How’s that for a Christmas photo? The wonders in the woods never end.Whoa! Is this from a bomb cyclone? Whazzat? Well, new smells at least.
I am sitting at my desk near the end of a breath-taking sunrise. The constantly throbbing colours from red to pink and blue, all filtering through shifting banks of fog have held me spell bound. I’ve watched from the first smudge of dawn, about an hour ago. What bliss! Behind me on the floor is a small mountain of books. They are tumbled and scattered and my day will involve sorting through them and deciding which will go on the bookshelf. The rest will be handily stored in the basement.
I’ve owned books for over seventy years starting with ‘Sleepy Time Tales’ and “Choo Choo.’ Yes, they’re here on the shelf. It is amazing to thinking that with all my travelling and moving on that I have anything from all those years ago. I was also taken aback to realize that a good many of these books were carried on board my boats. I recall fitting extra shelves to hold them all. Somehow I have the notion that all that mental energy of the writers is retained in those pages and perhaps I can access it from time to time. But then, some of the stupidest people I know can utter some of the most profound inanities. There’s far more to wisdom than what can be held between any two covers. Book learning is only as good as what the reader can absorb.
An old fart sorts through his books…and stuff and more stuff.No! It’s pouring cats and squirrels out there. I don’t want to go for a walk.NO!ME TOO. A dear friend once gave me some wonderful wool blankets. They are the best gift ever!
I often rail on about about the apparent loss of basic sensibility in our contemporary culture. Primal instinct seems to have vanished. The notion of danger is abstract for many folks. Last week’s TV news featured, the same video footage for several nights, a sobbing young lady wailing on about how she had almost been killed and that “They should do something.”
She had been out driving when hit head-on by a runaway truck wheel. It had come unbolted from its mount and run amuck. I’ve seen it happen before. It is wild! Nothing can fling itself along like a renegade wheel. There’s a lot of energy stored in that centrifuge and yes it can be deady. That truck driver received a seven-hundred dollar fine but it was not enough to assuage this ladie’s sense of indignity and personal attack. Look! No-one ventures out onto the road in a cocoon of comfort and divine safety. It is dangerous out there, we are each part of that deadly probability. As the “Victim” of this affront ranted on about being responsible I wanted to ask her when she had last checked the wheel nuts on her own vehicle. It’s all about me and then someday, shit will happen. It is a reality of adulthood, life ain’t fair.
Crow drones. A university thesis became a movement declaring that “Birds aren’t real.” The conjecture was that birds were really government spy drones and that when they sat on a wire they were really recharging their batteries. Could be!On a winter’s morningAnother winter morningOne more morning. Only a few more months of this. There is a ship in this image and a brave soul out fishing.December solstice full moon. Last one of the year. I know, I know. A lousy photo but it was a hand-held mobile phone shot. The totemThe last dash. They’re still coming.
So Christmas approaches, that jaded and bruised commercial season. The real meaning is gone. Once it was about the winter solstice and that the days would soon begin to lengthen, warmth and fertility would come again. The notion of that sustained folks through the winter to come. Then the Christ-child story was sprung on us and that has carried millions forward into the next cycle of life. Now it is about love equalling how much you can spend. It is a gross celebration of excess and over-extension. People become aggressive and even more self-centered. I just left the grocery store where in the name of some Noel solicitation two ambulances and a police car jamed the handicap parking and all their crews in flourescent green jackets stood in the cold winter rain. The way folks were hurtling around in the remaining parking, chances are those emergency vehicles will be necessary before day’s end. I emailed out an old Monty Python mutated Christmas Carol. Some folks were offended, some were delighted. So wishing you all a sense of humour for Christmas and that you can enjoy a few moments of the warm and fuzzy. Bumhug!
And a duck. A nice day to get out of the harbour for a while.
Our new old house, by modern building codes, is built like a bomb shelter. The contractor back in 1957 still held a sense of honour which meant that every home he erected was also intended to be a monument to his integrity and skill. The timber used was strait-grained and seasoned. It is massive. We have bridge timbers in the basement which support the floor and upper structure. The original diagonally-nailed flooring still does not squeak.
Another load. There seems to be a frenetic activity of log barges discharging their cargo at our local log sort. Maybe it is because the winter break is coming up.BBQs and snowblowers. What does this mean?
Last night a massive low (The girl in the tight skirt on TV called it a “Bomb Cyclone”) moved within two hundred miles of our shore and sucked the life out of us. We are some of the few who still have electricity this morning. There were gale winds and hurricane-force gusts. White ponies still race over the black water of the harbour and a low thick grey blanket of cloud races overhead. The rain was biblical. In our last home we had several skylights. I miss them. The rain drummed on them loudly and I loved hearing the weather raging outside. This old house does not creak nor allow anything of a storm’s song to penetrate. I have to open a door to check outside and then I am almost flung out into the garden as the wind catches the door. Bitch, bitch, bitch!
After the beach party. Strange things appear at times.
I am stunned as usual to witness the incredible stupidity of some people. Due to massive power outages after our recent wind event, several traffic lights are dead. Most folks understand to fall back on the old four-way-stop technique. Everyone takes their turn, first come first go. That is apparently too complicated for some people. I was making a left turn onto the highway. Other vehicles were clustered at the intersection, each politely taking their turn. When it was my time to go I tip-toed out with a sense of dread. Sure enough! An elderly lady did not even slow for the clot in her route. Using the left turn lane she hurtled through at full speed, narrowly missing me. I’ve heard of a few other similar incidents. Miraculously, I know of no horrific crashes. Clearly, fear is a primal instinct to be ignored.
Frost on the roses.So I pruned them and brought them in. There are a few morales to this story. Photo by Jill.It’s not August any more. We actually had a sunrise but the neighbour’s solar panels were in standy mode.
The previous owner of this house wanted to leave me a massive old upright piano where it sat in the living room. I declined. I was working in the backyard when the poor guy arrived with a friend. I ended up helping them. The trick to moving a piano involves using a sledge hammer and crow bars. It is deeply satisfying. I discovered that it had no keyboard but that there was some beautiful clear, well-aged wood which I cherished. I knew that I’d have to take the whole thing if I wanted a part of it so I shut-up and pushed and shoved along with the others. There is some amazing workmanship in those monster contraptions. Have a look inside if you get a chance.
The old plaster walls hold a plethora of nail holes. It looks like there has been a revolution fought here. The Oyster Bay Insurrection? The walls have a rough texture and are hard to patch. It does add character. Random seniors volunteer bits of history about who has lived here and what they had done for the community. It is lovely.
Got bugs? There is a section of exterior wall here where exotic insects apparea regardless of the weather. This scarab is called a California Fig Eater. What the hell it’s doing here is a mystery.
Friday morning brings us another storm warming. Brace yourselves people! Predicted to not be a bad as the last one two days ago, it IS November. Anything goes. I sit at my desk as usual at predawn while a tug scurries in towing a log boom. Three vertical white towing lights on the tug’s mast and a brilliant port hand running light. On the log tow behind are six twinkling white lights which mark the perimeter of the booms. These are clearly led lights, perhaps even solar charged.
I remember being a deckhand out on the log tows. Once all the rigging up was done on the tow, the last thing to do was place and light the towing lamps. This was achieved by pounding a three foot iron rod into a secure log, tightly held in its bundle. On a bracket welded at the top of the rod we would hang a good old-fashioned kerosene lantern and then tie it with a piece of tarred marlin. Then you had to light the bugger, lower the mantle and trim the wick. This was all accomplished usually in a welter of wind and sea spray. Then you would hike back along the log tow to the tug, afraid to look back for fear the lanterns had gone out. There was a regular duty, whenever possible, of cleaning the blackened fragile glass globes, (Which often shattered when splashed with cold sea water, refilling the lanterns without losing the tiny bungs, and then not dropping the damned things into the ocean. Led lights, yeah baby! Bugger the romance of the sea.
At Gibsons, one of the entrances to Howe Sound, there is a bar which you can sneak a tow over at high tide. There is no time to mess about, you have to get your tide over the bar before the tide begins to drop. One night we were in that slot, following another tow northward to Port Mellon. It was past midnight and we could clearly see the towing lights of the booms ahead. Suddenly a speed boat hurtled out of the harbour. Four invincible young men, were completely drunk after a night in the local pub, Grandma’s Inn. The speedster rocketed directly into the back of those log bundles ahead. One body was found face-planted three hundred feet from the point of impact. In the end, after families of the dead had alleged that there had been no towing lights, we had to provide affidavits stating that in fact there were.
I’ve reminded myself of the first time I arrived in Gibsons. It was just at nightfall and I hastily moored my boat. There is a long ramp down onto the docks. A huge window in Grandma’s Inn looks down that ramp and out onto the beauty of the sound. I wanted to see why what looked like every kid in town was lined up along the railing of the ramp. They were all peering into that big window. A stripper was on a small stage, on her back, lewdly gyrating to raucous music.
Ah! Things that bump in the night. Well, here’s one more thing.
I was down at the nearest Home Despot this morning. I ordered an electric snow shovel. Really! I had not heard of one until recently. Five years ago I would have laughed myself wet. It seemed a reasonable compromise between a snow blower and a shovel.
I asked reasonable questions of the elves in orange aprons. I was assured of how it worked in wet snow and dry, fair enough. Then I wanted to know how far it would throw a dog pile. Uhuh! “How high is your neighbour’s fence?” My thwacker is on order.
I’ve got my stinkeye on you.Chalice in the mossHave another sip.
Today I came home exclaiming how busy the mall was today. I hate malls and only go a few times a year when I must. Then I learned that it was Black Friday! I really did not know! It was quite like being in a footballer’s training scrum with half the shoppers stumbling around while texting on their phone. It was hellacious. Christmas Spirit? Hmmm.
Maybe there’ll be fish for supper. Times are tough.Crow dawn.
Lift is created by the onwards rush of life over the curved wing of the soul. ― Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
