When we first came to the wilds I was amused by what I deemed to be a new standard for what passed as acceptable fashion.  Our neighbours were a study in dressing down.  Way down.

People seemed committed, practically dedicated, to wearing third-hand or hand-me-downs or worse.  Well, they seemed committed to ‘layering’, too, so that, in itself, made it worse.  It was bad enough to wear threadbare and stained, ripped and faded, no-style and conflicting-with-sensibilities.  But then putting it on three or four layers deep and adding wet-weather gear!  What were they thinking?

It was wild!

The Layered Look

I swear: T used to have me laughing out loud at her outrageous outfits.  So much so that I began to carry the camera in order to record some it.  Pretty funny stuff. Or so I thought at the time.

My further-out (in so many ways) neighbour R was inclined to exaggerate his wardrobe as well.  He showed up in gumboots, baggy jeans with suspenders, old cardigan sweaters and sporting one of his own, self-knit hats with ear-flaps and a ball-tuft on top as his basic go-to outfit.  It would often be augmented with colourful wet-weather gear, scarves and crazy accoutrements.  Plus he sported a perpetual maniacal grin and a stubbly beard.  He would have been ‘well-known to police‘ and likely arrested in the city just on appearance alone.  Lacking T’s extraordinary closet cachet, he still managed to cut quite a dashing figure amongst those on the dock on community Wednesdays.

But, over time, it all became the norm.  One J sometimes wears only a towel.  And not all the time at that!  Another J wears clothes I swear are at least forty years old.  Maybe older.  Others wear paint-stained shirts from the last time they painted and that is so far back, the originally painted item has faded into obscurity.  But not the T-shirt.  It is faded but not forgotten.

And so it goes.  A really clever archaeologist type could establish a historical pattern of the local settlement by careful analysis of clothing currently found in closets, I am sure.  And it would be easy – much of it is still worn out in public every day!

Put another way:  “He’d give you the shirt off his back!” Does not have the same spirit of generosity out here.  Nostalgia, perhaps.  Generosity?  Not so much.

I mention all this because friends were coming up to visit last week.  They were traveling by boat.  But they had little time and they had a slow boat.  It was not a good plan for a relaxing week off and we were unsure if they were going to actually make it.  As it turned out, good sense and a sea-sick dog prevailed and they stayed in the Southern Gulf.

“I am feeling guilty, she said.  “We didn’t show.  Looks bad.  We meant to.  But it just wasn’t in the cards.  Sorry.  Don’t think ill of us.”

“Don’t be silly.  We thought the trek was too much to accomplish in the time allotted.  We know we are far away.  No problem.  And forget about appearances.  You have sailed to the South Pacific and back — twice!  We have learned up here to judge by substance, not appearance.  And, to us, you guys have substance.”

And, after that phone call, Sal and I got to talking about that Forest Gump-like statement she had used; ‘We judge by substance, not appearance’.

“Well, you know when you are on the dock and you are talking to people who have climbed the Alps or lived in Asia or who have built their own boats or volunteered in Africa……?  And well, all of them have also built their own homes……had kids……..survived extreme situations……….raised their own food…….they have some kind of real-life substance.  To me, anyway.

“They are more solid somehow in some respects.  Substantial.  And then three well-dressed bureaucrats step off a plane and tip-toe amongst our tulips looking for cell-phone reception?  Seems shallow by comparison.  Well, I guess I am still judging by appearances but it seems to me that the ‘old-clothing, gumbooted-types’ somehow have more to them than do the ones who show up well-dressed.  Maybe I am just a reverse clothes bigot now but the hand-me-down crowd seems more substantial to me.” 

Fashion, eh?  Pretty strange.  Definitely in the eye of the beholder.

Bugs!  Mosquitoes, flies, midges.  The annoying classes.  We seem to be getting some these days.  Not a lot.  Not Ontario or Northern BC volumes.  Not Winnipeg-in-Spring!!  (OMYGAWD! Have you ever been there?).  But more than usual for us. Seems a bit odd, actually.

I have traveled to many parts of the world and the first question I ask after ‘what’s it like?’ is, ‘what is the bug count?’.  I have never been to Australia and I never intend to.  The bug count is too high.  The deadly bug count is over-the-top.   I won’t be going to the Amazon or the high Arctic in summer, either.  Life is too short to share it with bugs as far as I am concerned.

So, it must be said: I hate bugs!  Well, I hate flying-bugs-in-my-face-type-bugs more than the creepy crawlie ones.  Mind you, a creepy-crawly in the face doesn’t go well with me, either.  Bugs-in-my-face is one of the main reasons I built where did.

We are perched on an elevated slope on a west-by-south orientation.  The prevailing wind is a Southeaster but the Westerly is pretty prevalent in the summer.  Both winds course over our site with more than the average gusto and we have a breeze 99% of the time.  We have a strong breeze about 40% of the time and we enjoy gale-force blows as much as 5% of the time.  It is hard to be a flying, hovering, buzz-the-human type bug at my house.

On average I would say I encounter a mosquito once a day in the summer.  Twice is a bad day for me (worse for them, I can assure you).  Flies are fewer than one a day as a rule.  For some strange reason, this September is blowing the stats all to hell.  We are getting as many as a dozen flies in a day!  Last night Sal and I quit messing about with the ramp down at the beach because the mosquitoes were getting out of hand!  This is mid September, fer Gawd’s sake!

The point?  Well, it must be climate change, don’t ya think?  Mosquitos in September?  The world is going to hell in a handbasket.  We are doomed!  Who woulda thunk it would end this way?

“Unh, Dave?  Don’t you think you are over-reacting just a bit?”

No.  No I don’t.  I think the sky is falling.  Well, to be more sane about it, I think that climate change is real and I think it is showing up in ways unexpected and, well, maybe a few extra mosquitoes at the beach at dusk is a bit over-reactive but, damn it……………….I am buying a couple of cases of RAID the next time I go to town.  Methinks the war has just begun!

Remember: you heard it here first.  Just don’t quote me.

Living off the grid is some kind of personal statement but I am not sure if it is just limited to one simple theme – whatever one might imagine that to be.  One goes off the grid for myriad reasons but, if I think about it, one statement above all – for me, anyway – has to be fear.

I am not even sure that the fear can be well-defined.  It is certainly not fear of traffic or fear of living cheek-by-jowl.  I am not afraid of traffic lights or high-rises.  I am not afraid of grids.  We grew accustomed to all that living in the city until our mid-fifties.  Not much to fear in that mix at the worst of times.

It is not fear of crime, higher prices or even increasing authoritarian rule although those feelings do simmer just below the surface at times – especially as one gets older.  It is not so much fear of any single threat. It is rather more like a fear of an insidious malaise, something felt rather than seen.

Put more dramatically, I think it is mostly the fear of dying before we are done.  I think it is the fear of death by a thousand cuts.  I think it is the fear of losing vitality before losing breath.  It’s probably most easily described as fear of terminal boredom.

Being bored, of course, is not in itself a scary thing.  But, really, who wants it?  What I want is interest and learning and new and different.  What I want is freedom to spend the remaining time I have any way I choose.  What I want is to feel alive.  And there was definitely the feeling that that was not likely to happen in the cul de sac.  Not with a big TV and a remote control device in my hand.

So, in that sense it was fear of not living large enough coupled with a renewed desire for learning and challenge and freedom.  And fear of sloth, perhaps?

I confess to having had a bit of a fear of becoming unhealthy as well.  I simply wasn’t active enough in my fifties to expect any kind of reasonable longevity.  Health fears – the reverse of what you might think for those who go óff-grid’ were whispering in the back of my head.  I am not afraid of not getting medical services – I was afraid of getting them too soon.

Turns out I am not alone.  Sally asked the women at book club what drew them to live remote, to live more minimally and simply, to embrace hardship and to eschew comfort and convenience.  The consensus answer was, “Living out here make me feel more alive.  Being outside, being physical, feeling the weather, facing challenges and learning new ways focuses me, clears my head and makes me appreciate the moment much more than I ever did in the city.”

There is no question that the above captures the bulk of the sense of fear-on-the-negative-side and vitality-on-the-positive side but I think there is more.

Well, there is more to fear NOW than when we left the city – that is for sure.  I now fear the increasing role of government without the tempering effects of democracy much more than I ever did.  I fear the destruction of the planet by way of pollution and climate change, nuclear meltdowns and worse, nuclear tyrants.  I fear the increasing police state.  And I fear being reliant on those terrible forces for my survival probably the most.

But I admit that I had less of an idea of that kind of fear until I became more independent so I am not so sure that it is all real or partly just imagined.  Trust me, most everyone out here shares those fears to some degree.  We are all a little paranoid.  It may just come with the territory.

I am also fearful of OIL and what it has come to mean in our lives.  Of course, oil provides great benefits but it is an addiction and all addictions come with a huge price.  In this case, a huge and life-altering price.  That scares me.  I am striving to ‘be alive’ and BIG OIL looms large and darkly in the background.  It doesn’t feel compatible.

Resistance may be futile.  In a fundamental sense we are trying to run away from something way too big and it is not possible.  In the end, OIL and or the lack of it will get us all.  Living off-the-grid and off-their-radar?  I guess I am just hoping to delay whatever the inevitable is for as long as I can.  Call me crazy.

Disclaimer: Sally doesn’t like it if my blog has a negative feeling to it.  ‘Not nice’.  But, of course, there are negative things in the world and we experience them.  Plus I tend to see the world through a glass darkly.  A half-empty glass.  And I gotta call ém as I see ém.  So this blog went in unreviewed and unauthorized by the editor.  This is a dissident’s blog. 

The community is reliant on a government dock.  All coastal communities are.  Government docks are operated by Transport Canada and the ministry is well into a decades long program of divestiture. They don’t want to be in the business of operating docks anymore.  They want to privatize them instead.

“We don’t need no stinkin’ docks, coast guard stations or lighthouses!  Let’s buy fighter jets instead”. (Stephen Harper, PM of Canada.  Born and raised on the prairies.)

There is not much to running a dock – once it has been built, anyway.  Generally speaking the facilities were very well built and have gone for years without much in the way of maintenance.  Every year a barge comes by and they replace a plank or two, lube up the winch and that is pretty much it.  Mind you, if something big does happen, it is a pretty expensive repair requiring crews and heavy machinery.  Those kinds of repair events are pretty rare.  Once in five or ten years.  But, honestly, it is not technically complicated and the materials are pretty basic.  If you can swing big beams and drive the occasional pile, it is a piece of cake.

But therein lies the rub – not everyone can swing giant beams and drive piles.  So, basically, no one wants to run government docks.  There are a few community groups who try but, for the most part, they just collect fees and then throw their hands in the air if an expensive repair is required.  As volunteers on the marina board, they have no real, personal responsibility.

Divestiture just doesn’t work.  People out here need docks more than people in the city need mass transit.  In fact, this government plan is not divestiture so much as dereliction of duty.

Some budding businesspeople have tried to ‘make a go of it’ administering a dock but they fail miserably and are hated by everyone as a result.  All of a sudden some local yokel is upping moorage fees and acting like a tyrant.  People don’t like that. Taking on the job is a quick way to becoming a social pariah.

And, if a major repair is needed, his/her hands go up in the air and he/she, too, does nothing about it.  Can’t afford to.  All the fees went to wages.  People really don’t like that!  Divestiture just doesn’t work.

Most small communities on the coast don’t have enough people (and/or boats) to warrant a wharfinger, a manager, a mini dock-tyrant or even a dock-boy anyway.  The facilities do not have enough moorage space or the number of resident boats necessary to generate any operating capital.  And, let us be frank; no one wants to pay moorage anyway.

That ‘I don’ wanna pay’ reasoning is pretty sound, actually.  There are no roads that lead anywhere.  You have to travel by boat.  And boats gulp fuel that is heavily taxed for roads so, in light of that, the local boat owners expect that a few dollars can go to minimally maintaining a few docks that were likely built over fifty years ago.  Reasonable, I think.  Mind you, I have to admit to a bias.

Mini rant!  It is not like remote communities get much for their tax dollars as it is.  In fact, they get precious little.  If a few bucks goes to a government dock and the library keeps sending books-by-mail, then most rural-types are content to pay their taxes and keep mum.  Take away either and there is likely to be a coastal backlash – not that anyone in government much cares.  But we coasters would be ticked!

Today three women flew in on a chartered flight from Vancouver to report on the facility.  They work for Transport Canada.  The dock is about 100 feet long and ten feet wide.  Just wide enough for the three ladies to walk abreast.  It accommodates the post office operated by Canada Post as well as providing moorage for a rotating flotilla of boats which, on a busy day, might number twenty.  Typically, only about ten or twelve are there at any one time.  One of the boats belongs to the teacher at the school.  Another to the custodian.  Another space, now and then, goes to the postmistress.  One end of the dock is reserved for the mail plane that comes three times a week.  Percentage wise, the government itself uses the dock the most.

Maybe ten people ‘get away’ with free moorage for their 17-or-so foot boat.  But, over time, everyone in the area ties up at the dock at one point or another.  The dock is the hub of the community.  It is the parking lot, the town square and the sea-port for outsiders.  It is essential.  It is part of our life line to the outside world.

The three workers walked around with a clip board and a camera and eventually hiked up the hill and toured the school and chatted.  And, of course, the charter plane waited.

Given their wages, per diem allowance and the plane-charter time, I would estimate that their visit used up the equivalent of two years maintenance budget.  Maybe three.  I have no idea of their backgrounds but, judging from appearances, they did not seem to be engineers, dock contractors, boaters or even past or present residents of a remote community.  I could be wrong.  But I am probably not.

I am certainly not wrong that three women with a single clipboard are not necessary to walk a 100 foot dock.  I am not wrong that they need not have chartered their own plane since the thrice-weekly mail flight also carries passengers and came in when they were there.  I am not wrong in thinking that these three women will not likely make the decision to divest the facility or not.  They just weren’t ‘senior’ enough for that kind of executive decision.  I am also not wrong in observing that their visit came unannounced.  It was fortuitous that some people were there.  I don’t think I am wrong in concluding that, once again, the government has proven to be an ass.

Mind you, if they just disappear and file a report for the filing cabinet, no harm done.  If they do anything, anything at all…..harm will be done.  Whatever it is they do, it will likely be a screw-up and cause no end of grief.  Gawd!  I hope the government does nothing.

Isn’t it sad that, despite my following politics, paying taxes and voting, the best thing the bloody government can do for me and my neighbours is nothing?

Today is a day off.  It has to be.  We’re too tired for it not to be.

Sal worked at the post office yesterday and so the laundry is still hanging out on the line for the third day in a row (until she saw me writing this and now it is in!).  I worked on the boat yesterday and I will do so again tomorrow.  I am getting closer but I am not finished.  This evening a load of lumber comes by mini-barge (herring skiff) and after dinner we’ll go to the high-line on the back beach and unload it.  I think I’ll fire up the gas-powered cut-off saw and cut the two-ton ramp so as to make it just a ton-and-a-half and then we’ll try getting it into place tonight on the highest tide this month – probably just before or after the lumber arrives.  We may have to to tie some extra floats on the ramp today to try and float it further in.  I also have to adjust those damn solar panels – they are simply pointing too high in the sky while the sun has moved lower. They are not doing much for us.

It is a good thing we are taking the day off or else we couldn’t get this stuff done.

Actually, it is a timing thing.  Seasonal.  This morning there was a marked snap in the air.  A bit of a chill.  We feel as if the clock is ticking down to winter and some things just have to be accomplished.  Day off or not.  Of course, some things won’t get done anyway and so they’ll just have to wait til spring but some things are necessary for us to comfortably cope with the winter.  They really have to get done.

Getting my boat back in the water.  Getting all the new lumber up and stacked.  Rotating the panels.  Placing the ramp.  These are important items so that the other late fall and winter projects can continue.  ‘Course the garden has to be dealt with, too.  And……..well……………the list goes on.

I asked Sally, “How in hell did we manage to hold down two jobs, raise two kids and have a social life in the city when we can’t seem to keep house and home together when we are answering to no one?!”

“I have no idea.  I guess we relied on others for things.  Hired people.  Did less around the house.  We never had hobbies or projects. And, of course, we ‘bought’ convenience, didn’t we?  From laundry and dry cleaning to delivered pizza on Friday and restaurant meals during the week.  Face it.  We mostly just worked”.

“Yeah.  Now we don’t work.  We just have projects.  What is the difference again?”

“When you work, they pay you.  When you do projects, you pay them!”

It is the journey – not the destination.

There is a 100 foot difference in elevation between the school and the dock where the road that joins them starts.  Maybe 120.  The distance to travel from one to the other is 200 to 250 yards.  The trek uphill is approximately a 15 to 18 degree slope.  The surface of the road is rolling scrabble-gravel and ruts.  Bad footing.  If one is going to the school, one is invariably carrying something even if it is just heavy weather clothing, lunch and a book or two.  And it is often more.  Going to school out here is a bit of a workout.

Going to the Quonset hut woodworking shop is a smidge easier topographically.  It is about 30 feet lower in elevation than the school.  But visitors to the Q-hut are usually carrying much more.  Tools, building materials, lunch, fuel for the genset.  Going to the Q-hut is every bit as much of a workout.  And usually Q-hut visitors are much, much older than school visitors.  I always arrive huffing and puffing.

Yesterday Sal and I delivered the new genset to the Q-hut.  It weighed only about two hundred pounds, maybe a smidge less.  But it was not easy.

I am not complaining.  Not really.  It is all part and parcel of living out here, isn’t it?  Lifting.  Carrying.  Dragging.  Hoping for a passing pick-up truck on an island with only about five of them? It’s what everyone does all the time – throughout the year – with just about anything and everything.  This post is really about an ordinary event experienced and repeated daily by just about everyone out here.  It’s called work.

The good part of this kind of schlepping?  It is likely part of the reason my blood pressure is now 120/60 rather than the 140/100 it was eight years ago. 

Anyway, we bought the new Honda EM 5000 in Campbell River and me and two burly mechanics lifted it into the back of the truck and, with it further filled to the brim with groceries and other miscellany, Sally and I drove home.  At the end of the day, we were pretty tired.  Too tired, in fact, to do the additional genset delivery to the Q-hut.  So we left it in the truck and did it the next day.

Sally got her little 11 foot whaler (and two dogs, of course) and nosed up to the cobblestone beach early the next day.  I came down from the parking lot and backed the truck right up to the bow of her boat.  We put two 2×4’s down from the inside of the truck and slowly lowered the genset to the beach and then, reversing the boards, slowly lifted and pushed the precious load up onto the boat.  Sal, Megan, Fiddich and the genset slowly headed out to sea.  They were on their way to the community dock a mile or two away.

I drove the truck back up the hill, parked and then got into my own boat and zipped ahead to meet her.  When she got to her destination, we used the boards and got the genset out of the boat and over to the dock ramp which, of course, was at a steep angle because the tide was out.

It is always out when you are doing heavy work.

The postmistress came out to lend a hand and the three of us managed to drag/pull/push the generator up the ramp.  A friend, knowing of the task before us, had kindly placed his little ATV with a small trailer at the dock for us and we lifted it in.  I drove the little Honda ATV with the Honda genset up the hard scrabble hill and we put the genset in the Q-hut.

Cost of genset: $3000.  Delivery time: two days.  Elapsed time from carpark to Q-hut: about an hour, maybe 90 minutes.  Elevation difference (two locations) about two hundred feet.  Distance covered (not counting the part done by truck) in total (land and sea) about 2.5 miles.

I really wish we could have used Mastercard.  But this kind of thing is priceless.

It has been a good summer but especially so for sighting Killer whales.  They came, they went and we saw.  All summer long.  They repeated that spectacle every two weeks or so it seemed.  Whales to the left us, whales to the right….

Whale watching from the front porch

But yesterday was another exceptional day.  Or, so it has been reported.  I was on boat repair duty but Sal was home and she saw another pod of orcas throughout my absence and this time they were up to some new tricks.  One of the tricks was similar to what grey whales and humpbacks do – they blow bubbles deep underwater that rise in a bunch and bring with them to the surface some kind of feed.  It is like they are fishing with giant breaths of air and the air, like a net, sweeps up their target and takes it to the surface.  We haven’t seen orcas do that before.

And this time one of the pods split up.  Kinda strange.  There were whales across channel, whales in front of the house and several distinctly separated groups going up the middle.  Usually they stick pretty close together.  For some reason we have determined that this pod is the itinerant one, not the homeboys we usually see.

Fiddich may be, officially, a Portugese Water dog but, unofficially, he is a whale watcher.  Whenever he hears them blowing as they come up or down channel, he alerts us.  He is ‘into’ whales, that boy.

To be fair, he also alerts us when boats go by if they are not in the main channel or further out.  Should a vessel venture a bit close to our shore, all Fiddich breaks loose.  He isn’t so much a watch dog or an attack dog but he is an alert dog, or so they say.  Regardless, he is on the ball when it comes to whales.

Seals, sea lions, logs, planes, really big boats like barges and American yachts…..well, not so much.  Not a peep, actually.  I’d like to think he just knows our interests but we have interest in logs and he just doesn’t seem to care about that.  Meg?  She notices dinner and that is about it.

The ravens have been pretty good neighbours this year.  They come when called, occasionally drop in on their own but, generally speaking this summer, they have gone about their business doing raven stuff.  They have not been as large a presence this year.  We think it was because of Fletch, their latest offspring.  We think they are a bit ashamed of him.  No question – that kid was a trial.  Trouble on the wing.  He was a rebel, a rule breaker, a hellboy.  He is a raven without a cause except bad ones.  Ooooh, that Fletch!

‘Course a nice, cute Ms raven might settle him down some day but, right now, he is the black sheep of the family, so to speak, and we are not sure we will ever see Fletch again unless it is on a poster somewhere.  My heart goes out to the parents. They haven’t been the same since he arrived and they weren’t the same after he left.  Kids, eh?

It is time to turn the solar panels down………….the angle is too high for a sun that is carving a lower axis.  We adjust the angle of the panels about two or three times a year in an effort to maximize their output but, to be more honest, we are really doing it to minimize their inefficiency.  There is a difference.

When the sun is high in the sky and we are not getting a big charge, we know it is the angle of reception on the panels.  Usually, we don’t notice until the batteries start to show a bit flat.  “Hey, it must be time to increase (or decrease the inclination).  We better get on it!”   And we do……….usually within a few weeks……………..we are always a bit tardy at that chore.  And we have been so to the point of delinquency this year.

We blame Fletch, actually.  He was a bad influence.

Despite a town day awhile back, we have been continuing our progress on the many fronts on which we have chosen to engage.  The battle rages in our favour but progress is slow and, I must admit, not just a little tiring now and then.

The two ton ramp has been floated around front and awaits further attention.  Which it will get as soon as I configure some kind of heavy duty winch-with-blocks for dragging and lifting. I have the theory.  I have the concept.  I even have the blocks and powered winch.  But I have learned now that that is less than half the chore.  The rest of the challenge has yet to reveal itself but, trust me, I am less than halfway there on that one.

The boat is largely done.  All sealed up, dry and now with beautifully fiber-glassed seams.  But it needs a bit of sanding for aesthetics and prior to painting so it is not quite launch-ready.  I may get to some of that today.  I confess to feeling a bit less than enthused about working today.

All the new-deck foundation wood has been gathered, lifted and stacked near the site at the back.  All the rest of the wood for the actual decking and workshop framing has been ordered and is on its way.  A few string lines and holes have to be drilled next and then work on that essential project can begin.

Got some work done on the community shop too, including getting and placing the new genset.  That project is still not done but I have been keeping up my end.  It feels good.  (NOT actually ‘my end’  which I still hope feels good but rather my task in the project).

We even bought a wine kit in town day.  And we have everything else with which to make a giant purple mess of things.  Someday soon Chateau Sal will produce 23 liters of swill.  Swill de Sal.

But that is not what I mean by progress.  Not this time.  This time progress means ‘book’.  Sal decided to gather up all the posts and print them out in hard copy.  Her reasoning was pretty simple: “I better get on this while it is still manageable.  I think you have been rather prolific.  I better start organizing now and that needs to be done in hard copy”. 

Better to organize and edit and critique in that way, it seems.  Better to visualize real paper.  Better to use real scissors and real paste.  She’s gonna chop it up!

The local printer-guy took our memory ‘stick’ and printed up what was on it.  Not counting the last half dozen posts or the couple dozen articles, we have 996 of full one-side, 12-size font pages.  Two of those small cardboard boxes full.  It is daunting.  Intimidating.  Talk about searching for some wheat amongst the chaff!

This is of a size that requires getting the scissors re-sharpened before starting, going to Costco for the amount of scotch tape that will be needed.  This is a real project.  Workshop construction?  Ramp lifting?  Boat repairs?  Those are trifles!  Mere hobbies. They are minor diversions compared to compiling a book.  OMYGAWD!

Lucky for me this is Sally’s part in the project.  Even more lucky for me that there is still work to do on the aforementioned simpler chores.  I may be able to hide out on the back deck construction until the compiling is over.

Sometimes you just gotta face facts and delegate.

We are not on the ferry route.  Not directly, anyway.  We have to travel by small boat and then drive across another island to get to the 10-minute ferry that takes us to Vancouver Island (and another ferry to Vancouver) and that ‘extra’ distance gives us a buffer from tourism and conventional developmental expansion.

It seems most people prefer to tour or move in a manner of least resistance.  No ferry boat, no paved road, no touring, no residential development.

We prefer it that way.  All the islanders do.  Being ‘buffered’ from the madding crowd is part of what defines the lifestyle out here.

It is not like the island on which we live couldn’t do with another few young families, tho.  Love to have ém.  And a few young families would not change the ‘buffer benefit’ at all.  In fact, it would help sustain it.  The school is always ‘marginal’ to the school board but important to us.  So a few new families would be part of our ‘sustainability’.

Plus, being able to re-open the now-closed store would also be good.  But our population is currently just not enough to warrant a store.  I suppose the island would not lose a thing – and it might gain a bit – if the population doubled (from 50 to 100). But that is not likely to happen in my lifetime.

Put more succinctly: more residents would add to the life, more systems would not.

Island life would likely change completely if we had a ferry.  For the worse!  Seems that is the way it is down south.  The more ferries you have (Saltspring has three routes), the more development, people and politics you get.  Islands such as Texada that are huge (it is the largest of the gulf islands) requires three ferries just to get there from the city.  Development, population and politics is minimal on Texada.  And therefore, our island which cannot be accessed by ferry at all has even less of all three.  Given the trade-offs, we’d prefer to remain unserviced.

More people is not quite the same as more residents.

But some so-called service providers are out to get us!  Imagine this: BC Hydro is offering rural electrification to our island.  As if that was a good thing!  They propose to stick a huge genset somewhere and run it 24/7 and then string poles all along the middle road.  Very few people live anywhere near the middle road (essentially, a meandering logging road that goes nowhere).

The staggering cost of that so-called amenity would be amortized through raised taxes even though most of us couldn’t access the main line even if we wanted to.  If you did want to and try to attach to the BCH grid, each pole installed from the main road is in excess of $2,000.  Then you have to upgrade your house’s wiring system to the standard approved by BCH.  The irony?  We already have genset-sourced power and we use it minimally and very frugally.  In other words, we can provide our own power, thankyou very much, better, cheaper and with less of an environmental impact.  We really do not need (or want) BC Hydro.

……………..unless they propose to do it with wind, solar or existing hydro-power…………but, even then……?

Thankfully the BCH proposal is not likely to proceed if 100% of the population is against it.

And, finally, there is the internet.  It’s a system, too.  Like cellular phone coverage.  Both of these ‘grids’ are weak out here.  But they’re here.  The phone calls have static or the calls are cut off or don’t come through.  Our internet is limited and expensive.  We are on both those communication grids but we are at the unravelling edge.  And, given the impact that a grid can have, maybe it is best this way.  Maybe barely adequate is just right.

Anyway, the point is simple and not just a bit scary: one cannot be totally off the grid.  It’s impossible.  But there is such a thing as being more (or less) immersed in the matrix and we’d prefer less.

Is it because we want inconvenience?  Absolutely not!  Islanders, of all people, have come to appreciate convenience more than they ever did in the city.  Convenience is good.  Inconvenience is very hard.  We like convenience.  It is just that the price of convenience is too high both in financial terms and in social terms. We don’t want any of that retail, store-bought convenience.

Put more bluntly: I’d prefer to struggle with a bad internet connection than have community hall meetings on the proposed new subdivision expansion.

I mention all this because the grid is insidious.  It can reach out and get you.  It has already reached out and grabbed most people.  Be careful out there (if you are out there).  And be extra careful if you are on the grid already and immersed deeply.  It is not always a benign or good thing.  Regardless of how you view those services, it is the grid that changes everything.

I’ve never been really big on parties, myself.  Don’t like ém, actually.  I think they are boring.  Chit chat, banter, short conversations with people who talk about their appliances, the price of real estate. Or worse, the weather.

Mind you, those are urban party topics.  Out here it is definitely the weather, motors and gardens.  And I have some interest in those but still, they are dealt with superficially at parties and I need real answers on those topics!

I don’t like encountering those with short attention spans either, the eyes of the person with whom you are speaking constantly searching for better company.  I don’t blame them, of course.  How can I?  My eyes are bobbing around, too.  I just don’t like it.

Seeing people you know but can’t remember their name?  Food like ‘nuts and bolts’, chili dogs and macaroni salad?  On ultra-thin paper quick-fold plates?  Pastic wine glasses?  Home made wine?  Huge trays of unidentifiable mush passing for a potluck contribution?  Am I missing something? 

How did this sort of thing become popular?  Well, I think I know……..it’s the gene pooling effect, isn’t it?  We needed excuses to get together to find willing mates.  Ergo: the par-tay!  But, sadly in some ways, and with relief in others, that topic is now ‘old’ isn’t it?  ‘Cause we’re old.  We’re long done searching the pool for attractive genes and chromosomes and the life guard is now ordering us from the pool.  “Get out!  Seniors swim is over!”

The exception to that observation on short-attention span people, of course, is the guy more boring than Cliff Claven who desperately needs some attention and with whom I am trapped in the corner.  God help us both!  “Have I told you that I got a grant to hold nature-walk courses?  Yea, the local museum and the local library are gonna arrange groups to walk through the forest and I will be the leader explaining different flora and fauna.  Why, did you know we have two hundred and thirty species of mushroom on this island alone?”

Life goes into painful slo-mo in such situations.  My joints ache.  My bad knee becomes crippling.  Both my mind and my body want out and my body is doing something about it!  In effect it is saying, ‘If our only way out is to call an ambulance, let’s do it!’

“Can you hold that thought?  I seem to recall seeing some of those mushrooms in the kitchen being stuffed with mayonnaise or something.  Want me to get you one?”  And I try to leave.  But I’d have to bowl him over.  He is standing firm……..

“They are called Boletus, actually, or more commonly, fungi…………blah, blah, blah………”

Parties with more than four others just ain’t my thing.  Six on holidays.  I like short, small dinner parties with real conversation and real food.  And scotch.  Call me crazy!

My friend, J, feels the same way.  He has the added disadvantage of not being able to hear and so much of the party conversation is lost on him anyway.  Worse, he is one of those with a short attention span.  Combine all that with a personal abhorrence of alcohol and his party time is double hell.  He figures three hours is all he can take and after two he is counting the minutes.  He doesn’t have to – I have a watch and the alarm is set for three hours.  We usually come and go from parties in the same boat.

But we are equally curmdgeonly on the matter.  The three hour rule is applied if he is visiting me.  And it is equally enforced if I am visiting him.  We are both more relaxed knowing when it will end and we are both grateful for the time limit agreement.  “Right!  Been great!  Nice catching up.  Thanks for the pretzel-things.  Time to go!”

We are blessed with another neighbour just a mile away who feels the same and is equally as hard of hearing.  The three of us get along famously by not seeing each other and, when we do, by not listening.  That keeps it short.

The women in our lives?  Not so much.  They can linger at the door, one fully clad for the winter weather, the other shivering while the rain hits her, talking about the seeds they are going to plant next year or the best source of lemon grass in the area.  The guys head to the boat, fire up the engine, untie the lines and hold onto the dock with one hand.  There is the unacknowledged contest of wills hanging in the air………..will he leave or will he wait…………?  Can she start a conversation about painting the bathroom or is that pushing her luck?

The unspoken rule is that the reluctant partner can drag her feet for about ten minutes.  Then the boat leaves.  It’s harsh out here.  The air is electric with tension at the nine-minute mark but so far no one has been left standing at the beach.

Anyway, the women are united on this issue.  They always are.  And, of course, they win in the end.  They simply schedule another get-together sooner rather than later.  The men?  We simply don’t know what to do.  So we go, champ at the bit for three hours and then start the engine.  What a ritual, eh?