg is a watcher.  Fid is a doer.  Meg is his audience.  Sally watches both of them do their thing.  She thinks both of them are geniuses.  I think they all are.  They keep each other totally entertained.  Bloody brilliant, actually.  When you think about it.

I try not to.

Later that evening I went out to tend to the genset.  Heard the wolves.  Faintly.  They were up at the North end.  Sounded good.

Waves, whales, wives and wolves with a few pounds of prawns as appetizers.

Wonderful.

I am a smidge embarrassed.  And I am not alone.

If you read the last few posts you might recall reading about the woman on the boat in the snowstorm?  That post was about being extra vigilant when on the water and even more so in the winter.  You may also recall the last post when I stated that Sal and I are even more safety conscious right now what with winter, my eyes, and all that.  I also mentioned that we were going to pull prawn traps.

And I said the wind was whipping up.

And I said that we were going out anyway.

We did.

Sal has a small boat.  Eleven feet four inches.  It’s a mini Boston Whaler.  Like a shallow bath tub.  It has, maybe, 7 feet x 4 feet of actual ‘walking space….not even the size of a piece of plywood.  We took on board two big white five gallon buckets (we are optimists) and a full size garbage pail for the line, plus a large plank with a mechanical prawn-puller on it.  With me added to the mix, space would have been at a premium had there been any.  We were packed.

The wind was piping up to almost twenty and a few whitecaps were showing on the windlines.  We had maybe 6 inches of freeboard in a fast-moving, heavily rippled sea.  But we were ‘just going a hundred or so feet from the front of the house……’

I suggested, “So…?  Waddya think?  Maybe not today?  Maybe we should haul tomorrow, ya know……………..like, when it is less likely to drench us?”

“Oh, sweetie.  Don’t be silly.  We are just in front of the house and it will only take a few minutes.  These gusts will diminish.  Suck it up!”

Being out-machoed by Sal is par for the course, so I shut up and we got about our business.  Seas splashed and lapped up the sides and over now and then.  Not a lot.  Just a little.  But it was steady.  And it began to rain.  The occasional wave rolled over the little foredeck.  Maneuvering room in the boat with two traps hauled up – each about the size of an ottoman – made the load and our ride even more tippy and unwieldy but we pulled up a couple and then went for the last trap.  I noticed a lot of water swirling around the bottom of the boat.  Surprisingly, about four of the six inches we had were filled.

“Hey, Captain Sal!  We seem to have a lot of water in the boat.  Maybe we should head for shore?”

“Yeah.  Where is it coming from?  I’ll head in………Holy Moly, we are going awash!”

Sally instinctively gunned the motor forward at the same time as the bow plowed into a wave and we instantly took on another 25 gallons.  So, now the boat was even lower.  And pretty much stopped.

And the gusts had piped up to over twenty plus.  Wind lines were rushing across the sea and we were in what can only be described as wallowing conditions.  Water was lapping over my rubber boot tops.

We looked at each other.  This was embarrassing.  We were only a few hundred feet offshore but it looked like we were going to get pretty damn wet pretty damn soon.  The boat would be fine – it has positive floatation so it can’t sink – but we were going to look like idiots.

Which only seemed apt.

That’s when L waved to us from the beach.  “Hi!  Thought I’d drop in for tea….. you guys OK?”

“Oh yeah.  We’re fine.  Head on up to the house.  See you in a minute or two.  Just coming in.”  Sal passed me a bailer and she grabbed a bucket and we began bailing the boat.  Fast.  Bailing is not easy when the boat is full of gear.  But we managed.  Got things noticeably more buoyant and then she dropped me ashore with the prawns while she swung the little boat around to the dock.  She got it back to ‘dry’ while zipping to the dock.  It self-bails when you can go fast enough.

So, the first lesson is ‘don’t push the envelope’.  But we did.  The second lesson is, ‘don’t sink the envelope’ but we almost did that.  And the third lesson is, ‘if you are going to be that stupid anyway, at least don’t do it in front of the neighbours!’

We’re hopeless.  It is embarrassing.  Especially for Sally (she was the captain and it is not all gold braid and salutes, ya know?!).

I think the only thing I can promise is to stop making promises I have no intention of keeping!

Yes, even tho conditions are similar, we are going out today for the last trap. 

It’s a cliff-hanger out here, eh?  Stay tuned.  

Spring?  So soon?

Weather’s OK, that is for sure.  But the wind is whipping up a bit.  Things are bright and clear.  And mine eyes are getting sorted.  Still a little out-of-sync but working – especially the new one.  Feels like Spring.  We’re thinking of getting out and about today.  Try to get some chores done.

First up, is pulling in some prawns if sea-conditions permit.  It’s a bit early in the season but we feel the need to get a few so a couple of traps worth will suffice nicely.  Three pounds or so.  No sense in getting more.  They stay fresher and get bigger leaving them in the ocean to await our future culinary requirements anyway.

Plus we are not pushing any envelopes right now.  I am a smidge more safety conscious and Sal is a smidge more Dave-and-his-condition conscious.

The weather is mild enough that some seeds are starting to sprout so a bit of time in the garden may be in order as well.  But that job is Sal’s, mostly. (I find it hard to talk to plants.  It is required, I am told.  I am disinclined to talk to cats and dogs as well.  I am just ill-suited to the task.  I need feedback, not tail-back.)

We definitely have a few logs to cut and haul.  Our beach is currently ‘logs akimbo’.  So, that would likely be job two.  And then there is the ‘hangover’.  It’s an old tree that hangs over the solar array in the winter effectively reducing the power production.  It has to go although, strangely, I feel I have more in common with it than the cats, dogs and vegetables.  (We’ve frequently spoken – is what I am sayin’).  Still, it is a tree and I am a man with a chainsaw.  It is just our destiny, really.

Which reminds me: it is time to top the batteries.  Fluid levels need to be checked.  May as well do another oil change on the genset while we are at it.  I do not tend to talk to machinery.  Not really.  Sometimes I yell at it but it is not really about communication.  It is a bit more about determining who is in charge.  The jury is still out.

Those are just the chores off the top, as it were.  If I go to the official list, it grows by a factor of five.  We have a busy schedule looming this spring.  Maybe even busier by summer.  Then it’s the whacky season. It’s when the guests show up and all hell breaks loose.  May even have some more students this year.  There’s talk, anyway.

I guess that is the point of this post – I am not quite all the way back yet but all things seem to be progressing way ahead of schedule.  Spring, the garden, my eyes.  I am thinking that a hiatus til April 1 won’t be required.  March 1 is more like it.

Healing.  New growth.  Spring is in the air…………… it is all looking good.  It’s definitely a good day.

Things have changed.

If I close the old eye and just use the new one, I can see in the distance further and clearer than ever.  EVER!  Not only that but when I look at a piece of white paper, I see white paper.  If I close the ‘new eye’ and use the old one, I can see close up but that means from about three feet in.  Anything over five feet begins to blur.  But the real difference is in the paper.  If I look at that same piece of white paper with the old eye, it is yellow!  Like pirate’s parchment!  Ohmygawd, I have been seeing the world for who-knows-how-long as kind of beigey-yellow-tinted.  Think Hong Kong pollution!

Cataract surgery is working for me!  And it has only been one eye and one day.

Yes, there is some difficulty using one eye that sees distance clearly and with it’s own colour spectrum trying to work in concert with an old junky eye that can only see up close and colours everything yellow. It can be a bit disconcerting at times.   But the old brain is doing it’s best to make sense of it all and, thankfully, it is processing the two streams of information and merging them adequately enough.  I’m coping.  But happiness (and Sally) makes coping so much easier.

Sometimes the health care system disappoints and worries me.  NOT this time.

Cataract surgery, they say, is “a piece of cake”.  And I think it is on the second eye.  Especially if the first eye worked out OK.  But that first eye requires a lot of trust.  Gonads and eyeballs.  High trust zones for me.  Authorized personnel only!

The O.R nurse told me reassuringly, “Don’t worry, Mr. Cox, we do this all the time and it is routine.”

“For you, perhaps.  Not for me.  In fact, I can assure you that I will never do this more than twice unless you also do gonads?”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind.  I just want you to concentrate on the job at hand.  No sense in getting ahead of ourselves.”

She looked at me like I was weird.  Somehow, I felt better.

I hadn’t been all that keen on this.  I mean, I am brave and macho and all.  I think we all know that, right!?  But, geez?!  The old eyeball!  I could imagine this guy as he approached my eye with a scalpel and then there would be an “OOPs!” And then the nurse would faint and then someone would start yelling Code Eye, Code Eye!  (like we needed a codeword for a scalpel stuck in an eye).

But it didn’t come to that.  Thank God.

I was nervous in the waiting room, too.  Me and four old women were waiting to get violated.  They seemed to handle the concept way better than me.  They were all having fun chatting about quilts and grandchildren and I was just sitting there like a good boy but frequenting the washroom noticeably more than anyone else.  “You OK, dear?” asked one of them.

“Not really.  They are going to slice my eyeball.  I should think that anyone would be a bit concerned about that but not you guys!  You guys are having a fine old time.  Your bravery is off-putting, ya know?  I am the guy, here.  I should be brave.  But I am not.  But you guys are.  Brave or crazy.  I haven’t decided yet.”

“Oh, dear”, she laughed. “It will be fine.  We have had our first eyes done already, you see.  We know what it’s like.  No big deal.  Really, hon, you’ll be fine.  Can I get you some cranberry juice?”  Of course I tend to associate cranberry juice with the gonad region and that sent a shiver up my spine.  “No thanks, I’m good”.

But we got to talking, me and the old crones.  They asked where I came from (seems the hospital serves a pretty large region) and when I told them about living off the grid, they were all ‘ooohing’ and ‘aaah-ing’ to make me feel good.  And it was working.  Something about being the centre of attention soothes me.  But thank God, I kept the descriptions brief, the story humble and my role in it self-deprecating.  Modesty is not really my thing but, this time, I was very, very understated.  A little joke here, a compliment to Sally every now and then.

They would have adopted me if they weren’t already octogenarians.

And I was relaxing.  They were fun.

I have also learned over 65 years that it is fem-speak-polite to then ask after them.  “And have you ever lived anywhere else beside Comox?” I asked politely.

The first one (the oldest) had immigrated to the Caribou from Germany sixty years ago and, with her husband, began homesteading eight sections of land somewhere around Fort St. John.  She had eight children!  The winters were sixty below.  Then the next confessed to ranching with a few hundred head of cattle just after the war just outside of Edmonton.  Their winters were also sixty below.  And so it went.

After that perspective-changing exchange I was positively looking forward to the operating theatre.  It had to be a piece of cake compared to working 8 sections in Ft. St. John or ranching just outside of Edmonton!!

Well, the eyes used to have it, anyway.  Now they have cataracts, instead.  And they are buggin’ me.  Can’t see a bloody thing which, given the havoc and chaos around me when I work, is a distinct disadvantage to continued survival.  So, I am getting them operated on.

And, so, thus this blog goodbye.

It’s been great.  Really.  Had a really good time.  And we must do this again sometime.  Maybe do lunch?  Give me a ring……….?  Better yet, I’ll call you. 

But not for awhile.  Seems I’ll be vision impaired for a while.  First one eye, then the next.  Healing takes awhile.  I should know.  Right?

So, no blog.  You understand?  OK?

I am thinking late March, early April?  Maybe Fool’s Day?

The doctor’s instructions came and it was very clearly printed out: No heavy lifting.  And No Blogging was specifically handwritten and inserted in to the instructions (mind you, the handwritten part looked suspiciously like Sally’s handwriting).  So I have to take a break.  Doctor’s orders.

I confess that I am not overly upset about it.  I feel a break is needed anyway.  I am wandering from the original focus of the blog which was: ‘old guy goes feral.  The adventures of a fool and his angel in the woods’.    I feel politics is starting to creep back into it.  If I can rationalize a political post as somewhat philosophical, I can yield to my inner political demon a bit but it’s a strain. It is time for a break and I am using the operation as my excuse.

I hope to be silent for at least a month.

Not bloody likely.

But I am gonna try.

No, I have not forgotten my outstanding items.  There are the docks-being-installed to report on.  There is the ‘little houseboat’ progress to watch.  There are the community machinations to observe and share whenever possible and, of course, there is our-life-in-paradise to monitor and record.  Not to mention the invitable accidents.  Plus Spring is not too far away and all sorts of things seem to transpire then.  So, there is stuff-to-come but I will understand if you wander off.  I would.

I currently enjoy a couple of dozen or so regular readers.  Maybe a smidge more.  Well, OK.  There are a smidge more than 500.  But they/you are a fickle lot.  They/you want ravens and killer whales and they/you don’t want politics.  And no one but Annette, Sid and a guy on a motorcycle writes! 

‘Who are you people?’  (Seems I also have a disproportionate number of antique dealers……..and wives whose husbands are similar in their grumpy, lumpy, dofus-ness to me!) 

Anyway, right now, I am raven-ed out.  And the Orcas aren’t due for weeks if not months.  And we are only a few months from a provincial election.  Can you feel the tension?

It’s hurtin’ my eyes.

So, like………………….see ya’……………(personal e-mails always welcome, of course.  I have installed the latest version of Windows Braille Mail so I will still be able to respond to e-mails altho my flat screen poses a bit of a problem for getting a feel for Braille.  Anyway, I’ll try.)

Bye

The weather is acting up.  (That is not news).  It is revealing that our infrastructure is not up to the task or is barely keeping up (and that is not really news, either).  Cities are struggling.  Citizen support systems are inadequate and expensive.  Some of it is crumbling.  Infrastructure decay is even worse in the states and weather extremes are revealing that, too.  This is still not news but somewhat ‘more newsy’ due to the frequency and the new eccentricity of the weather.

Conclusion: the weather is making some things political more clear.  The weather as a harbinger?

Recently several Canadian cities have had a warm period followed by a really cold snap and then that cycle repeated itself causing all sorts of municipal pipes and such to break.  “Get used to it.” says Environment Canada.  “Climate change is going to cause more extreme weather in the future!”

Interesting.  Now THAT seems to be news!  Environment Canada now officially recognizes climate change?  Seems it was only yesterday that our intrepid leaders didn’t know from Climate Change.  They were, if not ‘deniers’, then at least certainly not ‘acknowledgers’.  Certainly not ‘cooperators’.   And Harper verges on ‘denier’ status if actions and initiatives and priorities are considered to be any kind of indicators.  See ‘Oil and Gas Pipelines’. 

Weather as a harbinger?  And a harbinger of what?  Just climate change …..or political change?  Or both?

In other words: things may be changing significantly – in whatever way – and we may not be fully aware of it.

Even Obama, after inauguration, stated that Climate Change is now on his agenda.  The great ‘denier nation’ now, all of a sudden, onside with battling climate change.  Better late than never, I guess.  But, really?  Twenty years after the average Joe learns of climate change, our leaders finally acknowledge it?

Makes me think the leaders aren’t on the ball. 

Can someone explain to me why we call politicians leaders?  How could a group of people so fundamentally behind the times on just about everything be leaders of anything?

Well, the point of this blog is that they are not.

These folks are not leaders.  They are not even capable of leading.  Too much baggage was accumulated getting to that exalted position to be able to lead anyone anywhere.  Even bell hops are out in front of those fools.  Those people are so ‘invested’ in the old way and out of sync with the new, they are not even followers!  They are maintenance men.  Curators.  They seem to sit there indicating where the rest of the world has long passed by.  They are more like milestones. They are history markers, NOT history makers!

Maybe it is climate change that is finally showing them and our institutions up for the anachronisms they really are?

Big-man politics just doesn’t work anymore (even tho it is still practiced in third world countries and symbolically in first world ones).  And it hasn’t for a long, long time.

Life is just too complicated for any one man and so groups of men were needed.  Then groups of men and women.  Enter councils, congress, senates and boards of directors.  And so it went.  As life got more and more complicated the leadership model got more and more diffused.  More people.  More institutions.  More democratized.  More cooperation.

Environmental destruction and subsequent climate change, however, is in-your-face indication that not enough leadership, cooperation or efficacy was achieved but we still progressed somewhat and so the old political models continued.

Weirdly, the answer for the new problems we face might be the same one as before – democratize even more.

But the last bunch of nincompoops have pretty much sewn up the already-in-place and recognized mechanism (which, with voting machines, dirty-politics, robocalls, billions of dollars and the need for vote-monitoring, is also corrupted) and so the old-standard democracy infrastructure is also no longer up to the task.  We aren’t getting leadership choice, we are just getting a rote exercise of endorsement of people we don’t want.

The old ‘leadership’ model is now beyond hoary.  It is cumbersome in the extreme and it is also ineffective and too often corrupted. It seems we need a new type of leadership model. The tall, handsome, rich man with a toothpaste smile just doesn’t seem to work anymore. Nor do his institutions.

Social Networking and ‘sub-groups’ like Idle-no-more, the Occupy movement and the growth of e-media followers are now more ‘hip’, more current, more out front.  They are different.

Admittedly, few leaders in the traditional sense are emerging from this increased democratization of opinion and influence but that may be the next step to emerge.  OR, as the movements themselves predict, the ‘leader’ will be the collective voice of the majority and not manifested in a person or small group of elites.

I dunno.

But it seems to me that revolutions are not likely to look the same as the last ones.  Like wars, the establishment tends to plan for the next one based on the last one and the opposing, revolutionary forces plan something different.

Could social media be the new vote?  Could social media create new leaders?  Could we be in the beginning stages of a political revolution that is so subtle, unconventional and so in-it’s-infancy that we just don’t recognize it yet?

We have young mothers out here.  And young mothers everywhere like to take their kids on outings.  It is part of parenting. Kids need to be exposed to different things.  It’s good.

Sal used to take our kids to Stanley Park, the Science Centre, various semi-distant, out-of-the-neighbourhood events and, in the summer, off camping and things.  She was a great mother.  Still is.  But young island mothers, when going on outings, often take their kids into the city.  They go shopping, swimming and that sort of thing.

And sometimes they do it in the winter.

Not long ago, two off-the-grid, island mothers took several kids into town for the day.  A good time was had by all.  So much, in fact, that they were a bit late disengaging from the last activity.  They were about 30-40 minutes behind as they bundled into the car and headed down the logging road.  And it had just snowed heavily.

By the time they got to their boat, they were definitely a bit later.  It was dark-ish and getting darker.  And it was still snowing.  By the time they cast off, it was definitely night-time.  The snow made it a white dark.  They were blind.

The mother on the helm is good.  She knows her stuff.  But part of knowing your stuff is making sure you don’t get caught out in that kind of thing.  She was not happy with the situation.  Nor should she be.  Still, she knew her route, her boat was good, the compass worked and she had GPS.  She began heading home slowly and carefully.  There was a lot of wood debris in the water and, even tho her boat was made of heavy aluminum, no one wants to hit a log.

Her challenge – if the one I just described was not enough – was that she also had to navigate through two sets of rapids.  And she had a long way to go.  The rapids are from the currents that swirl through constricted passes and can top nine knots.  It is just as hairy going against them as with them when you can’t see.

GPS is good.  But not that good.  The passes she had to navigate are as narrow as 75 feet.  Imagine her situation: it is dark, the current is running.  You can’t see a thing.   And the water is setting you sideways and turning you off compass all the time.  And you have children aboard in a very inhospitable environment.  It is very dangerous.

But she kept her head about her.

In fact, she had to stick that very same head out the side of the boat as she went.  Snow on a windshield in the dark and on the water inhibits all vision.  Sticking your head out the side doesn’t make it much better but, psychologically, it feels as if you are doing all that you can.  And so she did.

She did good.  She managed to get home.  They arrived at their further-out community dock an hour or so later.  Everyone was relieved.  And so there was no drama.  No tragedy.  Just the tension.

And it is a tension everyone out here has faced at one time or another.  Worse, we have often felt that tension even after having made a promise that we would never put ourselves in that kind of position again.  Why?  Sometimes we think: “Well, I am late but the seas are OK.  My compass is good.  I should be fine…..” And so you go.  You stretch the safety envelope.  And 99 times out of 100 you are fine.

Sometimes you just ‘have to go’.  You don’t think you have a choice.

I once left our building site in a raging storm late at night to pick up Sal who had worked in town and left Vancouver late.  She caught the last ferry at 10:30 pm and I was picking her up at about midnight after she had hiked down a remote forested trail with groceries and supplies.  No cell-phone sevice for miles.  Had I not been there, she would have waited in the forest for a long time before probably curling up in the car.  She had no choice.  And I had no choice.  So I went.

I went with the storm as I headed out.  It was blowing about 25 and the seas were high but I was going with it to get to the pick-up point.  Piece o’ cake.  Almost fun.  I was in a small 12-foot inflatable and the fun was kinda overshadowed by the terror.

And that terror held centre stage when we started back and had to head up coast and into the teeth of it.  It was black as pitch and howling.  That was crazy! The seas were insane!  We were soaked within the first 30 seconds.  We got home about two or so hours later, pretty rung out.

That was just one of the times I made the promise, “I will never put myself or anyone in this position again.”

And I have probably made that promise at least ten more times.  And broken it.  My guess is that the young mother I described had made that promise a few times herself.   I know the feeling and I know that she renewed the promise-that-is-impossible-to-keep one more time.

It is the promise that will be broken.

Sal works today.  She’s doing relief at the post office.  It’s foggy.  She can barely see 100 feet head.  She and her little boat will disappear into the mist almost the instant I glimpse her leaving.  It is January on the west coast.

We’ll remain in radio contact for another five minutes but she can’t hear it above the sound of the outboard.  The radio is only really useful if she is stopped.  And we are hoping that is precisely what does NOT happen.

When she gets to the no-electricity, floating post office, her first chore will be to fire up the wood stove.  She’ll get a crackling fire going within a few minutes. But it will still be bleak.  It will still be lonely.  And, for the most part, it will be pointless.  But she’ll take Meg.  They’ll keep each other company.

Meg is never too thrilled about these days.  She thinks it pointless, too.

The mail plane is not likely to fly today.  And we don’t, as a community, usually have a lot to put in the mail – which would not be going out anyway – ’cause there is no plane.  If it is a busy day, Sal will see a few neighbours as they come to check their post office box and maybe, just maybe they will buy a few stamps.  Prob’ly not.

The pay is minimal and, of course, there are no benefits.  She doesn’t even have basic amenities such as a computer, phone or lights.  But Sal likes to do it anyway so that she can ‘be part’ of the community, see people she wouldn’t ordinarily see and just ‘do her bit’ to help out the post mistress.  It’s all very normal.  Healthy, in an unusual way.  And irregular enough that she enjoys it.

It’s also a change from working with me.

She got the job a few years ago when the ‘old’ post mistress was still here.  Before that woman ran off with a hitchhiker at the age of 50-something.  (Love is grand, eh? Romance at 50+ while living remote and isolated………that has to give hope to everyone, eh?)

The hardest part is the safe.  Hard to open.  Apparently it is the combination from Hell.  But Sal can do it.  She has some weird kind of job security as a result.

It is not undeserved.  Sal also takes the postman’s creed about getting through snow and sleet (or fog) to make her rounds or whatever quite seriously.  She’s a great employee.  I’d call her ‘intrepid’ in her execution of her duties.  Well, ‘cept for one thing……..she won’t take a job if they think she is an employee.  She’s done with being an employee.  This job is helping a friend and community work ‘cause she won’t work for such wretched employers as the post office.

“Aaaahhhhh, but Sal, you are, in fact, working for the post office.”

“No, I am not.  I am working for R.  I am working for R ‘cause she needs me to stand in for her.  I am not working for the post office even tho I work at the post office and I do the post office work.  And, OK.  I do it their way.  But that part means nothing.  I am working for R and the people who come in to get their mail.”

Perspective and attitude are everything, don’t you think?

Our neighbours loaned their cabin to friends for the weekend.  Which is good.  The people are nice.  We like ’em and they are sufficiently far away that, if we didn’t like ’em, it would not matter.  Blessed isolation is a cushion of comfort – if needed.

And it is rarely, if ever, needed.

But the friends have four dogs.  And their dogs are not quite as contained as are their masters.  They wander.  And they ‘mark’ where they wander. The guest dogs wander all over.  They explore.  They investigate.

This is still OK.  The dogs are good dogs.  No problem.  Three Huskies and a Lab but only the Huskies wander.  And they have their needs, their instincts, their behaviours.  Their own curiosities.  This is a vacation for them, too.  They are just doing typical dog things.  It’s fine.

Well, those things are fine by me, anyway.  Fid and Meg are not quite so sure.

And a small canine drama has been unfolding all weekend.

Somehow the visiting dogs know when our dogs are inside.  And that is when they come over into our area.  Quietly.  From tree to tree.  Skirting the perimeter.  Avoiding the main path.  Shadows.  I can see them from one of the windows. They sneak.  And they sneak-pee.  A lot.  These guys are doing the equivalent of graffiti.  They are tagging.

They know what they are doing.  And they know the effect it is having.

And then they leave.

An hour or so later our dogs go out and all of a sudden they are hyper alert, super-animated, focused and charging around the area sniffing everything they can.  Fid seems to run with his nose to the ground.  Meg sniffs a bit but mostly she just bounces around looking for a stick or something.  She’s excited and – as always – more than just a little confused but she is ready for whatever!  I don’t think she knows why, what or whom but she knows Fid is on the job and that is exciting enough!

After a bit of trail searching our dogs are on the far perimeter of our area and looking sternly in the direction of the neighbour.  Fid paces back and forth.  Meg has lost focus and is soon following Sal and I as we get about our work.

When we go inside a few hours later for a cup of tea, Fid plants himself in a place he has never sat before.  This new position affords a sweeping view of the back area and he would be quick to detect anyone or anything coming along the previously laid down foreign urine trail that he is now completely absorbed by.  He sits stock still.  And he stares.

Meg has a stuffed toy and is shaking it.  A.D.D. coupled with a new-ish stuffed toy is her go-to state.

Every once in awhile the visitors take a tentative step or two in our direction and, if Fid and Meg are out, they run to the ‘imaginary line-in-the-forest’ they have all agreed to – the U line (urine) – and bark.

But, if they are inside or off chasing sticks, the visitors sneak up and leave a ‘tickle’ for their noses.  Fresh pee!

And the drama continues.