We’re coming back from a town day, several miles into the last portion of the logging road and quite in the middle of nowhere, whipping past a clump of trees as we pass one of the lakes on the neighbouring Island.  I am concentrating on driving as, like most logging roads, this one is a single-but-wide lane and encountering traffic always feel at first like a collision in the making.  Sal shrieks.  Something falls off the roof.  I stop.  “Hey! There’s a sign in the bushes.  It says, Sally and David.  Think that means us?”

“What fell off the roof?”

“I think it was a roof rack mount.  Was that sign meant for us?”

We found and picked up the roof rack mount and went back to the little clump of bushes.  There was a place to pull off and camp at the lake and so I took the pull-off. Sitting there reading was our old friend, Doug.

“I knew you went to town ’cause I was gettin’ on the ferry you were getting off.  I saw you.  Knew you’d come back so I put up a sign.  Good eyes!”

Doug is 70+, gone camping for a few weeks with just his van – not an RV.  He has the required tent,  Coleman stove, sleeping bag. Bit of food.   He gets water from and bathes in the lakes and streams.  Everything is minimalist but in order and clean.  He’ll forage about for berries and stuff.  He is headed up island before returning for a visit.  Definitely a character…’who puts a very small sign on a bush in the forest and expects it to be seen?’

B and L were on their way up to us for a pre-arranged weekend stay.  He was the reader who offered to bring me welding stuff.  He knows how to weld.  After a lesson or two and a couple of days at it, I do too.  Kinda.  Just little, hobby-boy welding but that’s fine.  I intend no further advancement than hobby-boy and maybe a bit of Honey-do level welding.  Small jobs for sure.

So, the summer is here.  Officially or not.  Using dates or not, summer is here.  For us, the season starts with the first guests and, even tho we have had visitors already, it is the first overnight guest that marks the beginning of the silly season.  B & L were good harbingers of that.  They are goofy as Hell. Doug had a shot at it but he’ll be #2.  Otherwise he had all the qualifications.  Silliness up the ying yang.  But fun.

And so the madness begins…..

Sal spent $70.00 on go-to-yoga-Wednesday.  That is incredible.  Beyond comprehension.  But she did it despite the impossibility of it.  Mind you, she didn’t HAVE $70.00 at the time (nor a credit card or even a purse) but that didn’t stop her.  A man’s gotta do, a woman’s gotta shop.

But you already know all that about women shopping.  That is not news.  What makes this day of expenditure so remarkable is that Sal managed to do it without a store to visit.  In fact, with the exception of some postage from the Post Office, there was not even the semblance of a normal vendor and one had to look hard in places not normally associated with commerce to find something to buy.

I confess that, in this case, the looking hard part would have been the fun part for me because Sal came home with some new bras.  One of the people at Yoga had returned from Mexico with a collection of colourful and captivating custom-made bras for sale and Sal took advantage.  The goods were displayed in situ while attending yoga and who could resist that?  Her word is good so the debt was incurred and the bras handed over.  Ka-ching!  She also, of course, paid for attending yoga ($6.00) and the aforementioned postage.  She passed on lunch…(with new bras, she was watching her figure….).   

While on the public dock at the PO, she ran into G from a neighbouring island.  G raises chickens and had a few dozen eggs to sell and, surprisingly, a frozen chicken.  Our local chickens are more than free range, they are lucky as hell.  There is so much wildlife up here that the odds of survival are higher in downtown Homs, Syria, than for being a free range chicken on a remote island.  But this one made it long enough to get frozen and driven to the PO and so Sal couldn’t resist.  It was good karma in a poultry-kind-of-way.  No money.  Just a mental note…and a sum of money placed in one of several envelopes when she got home.

No store.  No intention.  No money at hand.  But we have chickens, bras, stamps and eggs nevertheless.  I kinda understand the chicken and eggs but colourful Mexican bras found in the middle of the west coast rain forest……?  This is a whacky, fun kinda place at times.

So far all that I have managed to stick is my vice-grip jaws closed.  The metal I was attempting to weld a bead on just melted.  Disappeared into the ether, too.  Like magic.

Welding ain’t easy.  Seems the damn thing takes some skill, not to mention a helluva lot of spare metal that can be melted or ‘fizzed’ away while you pick up the knack.  Old clothes are a must, too.  I have gone through a few check shirts already and nothing but my tools are actually welded.  Should you take up the hobby, I suggest less-flammable clothing than Costco check shirts, by the way.

As you may have guessed by now, I bought a small welder and am attempting to use it.   I plugged it in, fired up the genset and attached the ground to the metal.  I then touched the wire-feed tip of the Mig welder to the sacrificial piece of steel and expected to see a spark or two.  Nada.  I pulled the trigger til there was six inches of wire hanging out and still nothing.  Hmmmmm………?  So, I fiddled with a knob or two and VOILA!  All hell broke loose!  And, as a bonus, the metal scrap I was attempting to weld had pretty much vaporized.

Hmmmmm….more knob fiddling resulted in a bead of sorts but it turned out to include my vice grips.  I was so excited that I didn’t notice until I had melted away the better part of the spare square of  steel and, when I stopped and tried to remove my vice grips, discovered my error.  Using my mini grinder, I freed the grips but they’ll never be the same.  And my heart is still pumping.  Welding can be scary.

It is not so much the lack of control over a lethal dose of electricity as it is the weird disappearance of what-used-to-be a plate of steel.  Where does it go?  More to the point…where would I go?

Never mind, I will get the hang of it.  I just decided to go and get a few of our fire extinguishers at the ready first.  Nothing like setting yourself on fire to remind you of the importance of safety, eh?  Thankfully, I tend to smolder first and, having a keen sense of smell, I managed to save myself from a full-Buddha-style immolation. But the experience did bring me closer to God.

Me and Mr. Lincoln, sticking together, making vice grips stronger and disappearing useful steel plate.  And I thought it couldn’t get any better!

We usually trim Fid (dog) every once in awhile to keep his appearances up.  He thinks he is pretty good lookin’ and doesn’t like to ‘slip’ his usual standards.  But trimming him is like trimming a Brillo pad.  His hair is as close to wire as possible in a mammal. Because we were away and let him grow out in the winter anyway, we usually give him over to the local dog groomer once (sometimes twice) a year.  Every Spring, fer sure.  She does the heavy cutting, we do the touch-ups.  He’s a smidge over due for both.

Computers are ubiquitous and quirky and so many people know how they work and nerdism is getting more common all the time.  But not out here.  And we’re seemingly immune to all that software and data chip stuff ourselves and so our computers need to see the computer groomer once in awhile, maybe twice a year.  We do the little tweaks now and then but the real virus-outing and such has to be done by a geek.  Getting your real wires sorted is another Spring cleaning chore for us.

Our above-mentioned groomers are on another rural, underpopulated island.  You’d think getting service would be easy.  It is not!  It is easier to get an audience with the Pope.  “Well, I am now taking bookings for 2015 but maybe I could fit you in at 5:00 am on a Sunday? But you’ll have to make breakfast while I work?  Zat OK?”     

That’s the thing about employment in the forest; either the person is the only one for miles around or the only one competent for miles around and they are really, really busy or else there are several other similar service providers and they are all very, very poor ’cause they are never, ever busy.  You can stand in line just to get a ticket to stand in line for the dog groomer!  But there are a half dozen nuclear astrophysicists twiddling their thumbs just down the street.

OK.  I am exaggerating.  We are not oversupplied with physicists.  Hyperbole.  So, sue me.  But our cups do runneth over with quilters, knitters, crafters, herbalists, yoga instructors, potters, artists, weavers, writers, botanists, painters, sculptors, activists and assorted derivatives from several generations of over-emphasis on the Liberal Arts.   

We have carpenters up the wazoo.  Of course.  Everyone is a carpenter.  Even Sal.  Got millers of wood, too.  Same for plumbers and, oddly, medical personnel.  Well, NOT the official, educated, legal, conventional doctors although we DO have the legal, registered kind of doctor, too.  You don’t have to wait to see the local witch doctor OR their neighbour, the kind with ‘MD’ after their name.

I could see a doctor every day if I wanted.    Computer fixer? Not so much.  Dog groomer?  Sometimes she’s just a rumour.

The local area has at least four doctors that I know of and I suspect that there are several more.  They don’t all practice, so they remain incognito.  One is open about it and even has her name on a sign (and she’s good).  Most of them just live out here and enjoy life.  But one of them (under the radar-type) travels to a foreign country every year to attend to her own little hospital orphanage.  Another is on the local registry but works just a few hours a week and just a few months a year.  Rarely actually seen. She has a life. Another has an office but it is never open.  He may have a life, don’t know.  Hasn’t been seen in months and he is pretty old.

Lawyers, architects, people seeking bureaucratic positions..?  No chance.  No demand.  None.  May as well go to the city.  THEY use architects.  We ‘wing it’.  THEY use lawyers.  We just hold a grudge.  THEY use consultants and so do we but ours are free or will advise for a beer and a sandwich.

Every ‘secure’  job out here has been secured decades ago.  We have ferry workers who were born and raised on that very same ferry and they will likely die on it.  You don’t get your journeyman papers on our ferry till forty years of service!  No one leaves their ferry job!  Same with the grocery clerk, her kid and her kid’s kids.

The point?   Career paths are different out here.  Walking paths in the city are hard and straight and marked with signs, lights and crosswalks.  Paths in the country meander through the forest every which way and end up in the weirdest places.  And so it is with career paths.

Who woulda thunk that the foundation of the local economy would be the dog groomer?

Interesting times out here in Nowheresville.  And by that I mean, things are dull.  Like doldrums.  Can’t explain it…just NOT exciting.  Interesting, still, of course, but no sense of activity.  It’s like our collective feet are stuck or something.

It’s almost June.  You can count the number of recreational boats that have gone by on one hand.  And there have been kayakers but only one gaggle so far.  Not the half dozen or so that even last year presented.  And there has been only one single, lone paddler and that was about a week ago.  Typically, we see the iconic sole adventurer times five or six by now.  Air traffic has also been less.  Even the commercial prawners seem to be working at skeleton crew level.  It’s been a very slow start to the busy season.

In theory that should be fine with me.  And it is. I am seeking out people less and less these days.  Quiet is good.  But this isn’t about me.  It’s about the rest of the recreational public.  They just ain’t here. I have noticed a drop off in the hoi polloi for the last decade but the numbers seemed to level off about three or so years ago.  We had fewer passers by but we still had a countable, noticeable number every day.  This year days go by and no one enters our vision – and this with the Dog-who-alerts-us to every passing mammal even if it is a just another seal.  Trust me; we know who comes and goes.

I have several theories about why this is so but the reasons don’t matter.  There are fewer people working and recreating out here and that statistic has been well established over several decades.  That this year is even slower is simply part of a long trending decline in human activity both recreational and commercial.

Things will pick up, of course.  Our August is already full and, if they are coming to visit us, others are going to visit others and still others will come and go.  We’ll get people.  But this is an unseasonably slow start.  Weird.  It’s feels like a portent of something…

…the calm before the storm?  Or the calm before the death?

Ironically, a new TV series has been announced: America Unplugged (Sportsman Channel).  I am not sure what it is about (it has yet to premier and we don’t have TV anyway) but the ads indicate that it will be ‘hosted’ and that it will feature families (some with ‘gasp’ children!) who intentionally live off the grid.  They even had an excerpt from some discussion whereby the interviewee claimed to be able to survive forever with only a big sharp knife to aid him.  Oooh, tough guy stuff.  If the series is about eating bugs and tree bark in the rain while wasting away in front of a TV crew, it will be short-lived (as will be the star of the show).  But if it is about people like us, it will be interesting to at least people like us – who don’t have TVs and who number in the 00’s.  So, short-lived either way is my prediction.

I just discovered Wretha and husband at Wrethaoffgrid.something and they are four years into much the same adventure as us.  West Texas.  Learning the same lessons.  Loving it.  But, like us, they are amazed at how few actually do it.  Oh well…………

Conclusion: living off the grid is NOT popular.  Never will be.  Visiting (trekking, hiking, camping, kayaking) off the grid is becoming less popular than it used to be and may end all together.  Which makes sense: no people living out here, no visitors.  No residents no visitors, fewer resources to strip and exploit equals less people altogether.

And then the forest can heal.  The oceans can become rich again.  Then the people will come.  And the cycle may repeat.  Simba, Mustafa.

You deserve an update.

You may recall that two of my neighbours had projects and so did (do) I.  R had a dock to build and he did a fine job.  Fantastic, actually.  You could tie up the Queen of Alberni to it and it would be secure.  My other neighbor, J, built a ‘tiny’ houseboat.  It is magnificent, cute as a bug’s ear and the delight of his grandchildren. (Mind you, they are not here all the time and he does seem to spend a great deal of time there…just sayin.)

So, two guys, all by themselves, dreamed up projects and, within the last year, knocked them off and are now looking for the next challenge to which they will direct their energies.  And these guys are closing fast on 70!
That’s right, 70!  And their work output is greater than mine has ever been even including my heyday (so far back I can’t remember if it was my 30’s or 40’s).  These guys are truly an inspiration (for those so inclined to be inspired by that kind of thing) – though, not me.  I admire them both no-end but I am not inspired.  Expired, maybe.  Just looking at them go at it exhausts me.  I get inspired alright…to nap!

  It is not like I don’t do stuff.  I do stuff! 

But, geez, I also sit and have tea.  They don’t.  I quit if I start to work up a sweat.  They don’t.  That’s when they get into their rhythm.  They are like horses.  Not happy unless they are running.  I’m more like Jabba the Hutt, most happy when inclining.

Floathouse Interior

Still, despite my tendency to lie down on the job, we got the workshop done.  Sal and me.  I have spent the last few days moving all my tools and fasteners from various places around the site to their new and proper space-on-a-shelf in a pretty, new workshop-cum-studio.  It is a bit fancy for a workshop but my construction skills are not good enough to call it a studio so maybe we’ll call it the workio or the stud-hop. Sally suggested The Worst.

Studio/Workshop/Whatever

She has a way with words, that girl.

The Worst is 12 x 16 and too small in which to build much of anything but that is no problem.  I prefer to work outside anyway.  Have to, really, I make so much mess.  The best part of the Worst ‘concept’ is that the deck attached to it is generous and absolutely perfect for putting crap together or – someday – getting creative in some silly kind of way.  Maybe.  We’ll see. 

So that is the update.  All three projects are done.  All three guys are looking forward to the next thing.  For me, that’s a nap.  For them…well, it could be anything.  I can hardly wait to see what lunacy they come up with next.  I’ve asked Sal to wake me……..

(this is a weird one….)

Germany has achieved as much as 74% non-petroleum energy generation.  A lot of that is nuclear but an increasing amount is solar.  In Germany, the Green revolution has more than a foothold, it has roots.

The same is happening in Hawaii.  Their grid-juice is generator-based and so, with subsidies and lower solar panel prices, more and more neighbourhoods are going completely off-the-grid. The Rocky Mountain Institute (the publisher of Natural Capitalism) predicts that the majority of residential power in the USA will be off-grid by 2030.  The alternative energy writing is not only in the book, it is on the wall.

Countries all over the world are investing in solar and wind and even tidal power.  Many are looking again to nuclear power.  Canada is, instead, investing in BIG OIL.

In California (and some other states) the government subsidized solar installations to the tune of 50% for their citizens.  The $30,000 average cost of an adequate home installation costs the consumer $15,000 and they could even offset that cost by selling any extra power they might generate back to the utility.  Going solar in California is a no-brainer.  Our idea of a no-brainer is a premier and a prime minister.

They are also the ones in charge of making sure we have a world class oil-spill response.  Pause for second and think how stupid that phrase really is.

Canada/BC charges GST and PST on solar panels.  Forward-thinking governments around the world provide subsidies instead.  Like all of our modern commodities from cell-phone service to gasoline, from foodstuffs to nationally manufactured goods (such as automobiles and appliances), we Canadians pay more.

But, in counter-point, we give more away to foreign countries.  From lumber to petroleum products, from grain and agricultural exports, Canada sells cheap.  Hell, we often even sell the unprocessed logs so that Canadians don’t even get any jobs from the trees we harvest.  And we intend to sell the raw ‘tar’ from the tar-sands rather than processing it into finished product, too.

Canada is the international Head Office of Saps and Suckers Unlimited.

Do I care?  No.  Not really.  So we are a bit stupider than most others…so what?  So we pay more for everything than others…so what?  So our leaders are crooks and incompetents who steal from the people more and more and, at the same time, provide less and less……..so what?  Seriously, I don’t really care.  Honest.  Would I trade my life here for one in Nigeria where the schoolgirls are political collateral?   Would I live in China where I can’t rant like this?  Would I even choose to live in efficient and orderly Japan or Germany where they are so many times more rule-bound?  No.

I value my personal freedom so I choose here.

But make no mistake – what makes this country great is it’s size.  ONLY.  That’s right…it is that simple: we have room to get away from the madding and controlling and greedy and dangerous crowds that proliferate unchecked.  We can get away from it all if we want to.  What has Canada got for the average person?  Space.  Lots of it.

More and more I have come to appreciate that simplest of endowments.  I have space in which to live freely and though my time on the planet is diminishing, it is mine.  I am rich in it.  I have the freedom of time and space. Like Jean-luc Picard on the Starship Enterprise, I can go boldly…somewhere….if I want.  Even better, I have a fantastic #1 who can help ‘make it so’.

You think I am kidding?  I am not.  In the giant scheme of things the only currency you really have is time.  Money?  It’s an illusion.  They invented the stuff.  You are born with a full bank balance compromised of some indeterminate amount of months and years and then you spend it until it is gone.  To be able to do that unfettered by others is the greatest gift of all and Canada at least allows me to choose the ones I love and to avoid most of the others.  And how I choose to spend that love and freedom is entirely up to me.  For that, I am truly grateful.

The provincial GREENs are trying again.  Annual convention, policy rebuild, new executive, more statements, more promises.  New hopes and dreams.  I hope they get it right this time.  Mind you, the heart, soul and faith of the party is on the perimeter of the Gulf of Georgia (the Salish Sea) and the only elected Greens came right from the middle of it.  But the Annual convention this year is in Kelowna.  So, on the face of it, there seems to be a Liberal Party spy doing their convention arrangements.

Can’t win with the bad guys at the controls, guys.  See: the Conservatives and the Elections Act?

Still, I have hope.  I looked at the candidates for the executive board and some of them are capable people.  I think.  Resumes don’t always paint an accurate picture but they think they are great anyway.  I hope they are.  I voted for the cute one.

The last two decades of voting for the GREENs has reminded me of when I supported the Canucks.  I dropped that silly effort-in-faith twenty years ago only to replace it with the equally as disappointing and under-performing GREENs.  I may suffer from failure-to-prEdict contests and elections syndrome (FECES) – the acronym may not be too close but the feeling is).  Both processes seem awfully similar to me at times.  Both full of BS, too.  Politics, professional sports…..all the same, kinda.   And the champion is only champion for a short time before we go through it all again.  

Like it was all just another business……………hmmmmm?

One of the best things about living off the grid is our daily indulgence in denial.  We don’t hear, we don’t see, we don’t feel the omnipresence of BIG Brother every day- like we did when we were in the city.  Of course, BB is still out there lurking, planning, screwing up and sending us the bill.  That is what he does.  And he makes his bullying presence known at tax-time and other rent collecting times but, generally speaking, on a day-to-day basis, HE is not here inflicting himself on us too much. There is not enough percentage in it for him.  We are, for the most part, out of sight and out of mind.  In a word, we enjoy and revel in governmental and institutional benign neglect. 

Would the GREENs be better?  Unlikely.  They are simply not BIG enough to win against BB.  For all their bad press, bullies are usually pretty good at being bullies and they know how to do their job.  And they will.  If the GREENs ever win much of anything, they will be punished for it.  They won’t get big in my lifetime.

I think the real way to vote GREEN is to live green.  Walk the walk, talk the talk, grow the greens and shrink the footprint.  And, when you have the choice, vote for any one but BBC and his evil twin, BBL.  The Liberals-Conservative big twins.  I am almost as leery of their sister, the kinder, gentler but raised-in-the-same family, Ms NDP.

Call me crazy but that whole family reminds me of the FORDs of Toronto.

GUMBOOT GIRLS (Caitlin Press 2014) is about the ‘second generation’ of ‘landers’  from the 70’s.  Hippy chicks. First generation would be the original fisher and logger wives of several decades earlier and, of course, there were the ‘originals’, the First Nations women, for thousands of years before that.  Sal is third gen.  Kinda.  Mostly.

Sally is the same age as the second gen women but she just doesn’t have the roots, the scars, the skills, the long history to be truly a back-to-the-lander, hippy-chick.  Sal was urban until her early fifties.  Cosmo.  Vanity Fair.  Even though she has all the right stuff and attitude, she is a veritable Newbie amongst the many long-experienced, true Amazons of the wild west coast.

Mind you, those ‘GUMBOOT GIRLS’ in the book were further up north as well.  Life was and still is harder up there and it must have been especially difficult at times in Haida Gwaai and the nearest mainland area from which these stories were forged.  These women went back to the land in the seventies when services, amenities, housing, money and even safety was in short supply.  They did good to make a go of being off the grid when the nearest grid was still hundreds of miles away.  And many had to do it alone.

GUMBOOT GIRLS is a good read.  But it is also truly descriptive. It is accurate.  It gives the right sense of living off the grid.  Our lives are not as hard and never will be as hard as the GG’s had it but we do face similar basic challenges and there is often some kind of commonality in their stories for us.  We can relate.

And that brings me to the point: I am not so sure I can honestly relate to First Nations.  Too foreign an experience for me to relate to.  Too primal.  And the early settlers were also such a hardy and impoverished group working ten times harder just to survive – I don’t really relate to them, either.  Too tough.  But I know the GUMBOOT GIRLS.  Some still live amongst us.  Many still live around the remote nooks and crannies of the wild and rural-side of the province. These are the new Cougar Annies’.  And we know some of them.

Essentially, they are the hippy-chicks of the seventies but the qualifying essential is longevity.  Duration.  Stick-to-itiveness.  These are not just the young beauties of the free love era who arrived in long, thin cotton dresses with flowers in their hair that were somewhat ubiquitous at the time. These are the ones that stayed, partnered up, built boats, found employment, constructed homes and gardens.  And they raised families as well.  These are the women who didn’t have electricity or running water, who also gave birth sometimes in tents and small cabins and who learned to fix motors and survive off the land (to a large degree) or else they would perish. These are the third iteration of rural women and they did good.

They still are doing good.  Sal and I did a quick tally this morning and came up with twelve names of nearby neighbours who qualify as 70’s back-to-the-landers who are still here, doing great and are real role models for anyone wanting to see strong, independent, accomplished women who can virtually do anything.

Talkin’ ’bout Sal’s generation…? The Sally-come-lately’s?  The ‘other’ members of the book-club?  Well, she and some of the others just-as-old but-not-as-tested, recently-arrived women have more than enough to deal with transitioning from urban life to off-the-grid living. They work hard too. They are not slouches.  Their work is not as hard but these women started at a later stage.  Mind you, the children are grown.  So, it is still a challenge – just in a different way.

And there is a next generation in the making as well.  Some are children of the GUMBOOT GIRLS and they have embraced this way of life with the same gusto. Some GG children have married other GG children.  Others went fishin’ in the urban gene pool – promising to come back. We have young women with young men trucking families and tools and a sense of adventure to remote places for work and even sometimes just for the adventure.  And we have WOOFER’s. The spirit of discovery and adventure in the wilderness is alive and well, to be sure.

A full-time partner makes it easier, too, in either generation.  Having enough money to buy the food you need makes it a helluva lot easier.

But something as modern and simple as cell-phone service or Netflix illustrates the real difference.  There has been a technological leap.  We have it much, much easier than the GUMBOOT GIRLS but we also are just close enough to know what they went through and to have great respect for it.

GUMBOOT GIRLS.  A good read about a great way of life.

Been away.  A memorial service.  Mother’s Day.  Shopping.  Outboard repairs.  You know….the stuff from which life is composed and comprised?

Sometimes life is a bit of a drag, tho………right? Seems slow?  I mean, it is not HELL but it is sometimes same ol’, same ol’. Right?  C’mon…..you know it can be like that!

But, of course, it hasn’t been that way much for us these past few years because living off the grid is an adventure and, the best part: you have some control over the tempo or pace of your adventure.  Time seems to lose it’s influence.  I work at my shop when I want to.  I explore the beaches when I want to.  I basically find myself in a curious place that is at my convenience to explore.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

But doing the ordinary stuff of life (as referred to in the first line) puts that in a stark perspective.  Put another way: I never wear a watch anymore unless we leave the island.  Then I put one on.  I have to.  I have to swim in sync with the world for a while.

The service brought people from four decades past together.  THAT was something.  We were being greeted by old friends that we had not seen in close to forty years.  Most had changed dramatically, of course, but interestingly, everyone’s voice was instantly recognizable.  Some greying, old, bald guy rolling around in an extra hundred pounds, extended his hand and, puzzled, I shook it.  “Hi, Dave!”  It was Don!  I knew it instantly.

And so it went.  Ghosts, practically.  But in the flesh and reminiscing out loud and right in front of me.  Strange but good.

One fellow with whom I had communicated only by way of this blog came up and introduced himself.  My deceased friend had introduced us on the internet but we had never met.  That was good, too.

The whole thing was good (save for the purpose of the occasion) but also very, very poignant.  It was like the mother of all milestones.

We all know we are getting older.  We aren’t stupid.  And we know that we are actually getting old, to boot.  But when you are collected at a funeral for a friend of forty years, those decades come rushing up to splash you in the face.  You can see your own life in the faces of those with whom you were young.  Very sobering.

In a way, Mother’s Day is similar.  Sal’s mom is in her 80’s.  Sally’s (our) son is in his thirties.  We had pictures of great grandma when she was much younger than we are now.  And our own son is a constantly surprising and ever-maturing adult.  Such occasions are also sobering reminders that time is not a slow march but a veritable sprint.

Worse for me, sprinting or even long distance running was never my family’s forte’. We are a gene pool of occasional walkers that use the benches and rest stops more than most.  And, sadly, we don’t usually get very far.  We cover distance like the Celts, Druids and Hobbits from which we are descended.  We are short in all the wrong ways.  Long on words, brief on life span.

And that is the beauty of this island.  I don’t have far to go and I can rest even on the short paths.  Plus it is full and interesting, like life should be.  Short and sweet.