Takaya is dead. A few blogs back (Feb. 1st) I wrote about this splendid, and particularly beautiful lone wolf, who found his way through the city of Victoria and across tidal rapids to survive and thrive on Discovery Island. He lived alone, in social isolation for several years, managing to hunt successfully and to endure his solitude. This spring, in his mating season he returned to the main island, looking for a mate some think. He was eventually tranquilized and relocated deep into the woods of Southern Vancouver Island. He has now been shot dead by a hunter about fifty metres from where he was released. I am enraged and heartbroken as apparently are many others globally.
I have been a hunter who has lived in rural areas and eaten plenty of wild game. There was never a sound reason to kill a wolf. They posed no threat to anyone or anything despite any myth which can ever be conjured up. A few years ago, on Northern Vancouver Island, a grizzly bear was sighted, the first ever there to anyone’s knowledge. It was promptly shot. When our government conservation officers attend a human versus wildlife situation, quite often a wild creature is killed.
Wolf, man, dog, sea.
At the moment, tidal waves of fear about a deadly pandemic wash around the planet. Our entire social fabric is under tremendous pressure. The implications of this disease are far-reaching with all its fear and doubt. It is a time for introspection. I want only to put a little light into other’s eyes and yet today I share a little more grief. Damn us all. That wolf will never howl from the depths of the forest again, nor will any offspring. There is silence in the swamp.
Beguiled into leaving his wolf brothers, the dog is perhaps one of man’s highest achievements.
“The wolves knew when it was time to stop looking for what they’d lost, to focus instead on what was yet to come.” Jodi Picoult
Slowly spring comes. There are still morning frosts but the flowers are tired of waiting.
A molten dagger of sunlight found its way behind the curtains and crept across the wall toward the foot of the bed. Another crystalline morning. The world outside is eerily quiet. Quarantined. There is no frost until the sun rises a little more then instantly everything is covered in whiteness. Then the sun’s radiation burns it away again with a sweeping line as it climbs into the day ahead. A Covid dawn. I like to be up before dawn, it’s the best part of the day. However, I’m still struggling with the long-term effects of whatever flu bug I’ve had. Hopefully I have the right cream for bed sores but sleep seems to be what the body demands. Apparently many others endure a similar affliction. It is not the Big C but it sure is debilitating.
Trilliums too!
Overhead a few contrails lazily dissipate in the flight corridor which parallels the length of Vancouver Island. Unless those are military aircraft on international routes someone is still making commercial flights. This evening, minutes ago, I looked up to see a jet’s thick contrail aligned with the North Pacific Great Circle Route; bound somewhere in Asia I’d guess. The sun had set behind the island’s mountains but its golden glow rendered the long thin cloud iridescent in the azure sky. On the same flight path, four cranes silently winged their way Northwestward, their elegant black silhouettes contrasting sharply with the long glowing cloud tens of thousands of feet above.
They make a body want to burst into song… I promise I won’t. Dogs would howl, babies would scream, buildings would fall. I can’t carry a tune in a night pail.Spring path.
My most indelible photos ever are embedded in my personal hard drive. They’ve all been viewed when there was no camera handy; of course! So they sit in the back of my brain. As I wrote this, those birds descended with their wings set to land in some field or marsh to feed and rest for the night. Usually, cranes honk distinctively, calling for more of their kind already on the ground. Their silence seemed strange; maybe they knew they were the first of the spring migration. Maybe they were going to do a red eye and fly on past the coughing, sneezing hordes below. Life goes on.
Always a sight and sound to make a person tingle.Cranes in their summer grounds. They are extremely furtive and wary.Incredible!! Not the vehicle, the price! 10K! That one of these rust buckets has survived well over a half-century is amazing. My first car was one of these, I paid $90. which was far too much. My 1957 Vauxhall was horrible. Someone has invested some hot-rod efforts in this and hopes to recover some of their money. Good for them!
This old ranter is stuck. This is a time to be especially careful with one’s words. I’ll keep my criticisms to myself. The internet can be a fantastic tool or a weapon. The information available is staggering and imagine enduring this pandemic without all the ready information, whether accurate truth or blatant lies. It is up to each of us to be discerning about what we choose to believe but think of going through this event without the advise, news and entertainment. That was how it must have been with the Spanish Flu pandemic. Well, I’ve long felt an obligation to try and bring a little light to other folks, be that with humour or questions that I think need to be asked. I’ll do my best to brighten your days…and so too mine. This all shall pass and a day will come when we ask each other, “Remember that spring of 2020?” Yes, really!
Celebrating the pandemic…with a case of Corona. These guys sat in the local park on their motorcycles and camp chairs with a case of the good stuff.A local tack shop always wheels this horsequinn out during opening hours. They dress it in a timely manner. Note the virus balls. There are some great bits of humour appearing.
Here’s a link to some pertinent Australian humour. That continent has, within the last year, endured massive wildfires, severe drought and flooding and now Covid-19. Still there is humour to be found. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia0bfWbOLjY
Still running. The fuzzy blob on the left horizon is the ferry from Chemainus to Thetis and Penelakut Islands. The deep-sea vessels are coming and going now, the ports are functioning after a fashion.
“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt March 4, 1933
With all the media’s doom and gloom, from our present deadly global virus pandemic to the endless hordes of victims from war and famine, there’s not a lot of cheer out there. My personal issues are pathetically tiny in comparison but it all wears a person down until there seems no point in anything. One of those little things was that my Goldfield Nevada radio station was no longer live-streaming. For weeks the repeated message was about an error but with no suggestion whose it was. But I kept checking. Apparently it was down for upgrades. I can’t describe the boost I felt on a recent morning when there it was again, loud and clear! It doesn’t take much to cheer me up. I love this small-town mid-desert station with its eclectic play-list and refusal to be slick. It works for me. Burros, blues and country music and then a little bit of classical…can’t beat it with a stick!
I won’t begin to discuss our current global health situation. I don’t know where to begin. Who do I trust? Already being in a state of personal cheerlessness and lingering flu, yes still, I don’t want to damage any of the peaches you may still have on your tree. I doubt that any of us find humour or confidence in the news from anywhere. I think of the tens and tens of millions of us culled by the Spanish Flu a century ago. That was before casual global air travel. And we didn’t learn a thing.
Friends have gone off on their boat to escape the madness and that merely underscores my own situation. For decades I always had an “earthquake plan” at a nearby dock and boy do I feel naked without that. If I had a boat that’s exactly what I’d be doing as well. I think a couple of weeks without any news would be wonderfully restorative. And… I suppose if folks start tipping over by the score there’ll be all sorts of boats available simply for the taking.
For the last two weeks the sky has been clear and cloudless with a chill dry wind blowing. It seemed ominous, even surreal for this part of the world. This morning, the breeze eased enough for me to unzip my outer jacket. Then I heard it. Struth! A mourning dove. Its soft “hoo, hoo, hoo” was the sweetest music I could imagine. It was a little personal cheer for me. That sound is the instant harbinger of many things “desert” and of warmer days to come. There is hope.
In consideration of all the panic-buying of things like toilet paper, I’m heading into the woods to collect a few sacks of moss. No-one seems able to explain the fascination with all that loo paper. Maybe that will be our new currency. I can image board meetings at companies like the Purex Tissue Company. “Well folks,” says the chairman, “I am happy to report that this quarter’s earnings are really shitty!” They all double over in laughter. Then I heard about a pre-flight announcement. “Welcome aboard folks, this is your captain. The weather is fine, we should be about one hour enroute. I also should let you know that I have chosen to work from home today.”
The Covid Collar. (This is an old photo, Jack is fine.) What if…we all wore a collar 12′ in diameter. That would keep us all the requisite minimum of 6′ from each other. Deluxe models could include toilet paper rollers, face mask dispensers, hand cleaner and beverages. Base price $395…US!Mourning Doves, Ajo AZ. On the roof of the old Spanish Mission.In the desert. A crackle and aroma of Mesquite. Seems awfully far away right now.
I am especially bemused by politicians who want to assure folks by promising to throw money at them. Governments are always presenting themselves as a source of wealth, which they never are. The money that they are assuring folks is coming doesn’t exist. It is your money and they haven’t extracted it…yet. What bullshit! But we’ll baa the myth and wade on into the swamp. I am a bit of an expert on government financial matters, I have operated a deficit budget for years. I know that debt begets debt and I also know that to have a growing national deficit all the while declaring a surplus is a grand chicanery; especially when we believe them. I sometimes have the terrible thought that I was a politician in a previous life; no wonder the Gods punish me. Seriously, throwing money at things seems to be our eternal solution. If we had not tried to operate on a business as usual plan, we may well have impeded the spread of this plague. Global travel should have stopped at least a month ago. The donkey is long gone from the barn. But I say it again, maybe that’s what all that toilet paper is about. Commerce first, now turn you head and cough.
I wonder if he’s learned not to sit out in the open. A desert ground squirrel.A Caracara. He’d love a little squirrel for lunch.
Meanwhile, there before the cameras, stands yet another “Official” scratching their eyes and wiping their nose while telling us not to touch our faces. And wait until the world realizes it can survive nicely without the eternal pandemic of sports! For more comic relief you have to chuckle at the many travel companies currently promoting their wondrous packages. “It’s a strange world we live in Master Jack.”
I’m aching to drive this road again.
A friend and fellow blogger sent me this YouTube link.
As the Covid 19 Virus has officially been declared a “Pandemic” and toilet paper wars surge around the planet (silly people) I continue to seclude myself at home with what I’ve decided previously is called the Schlitzvirus. Mexico, home of Corona, apparently has the lowest global incidence of this insidious bug. Jack and I go for our regular outings in the cool spring weather but I still feel too wobbly to get out and live it up after ten days of this. Apparently I am far from being the only one with a similar affliction. Fortunately old Jack is quite content to sleep twenty-two hours a day so we plod into spring with little alacrity.
Along comes Jack. Some mornings there are too many good smells in the air to be in a hurry.Everyone needs a Jack
After a long dull winter I’ve finally finished my latest video. Here’s the link:
As usual my intent is to provoke folks to look inside themselves and truly think about notions others impose on us as ultimate truths. And that’s the whole situation. Stay healthy.
Bark ‘n fungus. Say that three times quickly. You’ve got it too! The micro-world is just as fascinating as any.Settled in, again… this waterfront squatters site changes hands frequently. The latest occupant has put some serious effort into upgrades. Despite a chill ocean breeze someone was asleep in there when I took the photo.A long green arm reached out.Wot the heck? One more of those spring photos.
“Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.” George Carlin
THE GREENING. A splendid beauty to me is when the sun back-lights the chlorophyll green of new leaves. Yes!One of the joys of a reluctant spring is that the flowers last and last. Snow Drops, the first to appear are still with us and becoming ever grander.
In my last blog a few days ago I made a crack about Schlitzvirus. The Gods took note. I got it. Their sense of humour at times truly leaves me gasping. I’ll spare you the yukky details, when two or more malfunctioningbody systems collaborate to bring you down it ain’t pretty. I’vedropped ten pounds in four days, everything hurts. Note: Schlitzvirus is not a recommended weight-lose program. And yes, cold sweats do exist. I’ve been invaded with alien movie worms, you know those ones that click their evil yellow teeth while crawling out through the skin of your belly once they’ve spawned. The evolution of my contamination is not over yet, I’m too sick to go to the doctor… as if he has a magic pill. In fact, come to think of it, I probably caught this wee monster from my visit to the doctor’s office last week! Snot funny! For fear of spreading this contagion I don’t even want to talk to anyone on the phone.
W’all now! That there pup’s gonna be one big dawg when she’s all growed up!Green, green green. Ahhh!Even a little slug was poking about in the sun
This morning is clear and frosty. Devil be damned I thought, we’ve got to get some air. It was glorious, but for once, Jack was the one up ahead on the path waiting for me to catch up. Back inside again after our little outing the crystalline light reflects off the neighbours wall. It’s beautiful. Even passing aircraft seem to glide extra easily through the silken air. Birds trill and twitter joyfully. Being too weak and wobbly to get out there again is a misery. There are murmurs of spring in the calm air. Hope lives. These are this morning’s photos.
Hope sproings eternal. I hear another one… sproing! Above this scene a wood pecker drummed up some breakfast.
“Spring is nature’s way of saying let’s party.” — Robin Williams
It’s coming, slowly and reluctantly but spring will soon be here in full glory.I am often told that I must have exotic camera equipment. Nope! These were both taken this cloudy morning with my mobile phone. Any type of camera no more makes a good photograph than a brush makes a painting. It is always the nut who holds the camera.
It is vain. It is frivolous. Yet in the window of a local main street art and framing shop, there is a painting which I covet. It is spectacular in its own way, a limited edition copy, well executed by someone who knows and loves the sea well and intimately. He has captured every fleck of sea foam, every glint of light perfectly. The painter Christopher Walker is a renowned Canadian illustrator and this image has my heart. It is small, 24”x 15”, which makes it more endearing and also possible to mount in a boat. It portrays a man in red storm gear rowing a clinker-built skiff a goodly distance from shore. The title of the work is ‘Devotion.’ “Ya bet yer breasthook!” I think. You’ve got no choice. Pull for your life all the while resolved to the living heaving reality all around. It is often referred to as ‘Storm Ecstasy.’
Behind him, a steep near-breaking swell rises high above but he does not look, hearing its slop and hiss tells him all he needs to know. He has to have confidence that his small craft will rise daintily over it and all the other lumps he must encounter on his way to a sanctuary somewhere near the lighthouse. He is resolved that there is nothing he can do about it anyway. One moment of panic may well spell his doom. “Now lean into it,” he thinks, “but don’t break or lose your oar.” That light, to me, looks a lot like Race Rocks, a few miles from Victoria. It is noted for its turbulent surrounding waters and the image is so true I can smell it. I can taste the brine on my lips, feel the wet air on my face and the slap of the sea against my fragile, thin hull. I’ve been in such situations and can see, hear and feel everything including the pull and spring of the wooden spoon oars. Perhaps there is a nice small halibut in the bottom of the skiff. He isn’t out there just for the exercise.
There it is! Every time I pass the shop window I check to see if it is still there and where it might have been moved. You can see it clearly and wholly online if you look up the artist’s web site without other paintings in front of it.
Designed to warn mariners away from danger, light houses are seldom built to draw them near but onward he rows. This painting expresses tension and peace all at once for the seasoned mariner and a certain terror for the viewer who is a landsperson. I love it. I want it. There is another special nautical painting which, years ago, I did not acquire yet remains indelible in my memory. Now the capitalist craving haunts me again but for the time being this new longing will have to stay in the shop window where it has called to me for the past year. The painting is a metaphor of my life. Read into it what you will. I have a fantasy of my writing desk by a window looking out to sea, my books on shelves at either elbow, that painting on the wall where I can see it along with other art I cherish. Still rowing toward distant marks, tide against wind I yam what I yam. You know the Bob Seger song.
The painting requires only a bit of money but I I have none and there are, of course, debts and bills to be paid first. The job I started a week ago lasted less than four days. I made a simple but grievously stupid error on my first morning. I was easily able to repair it and offered that, but the damage was done. There are no second chances after making a bad first impression. My wagging tail was suddenly tucked where the sun seldom shines. That dark cloud of doubt weighed on both me and my new employer. With a rapidly dwindling trade, due in part to both the global virus dread and the puckered economy in result of regional protests I could clearly see there was not much work for me at the moment. I need the income and I need the affirmation of being able to hold a job. Gone! I must confess my weary body and the incomplete healing from my recent surgery also made it obvious that perhaps my glory days on the job are past. I was able to prove to my younger co-workers that motors can be diagnosed and repaired efficiently without computer diagnosis. Maybe ignoring protocol was what did me in. But then, it would have been something else. So what! Life goes on.
There is no higher art than the wooden boat. Form and function blend to make something beautiful and extremely useful.An old boat once again becomes the land becomes the earth and maybe will become a boat again one day.Even a plastic kayak offers an intimacy with the ocean that bigger boats cannot match.The romance of the sea. This famous boathouse is now gone, strangled by the approach of suburbia, done in with noise bylaws although it was there decades before any newcomer. There’s a waterfront luxury condo there now.
This is a tough week and first things first, I must repair the engine in my truck. Maybe that will restore my confidence. Done. But I feel no better. Suddenly I’ve come down with flu-like symptoms but haven’t coughed up any Corona bottle caps so no worries mate. I was at the doctor’s office last week and everyone with a sniffle is piling in there. I don’t do baa very well. You get old, you get sick, you die. Then the cycle begins again. Old Jack wants to go for his morning outing, which will be a slow and halting procession, for both of us. We each need the air and the exercise and off we go before the drizzle thickens into a steady rain. Spring draws nearer.
One thousand words.
“And so in time the rowboat and I became one and the same-like the archer and his bow or the artist and his paint. What I learned wasn’t mastery over the elements; it was mastery over myself, which is what conquest is ultimately all about.” ― Richard Bode , First You Have to Row a Little Boat: Reflections on Life & Living
A manipulated image, this is an attempt to portray my sense of wonder and magic about these massive icons of international trade.What sights have been seen from this transom?
I’m not complaining, just explaining. The sheltered waters of our Gulf Islands are filling up with ships at anchor, waiting for cargoes they can’t load. It’s a powerful sight seeing large deep sea vessels anchored from nearby in our harbour to points miles away. Then there are those in bays behind islands which I cannot see. There are now dozens of them. As a man who loves the shape of all vessels, even these behemoths of function before form have an appeal to me that is hard to explain. Perhaps it is because they come from all around the planet to congregate in our local waters. It is exotic to be able to exchange waves with someone from Mungypongi or wherever home is on the other side of the planet.
Right of way? Yep, I’ll take it. This is just a half-knot of tide against the bow of an anchored ship, It is NOT a view you ever want to see from a little boat at sea. The cross-hatching is from the anchor chain chafing on the hull.At anchor ships swing to tide, boats swing to wind…well usually! This is a summer view taken in English Bay, Vancouver.
This fleet sitting on their hooks is amassing all because a handful of people in Canada have blocked transportation routes across the country in alleged support of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs who have decided against the democratic vote of their own people in favour of a pipeline upgrade across their hereditary lands. “Shut Canada Down” is a popular protest slogan. How, by pissing everyone off, do these folks expect to win any popular consideration? I have opinions both ways, but most of my information is not first-hand, only as gleaned between the perspectives offered by the media, so it is not reliable and…I am not a first nations person. I cannot grasp the true agenda behind this massive stupidity.
A handful of folks, some not even Canadian, most not first-nations people, have decided to empower themselves at the expense of the rest of the country. It is not their fight, yet they have decided to constipate the entire nation for their own personal ego. Some may be well-intentioned but they are not committed enough to have done even basic research into their cause. And if they so dearly love their cause, why aren’t they up in the deep sub-zero snow banks of the region they say they are trying to protect? We are allowing them to continue their selfishness unchecked. There are token arrests and obscure politicians offering meaningless rhetoric but the beat goes on. A clear lack of decisive will and action of our political leaders is frustrating and embarrassing. Eh?
A moment of beauty despite the ugly reality of its commerce.Mount Baker, an active volcano, looks down on the Cherry Point Refinery, Washington State as a loaded tanker pulls away into the approaching night. Two huge escort tugs are standing by.
Meanwhile our third-world-style national economy (Sell raw resources wholesale / buy finished products back retail) continues to plummet horrifically. Thousands of people are laid-off indefinitely at the mercy of the protest goons. A friend points out that export petroleum products are transported along major rail arteries. They are built, logically, for very many miles along the banks of our sacred salmon rivers and their tributaries which are also traditional first nation homelands. When, not if, there is a major wreck and those waters are poisoned with black goo, I cannot imagine the anguishing about what the colonial capitalist bastards have done to our prime salmon rivers. Railway OK, pipe line bad. I’m confused.
The wonder of it all. How must it look to the eyes of the crew, day after day? These vessels are built by Asian shipyards probably from Canadian iron ore and scrap metal, smelted by Canadian coal, fueled by Canadian petroleum to ship Canadian grain, lumber or other raw resources. I wonder what these bulk carriers deliver to us in exchange. Notice how these two vessels swinging at anchor to the changing tide, point in opposite direction while only a few cables apart. There is a distinct tide line between them.The afternoon ebb. In Ladysmith Harbour the ‘Ru Meng Ling’ slips into shadow while almost five miles away other freighters endure the same lonely vigil.Winter grudgingly yields to spring in fits and spurts. Blue skies produce sudden icy rain squalls, dark storm fronts advance and dissipate. Wait five minutes and it will all repeat itself.
There’s a n ancient anecdote about various body parts having an argument about which was the most important. Although all the organs and other parts laughed, at first, ultimately the rectum proved to be supreme. Simply by seizing up the works until the rest of the body began to fail, this lowly member proved its overwhelming power. So here we sit. And sit. Still more ships are anchoring in anticipation of a very long wait to clear up the back log of loading orders after there is finally a resolve. That may take months. I guess in Canada, where being politically correct in all ways is what we try to do constantly, some folks use our lethargy to get away with an awful lot. Despite my growing mistrust of the media I’ve just read an article from the National Post which is written succinctly and expresses an apparently researched, informed opinion. It is worth your while to read it. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/diane-francis-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-canadas-high-living-standards
Meanwhile here at home a half-year-long labour dispute has been resolved and the local timber industry is back at work. Now we can again hear the busy howl of Detroit diesel engines in the boom boats at work sorting logs. Hopefully the Teredo worms don’t go on strike now and quit holding hands. They’ve had a good long time to munch on the billions of dollars of timber floating far too long in the booms all along the harbour. Soon there will be the squeal of chains in the mill and the all-night-long clunk and bang of fresh sawn lumber on the drop-sorting lines. I never thought that the din of one of our few remaining coastal sawmills might provide a sense of comfort. There was an editorial cartoon in The Vancouver Sun many years ago which is indelible for me. I wished I’d saved it. A man stands in front of a mirror shaving. He exclaims to himself “ Wow. I’m a white male heterosexual trying to make a living in the BC forest industry!” An endangered species perhaps? Indeed!
Crow’s dawn. “I say old chap, is that a log tow approaching? ‘Tis many a fortnight since we’ve seen one of those!”
Well, just for a grim smirk, here’s an example of how popular opinion can be so easily influenced. This Twitter headline just in: “Corona Beer does not cause Coronavirus” but global “purchase intent” of the world’s most popular beer may be down by as much as 38%. Now then everyone, say baa. What if there was something named “Shlitzvirus?”
Dear Mom: While out taking photos I’ve found a new home I think I can afford. It has an ocean view and an easily maintained yard.Pretty perhaps, but it’s a jungle in there.Another day in a long wait.
And so it goes. It’s March first today, and we’re in like a lamb and out with the dog into the sunrise. For this moment there is not a cloud in the sky.
Here we go again, the wait wears on.
“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for.”
