I am so keen on living off-the-grid that I confess to proselytizing and preaching now and then.  One could even assert that this blog is trying to start the new back-to-the-land movement or at least cheering from the haywagon, as it were.  I write to attract readers and I attract readers to come live this way.  I am kind of like ‘wooing’ in a way.

It’s true.  I know it, anyway.  You probably haven’t noticed but now and again, if not a whole bunch too often,  I wax rhapsodic about rural living, the forest, the sea, blah, blah, blah.  Ravens.  Clams.  Whatever.  It can get a bit sickening, I am sure, so I try to keep the boosterism to a dull roar when I become aware of the tendency.  But I know that I mostly fail to keep it very subtle and I must occasionally come across like a beginning realtor in a cheap suburb.

I am sorry about that………………a bit.  Not too sorry.  Well, not very sorry at all, really.

There are several reasons I promote this way of life, the most prominent of which is that I am sincere and I believe it and I want to share with others.  I am a sweetheart, I am NOT a realtor.  But there are also a few other reasons and I thought I should expose all my agendas, you know, so as to be pure-of-heart as well as sweet.

A second reason for recommending a cottage to visit (putting a delicate spin on it…I could say a place to ‘hunker down’ or ‘hole up’) is that I have and have had a sense that the system is breaking down and that being in the city will cause my friends and readers extreme hardship in the coming years.  In other words, I think you are all pretty much doomed.  Mind you, in the words of a journalist from the Georgia Straight writing about recent problems,  I am clearly not alone in that.

“Am I the only one that sees all this as a great opportunity to move to the woods and live the Little House on the Prairie lifestyle? Maybe I’m deluded, but I’ve kind of been waiting for this my whole life.  It takes one hell of a lot of brain activity and luck to make modern urbanism work, spiritually. Let the hemorrhage begin!”  Pietra Woolley

I also simply expected more of an exodus.  A naturally occurring one.  I really did.  Frankly, I still expect it and I think you are all just procrastinating.

One reason for that is that, historically, older people seem to gravitate to cottages.  It’s a natural-aging kinda thing.  Like golf and gardening.  Ya, know?  So, like, don’t you guys think you are getting old? Are you in denial about this?  Is that it?  Is it the yoga, the plastic surgeon and the viagra that is holding things up (in more ways than one)?  Where are the typical ‘going-to-the-cottage’ types?

Another reason – and I know this sounds a bit egocentric – but what has, in the past interested me, seems to have also interested a majority or a significant number of others.  Much to my horror, I have come to accept that I am not unique in the least and that, in fact, I could be the poster boy for Stats Can’s average man.  Advertisers could save a helluva lot of effort simply by following me around.  What I do is manifest mainstream living.  I am average.  I am the average Canadian.  I am Canada.  Well, I am baby-boomer Canada, anyway.

So, if I like it, shouldn’t everyone be doing it?  I mean, really?  If I am only half as average as I think, doesn’t that still translate into a rural-living boom?  Shouldn’t solar panels be flying off the shelf at the very least?  Are we the only ones with walkie-talkies that actually get used?  Doesn’t everyone compost nowadays?

‘Cmon!  We had four TVs when we lived in Tsawwassen.  Now: none.  We took several newspapers.  Now: none.  Three cars: now one.  We ate processed cheese, for God’s sake!  Now: well, I don’t know from cheese but you get my drift.  We not only moved but we moved on. The world is changing and we went green and rural and I thought others would, too.  Seems the vast majority are going ‘condo’ instead.

I am shocked.

My friend Bill moved.  He’s on a southern Gulf Island.  That’s one who saw the light.  And a whole lotta people were out here already (the earlier cutting edge).  So, I know that it is an attractive alternative lifestyle.  But I hafta admit that there are only a few escaping the city and most often as just a means to get a summer cottage to supplement their several other homes in London, Paris and Vancouver.  The homesteader of limited means is nowhere to be seen.  Hell, the lower-middle income worker getting economically killed in the burbs isn’t showing up either.  And the youth?  Most of them are flipping burgers and playing X-box.  In town!  Those who seem to be ‘getting it’ are gazillionaires and/or are really just wealthy retirees getting a part-time retreat.  The advent of the exodus-of-the-aware-and-scared just isn’t happening.

Mind you, David Suzuki lives out here.  I am pretty sure that he knows something………..

I guess, in the end, it doesn’t matter.  Home is where the heart is.  And, if most people feel at home in the city, that’s just fine.  It’s a nice place to visit and an even nicer place for us to have friends to stay with.

So, anybody buying bullets?

Hard to believe, but we did a bit o’loggin’ again a couple of days ago.  And it’s December!  Sal had wrangled the odd log to the beach over the previous week of very high tides and so we had a few to cut up, anyway.  But, really, that’s just an ‘everyday’ kind of thing even tho it is late in the year.  Livin’ remote on the west coast, whenever you see a good log floating by, you take it. That’s just life out here.

To help you grasp the concept of this ‘everyday’ pickin’-up, salvage/gatherer mentality, you city-folks, it’s like you stooping down to pick up a twenty dollar bill you find on the street.  It doesn’t happen everyday but everyday it happens, you’d stop to get it.  Most of us would even stop our car and get out in the rain to pick up a $20.  Right?  Well, a high-floater at least 30 feet long is the equivalent of finding a $20. Well, Douglas Fir, anyway.  Hemlock maybe $12 or $15.

The other day we saw a big ‘butt-end’ Cedar on the beach.  At least six feet around at the thickest part and maybe 15 feet long.   This puppy represented the motherlode of kindling to us.  Maybe even a shake or two.  We could be set for fire-starter for a few years with this piece!  To use the same analagous measuring stick, this Cedar was a $50 bill.  We picked it up.

“Wow, Dave!  You think in terms of money when you log salvage?”

“No.  Not really.  I draw such a parallel for those of you who don’t find, chop and burn wood every year.  But, I must admit, having next years logs already drying does, in fact, feel like money in the bank”.

When I think about it, I actually feel that way about the clams and the oysters awaiting their fate as my future paella or clam chowder, too.  I don’t really value them in terms of money, per sé, but they do feel like ‘money-in-the-bank’.  Maybe food-in-the-larder is a better description.  It is different – kind of a security thing.  Weird, really.

But, back to wood.  Fir is the recognized ‘best’ wood for heating your house out here.  Provided it is dry, of course.  If you read the wood charts that give the BTU or caloric rating, Fir is at the top of the west coast woods.  And most people seek, find, chop and burn that, if they can.

Dry Alder is also good.  But, for some reason, we don’t seem to gather that so much.  I guess it is because less of it is already cut, trimmed and floating by for our convenience.  Logging companies just ‘trash and slash’ Alder.  It doesn’t grow to sawmill thickness.  Fir and Hemlock are the industrial grade woods and so they are the ones that sometimes escape the booms and become hazards to navigation and potential stove-wood for the local oportunists such as ourselves.

Hemlock is not bad at all.  In fact, by the caloric ratings it is 75-80% of what Fir is and, because it is more plentiful, it really is a good comparable.  You need a bit more of it but there is a lot more of it floating by.  The trouble with Hemlock is that it seems to retain the water longer.  So it has the added negative of requiring more drying time.  Since we have a lot of Hemlock, we are obliged to ‘get in our wood’ at least one year ahead and this year we got in enough to be two years ahead.  By doing that, we have managed to make the Hemlock work for us.  And we are feeling a bit smug about it.  Thus this blog entry.

But here’s a surprise (although I know it is not one to those experienced folks out here), Pine is maybe the best of all.  Generally speaking Pine doesn’t rate that high on charts.  And who am I to argue with the caloric tables?  So, we never sought Pine.  But sometimes Pine seeks and finds you.  Over the years, a few old Pines have fallen and, of course, I clear them up, buckiing them to length and throwing them in the woodshed.

That last tree I wrote about that fell against the other tree during the storm and threatened my solar panels was/is an old Pine.

But our coastal pines are like hardwood.  They are usually only 6 inches in diameter when they are 100 years old!  To have a thick 8″/9″ diameter Pine log is to be looking at a 150 year-old tree!  Maybe older.  The rings on that tree are so close together they are hard to distinguish.  And the wood is heavy.  Heavy and dense.  And full of resin, I think.

Anyway, I burned a few Pine pieces over the last few days.  Ones that had been dried and in the pile.  And it was good.  I am not so sure that I am right about this but I am pretty sure that a piece of Pine will burn at least twice as long and even hotter than a similar sized piece of Fir.  I am sure of that if I just use my own experience.

Now there may be some downsides like too much resin (creosote) or whatever but damn!  Once you get that puppy burning, it goes like mad and does so for a good long time.

I’ll be salvaging a lot more Pine deadfall this coming year.  And to think I have just been turning my nose up at it until lately.

Fiddich and I were left alone yesterday.  Sally had taken Megan with her to the post office.  She was ‘standing in’ for the regular postmistress that day.  The two ‘shes’ wouldn’t be back til the end of the day.

It was cold and clear and inviting and so I went outside for awhile.  Sal likes it that the dogs play fetch every day and so I went out to do that. “C’mon, Fid.  Let’s play fetch!”

Fetch is crazy.

First of all, I don’t believe in fetch.  I think the whole concept is overblown. I don’t believe fetch is necessary nor important.  For me or for the dog. It’s just dopey.

If you have a dog that is stuck in an apartment or even a backyard, then, maybe a little fetch is in order.  I’ll grant you that.  Dogs need to move and run.  I get that.  But, if you have a dog whose backyard is the great outdoors, unfenced, unrestricted and virtually infinite (if he does a little swimming which, call me crazy, Portugese Water dogs should be able to handle!) then he or she is the captain of their own ship, so to speak.  They can go anywhere, do anything and they don’t need me or a ball with which to do it.

But, you know…………Sal likes it………………and, well, it was a nice day………….and the dog seems………………never mind!  I went to play fetch!

As I described, we live in the forest and, if you look at the picture, we live on a rocky peninsula jutting out from the larger forest.  We play fetch on the peninsula mostly.  It is over 15 acres.  Plenty of room.  Elevation changes.  Bushes.  Trees.  Gullys.  Buildings.  Mud.  A perfect place for a dog.

I throw the ball.  Fid brings it back.  It’s a simple concept made just a bit more challenging by the topography but that is what constitutes the spice of life for a dog. 

“Go for it, big boy!”

And off he goes sniffing and charging around.  Nine times out of ten, he brings me the ball.  It is the tenth time about which I am writing.

Upon that occasion when Fid fails to find the flying and hidden riddle of the far flung ball, an impasse and a dilemma is created.  For me, anyway.  We can’t play fetch without the ball and I do not have a better nose for it than does my companion.  Can I even recall in which direction I last threw it?

I must find the ball.  It is an expensive, unchewable, specially-constructed ball-with-ears (don’t ask) that Sally values even more highly than do the dogs.  It is her favourite ball.  So, I go looking. The longer it takes, the more desperate I get.  The more desperate I get, the happier seems Fid.

I think he knows that this is the tenth time.  It is my turn.

“Go for it, big boy!”

I'm waiting...

While I am ferreting my way around, sniffing and charging through the bush, Fid oftens just sits primly and watches.  I admit that he looks pretty happy.  And I am looking for the ball.  He is just waiting.  Maybe grinning.  Ocassionally he looks like he might offer a bit of encouragement but he rarely does.  He never helps.

Ten percent of the time, I am fetching for him.  This never feels right to me.  Ya know?

“So why not quit?  Go in and have some tea?  It’s only a ball!”

Well, I confess to feeling not just a little pressure.  Sally likes me to play fetch with the dogs but she doesn’t want it to end badly.  Not having the ball at the ‘end of the day’ is ending badly.  Should that be the case, I am in way more trouble than I would have been if I hadn’t gone for a fetch in the first place.  I start to panic.  I can’t think clearly.  I am getting hot.  I start to pant.

I sniff for water.

I am telling you that I think fetch is crazy and when the roles get reversed, it is even crazier.  Thank God, we found the damn ball!

And yes, once I found it and calmed down, I threw it for him again a few times  (adds an element of danger) but I stopped short of losing it again.  The ball is still ours.  We live to fetch another day.

OMG!  It is so beautiful out here today!  The sky is clear, the sun is low and bright casting long, sharp shadows everywhere.  The air is crisp, cold, bracing.  The sea is a dancing sparkle.  Gorgeous.  Natural light just seems perfect for seeing everything so clearly, lots of contrast, definition, colour.  High, high resolution!  It is like Blu-Ray and HD!  Only better!

Even tho that statement is 100% true, it is tragic in that I had to use Blu-Ray and HD to convey the picture.  “High resolution!”  Crazy, eh?  We are subtly being absorbed by technology-speak to the point that I felt I should describe the natural things in techie terms rather than techie things in natural terms. That can’t be right.

Maybe I need some kind of help?

Anyway, today is a no-blog day.  It’s too nice out.  Sorry.

As you all know, I am trying to make my blog better.  Not by content, sadly, but by widgets, gimmicks, smoke and mirrors.  I think I am trying to piggyback on Facebook, too (not sure how that is working out).   I am shameless.

But I am also pretty hopeless.  The ‘language’ of the programmer is weird nerd-speak to me.  The instructions on the administration page seem to refer to things that don’t exist.  I need help.  And so I turned to my son.  You know; the one who has the computer degree that I helped sponsor?  The son I love so much?!

“I am having a lot of trouble working out this blog crap, son.  How come I can’t get my friends faces back.  I liked that gallery.  It was fun.  I want my gallery of faces back!”

“Calm down.  Just go to i-google, check in, move the links, check the boxes and follow the instructions.  It’s easy.  And stop buggin’ me.  Don’t be such a doofus!”

Chastised, I go back to fiddling around with what seems like Swahili to me.  It is not working out very well for me.  Two days later.  “Ok.  I give up.  I’ve checked and I’ve followed instructions and I can’t do it and, quite frankly, I am ready to pop some veins!”

“Alright.  I’ll do one thing for you.  But only one.  You should be ashamed of ourself.  You can do this thing!  Follow my lead.  Then you do it for yourself on the other things.”

“Can’t you just do it?”

“Where would the fun be in that?  You like learning, so learn already!”

I am learning!  I am learning to hate you!”

“Now, now, you wouldn’t want me to get all huffy and leave you now, would you?  Play nice.

“I am gonna kill you.”

“So, then who helps you tomorrow?”

I spend some time re-learning to breathe.  I count to ten.  I walk out and look at the sea………….

Then I remember.   What goes around comes around.  So I must have been a horrible father.  The worst.  I must deserve this.  Or? Or…….if I don‘t deserve this, then he’ll get his!  And, frankly, I think he is doomed.  “I pity the poor fool!”

It all works out in the end, you see.  Circle of life, kinda thing.  We’ll see how this works out for him.  HA!  Hahahaha……ahahhahahahhahahahahhahaha!!!!!!!!  (Sorry, I just lost it there for a sec)

In the meantime, I am now praying to be a grandparent. Revenge is best served warm and in diapers.

“Oh, having a few problems with your new son, eh?  Need some help, do ya?  Need some babysitting, do ya?  HA!  Ha!  hahahahahahahahahah.  So glad you called, son.  So glad”. 

It’s only fair that the sins of the son are visited back on the son, I say.

We were pretty smug on Thursday.  The weather was bad and so we stayed home.  Warm and cosy.

But, as Friday was pretty good and we needed a town day, we decided to go out on Saturday.  Weather was OK at depart-from-home time but the overall regional forecast was bad.  Still, off we went.  After we had been loaded onto the ferry and the departure time came and went, I asked the workers as to why we were not leaving.  “Weather.  It’s pretty rough just around the point.  Hard to get into the berth at Campbell River.  But we’ll leave in a minute.  Soon as the captain works up his courage!”

I laughed at the obvious joke and went back to the car.  Sure enough, we left within minutes.  Rounding the point, we experienced all hell breaking loose.  Our ferry pitched and rocked and then it tipped and rolled.  All the way across.  Water sprayed regularly over the hood of our car (we were first in line).  Sal went outside to get a picture but it was too crazy out there.

But the captain berthed that boat like a person placing a robin’s egg back in the nest.  Not a bump.  Bloody brilliant he was!  Confidence inspiring, actually.

We then went about our business.  At the last shop the clerk mentioned that the ferries had stopped running.  We quickly finished up and raced back to the ferry terminal to check it out.  “Well, he may try to get in another run.  He missed the last one but this captain is pretty good.  If he can do it, he will.  Go about your chores and phone me in 20 minutes.  I’ll know by then if he is going to try another run.”

We went to Canadian Tire to buy Sally yet another pair of rubber boots.  I called the ferry terminal.  “Yes!  He is making another run.  Better get back here!”

And so we did.  And the ferry ran.

When we got to the other side, there was a shift change.  We saw the crew leave and the next one take over before we unloaded.  And then we headed home.  We had another ‘crossing to make’ in our own boat but we were confident.  It was wet.  It was crazy.  And making the landing was treacherous.  But we made it.

I was soaked.

Smugness had diminshed somewhat by then.  Not so much because of our own last-leg trip but because we could very easily have been stranded in Campbell River.  In fact, we later learned that the afternoon crew opted to stay put.  Not another run was made that day.  One of our neighbours spent the night in a hotel.  We caught on with two of the few runs made that day and only because the captain on shift was so incredibly capable.

It is easy to be smug when you are warm and cosy at home and making ‘good’ and ‘safe’ and smug-inducing decisions.  It is quite another thing to be sitting in a parking lot waiting for the captain to muster up the confidence to ‘make another run’.

I am going to tone down the smugness a bit.  It can get difficult out here sometimes.  Easy to lose one’s perspective when writing from the warm and cosy.

Work with me on this………….just for a bit……

Imagine you are driving in the back-country and pass some old homesteading-type residence as you bounce by on the bumpy, irregular dirt road in front.  Maybe the owner’s old dog is a-howlin’ and a-nippin’ at your squeaking and rattling car as you go by.  You glance sideways to take in the ‘curb-appeal’ of the place and note with mild disgust the two old pick-up trucks in the front yard that clearly haven’t moved for decades.  Your discerning eye also notes an old tractor buried deep in the nearest clump of bushes and an old fiberglass boat lying not far from it in a state that suggests floating again is completely out of the question.

The house itself is no beauty either.  It could use a coat of paint, some minor repairs and the doorless appliances left rusting on the porch are definitely an offending touch.  “Man, oh man, where do these people come from?”    

Got that image in your mind?  Clear and vibrant, is it?  Ya know what I am talkin’ about here, do ya?  Ya got it?

OK.  Good.  Now imagine this: you are in a similar state of mind and on a similar journey.  Only on a larger scale.  You are in a vehicle of sorts that can cover more ground more quickly.  And you are sightseeing in a nationalistic kind of way.

You zoom by a large Government of Canada site and see a huge building looking kinda ugly and in need of a bit of repair.  It doesn’t look good.  Beside it are the aging and abandoned hulks of Sea King helicopters none of which can fly anymore.  The doors have been removed and they are clearly not capable of seeking anything again.  Your practiced eye also notes a half dozen old British submaries that are also high and dry and not in any position to float or sink.  Ever.  Resting is the position and rusting is the colour.

You instinctively look for a porch. It’s a habit from the old days.  Much to your surprise you see what passes for a large hangar.  In that hangar are parked a couple of dozen shiny new fighter jets.  But you look more closely and notice that they are all covered in a layer of dust.  And there are gaping holes in the planes.  And then you remember, Canada bought those jets for between 35 and 70 billion dollars from the United States a few years ago but the engines weren’t included.  You are looking at a hangar of useless hulks in the making.

A security guard dog comes out of the shadows and snarls in your direction.

Disgusted, you zip over to the coast to get a breath of fresh air.  Your vehicle passes by the tar sands.  “Man it is a good thing I don’t have to see that eye-sore everyday.  I might get depressed!” 

Your companion at the time says, “Well, it is ugly and it is pollutin’ and all but at least we are making big bucks, eh?” 

“Yep!  Big bucks.  I think we may have made enough to pay for those jet-fighters by now.  By the time the USA gets all that oil, I bet we can afford engines for them!”

“Yeah, in a funny way, we kinda did like the indians did when they traded the island of Manhattan for some beads, eh?  We traded northern Alberta and the coastline of BC for a hangar full of shiny trinkets…unh….I mean fighter planes.  Much cooler than beads, eh?

By now your vehicle is hovering over Vancouver and things are looking much better.  You look to land somewhere near downtown.  North Vancouver will do.  You pass by the old fast Ferries.  None of them going anywhere fast.

“Damn!  Forgot about the fast ferries littering up our front yard.  Them puppies don’t run and they don’t belong to us either.  Some ‘merican owns them.  Paid ten cents on the dollar.  Oh well, we’ll find a nice porch for them somewhere, I’m sure.  Let’s go over to Nanaimo and see how those two new German-made ferries are doing.  Government took possession of those boats years ago and have never used them.  Seems they burn too much fuel.” 

“Wonder if we can buy some of our fuel back from the Americans?”

You glance down to look at the water as you head over to Nanaimo.  The water has a thick black sheen to it.  “Hell, I guess we can just scoop up some of that oil that Enbridge spilled, eh?  Maybe we can burn that?   

“You know what, ol’ buddy?  We really are spoiled rotten in this country.  We should get off our duffs and go see the world as it really is.  Let’s go to a third world country where the governments are corrupt and criminal, where the people are impoverished and where the despots buy themselves big shiny toys by exploiting natural resources while polluting their own backyard.  C’mon, waddya say?  Let’s go see the stupid guys!”

The thing about rural living is that, no matter what, you keep getting ‘grounded’ in reality.  Yesterday, because of the rip-snortin’ storm and constant rain, I was inclined to stay at the computer, stoke the fire and beg for frequent cups of tea.  Alas, it was not to be.

The storm sent one of our neighbouring trees falling.  Or, rather, trying to fall.  It split lengthwise, twisted and fell against another.  In a world full of respectable trees, they looked like two drunks.

But, ‘so what’ you might say! ‘Surely trees do that all the time?’  Well, yes they do.  But these two columns of catastrophe were leaning precariously in the direction of my solar array and garden boxes.  Worse, it was not just direction they had going for them, they had proximity.  If they fell, I was gonna pay.

And they were going to fall.  It was just a matter of time.

So, like the cream-puff lumberjack I am, I went out to ‘do something’. Manly stuff.  Whatever that might be.  I had no clue.   I looked at the log-jam-in-the-air and wondered what Paul Bunyan would do as the 50 and 60 kmh winds howled and blustered around me.  Fear and ignorance suggested going back inside and trying for more tea to be brought.  Maybe a nice muffin to go with it, ya know?

But a man‘s gotta do, eh?

So I threw a light line weighted at the end over the drunkest of the two trees and then tied a heavier line to it.  Then I pulled the heavier line up and cinched it about twenty feet up the tree by way of a sliding knot.  And then I headed off into the deeper forest to find a strong healthy tree to tie it off to.  The idea: to hold up the one most tipsy.

So far so good.

A thick and heavy branch whistled down past my shoulders.  I looked up.  I was standing in a mini grove of swaying giants with all their branches waving hysterically in the gusts.  Another little limb went flying off out of range.  “Hmmm…….maybe I should get the hell out of here.  That last one is not likely to be the only large branch to kamikaze to the ground.”

I tied off the rope and skedaddled back to the safety of open space.  Surely that was enough for one day.

I felt grounded.  I felt as if I was ‘alive‘ and ‘living in the moment’.  Shouldn’t I go in now and feel alive in the house!?

I was thinking of making a break for safety when Sal came out with the dogs.  Smiles on all their faces (Sal assures me that dogs smile).  “We are going out to play, sweetie.  Wanna come?”

“You crazy!?  It’s hell out here!  Trees are coming apart.  Looming.  Threatening.  The storm is increasing.  We will all die!”

“Oh, sweetie.  Don’t be silly.  I am gonna go down to the lagoon and pull up a few logs and then I am gonna play ball with the pooches and it will be so much fun.  C’mon!”

I hate it when she gets all playful and happy in the face of clear and present danger.  Makes me feel as if I have to go ‘be crazy’ with her.

So, I went.

It was OK.

No trees fell on my head.

But chapter two happens today.  Now I have to take the two drunks down.  Wind has abated.  I am all ‘tea’d up’.  No excuses.

Dogs really are grinning from ear to ear now.  They know.  They think there will be blood.  Again.  Bloodletting is a regular occurence for me.  They love living here.

Town day.  Ain’t gonna happen.  Winds to 50.  Ferries not running.  Today, it turns out, is a day for hunkering down.

But that’s OK.  We’re cozy.  Enough food to last til the second coming.  ‘Course there is a limit on our scotch reserves.  But there is no sign of panic yet.

It’s a funny thing about timing.  Yesterday I wrote about our need to get more creative if we were to ensure community out here.  And today I got a response.

But first, I had better clarify – it is not like our current sense of community is eroding.  Not quickly, anyway.  In fact, we seem to be ‘holding our own’ and a clutch of cottagers and homesteaders ten miles east of us even seem to be growing a bit.  I wrote what I wrote from a macro perspective – small towns are getting smaller and big cities are getting bigger.

But we are basically keeping the status quo here.  Kinda.  The only real threat to that ‘quo’ is age. Because our quo is aging, time will eventually catch up and we will not be able to keep the status.

Anyway, I heard this morning of someone doing just that – reinforcing his community.  It is small.  It is largely insignificant.  It won’t attract people or keep any.  But it is positive.  It is constructive.  It is creative.  And it is this kind of thing that, if repeated and expanded on, can put the lipstick on the pig.  We will still be small, not a major draw to the multitudes but we’ll definitely be a bit sexier.

He built a phone booth.  A community phone booth to serve the dozen or so others that live near him.

“A phone booth?  You think a phone booth is sexy?!  Dave, you are losing it!”

“Well, maybe it comes up a bit shy on the sexy scale but compared to lipstick on a pig, it holds its own.  In my opinion, anyway.  And, what you don’t know is this: where they are, cell phone reception is poor.  Poor enough to inhibit calling and almost eliminate receiving.  People do as I was doing in that picture I posted two blogs back – holding an aerial and walking about in the rain (in their housecoat if the need requires it) to get or keep a signal.  It can be frustrating to say the least.

But, having a ‘held-high, perhaps mounted-high antennae and a ‘booster’ pack, seems to bring in a signal that can be used much more reliably.  We eventually did that at our place and, with the booster, almost have reliable phone service.  We still ‘drop calls’ and many calls go direct-to-the-message rather than ring but it is 500% better than standing in the rain in the nude (yes, I spared you that picture).

Boosting the Signal

So, this generous fellow went out and built a weather-proof phone booth, equipped it with a booster and such and attached a good antenna on top for everyone around him to use.

Simple, creative.  And definitely community supporting.  And that is what I am talking about, but on bigger and smaller scales.  And more often.

If we ‘construct’ and ‘create’ in ways suitable and appropriate to this lifestyle – which includes some modernity, they will come.

It’s a plan.

One hundred years ago (give or take) there were a lot of people up here.  In fact, there was once an aboriginal village on a narrow passage that was so populated that it was not expected that any one person in the village would know everyone else!  That’s beyond village in my books.  That’s a town!

It was also a bona-fide community.  Campbell River hardly existed back then.  This was the centre of their universe!

At one point, there were five hundred non-aboriginal people living in the channel to the west of us.  Now there are maybe thirty.  And my island once had three times the population that it has now.

The reasons for this, of course, are obvious and can be summarized nicely by the term, urbanization.  Before that tidy word, we had industrialization and modernization.  The implication in the terminology is clear: we are evolving, improving and living better.  Go urban or devolve.

Put more bluntly: there is a death threat warning being broadcast to all small communities.

Already the vast majority of the Canadian population lives in cities and this inner migration phenomena is playing out all over the world.  The trend is likely to continue.  Progress, eh?

But that trend didn’t influence those who stayed here, those who came here and those who are living here now.  It doesn’t seem to include those planning and preparing to come here tomorrow.  Why not?  What is it that makes people ‘buck the trend’ and choose to ‘live freely a harder life with fewer rather than more modern conveniences’?  Are they just nuts?

The reverend Alan Greene (Columbia Coast Mission) wondered that same thing back in the 1930’s and concluded in his journal at the time that “it was their need for independence.”

I don’t think that’s it.  Not entirely.  I think man is mostly a social animal and isolation, separation and, in some cases, deviation, is not their chosen path to happiness and fulfillment.  I think even the most eccentric amongst us wants to belong a bit.  Once in a while.  Somewhere.  Put more succinctly, I think we all crave a little community now and then.  And, more than that,  we want to be members in that community, not guests or visiting strangers.

“So, then, why do it? Why live remote?  Why go feral?  What kind of community is in it for you way out there?”

My first thought is that it is not about ‘what you get’ in the way of community.  I had no idea when we arrived what community might look like when I got out here.  I think it is more about what you don’t get.  I think the urban-type-who-goes-feral is really fleeing the order, the controls, the rules, the restrictions and the overwhelming presence of authority they see and experience in their current city-based lives.  So, in that way we, ‘the fleeing’, are seeking less-of-what-passes-for-community-in-the-city, to be sure.

Of course, in that way, it is the same thing as Rev. Green said. we seek independence.  But I am shading that idea a bit darker.  I think that we first experienced civic claustrophobia.  Civic dystopia.  Too much overbearing community.  I think we first felt unhappy in the row house, the apartment building and the cul-de-sac and then we jumped from the frying pan into the great outdoors.

And who can blame us? It has only gotten worse, it seems.  In the last decade community has morphed into BIG BROTHER much as I sensed and feared it would when it was just a bit too much of a restrictive and claustrophobic community.  Now we have CCTV and gas-passing police tasering, shooting, and harassing people.  We have gangs-at-war, escalating housing costs, longer commutes, bad air, polluted water, diminishing quality of life and worse, fear of each other rather than a sense of community with each other.

So, to me, the off-the-gridder still wants community but simply doesn’t like the kind on offer in the city.  And most of us that come from the city – even those who came years ago with the back-to-the-land movement of the seventies – really don’t know what kind of community we are wanting, getting in to or are working towards when we get here.  We don’t know what we are doing.  Community building is a lost art.

Of course, we tend to follow the old patterns of community building somewhat.  It’s a path, of sorts.  We hope for enough kids to justify a school.  We build and frequent a community hall.  We help one another through various tests, trials and challenges.  And, of course, like all good people, we share and give generously to the local common weal.  And we socialize.

But regular potlucks is not enough. The pressures to move to the city are too great.  And we are too weak in that regard.  Our community currently isn’t sexy enough to ensure sustainability.

Gut wrenching reality fact: sexting and texting seems to bond people better than potlucks.

Don’t get me wrong – the appeal of the hinterlands hasn’t diminished.  Not a bit.  Not even the potlucks.  In fact, whenever the country is directly compared to the city it is like comparing Shangri-la to Calcutta’s sewers.  Looking at them that way makes the choice or the decision easy. For anything.

But the pressures are still there.   They are subtle, though.  They are indirect.  They are unhealthy.  They are wrong.  And they are sneaky.  But they are damned effective.  Let me explain…………

The ferry system (for instance) doesn’t directly serve the urban communities (for the typical young urban Vancouverite in the west end or Yaletown, they may use the ferry for infrequent summer time recreational purposes or even less).  BC Ferries, by original design and annual usage, mostly serves the gulf and Vancouver island communities.  And the ferry system is not working very well due to lack of funds and proper management focus (they forgot who their main customer was).

The result: regular and especially gulf island-based ferry users are considerably more inconvenienced than their city counterparts.  More than they originally bargained for anyway.  Older and younger people experience even greater hardship due to costs and poor transit connections.  Hardship = pressure.  Pressure seeks relief.  Relief = city living.

We are also taxed pretty highly out here.  Especially when considering the dirth of services.  Less services + higher costs = pressure.  Pressure seeks relief.  Relief = city living.  

You can repeat that formula for just about everything from communication to food shopping, from doing business to visiting friends and family, from transportation to casting your vote.  Living out here is hard and they purposefully make it harder.  

“Ya know, this island thing is just too inconvenient.  Plus we are getting older.  Maybe we should move back to the city?”  (my parents in the 70’s when they needed a bit more attention)

At some point almost everyone on an island entertains that thought at one time or another.  The government does not support as much those who live rural compared to those who live urban.  Period.  Not by a long shot.

“Dave, you gettin’ wimpy on us?”

No.  No!  A thousand times no!  In fact, it is the opposite of wimpiness I am talking about.  I am suggesting facing the reality of it is all.  I think we have to kick it up a notch to survive.  Community-wise, I mean.  And I don’t mean protesting.  That is ‘old’.  That is negative.  It is not the constructive way to do it.

We off-the-gridders thought outside-the-box and then went one step further and got-outside-the-box.  But the box is still a big influence and we may have to look away completely.  Being outside and yet still looking in is not good enough.  It generates protest but nothing else.  We have to learn to build community out here.  On our own terms.  We have to have a blend of old (potluck dinners) and new (modernization projects, community projects, etc.).  This is a lifestyle so utterly fanatstic that it should not be threatened in the least by such mudanities as ferry service or the price of gasoline, of government policies or services.

If we are truly independent then we are going to have to simply get more creative.

I am kinda lookin’ forward to it.  But it is a bit of a challenge, don’t you think?