Monday: Heading down-island to Victoria.  Got luggage and two dogs.  Sal was down at the beach with it all and was waiting for me while I had gone around to the other side to get the boat.

A few minutes later I was leaving the dock.  I was about 60-70 feet away when I heard something.  It was a little ‘whoosh’, almost a whisper.  Like the wind in a bush.  But I was moving through the water and the engine was running.   It didn’t really register.  I was heading around the point and going a bit slow to rid myself of the rainwater in the bilge. I wasn’t focused.

And then a fin appeared.

Then another.  Then a few more.  Within seconds, I had twelve or so white-sided dolphins slicing along right beside me.  A few more were not five feet from the boat.  It was very cool.  I ambled along at just a few knots and they zoomed around me, under the boat and criss-crossing in front.  Like in the movies, ya know?  Just like dolphins are supposed to do.  And, I confess, I spoke to them.

“Hey guys!  Waddya up to, eh?  Playing around this time o’the morning?”  And further nonsense like that.  I was pretty amused.  We see dolphins all the time but it is rare that any come up close and I have never had a dozen or so frolic around me.  It was very neat.

But I was slowly making my way in a southerly direction to the point and I was going to turn around it and head in a northwesterly direction.  I fully expected them to keep their heading and that we’d part.  Not so!  When I turned, they turned with me!  And so it was that I was accompanied several hundred yards around the headland of our property  by dolphins.

As I turned into the beach where Sally was waiting, they simply dropped out of sight.  Went deep.  Disappeared.  Gone.

No big deal.  I know that.  But it was early, I was still sleepy and subdued, not overly keen on driving all day.  Maybe a smidge grumpy.  But not after them!  It was uplifting.  It cheered me up.  I picked up Sal with a smile.

A dolphin escort will do that.

There is a great deal more to that chapter and I’ll eventually get back to it but, to move the larger story along, Sally and I were now left alone to build our cabin.  And we weren’t really ready.

Of course, we had all the raw materials and I had tons of previously stored and transported junk and equipment on site.  I had tools up the wazoo and we were stocked with food and water and even had a box of wine and a few bottles of scotch.  We had the stuff.  But did we have the right stuff?

Neither Sally nor I had ever built before.  Not from scratch.  We had done most of the work on the boat shed (no running water, no bathroom, no real kitchen – just a campstove, etc. etc.) and that turned out good but it was just twelve by sixteen.  We really had no idea where to start on a house.

But that had been taken care of for us.  Kinda.  The boys had gotten us off to a good start.  We had a level square platform of 900 square feet looming in the air at the top of the slope.  The fact that we had expected  a great deal more was beside the point.  We had a floor on a good foundation and the outside walls were up.  We got some How-to books from the library and decided to just carry on.

“Right!”, I said, rubbing my hands briskly, “Just where do you think we should start, sweetie?”

“Don’t you know?  What do the books say?”

“Well, all the books start at the beginning, the foundation.  None of them really have a starting point beginning with the rough exterior walls.  I mean we are somewhere around chapter four in a 20 chapter book, I guess.  But, exactly how do we pick up the pieces from where Wayne and the boys left off?”

“I dunno.  I was cooking.  What was the last thing done?”

“Last thing done, I think, was completing the perimeter walls.  When that was done, we were all pretty wet and exhausted but we were happy.  And then we quit and everyone went home.  But Wayne had also placed some second floor joists as the first walls were going up.  I am pretty sure he was thinking of completing the second floor next.  In fact, that little temporary shelf-floor stuck up there was to be used for that, I am sure.  I think we should now finish the upper floor joists.”

“Right!  Second floor joists it is.  You get some joists and I’ll get the instruction book!”

And that is how the house was built.  One step following the next and the books telling us what order to follow.  It was mid May when we started.

By mid October, the house had been completed to lock-up.  The roof was on.  Doors and windows in.  Outside cedar cladding had been installed.  The building could handle the coming winter.

But we couldn’t.

Firstly, we were exhausted.  I was falling asleep around 8:00 pm and somewhat reluctant to get back up before 8:00 the next morning.  Trying to get stiff muscles to even move took a long while.  Plus we were living in the 12 x 16 boat shed and that was also the space in which we stored everything.  We had a small antique propane heater for warmth and, now that Fall was well underway, we were using it already to capacity.  We just couldn’t imagine working on the house through the winter.  Frankly, I found it hard to imagine ever completing the house at this point but we knew we couldn’t keep going.  We had to stop.  And so we did.

“So.  We can’t keep working throughout the winter.  And we can’t live here.  What is the plan?”

“What does the book say?”

“It says, ‘Go to Mexico.  Live on the beach.  Return in the Spring’. 

“Those Sunset books are great, aren’t they?  Did they happen to mention how we were going to do that?”

“Yeah.  It was very specific.  It said ‘camp in car and then camp on beach.’  We can do that.  We’ve done it before.  We jump in the car and we camp all the way down and all the way back and, while we are there, we just keep on camping.  Piece of cake.”

“OK.  Let’s go.  It is starting to get cold.”

The rest of the winter was logged in at: http://hippyredux.blogspot.com/2007/02/baja-diary-2007.html

Back to the main story next blog.

A carryover from the ‘history’ – last blog

“Hi!  Do you still want a sponsor for your trades class?”

“Yeah!  Great!  Let’s meet at the school tomorrow morning.”

And, with that, the die was cast.  I went to the Ladner High School the next morning and met Wayne, the teacher, and some of the 20 or so young men who were to form his class.  They were a pretty loose group.  Goofy, kinda, in a bunch o’ teenage boys kinda way. And they didn’t listen to their teacher very much at all.  I wasn’t overly impressed with anyone, really, but I wasn’t about to miss out on this window of tolerance and largess that Sally had offered.  I’d work with this motley crew.

“Before we start on this, Wayne, I should tell you that the building I am planning has a 900 sft footprint.  Zat too big?”

“Nah!  We have been doing 400 to 600 sft each year but going up isn’t a problem.  You know, we build it here at the school and then dismantle it for transport to your site.  Then I take the kids up for a week and we erect it on the foundation that you have already put in place.  Can that be done?”

“Yes and no.  The foundation is piers.  Legs.  Piles, if you will.  The site is a severe slope so the back side will be ready, concrete and solid but the front will be elevated on posts.  I figure the posts to be about 20 feet at the very front.  So, we’ll do it all except for the front two rows of posts.  About twelve or fourteen of them.  They will have to be done at the time.  Will that work?”

“Oh yeah.  No problem.  You also need to transport twenty or so people from the lower mainland, feed and house us for a week and then get us back home.  OK?”

“Yeah.  By the way, how far will the crew get in a week?  I can’t imagine getting to lock-up like you said.”

“We’ll get to lock-up.  Maybe even get the metal roof on.”

I had shown Wayne the pictures of the site.  I had shown him the inclined slope on which we were building by measuring it and then holding a yardstick at the proper angle.  He was not deterred.  We shook hands and I handed him the first few thousand of what was to be a $30,000 materials and shipping bill within a month or so.

Every week (Friday afternoon) I’d show up on the school grounds (with donuts and cokes) to get to know Wayne and the boys a bit better and to monitor their progress.  He had some good boys, some bad boys and some real screw-balls but they were doing good work and, within a few months, the floor was set and they were starting on the walls.

When May rolled around I made the necessary arrangements to haul everything (large flat bed truck on the ferry, transfer to barge and then the barge would deliver the materials to the site a week before the boys arrived.).  Sally and our friend, Perci, shopped and spent a fortune filling the larder of my neighbour’s place in anticipation of a marathon cooking, eating and cleaning exercise of military proportions.

I settled all accounts and we were now definitely ‘into’ the project in a big way.  It was not turning out to be any cheaper, however, than had I simply hired local people and bought the materials up here.  Actually, it was more expensive.  But cheaper was not our motive and, at the time, we didn’t know that there were local people available.  We felt as if we had ‘done good’ by the school and, anyway, it was the ‘kickstart’ the project needed and it was the kickstart we needed.  We were ‘on our way’ and there were no regrets.  Not yet, anyway.

Long story short: it rained torrentially for the first three of the six days (not the promised seven!) the boys were here.  No one could do a thing.  No blame.  Just circumstance.  Also the boys were not a team.  Some were phenomenal – about four of them.  About the same amount went and hid every morning to avoid work.  Wayne had way overestimated their ability and way underestimated the site difficulty.  Especially when wet.

After three days of basically wasting time, it was not looking good.  I was not pleased.  I told Wayne that he and some of the useless boys may as well go home early.  I’d finish myself with whoever wanted to stay and get it done.  I told him that I was not going to feed a bunch of nincompoops and listen to anymore vulgar, stupid nonsense.  He was apologetic and later told the boys what I had said.  They were appropriately embarrassed.

In the meantime, Sally and Percy were working like rented mules.  They literally pumped out food by the tub-full.  It was amazing.  The best part?  Sally and Percy are great cooks.  They made biscuits and pies and cakes and everything from scratch.  It was all delicious.  The boys had never eaten so well.  Even the bad boys fell all over themselves complimenting the cooks and being on their best behaviour around them.  What started out as an unruly bunch of foul-mouthed slackers quickly changed to a group of respectful, polite, helpful and even pleasant young men.

But now the weather was holding us back.  On day four, Wayne and some of the hardy boys showed up on site anyway.  And they worked like dynamos.  And, by mid-day all the boys were on site, working hard and getting soaked and muddy.  It was a wonder.  We got all the posts up and started on the floor.  The next day the floor was up and we had a start on the walls.  The third day the walls were up and that was all we had time for.  Lock-up?  Not even close.  Now what?

Still, when I saw the kids showing up on the second morning in still-wet clothes from the day before and some with dried mud in their hair, it was starting to feel OK.  When we were hauling walls up the hill with wet moss underfoot and kid after kid slipping with some of them continuing on down the hill, it was starting to feel like a team.  And, when we had the first floor up and the walls all around, well, it felt like a victory after all.

And by then, I had formed a few friendships amongst the boys.  And, to a kid, every single one of them would have traded their own mothers for Sally or Perci in a heartbeat.  They may have been rotten teenagers but they weren’t stupid!

More on that week later.

(Apologies: this historical filler is 1200 words.  A bit long.  Sorry)

2004.  We were still at the stage where I was dreaming and reading, collecting junk and working at a ‘packaged home’ company to learn about building and design and such.  I’d pretty much stopped mediating but I would always do what was needed for a previous client.  So, I was pretty busy at times.

Sal was still working and ‘getting ahead’.  She went to a lot of meetings, pushed a lot of paper, strove to get the latest ‘re-org’ to work and continued to put out office fires while wading hip-deep in alligators. She, too, was busy.

Even though our combined annual salary was something the middle class deemed middlin’ enough and was something many people would wish for, we weren’t getting ahead.  We had two kids in university and, even though they did their bit, they needed a big chunk of financial support for their first two years in school.  And a bit more now and then after.

Neither of us had bad habits to support.  We didn’t spend much on ourselves at all and both cars were over ten years old.  Basically, the money just flowed through.  We hardly saw it at all.  At the end of every year, I borrowed to pay the taxes and buy a small RRSP.

OK, admittedly, I had a garage full of old junk and salvage materials but, honestly, everything was bought cheaply.  That stuff was not the problem.

It would have been depressing except that every year the value of the house went up.  So we seemed OK ‘on paper’.  After much contemplation, I decided that we were basically just running in place.  And lucky to be able to do so.  We saw more than a few families implode between 2000 and 2004 when we left.

Some of the cul-de-sacers stopped drinking the believe-in-the-system kool-aid and, instead, opted for the booze or even in one case, the hemlock.

There was a constantly increasing and evident cognitive dissonance in the neighbourhood – people driving shiny cars to Blockbusters and getting bigger TVs at the same time that their families were being driven apart by financial worries and self-destructive behaviour.  And the recent rash of corporate and government downsizing didn’t help matters either.

2000-2004 may not have been an officially recognized bleak time in the media but it seemed that way to me.  I can’t say that I consciously observed or really understood the feeling.  But I definitely felt it.

I distinctly recall going to a beach town in Mexico one winter for a couple of weeks.  We stayed at a friends place.  We learned that a half acre lot overlooking the ocean in the village was a bargain at US$100,000.00.  $250 K all-in complete with a hammock on the porch.  We were advised that it was a great deal!

All I saw was a piece of rubble in a town whose median income couldn’t afford a tenth of that price.  All I could focus on was open sewers, a broken electrical system, corrupt and intimidating cops and building standards that wouldn’t have met Fred Flintstones expectations.  To me, it was a money trap.  Mexico was a legal, financial, health and life-style trap, as well.  You’d have to be stupid!

Mind you, I am not partial to the heat.  So………….

Worse, Mexican beaches are hot as hell.  And that is in the winter!  Try living in your hovel in the rubble year around and, even by real estate booster standards, ‘you have to go back home in the summer or else the heat will kill you.’  In effect you were paying $250,000 for a dump that was only tolerable half the time!

And house prices in California (we drove up and down) were even higher.  You could buy a cheap piece of ticky-tacky crap plunked flat on some desert floor a hundred miles from anywhere for even more money.  Starting at $500,000.  And they were selling!??

‘Course it was happening back home, too.  And it made no sense.  If two working middle classers couldn’t achieve much more than just keeping their  noses above water, how the hell was a single mother coping?  How did a single income family survive?  Who was buying new cars?  And why?

Mind you, I have a debt phobia.  My perspective is a bit skewed.

But to me it was obvious – the system couldn’t hold.  It wasn’t possible.  Too many people could not afford to live.  It had to collapse.  It had to.

(I tend to see the glass half-empty, too.) 

But it didn’t collapse.  Not quite.  Not yet.  Took three more years of systemic lying and cheating on the part of the banks and the governments.  The first thing that happened to cushion the pending crunch was the lowering of interest rates.  That helped fool everyone a bit longer.  It allowed house prices to continue to go up anyway.  It made debt seem easier to float.

But it was still debt.

Mind you, they made debt easier to accept as a normal coping mechanism, too.  House prices went up and interest rates went down so we all thought we had more equity to play with.  And many people play with new toys.  Consumer spending went up.  Debt load was increasing while real wages were falling.  Couldn’t people see that?

Not enough of them, anyway.

I am sure many did, though.  But most of those who understood that or intuitively felt this invisible pressure on the system just kind of hunkered down and kept their noses to the grindstone.  I have never been very disciplined like that.  Grinding it out is not my style.  I tend to flaky sometimes.  I wanted to run.  I wanted to hide.  I wanted off the bus before the next big curve.  Please.

Sally is the type, however, to put her shoulder to the wheel.  When the going gets tough, Sal just gets tougher.  She just put in more hours.  She just took shorter breaks.  She would beat the next ‘re-org’ lay-offs ’cause she would do the work of three people.  She was like Bruce Willis in Die-Hard.

But it was killing her.

One day I noticed that her rosy cheeks were fading.  The instant and impossibly beautiful smile was a bit hesitating.  She was getting tired.  Normally, I would use that to my advantage and strike.  I am a pig.  And I needed the edge.  But it just so happened that fate intervened for me.  Sal read that the local high school was in trouble.  And Sal decided that we should help.

“The local school has a building trades program.  Every year they build a small building for some sponsor.  That becomes their learning-by-doing project.  This year the program is without a sponsor.  You want to build a cabin.  I think we should be their sponsor.  In that way, you and they get what each other wants and I don’t have to worry about a cabin you built falling down on my head!”

“You serious?  This means that we will be hightailing it within a year, you know…..?  Can you quit?  Can you make the leap?”

“I dunno……….but this is what you want, isn’t it?  I think we should at least take the first step.  Phone the school.  Right now.  Tell ’em we’ll step up.”

“OK, I will.  But first I have to say, there is a second step, you know?  There will be more steps, too.  This is not something that will be satisfied by a high school class.  If you can make the leap – the whole leap – I will make a promise.  I promise to buy you the dog of your dreams.  Any dog.  It’s a promise.”

“Dial!  I am in!”

Our city-neighbour, R, got in last night.  That is a sure sign of spring.  When R comes, the winter is over for the rest of us.

Winter usually hangs around a bit longer for him, though.  He is a bit of a Joe Btfsplk, the Al Capp character always drawn with the rain cloud over his head.  JBk is actually a cartoon character who represents bad luck and my neighbour does just fine in the luck department.  It is the little raincloud over his head that he is cursed with.

He had written us prior.  We knew he was on his way.  Late on the day of arrival, the sun disappeared and a lone rain cloud formed down the channel.  “Well, R must be on his way!  Rain down channel and heading slowly this way.  My guess is that he is in the middle of it.”

“Of course he is.  Whenever he gets in his boat it rains, the poor sod.  Unbelievable, eh?  But you can’t write about it!”

“Why not?  It is the eighth wonder of the world.  The UN should send him to drought stricken areas.  The guy is a rain-man!  He’d turn Ethiopia and Somalia green in a week!  Saudi Arabia? One month. Tops!”

“Not quite.  He needs to be in a boat for the curse to work.  Preferably coming or going to town.  If you are going to write it, get it right!”

R dropped by our place on his way to his place.  (Yes, it was raining.)  I jumped in to his boat and we headed over to unload his stuff.  Normally he doesn’t need me but we had to wrestle his new genset out of his  small aluminum skiff along with a ton of supplies.  Like me, R lands on a rocky beach/cliff.  High tide is a critical logistical factor. So is a strong second back when the load is heavy.

This, by the way, is a lesson that no one seems to get right away – you are only as useful as your boat.  Really.  Should you consider getting off-the-grid and by way of a remote island, do not think that you only need a small rowboat or a little skiff.  Many people make do with that, of course, but little skiffs are extremely limiting.  I know.  I have one.

The ideal island service boat is a fast, stable, shallow-ish boat in the 20 foot range.  A Boston Whaler-type from 18 to 22 feet would be ideal.  It should be ‘beachable’ even if you have a dock (so many places to go where there isn’t one) and it should have a very small ‘house’ or, better yet, a centre console with a little roof and windshield.  You don’t need a cabin. But you do need open deck space to put the inevitable load of stuff and supplies.  Mind you, a little shelter from the weather is good.  Remember, most of your ‘shelter’ takes the form of wet weather gear.

Anyway…………

R is not really a city feller who goes to the country for the summer.  Not really.  He is a country feller who goes to the city for the winter.  Big difference.  You see, he is here from April through to late October.  That is almost seven months.  He is pretty much evenly divided between his two homes but he is happier here so he is a country feller.  Kinda.  Put another way: he is eager to get here, his wife has to drag him kicking and screaming to leave.

She’s a city gal.

Typically the divided households or summer residents are just that – here for the good weather.  They are in the city the rest of the time.  We have part-timers from the States, from Toronto and, of course from the lower mainland and western Canada.  Population swells by about a third in the summer, I am guessing – from 60 to 80.

First R.  Then the geese.  Then the pigeon guillemots and then the ‘hordes’.  Then it is summer.

A very illuminating and interesting aspect of leaving the city years ago was the getting rid of stuff.  And we had loads of stuff to get rid of.

Of course, we offered a smorgasbord of collected junk to our kids and close friends but the kids were still living like students and the friends had all the stuff they wanted.  The exercise of ‘shedding’ our urban trappings was to provide a cognitive shift in our thinking.

I guess you always need some stuff.  But you don’t need much stuff.  Thoreau on Walden had virtually no stuff.  Stuff is a drag.

I have never been tied to merchandise, chattel or things material much anyways.  And neither has Sal.  We just didn’t covet enough, I guess.  We had (I think) quite a few nice things in the last house including antiques and Persian carpets, art and bric a brac plus the required amount of TVs, VCRs (then) and BBQs, bicycles, computers and assorted crap, junk and detritus.  But we didn’t think of it all like the ‘treasure’ that the insurance company did: ‘worth X thousands to replace!’

Thank God for that!

The first thing Sal did was call in an antiques dealer.  She pointed out a number of lovely things (furniture, mostly) that could go and asked if he was interested.  “I am. he said.  “I’ll give you $300 for the lot!”  Sal was shocked.  She thought it was worth ten times that and that we might get half of that. At least a third.  He offered ten cents on the her very already low estimated dollar.  But her resolve was strong.  She took it and the dealer took it.  And we were a thousand pounds lighter.

Our next effort at reducing weight was a garage sale.  We advertised like mad and, on the appointed weekend day, looked out to see hordes of people.  We had loaded the driveway and the garage.  Stuff was piled deep.  And the sale went like this: “How much do you want for the BBQ?”

“Figure out half the value that it has as a used BBQ and cut that value in half.  Then cut that value in half again.  Give yourself a deal.  What do figure?”

“I have a dollar and sixty seven cents in my pocket.”  He left with the BBQ.

One person stole the lawnmower!  Wild, eh? It was a good, well-running Honda lawnmower with a $15.00 price tag on it and they stole it!  I am still shocked over that.  Getting out was looking better all the time.

When it was all said and done, we had sold just about everything we had on offer for just over $400.00.  I rented a truck and packed away the things we were going to keep.  Then I took the truck while Sal took the car and our trailer with a few more items up Vancouver Island to Campbell River.  We unloaded it all into a storage unit.  And I then gave the truck back to BUDGET.  The cost of moving stuff to Campbell River (not counting storage) was just over $400.00.  The majority of our belongings were valued, it seemed, at much the same amount as transporting about 20% of them a few hundred miles.

The storage guy asked us how long we would need the unit.  “Well, said Sal, “we are going to build our own house up on a remote island further up the coast.  That’ll take us a while.  Say, six months?”

“You are building your own house?  Constructing it yourselves?  On a remote island?  Hahaha.  I’ll write you down for 18 months and you can give me a few months notice if you need more.  Hahahaha.” 

He was right.

Admittedly, he had just watched us unload our remaining stuff and we rationalized that must have given him a mistaken impression of incompetence (we were tired) and so we just shook off the insult and vowed to pack up when the time came with speed and cooler efficiency. Even if we died in the effort.

Eighteen months later, we were $1800 poorer for the storage fees and we knew that our remaining belongings weren’t even worth that.  But worse, we weren’t ready even then to take them home.  Our stuff was becoming a burden.

It is the yin and yang of stuff.

“To hell with it!  the roof is on.  The place is dry.  The floor is down.  Let’s get our stuff out of storage and move it in anyway.  We’ll just finish around it all.  I really don’t want to pay that guy for more storage!”

“Deal!  Just one thing………….let’s blitz that unit and get everything out like our last name is Bekins!”

You may have noticed a bit of a shift in the blogs lately?  I am not so sure there has been one but I think there has. I am getting signs.

The major indicator?  My wife has recently turned against me.

Sal is the editor and, as my wife, is supposed to be supportive and nurturing. Encouraging would be nice.   Actually, NOT being yelled at is usually good enough for me to consider that as adequate spousal support but even that just  changed (we’re still negotiating nurturing).  The other day she said, “Sorry.  This blog you just wrote can’t go up.  Not good enough.  Try again!”

“What?”

“You heard me.  I have decided that, if this is going to eventually turn into a book or something and will have my name attached to it, you have to kick it up a notch.  I want better.  Sorry.  But I am going to get harder on you.  The bar has just been raised.  And I don’t want to have to tell you this again.” 

“What are you saying?  Have I gotten worse?  Or are you getting tougher?  And by ‘tougher’ I mean ‘horribler’!”

“Well, I do think you are fading, somewhat.  Frankly, I have been disappointed lately.  Not enough laughs, ya know?  You better get funny, man! 

“But really, it is not just about fading, getting duller, losing your charm.  Boring.  Not really.  It is also about mediocrity.  And then there is bland to consider, too.  Really, it’s about NOT growing.  The blog is just NOT growing!  Look at your numbers, for Gawd’s sake!!  Who reads you?  Like, a dozen or so?  Honestly, you have to get better or get a new hobby.  The old crap just won’t do.  Now I want more.  We all want more!” 

“So, it’s me!?”

“Yep.  You’re boring me. You are boring us all!  People are phoning me, asking me questions about your mental state.  Basically, you suck!  But it is also me.  I have been too lax until now.  Too easy on you.   I let you get away with crap.  No longer gonna happen, mister.  We have to get serious.  It is time to put your words where your mouth is.  No more Ms Nice Gal.  Not here.  Not now.  The editor says, suck it up!”

“Whoa!  Way harsh!  I am reeling.  Gasping, actually.  You just ripped my heart out!”

“It is for your own good.  Think of it as tough love.”

“I think of it already as horrible love.”

So, since everyone likes to kick a man when he is down, I thought I’d ask you, the reader:  If all the previous posts were assembled and put into book form, the theme of which still kind of eludes me but which Sal assures me is something like ‘old city guy goes to the country’ or ‘it is never to late to follow a dream’ or ‘learning and growing while greying’, what components are missing for you?  What do you want to hear?  What would make all the gibberish gell?

And how do I get Sal to be nice to me again?

Our neighbour dropped six prawn traps for us yesterday before he left for his city home.  We get to pull ’em and then re-set them as needed.  For a bit.  He’ll be back to take over again in a few days.  It was a nice gesture.  But we weren’t too excited.  The prawning has been poor.

Usually we just set two of our own traps and that has provided enough for a few meals and we are content with that.  Better the prawns should have fun and stay fresh down there while we have pizza or chicken.  Or whatever.  We’ll call on them when the occasion requires it.

Last year, with guests and all, we went through about 300 prawns.  About a five gallon pail.  Approximately ten Zip-Lok bags.  It was plenty.  More than enough.  If it was just Sal and I, a third of that would have been good.  Sal makes a mean prawn linguini in cream sauce and they are always good with garlic butter and some tomato-based sauce as an appetizer.  I sometimes add them to sushi with avocado slices.  I think of prawns like I do bacon – more than a garnish, less than an entrée.

And we needed a few entrées.  So, we did a town-day lite today.  Just over to the next island.  They have a store there and a recycling depot.  Plus I needed a couple of bits of hardware for the woodwork shop.  And there was the chocolate mandate to be filled, too.  We ambled over.  Did our thing.  And ambled back.  Pretty laid back.

Then we went to pull the traps.

The first trap came up empty but for a single prawn!  The next two on the string lifted the haul to about a dozen.  Twenty four hours on one of the best areas at the beginning of the season and I am not sure if we had a dozen!  That was not good.

We went to the next string.  Started to haul.   The traps were not coming up right.  It is hard to say what pulling a weight from the depths is supposed to feel like but I had done it enough to know that it just didn’t feel right.  I imagined that there were octopi in there.  That happens.

We kept pulling.

Eventually, I could see a problem as the traps came up.  They had somehow set on themselves.  They were tangled.  Each trap was ensnared with the other two.  It was a jumble of traps.

Of course, you keep pulling.  Have to.  We had to clear the tangle at the very least.

But as they came up, we began to see prawns in the traps.  Within the next five minutes we had filled a five gallon bucket!  Three hundred and fifty prawns!  And all of them captured in a pile, a jumble, a veritable rat’s nest of nets and ropes.

Wow!  A new prawning technique!

When we were done processing the little sweeties, we had our yearly allotment!  One haul!

It was a good day.

A Mess of Prawns

My son and his partner K are in eastern Europe.  They are having a good time.  But, of course, not all their conversation revolves around just traveling.  Sometimes they talk about other things:  K wrote to tell me of one conversation……..

Killer whales yesterday.  Killer whales all last week, too.  All heading south.  Strange.

We see Orcas, of course.  But it is not like we ‘track’ them or anything.  They just go by every now and then.  Sometimes up channel.  Sometimes down.  It is always ‘attention-getting’ but as a rule it is just commuting neighbours writ black and white, wet and large.  We enjoy the sight but don’t think too much about it.

Having said that, I don’t ever recall three separate pods all heading south within days of one another.  And, yes, we can tell the difference between pods.  The dorsal fins of the bulls are usually distinctly different and the numbers in the pod vary.

Ravens are acting a bit different, too.  Typically Liz is on the nest right about now and only Jack forages.  If we see her, we don’t see him.  Trade-off time.  But yesterday, we saw them both.  Odd.  Doesn’t bode well for the eggs unless they have hatched.  And that doesn’t seem likely.  Not yet.

It’s prawning season again.  My neighbour dropped a couple of traps.  Usually, the first traps of the season get good results.  Not this year.  Meagre is the word.  Minimal.  Not a good sign.

It is just April.  Usually by now the sun is shining and doing so at least half the time.  March this year came in like a lion and left like a raging bull. Blew like hell last night.   Blowing like hell right now.  Winter just hasn’t quite let go it’s nasty grip.  There are a few signs of spring but it still doesn’t feel like spring-is-in-the-air. Not quite.

People are snapping, too.  Happens every year, they say.  A bit-too-long-a-winter and the darkness catches up with folks.  They get a bit crabby, a bit snappish.  Tensions run a bit high.  Sometimes they call that state one of being ‘bushed’ but really, that term should be reserved for the more extremely isolated and antisocial characters.  Real hermits.  Not us.  I think it is mostly just some variant on Spring fever or maybe SADs (Seasonal Affective Disorder), sunlight deprivation.  Whatever it is, it is real.  People are a bit grumpy.

Still, I think a few nice long days of sunshine would help plants and animals alike.

We got all the fibreglass done on Sal’s boat despite the bad weather.  A judiciously applied source of heat at just the right time and just the right place made the job do-able.  The weather was not good but we prevailed.  A bit more ‘messin’ about’ painting and fixing and we’ll launch it again.  Probably next week.  Sal is happy.  Almost.

We have to go to town.  Probably tomorrow.  Haven’t been in two weeks.  Getting a bit low on things like milk and chocolate.  We can do without the milk, tho.  But some things are just way too important.  Sal has decided to go to town regardless of the weather.  And Sal said, “THERE WILL BE CHOCOLATE!”

All in all, I’d have to say that we are on the down side of a number of naturally occurring, mood-affecting cycles – foodstuffs, movies, chocolate inventory, weather, sunshine and, most importantly for me, frequency of communication.

It is not that bad but this is the time of year that seems the loneliest to me.  All the busy working people are busy working.  All the non-working people are still ‘holed up’ and hunkered down.  Family is away.  Writers and callers are fewer (We definitely get more attractive to our friends as the weather gets sunnier.  Maybe it is the tan I get?). 

In the dead of winter, I expect to be ‘cut off’ from people (I am not always cut off.  Sometimes we travel and are busy interacting but I expect otherwise when I am home.  A neighbour likens it to human hibernation.  Anyway you describe it, less people in winter is just fine with me).  In the middle of the summer, there are always too many people (they tend to cluster, to bunch up, ya know?)  It is usually just right in the autumn.

It all reminds me of the Chinese curse and blessing, “May you live in interesting times.”

And we do.  Right now is just a smidge more interesting than other times.