Kayak Bow Buddies
Posted by paddlinboy in Dave's Rants, Ravings and Rambling. on January 19, 2023
Kayak Bow Buddies
Humans like to have talismans, good luck charms and symbols to lean upon on those tougher times. Flipping a coin, rubbing rabbits feet, fuzzy dice, and bobble-head Buddhas on the dashboard of life. Kayakers are not outside of this superstition belief system. I can say with some certainty that anyone who endeavours in activities that can come with some risks hold private belief systems to engage a vibe of good luck around them. The old saying that there are no atheists in foxholes rings true when you and your kayak are about to be humbled by a surf wave. I carry a carved medallion in my pocket that was a Christmas stocking stuffer gift which hangs in my tent on paddling excursions. I keep it in my hip pocket the rest of time. So far so good.
Would my kayak tip over if I didn’t bring it, probably not, but who wants to test the fates?
A mascot is just an extension of this embodiment of belief in the super powers of an inanimate object to serve our need for comfort and peace of mind. It is something to rally around.
Long ago we started this tradition in my paddling gang of attaching a mascot to the bow of our kayaks. It started with a rather odd looking wirey-haired stuffed chihuahua found in a metal bin out back of Mojave Desert grocery store. He traveled on the bow of my good friend Pete’s kayak for a long time before one terrible morning in Clayoquot Sound when we woke to find him gone. How he became lost is a mystery. Did he fall off in the sea, his disappearance gone unnoticed in the hustle and bustle surrounding a beach landing, did he snap his tether and run away feeling the uncontrollable appetite to the call of the wild, or was it the most likely outcome that he was eaten due to the fact he was a stuffed dog filled with millet?
The Monk, came along as well. A bedraggled fading purple monkey found floating and resurrected riding the bow of another friend’s kayak, to my own pink two-headed dragon lashed to the bow of my kayak. These bow buddies saturated by saltwater, faded by the rays of the sun and washed only occasionally in the inevitable summer camping rainfall have shared and experienced the joys and hardships of sea kayaking on the British Columbia coastline.
All hail the stuffed!
How to Make a Hearty Potato Soup
Posted by paddlinboy in HOW-TO, Recipes, The Hungry Kayaker on December 18, 2022
Creamy Chunky Potato Soup
It is soup season again and looking out at the first few snowflakes falling today I am in the mood for comfort foods. I happen to have the ingredients on hand to make this soup and wanted to share it with you guys. Soups on camping trips are a special treat. Even in the warmer months it can get cooler by the water at night and a bowl of soup before turning in can make all the difference to an overnight or multi-day kayak camping trip. Soups are easy to put together beforehand and when frozen serve a second purpose by helping to keep any other of your fresh meal ingredients cold. Who needs ice packs when you have iced soup bags on board?
This rich thick soup is a perfect addition to the best soups of all time because it is as hearty as it looks. Chunky enough to be interesting to the eye, and yet creamy enough to induce ultimate comfort while sipping a warm bowl the sofa while the winter snows blow outside, or sitting on the shore on a warm summer evening admiring your kayak back-dropped by the sea.
On its own the soup is satisfying but garnished with a sprinkle of shredded cheese, bacon and spring onions you may as well toss aside any guilty feelings and just leap into the pleasures of it all. After all, comfort foods need to be naughty now and then and so do we.
Ingredients:
6 bacon strips, chopped, reserving a strip or two if using as garnish
2 small onions, chopped
8 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch cubes
6 cups chicken stock
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 spring onions (green onion), sliced
Directions:
In a large saucepan cook bacon on medium heat in a half tablespoon oil until crispy, about 5 minutes. When done, transfer to a plate covered in paper towel. Drain most of the bacon fat from the pan, and then add onion. Sauté stirring onion occasionally on medium heat until translucent, but not browned and then add cubed potato and chicken stock, stir and bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 20 – 30 minutes, or until potato is tender. With a potato masher or fork, mash potato in the pan until soup becomes thick, but still chunky. Stir in milk, salt and pepper. Heat through and serve.
Garnish with some of the cheese, spring onion and bacon pieces.
How to Stay Warm When Winter Kayaking
Posted by paddlinboy in HOW-TO on December 17, 2022
How to Stay Warm Winter Kayaking
If you haven’t noticed already, it is winter. As I write this I am awaiting the first of three Christmas week winter storms to pass over my little island home. Most years it consists of wind and buckets of rain, but not this week. The first is advertised as bringing a mere dusting of the wonderland white stuff overnight, the second one will bring over a foot of snow, and the third will be at the end of the week bringing a messy mix of rain and snow as the temperatures slowly rise to normal for the west coast Christmas season. I have been preparing for the worst as with the coming storms there will be heavy wet snow that regularly leads to tree branches knocking down power lines. Outages are something I am no stranger to and have my lantern, camp stoves and back up water just in case. One winter about 15 years ago had me hunkering down for what became a week long power outage. I have electric heat and live in an old not terribly well insulated cabin so you can imagine how chilly it became in the first few days of the adventure.
I don’t like winter camping, but on that week I was grateful to have the appropriate camping gear to make it comfortable. I set up my three-season tent in the living room which confused my cats to no end. I lived in the tent that week. Venturing out to eat and hike in the snow to kill the down time of the daylight hours. The quiet was incredible. No cars going by, no one really. Just me and the noises that my brain created to fill the sound void. One night lying in my sleeping bag with confused cats in my tent I swear that I heard a mosquito. I turned on my headlamp to search for the bug, but nothing was there.
The coming storms gives me the idea that I should share a few tips, some well known and some I have come across by trial and error in the attempt to keep warm and safe on colder days in the kayak. I like to paddle in the winter months. The weather is usually calmer after the December storms have abated and the water is flat, and the best part is the lack of pleasure boaters and other people. Kayaking around my home in the Gulf Islands can send me back in time just from the lack of population. I have camped on the local islands in January and February in relative comfort even with overnight temps hovering around freezing.
Some simple habits I used backpacking translated well to the water world and the exposure to the elements when camping near the ocean. The first is clothing. Obviously, layering is the key to the beginnings of comfort and wearing a good base layer is where to start. While on the water I wear a thin merino wool shirt against the skin to wick away any sweat. The next layer is a long sleeve lycra shirt and of course my paddling jacket on top. The life jacket provides amazing core protection as well and I advise keeping it on when you stop for a break on shore or when you have a snack etc. Keep it on while setting up camp as well to retain the warmth.
Stay hydrated! I tell everyone that hydration is the cure for everything else and staying hydrated will keep you warm and stop you from playing catch up to get warm again after becoming chilled. If the idea of drinking cold water on a cold day makes you cringe as much as it does me, then have a thermos of hot liquids on hand. When you decide on where to camp keep your layers on and don’t give in to the temptation of taking a break on shore before setting up your tent home. Once your tent is up that is a good time to change out of your sweaty paddling clothing while in the shelter of your tent. Having good dry warm layers for camp is important and never unpack that bag outside of your tent. Dry, stay dry to stay warm and if you don’t already know this, stay away from cotton as it will retain moisture and draw your warmth out leading to dangerous situations.
Now that you have set up camp which is hopefully in a cozy spot behind rocks or deep brush as a windbreak keeping in mind that even a slight breeze will be a pain and take away from your enjoyment. And do set up camp while the sun is still out. Trust me fumbling about in the dark and in the cold is not fun. Now get those hot foods cooking even if it may not yet be dinner time, but you have used up calories in the kayak and even a pot noodle will perk you up and help to maintain your core temperature.
Bedtime is the best time when camping, especially in cooler weather. Making sure your tent is in a sheltered place is just one thing to consider, the other is your sleeping set up. I stack up a pair of Therma-Rest inflatable pads under my bag and it is a good idea to make sure that you are using the right sleeping bag rated for that temperature range. I use a bag rated for -5 Celsius which is the comfort rating of that bag and there is a difference between comfort and survival. This means that it will keep me alive but if it dips below that rating I may be shivering during the night. If your bag is too big your body will be trying to heat up that dead space as well. It might feel cramped but a tighter fit bag will aid in keeping you warm and lessen the work your body will have to do in the night. Another consideration is what to wear to bed. Some like me just stay in my camp clothes which I have tried my best to keep dry. Again layering for the conditions and I do sleep warm so have found on some nights, even in summer that I have to strip off a layer when in the bag. The regulation of your body temperature at night is important because if you are wearing too much, which will be very tempting may cause you to begin to sweat overnight and can lead to being chilled the next morning if your camp clothing is damp because of it. One of two last bedtime tips is to have a pee. You use up a lot of energy supplying your bladder with blood. Give your circulation something more useful to do instead. The second tip is to heat up a bit of water and fill a bottle with it. Shove that down to the toe of your bag before you go to bed. It will help pre-warm your sleeping bag and will act as a nice hot water bottle in the night.
Head, hands and feet should not be forgotten in your clothing choices for cooler weather paddling even if you are just going out for a few hours and not overnight. I switch between polar fleece and wool on my head depending on how close the zero the air is. If it is raining, my wool ‘sherpa-style’ hat is deployed as even if it gets wet it will keep my head warm and the ear flaps don’t hurt either. Hands are simple as any outdoors store will have waterproof hand protection to choose from. I have worn thin knitted fingered mittens under Poggies (full coverage waterproof mitts) for a bit of layering as I am allergic to neoprene and have to find inventive ways to keep my hands warm on the water. Feet, again this is an area where I can’t have neoprene against my skin but a pair of thick hiking socks inside waterproof booties or gumboots has been good especially when getting in and out of my kayak.
It is about planning ahead for a winter day paddle or a more committing endeavour of overnight kayak camping. Everything from your food choices, such as high caloric snacks to hot cooked meals, sleeping arrangements and what to wear and if in doubt of any of the above if you are new to this, a good idea is to practice in your back yard on a cold night. Pretend you are kayaking and if things don’t work out as planned you can run in the house and try again the next night with an updated plan. There is little reason the kayaking season should stop in winter. I have had the privilege of paddling year round on occasion if the December storms allow and the light, the sea, the air are all different than at other times of the year. The wildlife is abundant and the variety of species can be different as well during migration times. So layer up, and do it up!
The Old Lady
Posted by paddlinboy in Dave's Rants, Ravings and Rambling. on December 14, 2022
The Old Lady
The wind cut to the core of my being as shards of an invisible form of ice created magically out of the meteorological equation to lengthy and complicated to investigate here and now. Suffice it to say, it was quite an uncomfortable half hour walk from the downtown bus stop to my girlfriend’s house. I make this journey of the heart each and every week but on this Friday afternoon my mood became increasingly sullen. I had misread the forecast and neglected to wear a woollen scarf that was part of an Irish fashion statement crafted by my partner a few Christmas’s past. The heavy wool sweater was at her house along with the green tam that is retired in late fall to return to my noggin in springtime.
I have a routine as I travel back and forth from my island to spend as much time with her as possible. When I get off the bus I usually walk a few short blocks to the one remaining record store in town to browse and then never leaving without dropping some shekels on an old vinyl I then walk across the street to a coffee shop to indulge in an Americano and one of their luscious Earl Grey custard filled donuts. On this frigid day abandoning my pleasures I moved at a pace head down against the wind that no matter which direction on the compass I turned its icy fingers slapped me on the side streets out of the core of the city.
I took the same route passing by my haunts, passing the theatre, passing the YMCA and across a street towards a cathedral standing guard to the impressing views of the Olympic Mountains across the strait snow covered and on this day topped with clouds. Onwards down the pedestrian only street between the church and memorial park bearing a constant fog of gloom and despair in it for some reason known only to my subconscious mind, it is a feeling I have every week as I stroll this section of the journey. It is a sad place, a place where some folk have died, or lost their way. It is also a weekly meeting place of like minds gathering in a circle of lawn chairs and blankets in a corner of the green space. Those with common demons attempting a better path in an unlikely location hoping for some kind of redemption, and the wind is shrill now. Screaming to my bones as I emerge from the darker place to the final leg up Rockland Street leading to the intersection with Cook Street and I know that I will be made to wait at the light there for some minutes before being able to cross and walk the last twenty minutes to the front door uninterrupted.
I grew closer to the intersection and as predicted the lights changed on my approach and seem to take longer to turn to my advantage when I get there. I didn’t run, there was little point so I let the lights change as they may and settled for a few extra minutes in the chill. Stepping to the corner I watched an older woman clutching a grocery sack to her stomach and feet shuffling with a favourable light just in time before it changed. Her feet seemed possessed as she cleared the road and returned to the sidewalk and her pace quickened as she walked in front of me, and that is when her legs gave out and she fell hard, not on the hard sidewalk but into the soft partly grassy patch bordering the street by the phone pole. It was a full face plant, the bag breaking her fall somewhat but one arm was lost under her chest. Her glasses were askew and I moved quickly the few feet to her side.
“Oh my, are you okay?”
The old woman was speechless, but then muttered, “No.”, and had retreated inwards in a state of disbelief, shock and worry. I could tell the systems within were slowly resetting in her brain after the scare and gave her another moment before I began the questions to assess whether or not to call an ambulance. She then quietly said to me that she felt she may be alright but remained motionless. I was immediately concerned for the arm tucked under her as I saw her fall I knew it took the brunt of the impact. I moved her glasses from her face and a second Samaritan arrived. He began repeating the questions I had already covered and she did not respond which by the expression on his face had irked his sense of self somehow. It was decided that he and I would slowly get her to her feet. This took some time as she was still bewildered by falling and checking to feel if anything was broken. Feet, ankles, legs, arms, and head all checked off the list as working though I knew from her shortness with our questioning that there may be a sliver of shock remaining. He asked if he was being to rough with her arm.
“No dear, its fine. I just need a minute.”
As things were looking brighter at third Samaritan came to the scene walking her bicycle towards us on the sidewalk and she began telling the other fellow and I what we should be doing. Oh, great I thought. I have seen it all. This is the only time I have encountered a first responder Karen! Insisting that we were on some levels negligent for not immediately calling an ambulance to assess our charge and only she knew what to do. It should be noted clearly that throughout the entire ordeal for the older woman the bicycle lady did not put down her bike, or even attempt to assist me while I gathered spilled grocery items off the muddy ground.
I forgot about the wind. The adrenaline rush of administering first aid distracted me from how uncomfortable I was in my cold solitude, lost in my own thoughts. This is also when events began to turn, odd. The older woman now on her feet lightly braced on either side by the other guy and I holding onto her tremendously heavy bag. It was no wonder she fell on her face as all this weight was naturally pulling her forward to an eventual disastrous angle. The bike lady asking the other fellow too many questions to which he began to feel irritated and I am certain my calm did not help.
“I am sorry madam but I don’t have the answers to any of that!” he spouted and I could see he was quickly realizing this was taking longer than he expected to get the old lady on her way.
Meanwhile, I had her in hand clutching her at the elbow as she adjusted her glasses. The other fellow asked,
“So how far do you live from here?” in an impatient tone and then added.
“Do you want to go with him, or with me? He…” pointed to me, and I admit to not being a great hulking man but more of the short, fast and cunning variety so I can see where his badly disguised rudeness originated.
“He, he isn’t that big a guy.”
“I can manage, I’m stronger than I look and at least could break her fall. Besides, I am going her way and it was my fault she fell.”
They both turned to me; even bike lady shut her gob for the first time.
“She saw a good looking guy coming towards her and that knocked her off her feet!” I smirked. The old lady came back to life from whatever pit she was in and chuckled and took my hand.
“Okay then, you should follow your heart and go with him then.” The other fellow said. I was not sure why he felt this was a competition but he did insist on taking her other arm as we crossed the street to show a little good faith before he left without another word, denied being the hero of the day and being delayed for another minute.
As we walked across with the light I heard from a distance behind me, the unseen third Samaritan shouting after us.
“Oh my look at the kindness, this is what Christmas is about! So much kindness!”
It turned out that the old woman lived only a half block from the spot where she fell. We strolled slowly to the front door of her building, hand in hand and each of us possessing one muddy knee. I handed her bag back to her and she felt more solid on her feet. We chatted briefly about getting older.
“I do the same things as always but some of those things don’t always work.” She quipped. The only real injury was a wounded pride. With no names exchanged at all she went inside, wishing me a Merry Christmas as she disappeared. I returned to my hike up the hill.
“Goddamn, its cold!” I muttered to myself.
Bears!
Posted by paddlinboy in Dave's Rants, Ravings and Rambling. on December 8, 2022
Bears!
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it fall, does it make a sound? How arrogant are we to think that if we the biggest guy on the block are not there to witness it, or record the sound with our own ears there would be silence. If we are to believe science, in a time when a few of us discount it if science dictates something contrary to a personal myth or taught belief system a tree would make a sound even if we the biggest guy on the block isn’t there to hear it. Objects striking objects make a sound. The question I have is from another adage is this. Does a bear really shit in the woods? Of course it does because that is where bears live, silly but does the bear make a sound when it poops in the woods is what I want to know.
I have never heard one doing that but I have seen them up close in my travels by kayak and hiking the mountains of Vancouver Island. Around here it is the Black Bear, Ursus americanus, which haunts my nerves with any heightened sound outside my tent at night. However, on my island and the surrounding area they are skittish and want nothing to do with us big guys on the block. An even trade as I would rather limit my encounters with them to the ones that I have had in my time in the outdoors to date.
There was the time I was walking in a local park with a friend and her small dog. While chatting I looked up the section of the trail ahead and saw what I thought to be a large black dog without a human companion attached. Not certain of the dog’s disposition I decided to err on the side of caution and suggest my friend pick up her dog, just in case of doggy troubles. She did and as she lifted it up to her chest I saw that in fact our visitor was not a dog but instead a young black bear. It took one look at us from a distance and scrambled into the underbrush, and we took a swift about-face and hoofed it back to the car.
Not so timid are the bears further up the coastline. There are places frequented by us kayakers that bear warnings about bears. Down here in the cluster of islands I call home when camping I do hang my food. Not for fear of intruding bears but because the racoon population are clever and aggressive. On Wallace Island for example Parks Canada have provided a smaller form of a metal bear cache to safely store your food stuffs so the tricky fingered masked bandits won’t find a way into your kayak to steal your gummy bears.
On the west coast of Vancouver Island there is a challenging trail known at the West Coast Trail and hiking out there you are with the wolves, cougars and black bear. I am sure there are racoons but they will be your least concern when pitching your tent beside a day-old pile of berry filled scat. On one such evening after a long day on the trail dealing with deep mud, rapidly rising tides and those wretched wooden ladders my group and I settled for a clear spot on the side of the trail with access to the sandy beach. The sound of the surf lulling me to sleep in my tent that night in a site we christened ‘bear shit camp’. Placing ones tent was difficult in the dying light as most of the flat surfaces available were covered in bear poop. They liked the view of the beach while doing their business I suppose.
I once had a restless night in Desolation Sound https://kayakrogue.wordpress.com/2022/11/03/a-day-at-the-spirit-animal-zoo/ when I awoke from a waking dream about a bear considering me to be an enchilada.
I once was in my kayak in Clayoquot Sound when I heard growling and snorting from some unseen place behind the jumble of rocks on the abrupt shoreline of Flores Island. I leaned my kayak away and had camera at the ready when my companion that day reminded me that bears are incredible swimmers and that any photograph I managed to take would be my last. I put away the camera and paddled on.
There was the time on the lengthy drive to Whitehorse when as one point on the highway we spotted two bears eating berries in the ditch. I was driving and slowed to park along side of the pair. It being a right hand drive put me in the veritable driver’s seat with my camera. One bear scrambled up the embankment while its partner was too hungry to care and was bothered more by his own personal cloud of Yukon sized mosquitoes that by me sitting with my camera braced on the open window ledge with one foot on the brake and the other hovering nervously over the gas pedal. I got the shot and drove away thus proving that if there is no picture it didn’t happen. That is the rule of the outdoors wildlife encounters.
Do they make sounds, oh boy yes! Do they poop in the woods, also an affirmative captain! Is there moaning and groaning because their diet not only includes berries but also pine needles. I would not be so arrogant to comment.
Lake Laberge, part 2 (the red light)
Posted by paddlinboy in Madness Under the Midnight Sun on November 30, 2022
The numbers on my handy elastic-band-wrapped GPS did not jive well. There was so much distance between the time on the clock and the distance to the next way point, and the long anticipated ending of the Lake Laberge section of the marathon, called Lower Laberge. Paddling through heavy winds on grey/green frothing lake water in a head down take no prisoners attack towards the shore and the Cathers Point monitoring station took its toll on me mentally and indeed physically. I was a hurting puppy as I waved and called out my number to volunteers and onlookers on shore with clip boards dutifully recording the progress of each paddler as they struggled past the check point. If not for the winds my paddling friend on a stand up board and I might have missed the checkpoint all together. In our defense we were slightly distracted with attempting not to drown in the wind waves. Soon after the passing of the point the weather took another change of the many that had already occurred. It was choppy but manageable now and the breeze only slight but still in my face. The forecasted tail winds did not find me until much later on and then only a cruel joke of a wisp of air that could barely move a falling feather from its downward course.
The lake was proving to be my hardship and my challenge. The idea of the hundreds of kilometers ahead fell away as too abstract. All I knew was that I had to take my kayak to the end of the lake. Beyond the many gravel beaches and high cliffs. The rolling toes of rock that poked out into the lake ahead of my bow and hiding the deep coves on the other side. These notches and meanderings in the shore line caused Glen, the paddler boarder and myself to be scolded more than once for exceeding the limits of how far away we were to be from land at any given time. As means of another excuse it was no our fault. The land fell away as we maintained a straight course. It became a bit arbitrary to us but each time a monitoring craft came broadside and told us to paddle in another hundred meters, we complied, muttering complaints the whole way.
Glen and I kept each other company for a couple of hours but soon he found a head of steam at the sight of the terminus of the lake. It was late, and much later than I had anticipated still being on the lake. I was behind my time and feeling the twinges in my shoulder at each stroke reminded me of how far I still had to go before I could climb out of my kayak. At sunset, of as much of a sunset that we would receive as the sun dipped to the spiking tree tops only to bounce back up again slowly I saw what Glen had seen before me, the red light! I looked at my map and sure enough that was my finish line from the marathon paddle across the lake. I was joined by a tandem kayak with two women who were laughing and telling stories to while away the time until they too could stand up on shore. I picked up the pace as best I could by counting ten hard strokes and five easy ones. Little by little the right hand shore fell away as we made the slow cut across to the return of the river proper. The red light blinked and eventually in what seemed hours to pass I had that light behind me at last. I rounded the curve to find a small pebble beach housing several kayaks and canoe. My pal Glen was there sipping something from a bottle and appearing weary. We all were, that unhappy crew of last in the pack stragglers. I am assuming the same nagging ragged thoughts of defeat were blinking like that red beacon in the backs of our minds. This race is against the clock but in more ways it is a race against yourself, the self-defeating monologue and a personal narrator either inspiring you or spitefully and unfairly attacking you in the shadows while navigating your own lowest moments. I discovered in the final hours of the marathon the truth of mind over matter. It is actually mind over body as one failed the other manged stubbornly to carry on the end.
I tipped my boat on its side after a burly and friendly volunteer pulled my bow far up the round stones and crawled out on my hands and knees. I had been in the seat for nearly twelve hours without break and my limbs were failing me. I managed to maintain an image of physical sturdiness as I rummaged for my night bag containing warmer clothing as the temperatures dipped overnight in the nearly dark under the midnight sun. I took the bag, wobbling on my ankles to the flat patch before the alder trees. I needed to pee! Finding a spot away from people I found the relief of that and of warm dry fresh clothes. I lingered on shore longer than I should but needed to replenish my spirit. I put on my headlamp required for safety so we could be spotted on the water, I sipped cold tea, and popped open a can of Red Bull which I balanced between my deck bag and hand made stand for my GPS. I sat, and pulled the spray skirt forward over the cockpit and the same burly and friendly volunteer asked if I was set. I was. He lifted my kayak and I with ease and with the help of the rolling rocks slid me backwards into the river. I spun around, waved goodbye and too the first paddle strokes into the next section of zig zag elbows and miniature rapids in the dusk of early morning on the Yukon River. This is where the real adventure and reality of the length of the race sets in. The red light was only the teaser to what was to come.
If you missed it, here is part one of my hours on the famous lake. Lake Laberge is very long, Part One
Making Room for Beer is a Good Excuse, I guess.
Posted by paddlinboy in Dave's Rants, Ravings and Rambling. on November 25, 2022
If it does not take five burly assistants to help carry your kayak to the water’s edge you are already doing something terribly wrong before your trip even begins. There is no need to travel light when touring in a kayak yet again and again I see people skimping on the small pleasures that make an outdoor experience better. I mean really folks, it’s not like you are carrying it all on your back like say, some sort of backpacker. Small stones, wood, maybe witches and of course as we discovered thanks to Monty Python, ducks float easily. So does as demonstrated by a paddling companion some years ago, a large glass jar of pickles! I have done both backpacking through places like the West Coast Trail and up and down some of the local mountains, and I have also done even more kayaking miles and I can say that my years of kayaking over mountaineering and trekking is largely due to not wanting to wear my household on my back ever again. It still astonishes me how much weight I can load into my kayak’s hatches and various nooks and crannies without it sinking under the burden of my dietary desires. The first few paddle strokes are hard but once the momentum is built up the vessel glides through the water without much effort, unlike the first few foot steps with a heavy pack. That never gets easier and there is no such thing as momentum.
I concede that making your pack as light as possible is necessary when going up and down things or across them for many days and nights. Your menu changes with that necessity from the gourmet to what doesn’t taste great but keeps you fuelled for the next day. It is all about food. It should somehow go beyond just eating for the sake of it or to replenish what you have used up all day in your efforts to get from A to B. On the aforementioned trip on the WCT where the ruggedness is equal only to its beauty my group and I packed our bags as though we were kayaking for a week. To say overkill would be an understatement with each of us possessing our own tents, stoves, pots and of course for the most part non-backpacker foods. We had a ten pound bag of fresh vegetables that became the punishment for any bemoaning of our fates due to weather or terrain the previous day when it was handed to you to carry. On the first night it took all four of us to heave the packs up into the trees. The veggies were eaten on the last night. Should we have planned better, yes! Should we have shared a stove, pots and brought dry noodles and nuts instead of corn on the cob fresh on the cob? Yes! Did we enjoy that darned corn over the campfire on a beach of pebbles that sounded like a rain stick being tipped back and forth when the tide and waves rose and fell over the small rocks, yes! There is a time and a place for such luxuries and that time and place is when kayaking.
Valdes Island lies a few kilometres north for Salt Spring Island. From my home on Salt Spring it was only a couple of hours of steady paddling and navigating away from the opening of Porlier Pass to get to my camping spot. It was the August long weekend and I misjudged how crowded that beach camp may be forgetting of course that it is also a destination for power boaters coming across from Vancouver Island. The only piece of tenting real estate I could find was a patch of sloping crushed shell beach inches above the high tide line demarked by where the seaweed and a partly submerged log. I made do with what I could get and after setting up I set out on the water for a sunset paddle up the shoreline to admire the eroded sand stone cliffs. On my return I saw a woman pushing her tent pegs into the same holes that mine were in. I rushed ashore to confront her but before I reached the shell beach she was calling out an apology and offered to share some of her summer sun warmed beer with me. Who could refuse such an offer?
Her name was Jean and she was in her early sixties. Her solo journey paddling the entire Gulf Island chain from Victoria to Nanaimo where she lived was coming to an end, it was her last night camping. After the previous night marooned on a smaller cliffy island due to a low tide and no way to move her kayak down to the water she was low on supplies with no time to detour to gather more. We sat up that night chatting and watched the fireworks igniting over the distant small town of Ladysmith sipping our beer that I had dunked in the ocean to cool. The next morning I pulled out my bag of goodies to make coffee and breakfast. Jean pulled out a cup from her smaller bag and filled it with instant coffee and a bit of milk that I am certain would be curdling, topped it with cold water, and drank that nasty gritty mixture down like a trooper. She made a gurgling noise. It was hard to bare witness.
“No! I can make you a real coffee if you want. Use my stove! I will do anything not to have to see you drink a second cup of…that!”
Jean refused my offer stoically. Cold soaking her meals each day and enduring the privation of even hot water for a cup of morning coffee without complaint, at least outwardly, but did the simple meal plan add enjoyment to the epic solo journey she was doing? I turned away to light my stove to make a fresh and hot mug of coffee with my miniature espresso maker because I could, and prepared a bagel with salmon capers and cream cheese. The guilt of eating this breakfast feast caused me to sneak away to a hidden location up the shore while dodging the milling throngs. I had planned a two-day outing but had packed enough food for a family of four. I get it; she wanted to travel simply and lightly. Making room for beer is a good excuse I suppose, but to take on such a trip and not enjoy the menu seemed to discount some of the satisfaction of the journey, at least in my eyes. I sent her on her way with a bagel with the works before she left to catch a forgiving tide to go through Dodds Narrows, the last hurdle before she reached home. What floats you ask? Pickles which have been scientifically proven to float, small stones, witches and wood as well, but this paddle foodie would say that you can also float a full satisfied stomach. Cold soaking is for masochists.
Wasabi Blues
Posted by paddlinboy in Dave's Rants, Ravings and Rambling. on November 16, 2022
Five days after 9/11 with that horror fresh in my head I took my place in line for the outhouse. Walbran Creek marks the unofficial middle of the most strenuous hike you will find known as the West Coast Trail, or W.C.T. White sandy beaches, a fresh water flow coming from the deep forest and lots of places to pitch a tent makes this ideal. The Creek is a location where weary travellers tend to rest up after coming north to south via Bamfield, a small coastal town or south to north via Port Renfrew, another tiny blip on the shoreline map. Caked in mud as I and my group of four were we could use the creek to rinse off a few crusty items, make a fire to dry the rest and take a day off from climbing ladders and struggling on quicksand ridden muddy paths. Walbran Creek also offers one other thing, a piece of civilization known as an outhouse. My advice to all is bringing your own toilet paper for a more enjoyable repast inside the squat hut, and because this is a gathering point there will be a small community of tents and people from all over the world to get to know there may be a line. I love talking to strangers but on this unreal week in the wilderness I was by chance in line behind a couple from Germany who I had taken out kayaking about ten days previous. What are the odds? I told them the terrible news from New York and in the days before viable wifi and cell phone reception the trail was a way out of knowing anything about the world beyond the next hurdle on the rugged path ahead. Of course, they were having none of it and did not believe my tale that always sounds like an action movie plot. Planes hitting the World Trade Center and other targets simply sound ridiculous, even two decades later. I imagined that the world was engaging in end of the world shenanigans as we spoke.
It was not just the potential for World War III mysteriously lurking on the horizon and shadowing our journey like a cougar who had possibly stalked us the day before, it was also my good friend’s 27th birthday that night. We were not good backpackers. There were four of us, myself and three women, and before you say a word about what a lucky guy I am, I can tell you that it was not always an every man’s dream. I also learned more details than I needed to know, ever! That said we packed for our week trekking in the woods like we were doing what we were accustomed, kayaking where weight of ger is less on an issue. Each of us brought a stove, pots sets, food for a month and the dreaded vegetable bag containing of all things four corn on the cobs, still on the cob. It was a worthy punishment to be given the bag for the crime of being whiny on the trail the day before. We were all overloaded but lightened the load somewhat with the birthday feast of vegetable sushi rolls. Our friend as it was her birthday took care of us. She brought little gifts for each us and argued to make the sushi. I had a plastic water bottle filled with red wine that may or may not have been improved by days of giggles and drops on the hike. I shared it out and by that time the sushi was served. There were enough ingredients for one long roll and as we were entertaining guests the roll was stretched with each of us having three or four small slices. Our guests were a couple of lads who met on a kayaking tour in Tofino consisting of a kayak guide and his new friend who had been convinced to join on a hike of the WTC. Another German I might add. We lifted our cups of giggled red and toasted the birthday girl and our good fortune to all be out there on the trail. The toast chased by a piece of sushi followed immediately by a group spit take, rice, carrot, cucumber and red wine sprayed into the campfire. She had a tube of wasabi paste and to lighten her own bag had squeezed it in entirety into the one roll trapping the green dynamite inside. With little in the way of a plan B meal at hand we used the wine to slightly deaden the pain of each sushi slice. Nasal coughing, choking, snorting and wheezing laughter got us through that night, and the only outhouse at Walbran Creek collapsed the next morning. No one was hurt, but wasabi may have been involved.
Is Everything Boring Now?
Posted by paddlinboy in Dave's Rants, Ravings and Rambling. on November 15, 2022
Is Everything Boring Now?
Is everything boring now? I ask this because of the reaction I had at being front and center witnessing the final few footsteps of a great trek that had begun five years before. The Trans Canada Trail begins and ends at oceans depending on which side of the country you take your first footsteps, Pacific or in this case Atlantic. Most people if they have the opportunity will hike a section of two of this wilderness path but one person decided to go the whole way with an amazing detour to the Arctic Ocean. Melanie Vogel of Germany wetted her toes in all three of those oceans and gathered blisters for the rest of the journey west.
It was a spectacularly sunny blue skied Saturday in November when I took my own urban hike under the canopy of brightly coloured tree leaves from my girlfriend’s house to a local coffee shop. I grabbed a cup to sustain me on my journey to the sea walking at right angles to the route Vogel was taking to the ‘point zero’ marker of the TCT at Clover Point Victoria BC.
A small crowd was gathering there, some expressing confusion as to where she would be arriving. There is another zero point on the same shoreline road named Mile Zero which is the terminus of the Trans Canada Highway. I was early and so was the reporter from the city news who had come to cover the event. I did not want to lose my early bird spot with my camera so struck up conversation with the reporter who had been on the Vogel story for some time. She spoke of how the past couple of days had been hard on Melanie Vogel as she reappeared in society after so long hiking alone, well that is alone with her husky/lab cross, Malo. Being overwhelmed by well wishers, media interests and blistered and bandaged feet was the back story I was told as the reporter, looking through her video camera could make out the crowd that had joined Vogel for the last leg.
The group closed in on the final steps of a five year journey and I wondered as I crouched down to take video from a low angle to make her appear bigger, I wondered what she must be thinking. I could see it in her eyes as she walked past me. There I could see a mix of fatigued bewilderment, gratitude, relief, regret and release that fell from her being with each footprint. Malo just enjoyed the treats and attention. She touched the signpost, hugged Malo and dipped her feet in the cold water as Malo stole the show rolling in a pile of seaweed when his own pack was removed. Moments later the media jumped her. She sat on a log, hugging Malo as people asked for pictures with her. She agreed to them but was in the images in body only. I could tell she had retreated into a bubble. Shoeing away the reporters for a moment by telling then that she had little to say than she had already said in so many previous interviews, and they were surprisingly respectful letting her savour the moment and somehow process the end of the journey. That was when I packed up and headed back the way I came. The long way home seemed fitting that afternoon all things considered. The question I started asking myself as the event unfolded remained and enforced by my observations of those around me. Is everything boring now?
Is everything boring now because everything is immediately at our fingertips? Is everything boring now because with a device in hand we cannot get lost because it will tell us exactly where we are just by opening an app? Is everything boring now because every life experience, both real and imagined is available through a content producing public all over social media? I ask this because for a brief moment on that sunny Saturday everyone looked up. They took part in a flash community. They engaged with each other and actually talking to strangers about the anticipation of this woman walking across the country to end up sitting on a log hugging a wet dog. The moment of community was short lived and I watched them all retreat back to the default settings our society has fostered in the last decade or so. The excitement over, the ant hill returning to regular business and off we went into our regular lives. I noticed one young woman who as she walked past me held an expression of boredom. It didn’t take. The random and to me very exciting emotionally provocative arrival of Vogel sent my throat to stiffen and eyes, I admit filling at the corners as she walked up to the sign post. This woman might have felt a short blast of excitement but it washed over her leaving her feeling, meh. Was I imagining this? In my caffeinated state I was jumping in and talking to reporters like a pro, and to total strangers, I love doing that! So, I quickly asked the young woman what she thought of it all.
“It was cool, I guess.”
Me: “Could you see yourself doing something crazy like that?”
“Oh nooooo way!”
Me, laughing knowing me. : “I can!”
She chuckled and left. Okay, so not a good example of going on a multi-year hikes as something seen as boring, but she was bored, almost instantly. All mystery and imagination has gone into the existential junk drawer. Everything has become all too available. The things that other people do and we get to watch on You Tube and Instagram have become a kind of entertainment and not seen as exceptional. We even go as far as to critique the video quality of someone’s life dream adventure that they go to the trouble of sharing with us online.
I have written trip reports that I hope give information about a place to hike or to kayak, and that some of my words may actually spark the imagination of the reader. I do hope that, and not that I have become entertaining.
Something special has gotten lost along the way. The way we acted out during the pandemic, the so-called break down of social norms all feel like a live version of the nasty comments threads I read on the interweb. I believe that it is due to the lack of running room. There is no escape for the in coming information, data and video. Over-sharing is killing us and we are acting out of boredom.
I own a flip-phone. I know that some of you reading that will scoff. Why would you use something so useless you might ask? I don’t owe an answer but I will say one thing. I very nearly burst into tears at that sea side marker when a woman and her dog arrived from an mighty journey, a solo journey of many kilometres and delays due to Covid restrictions giving her the chance to spend a year and a half in the Yukon, which is one of my favourite places on Earth. Maybe owning a phone that just makes phone calls saves at least a portion of my soul. I was not bored before, during or after on my walk home that day. In fact, I was stifling the emotions the entire way home and at watching my video of the event at home felt that rush yet again.
It is a complicated world we now live in. Do we throw away our devices to save our collective spirits? Are we all in need of an intervention and some form of a 12-step addiction program to at the very least find some moderation in the use of the digital drugs? Inundated from the moment we wake up by the noise of other people over-sharing. It has dulled the senses. It has made everything boring. Before you say it, yes I do partake in the sharing of things on the internet. I admit to getting lost in video clip vortexes when I get home from work that is tough to jump out from. I am as susceptible as any to the dangers of over-sharing of others. To say, that was cool, shrug my shoulders and then walk on to the next thing is something I can’t do. I have been thinking about Melanie Vogel all week. I wonder how she is making out in the strangest days she will experience after the hike, and I wonder what the next morning was like. Did she enjoy a good cup of coffee on some balcony and gaze out over the cityscape or did she pull the covers up over her head and let it be? The event of her last sore footsteps that afternoon struck a nerve, a pin was placed on the memory map and I cannot be bored by that.
Stay in your Lane, but Howl if you want to!
Posted by paddlinboy in Dave's Rants, Ravings and Rambling. on November 10, 2022
Stay in your Lane, But Howl if you Want To!
The separation between God and man is equal the space we have driven between ourselves and the natural world that we sprung from millions of years ago. In the recent decade I can see the changes and distancing from one another that have occurred and the unfortunate divisions driving us to become more insulted from each other. We are a society of ones. I blame the combo platter serving up the internet, a once useful creature that slowly was made corruptible and its cousin, the constant distraction machine of the cell phone. I dare you humble reader to find one single coffee shop anywhere on the planet, not just the western so called advanced nations, but anywhere that does not contain caffeine drinking inhabitants sharing tables who are glued to their phones. Not sharing life’s little stories of family and friends. Not arguing over the state of the world at large, not communicating with one another at all. Simply captivated, and so completely adhering to this captivity of scrolling through nothingness that they, we have successfully removed each other from each other while praying to the good God social media. We suck!
It is our own fault that we are so focused on nasty little trolls and info-tainment that we are missing out on the experience of being living creatures. It is why we are experiencing something other than engaging in zombie-like meat puppetry in the glow of our personal screen time. We suck!
It is our nature I suppose to wander away from what keeps us sane and whole. It is easier to blame the other, to seek ways of deferring responsibility for our own actions. The combo platter does the trick and the buffet of it all fills us up while somehow at the same time leaving each of us empty in the existential stomach. I would argue that the years of wandering from our natural beginnings only exacerbated the speed in which we have run to a place of avoiding each other as real people not abstracts on a phone screen.
The human critter does not want to think of itself as small. We beat our chests and tell the old faithful myth of how we are the top of the food chain. We think and I dare say believe that we are the leader of the pack and not part of the natural world. Tell that to the jogger being chased by a cougar and ask him or her if they feel superior or just dinner. We are big, stupid bumbling animals who really have not advanced much from our days fashioning rudimentary tools from wood, bone and stone. We are now big dumb bumbling creatures with bigger tools that are smarter than we could ever be, yet we pat ourselves on the back for how brilliant we are. We suck!
There are a few of us who are trying to reconnect, maybe not so much with each other but that we did the nature thing on the weekend, place selfie here. An industry rose up supplying social malcontents who want to engage with their true selves and touch a bit of human history by sleeping rough in a thin nylon enclosure while the wind whistles, and a twig snapping sends them reeling into a primal fear of that awareness of not being on top of the food chain. They, like me are the thrill seekers who want to sense that anxiety at the sound of a twig snap. It is a rush man! When we lose that grip on the personal human kind myth and embrace our true place in the scheme of things, to humble our egos and understand finally that it is not something to be embarrassed about, to be small. If we see the natural world as small, in how could we be on same the level of grass, or a tree in a field, a bird, a worm or an amoeba? We are! It is exciting to be small, to be part of something finally and against all social motivators to the contrary. That is why people buy tents, sleeping bags, cook stoves and hiking boots. It is why we invented horrible terms such as nature bathing. It is why I did all that and then expanded my purchase history when launching knee deep into kayaking. It is why people go outside. There is something primal speaking in the depths of who we are reminding us of why we are. Do we have to suck?
On an island in a small chain of what looks like from thirty thousand feet to be chips broken away from the whole of Vancouver Island is a long crescent-shaped sandy beach at the base of a the abrupt and deep green hillside. One end of that beach is wild. The surf breaks violently after the smooth rolling swells of the breathing ocean meet the rocky shallows and rise up against themselves to fall in a rough line of shore for hundreds of feet. The other end of the curved shoreline is calmer. Protected by a rocky outcrop of land creating a safe warm soft armpit of land to slide a kayak into without getting wet in the attempt and naturally at that place is a perfect camp location. It offers a white sand platform for your tent if you enjoy your tent filling with sand, and a level wooded area that is sand free. It is a human place with park trails and a green cone toilet out in the open and oddly facing the hiking trail. It feels safe from all that uncomfortable proximity to our natural past.
On morning I and my companions woke to find that the trail was not just being used by humans. My tent was in the sand. I like the sand. It gives way under me when I sleep and camping on the coast without getting sand in your tent, or coffee cup for that matter is a ridiculous notion. My tent had tracks leading to it and around it on both sides. There were no signs of any of the night dwellers investigating my abode, only seeing it as the only obstacle on the way to the fresh water stream falling from the deep woods into the sand around the rocks from where I slept. Wolf, bird, cougar and raccoons had come to visit over night. Not one twig snap was heard.
Later that afternoon we saw a wolf appear from the head of the hiking trail. It was followed by a backpacker named Steve who was out for a hike of that side of the island with his German Shepard. I still have a grainy photo of that dog from when it arrived at our beachy home alarming us as we made hasty plans on how to get rid of what we thought at the time was a human habituated wolf.
The next day found us still on the beach. The fog of morning just would not let go of the shoreline and the next safe place to land our boats was hours north. We stayed put and spent the day lounging on our own self-satisfaction of having this blissful location all to ourselves. A rare and beautiful thing! If not for the lack of palm trees we could see the area as Hawaiian. White sands, the roar of waves getting louder as the tide rose, and the hush later as the tide receded. The mists clinging to the green steep hill and the colour of the water had us in paradise mode. It was time to take the deep dive into the past and away from the myth. We grabbed some snacks, cameras and tucked away the rest into the relative security of kayak hatches and set out to hike to the wild side.
The shore is longer than it appears and taking our time, taking pictures of each other in self-congratulatory images to show off back home. We marvelled in the forms, sounds and patterns of the sandy environment. Eventually, stopping in our own tracks to admire and question the single file set of footprints coming from the trees out on the sand and at their terminus, a pile of feathers and disturbed red sand. That gull had a bad morning as the tide was still going out, the kill was fairly recent and we all now felt watched. Time, what is that? The year, the minute the second erased all connection to the now when standing over a single line of wolf tracks. We sauntered onwards with prickles rising on the backs of our necks.
Under a log held up by a pair of exposed seaweed covered rocks and down into a gully formed by the constant dredging of the sea’s daily incursions we all admitted later to sensing that crouching under that log signified the entrance of the older world. The nature that we came to do was a real, in-your-face-Jack moment. Primal is the only word worthy of describing the feeling of not belonging. We were not in our place. Nature had separated us from it. All our attempts to touch it, to climb back into the womb were dashed. We cannot go back and the limbo move required getting under the log rubbed it in intensely. Had we so totally lost our way in the world that the wolfy end of that rugged place drew a line in the sand? You do not belong here! You suck! GO HOME!
We do not do ourselves any favours by hiding behind our phones. We are not just distancing from each other but creating an environment of apathy towards each other that can only contribute to the growing climate crisis. We need to interact once again with each other, not by memes, or one line texts, and find a course back to community which has been so sorrily lost. That wolf nest at the nature end of the beach set the stage. I felt lost on the walk back to camp. I, and all my fellow humans have waited to long to come home again and home moved on. We had our end of the beach, they had theirs. Climate change has been a bulldozer leveling the playing field for the human race. The planet is changing and we are not. We just are not changing. Nature has drawn that line in the sand and is moving on without us. The planet will not die, however you and I have questionable futures.The question remains how do we find the path back away from the trolls, and the endless energy put into scrolling the nothingness to where we can stand at our end of the beach and point to what was, and what is. knowing that even though all in nature has had enough of waiting and put the log up that we are still part of them, as they are part of us. Howl if you want to against the silence of a coffee shop filled with zombie scrollers. The creatures strolling by my tent knew that the beach can be shared, it is time we learned how to as well.
A Day at the Spirit Animal Zoo
Posted by paddlinboy in Dave's Rants, Ravings and Rambling. on November 3, 2022
A Day at the Spirit Animal Zoo
The inside of the tent was bright that morning as it is every morning on a summer camping trip to the west coast. The air was yellow and blue reflecting the coloured pattern of the thin layer of nylon that separated me curled up snug in my sleeping bag, and the 250lb black bear seen as a menacing blurred shadow sniffing at my tent. I could not move a single fear locked muscle and the restraining feel of the hooded mummy bag didn’t help the sensation of being trapped against my will. The bear had me dead to rights and could if it pleased used me as a kayak camping enchilada. Thoughts raced across my mind, rational thoughts on how and why a normally timid coastal black bear would venture into my encampment on the shores of a very busy and noisy bay of motor boaters? Hell, I was kept from sleep most of the night by the sounds of a family group up the beach and the drunken warbling of its matriarch as she sung along to old time rock and roll tunes. My Sherona by the Knack had never been covered with such passion, and so many times in a row.
With the sounds of generators, dvd players, outside voices echoing in the bowl shaped bay and the Knack on repeat how, I thought would a bear come anywhere near? It must be very hungry! I’m toast, paralysed in a bag. The tent walls rustled and that was the end. I woke from the dream and regained the use of my limbs and in seconds my wits returned under the heavy breathing. But there was still something outside my tent, something brushing against it and then the sound of rain. Wrestling in a subdued near bear encounter panic I escaped my sleeping bag and unzipped the triangular flap to my enchilada cave. My head popped out into the sunlight and silhouetted before it was a man in a bucket hat and shorts holding a coiled up dog leash as his golden retriever pissed all over my tent fly.
“Sorry.” He muttered and called his dog back to the dinghy he used to take the dog for a pee on my tent from his 40ft sailing boat anchored in the nearby still waters of Roscoe Bay.
I sat on the mossy ground, ignoring the picnic table provided and listened to the hiss of my coffee maker doing its duty. It had no idea what I had just gone through, but that was not what it was about. My coffee maker’s hiss was the sound of civilization. A return to the over-populated boater bay I settled for the day before when the hour was getting late and the setting sun had fallen behind Vancouver Island. The gurgle after the hiss meant relief. Nothing bad can happen when you are sipping your first cup of coffee in the morning while camping, it is a rule. I had little concern of a black bear waddling down the path leading directly to my tent spot. I could relax and ponder the horrors of the morning with some self-doubt about my fortitude in nature. I thought I was made of tougher stuff, but my subconscious sent me into a waking sleep paralysis instead of grabbing my flare gun and lighting up that bear’s insides.
Years later on the Yukon River after a twelve hour stint in the kayak seat without rest I arrived at Lower Lebarge checkpoint at the northern end of Lake Lebarge. The sun had only gone down slightly below the tree line and would soon be on the slow rise. It was shortly after midnight when I stumbled rubber legged up the beach covered in round river stones to firmer flat ground. There was a smell of BBQ but I don’t recall there being food served. I had my bag of clothing designated for the chilly overnight paddling hours of the three day long marathon named the Yukon River Quest from Whitehorse to Dawson City the epicentre of the great gold rush era. I nearly toppled over attempting to change my clothing and even found a place that would serve well as a tent spot, if not for the sense of urgency we all felt to get a move on. The next section of the river was a reward for the long mind-fucking shore topography of the lake which is one long shallow bend around one rocky outcropping obstructing the view the next rocky outcropping. It would take many hours of paddling in at times unpredictable waters before the red beacon light signalled the entrance to the river. The reward was faster water, zigging and zagging through cliffy canyon-like terrain that is said to be visually stunning in daylight hours. In the sheer dusk of the hour the headlamp light could make out some features but the rest were lost to my eyes.
It doesn’t take long to read the water and understand where to point your bow to make full use of the flow and give paddling arms a rest. Steering left and right, and then another fast right, go straight and into the next set of mini rapids. By 1am and a snack of gummy bears chased with a five hour power shot drink followed by an ill-advised Red Bull I was drifting a little. Letting the waters take me downhill to the Bering Sea thousands of kilometres away. I scanned the shore looking for anything that would indicate the light was getting brighter. I seemed to remain dusk for a long time. I saw the weak sun peek in amongst the sparseness of the hinterland forest but it was not yet friendly to weary kayakers on a daft mission to beat the clock. What I did see was a deer. I was in luck but there was no one around in canoe or kayak to share my good fortune of witnessing a rare thing indeed. I couldn’t believe I was drifting at the same pace as a white deer tip-toeing and struggling somewhat on the loose sandy incline to the water’s edge. It pranced and jumped as if as startled at seeing me as much ai I seeing it. In an instant it was gone. The deer jumped up the sand bar and while in mid-flight burst into a cloud of sparkles. I assumed it teleported and would reappear sometime, someplace later.
We were lost in the archipelago. Left became right somewhere during the afternoon of leisurely exploring the islands with no names, some only identified with a number, some with nothing at all according to the sea chart sealed in clear plastic on the deck of my kayak. Being lost was what we did best. Myself and three others had paddled many days and many locations together and would inevitably on each occasion get thoroughly lost. With little care in the sheltered safely from the wild open ocean that the islands provided we decided to stop and get clearer bearings. Choosing a muddy beach of one of the nameless islets where the dark wet soil met a small green grassy clearing that must have been at some distant point in the past, a homesteading site. The patch was too flat and too clear to be anything other than that. The beach faced the inland side of the island group and was as calm as a pothole puddle. The west coast makes mud. West coast mud is the type of mud that reminds you why as a kid one of your basic phobias and terror was to inadvertently encounter quick sand. The mud looks almost dry on the surface. Deceptively assuring the traveller that stepping upon it will mean solid ground not the ‘you will only sink faster if you struggle’ sand that will swallow you up whole unless there is a long sturdy vine within reach that you can use to pull yourself out.
I stepped out of my kayak and lost my sandal instantly in the deep quagmire. I looked up while reaching elbow deep to retrieve it and that is when I saw a normal coloured deer dancing in the grass. Hopping back and forth and we all saw it. I had witnesses! This deer was working it, prancing on ballerina hooves. Spinning and jumping about. Was this a greeting, or a warning not to come ashore lest ye be damned, or it could simply be that the deer at the late summer berries and had a buzz on. In a blink it was gone, and so was my other sandal.
Maniac Mondays
Posted by paddlinboy in Dishpit Diaries on October 27, 2022
By David Barnes
I am an extraverted introvert. I know that sounds like a confusing contradiction tied up in a neat little paradoxical duality, so just imagine how I feel living in it every day. When I was a kid I was not a cool kid. I did not run in that crowd. I did not do the cool kid stuff, go to cool kid parties, and there were many reasons for that lack of the cool gene that the obvious cooler kids who are cool possess. I was the outsider from the beginning. I was short and goofy looking. That describes all kids but I think you know what I mean. I am still short and goofy looking so I call that a win in the consistency department! I managed somehow to roll with many groups but never fully integrated myself into any one of them. I was not seen as obviously cool. Some kids just don’t fill that particular cup all the way to the top and I was alright with my state of being. After all, I might not have been recognized by the cooler kids but I was certainly not with those losers over there! In between coolness and burnouts suffering their own kind of loser-dom is where you will find my footprints walking in circles and doing my own thing.
Kitchens do not attract the quiet wallflowers or gentle observers of life. It is a scolding hot dark loud anti-social punk rock environment. There are boiling liquids, knives of varying sharpness, there are flames and bodies jostling in a cramped uncomfortable space resembling a submarine. It is not for the contemplative soul. No time for naval gazers. This might be why, or at least part of the contributing palette of the job that leaves me a zombie wreck by my weekend. It is the act I am playing in the kitchen hours on end that drains me more than the physical act of being on my feet for up to ten hours a day. My introverted self, the one that is here right now typing against the taunting white laptop screen is my usual self. Being creative, thinking at all time about all things, and attempting to convey this with my own voice and in a tone that is accessible is exhausting enough. Now try thinking about things, all things all of the time while the soundtrack of Apocalypse Now is playing all around you, and there are sweaty cooks asking the impossible of you while being jostled in tight uncomfortable quarters. Something dear the core of my being must be hidden in a safe room until my shift is done or it will never recover from the PTSD inflicted upon it.
Covered in bits of food, moisture from the overheard pressure sprayer and knowing that when I do finally go home I will smell badly is the role. It is the casting method of playing that role of the louder, hotter, crankier punk rock extrovert whose banter and comedic rants can at times border on inappropriate. He is the manic polar opposite of the guy writing and listening to old timey blues music while doing so. He, the kitchen monster comes out as the protector and is a released demon to guard against the onslaught of over stimulation that can leave on feeling like a shaken baby in a matter of minutes. To fully take on that role when it is not your natural state of being is tiring. It goes right to the sole and over time you just simply need to take a break from it. I live in hopes of those surprise days off that are usually months apart. In the meantime, I find other escapes to shed the kitchen self and gaze, most times in the blurred reflection of the stainless steel walls of the walk-in cooler. The door propped open with a potato so as not to repeat the unfortunate time I was locked into a walk-in freezer unit because the push button lock release broke and was rescued to emerge moments before freezer burn settled in. The walk-in cooler is the refuge of every kitchen soldier suffering from major to minor battle fatigue. In the comforting hum of the compressor and the stale scent of waxy cardboard boxes we find solace. Time stops however briefly though am fearfully aware that at some point your absence will be noticed. “Where’s Dave?”
“He went to the shed.”
When I worked at a small seaside fish and chips joint the building which seemed by style to at one time be a residence was perched precariously on the side of a cliff. The walk-in was housed in a separate smaller building ‘the shed’ up the hill and as far away from the working kitchen as could be humanly possible. The waddle up there with an empty bus bin to collect items needed in the kitchen was what one young cook named the stress walk. We all take stress walks there during a shift and with more frequency on warmer summer days. A few lovely minutes pretending to gather ingredients while standing in the cold breeze inside the cooler and you walked back down with a little less stress than on the walk there.
In a few hours I will return to the belly of the beast and face off once again with my duelling selves. I have become less and less aware of the internal fight while it is going on only to feel the morning after affects of the existential over drinking later on. The euphoria of getting to the end of another shift, and being one of the cool kids in a working kitchen and hours of nerve-jangling stimulation gives way the following day to a natural downward spiral of the quiet guy processing what just happened.
It Won’t Go Down!
Posted by paddlinboy in Dishpit Diaries on October 25, 2022
By David Barnes
It won’t go Down
It won’t go down! Try as I might I cannot nudge or negotiate the only object, a piece of medium diced tomato down the dishwashing station’s soaker sink drain which is inconveniently located in the back right corner of the square stainless steel cavern. There is an art a kin to the finesse used by a snooker player to judge how much hand pressure to apply to the overhead pressure sprayer nozzle to accomplish certain washing tasks. Over the years, months, and hours standing at the dishpit staring into my own dull reflection in the stainless steel backsplash I have developed a surgeons touch.
Applying full pressure to the handle to push away stubbornly clingy cooked on gravy in a pan to the light as a feather barely conceivable technique to use the same device to removed gravy from a ladle unless you want to throw caution to the wind resulting in a face wash of used gravy and hot water. Have hand towel at the ready at all times! I have become an intermediate league player in the world of dish sink hockey. In those short-lived but enjoyable moments of relative quiet in the lull between waves of orders coming in from front of house when I have caught up with the stacks of pots and pans, dishes and bowls and cutlery, I indulge myself to aleve the boredom which inevitably grows in a work place that is a non-stop cacophony.
A working kitchen is like a foxhole during a fire fight in the Black Forest. Moments of stress and impossible noise and futility broken only by longer moments of anxiously caused by awaiting the next bout and doing what you can to frustrate the anxiety with a game of cards, lighting (carefully so the enemy can’t see) a cigarette during a smoke break, of attempting to push a chunk of medium diced tomato down the drain hole. The sound of the spray hitting the metal like a heavy rain in the middle of the night easing your tensions until you hear your name called with urgency snapping you from your revelry and the guns begin to fire once more.
This evening as I wait for the final rush of the night that clever piece of fruit will not go where directed as though it may have a will of its own.
“For fuck’s sake!”
I go for a full blast to its left flank and nothing happens other than giving it a sudden fixation of the lower corner under my arm and nearly out of sight. It may be hiding, refusing to submit to my designs, and I know in my heart that time is running out. The enemy a.k.a. the loyal customers are reloading as the water flares from the hose. It won’t go down! I resolve to give up. It wins, or so it thinks. I hang the dripping nozzle in its cradle. A habit I rarely do as I want immediate access to the hose and do not have time nor patience to fiddle with that instead leave it swinging or at least shove it on the faucet pipe hoping it won’t swing back and hit my in the face. I hear the printer start that triggering sound as the tickets resume, and I reach down sliding the cube to the drain and push it down with my index finger.
Get Out!
Posted by paddlinboy in Dave's Rants, Ravings and Rambling. on April 12, 2025
It’s noisy here, right. Not because I am walking here on a busy street but in general. We live in a busy place, the civilized world. Actually it is a distracted world. We like to think of ourselves as civilized people but in fact we are simply distracted people. And it is to our detriment and the very recent; we forget just how recent the device in our hand came along and put the final nail in the coffin of our personal boxed in distracted selves. Sad really because we were and are built for more than staring at our phones all day.
I hate standing waiting for my coffee order and seeing happy couples, I assume that they are content but they are staring at their phones and not into each others eyes. Put those damn things down people. I did. I have a phone and it is a phone, with the ability to send texts. I own a flip phone. LEAVE SPACE OF THE LAUGHTER TO DIE DOWN. It does what it does. I feel it frees me up to be more in touch with my surroundings which in the past we all were, as much a survival mechanism as anything else. Ever try to send a text on a flip phone? It slows you down because it is cumbersome and requires you to consider what you want to write and pare it down to the necessary amount of words only.
I know it is easy to blame the device for all of our ills and there are other factors for sure but it is the one thing that has in recent years distracted us the most.
Back to being civilized. We are fooling ourselves! We are only a few evolutionally feet away from where we began only our tools are more sophisticated.
We are nature, part of it anyway and though we have forgotten that part there is still somewhere buried deep inside the instinct to get outdoors, be in nature, in the wild admiring all it offers. Why do you think national parks are so popular? We need community and we need to be in touch with our surroundings.
When I was a little kid I was not one of the cool ones and I did spend time on my own in the woods. Our property overlooked the harbour and had a rather abrupt treed slope to the shoreline. I would clamber down onto the ledges of mossy rocks and peer through the trees to the water. I would become completely absorbed in my nature bubble. The smell of living things. The way the dry moss felt under my hand. I have a distinct memory of watching an eagle swoop in to try and catch a fish in the harbour. I was part of it.
It was much later in my 30’s when I would come back to that feeling. I by then was a commited couch potato. A couple of school friends who had gotten into alpine hikes invited me along on a mountain day trip that they insisted that even I could do. They were right, I did it and not being one to start slowly I hiked almost all the way up. I would not make the summit until the following year but on that first outing as I ate my noodles on a rocky outcrop and could see for miles in all directions I had an epiphany of sorts. I had come fully back to my 10 year old self watching eagles.
Its my birthday today. I am now officially a 60 year old fella. I don’t know how much more walking I have in me but I want to do as much as I can now that shit is getting real. And if I can give any of you something as a birthday present I say this, got out! Put your phones down and stroll to the coffee shop, or the store, or the local park and sit in the grass and watch the people go by. Feel your surroundings even if they are in an urban setting. Slow yourself down; notice the things on your way that would be missed while zipping by in a car or while looking at your phone.
I know that there may not be a mountain awaiting you this afternoon. It does not have to be so grand as that. But go, walk. Go walking not because it is a healthy thing to do like eating your broccoli; go walking to rediscover who you are inside. Spend some time in your head and I know that might be scary for some of you, but do it. You are nature, and you are still in there. The phone and the world so desperately trying to compete for your attention will still be there when you get back home.
She is the City, a Homelessness Story
Posted by paddlinboy in Dave's Rants, Ravings and Rambling. on November 19, 2024
By David Barnes
I was not prepared for the damp chill that enveloped the city at 8:40 on a Saturday morning. I left the car to have a limp tire repaired and not wanting to linger on the provided faux leather couch and browse the dated magazines, let alone inhaling the industrial scent of vulcanized rubber for an hour I opted to wander. The air outside the garage door was cold. A categorically off-putting temperature mixed with a slightly irritating non-committal drizzle. A colourful capital with a mix of old and new architecture on this day the cold pulled any of the usual lovely anesthetic from every wall, tower and green space. Nothing was open at that time of the morning save my regular weekend morning coffee haunt several blocks away where I bought a take out cup before my appointment. I soon realized that the coffee shop kitty corner to the garage was in fact open but now with a competitors cup in hand with the logo shining brightly I thought it rude to walk in, sit down at an empty table and pretend to the young woman behind the counter that I was meant to be there, so I walked.
It is amazing how time works. It ebbs and flows. Eddies and ripples into rapids when you least expect. On this gunmetal grey part of a late November morning with rain that was not rain moistening my skin and I had hopes it would do wonders for my complexion the clock wound slowly onward.
I made it to the corner and passed the church recently enclosed by the tall pretty blue chain-link fencing designed with the purpose of protecting the building from those the church once claimed to love and wanted to nurture. Those lost souls crippled by the drink, drugs, haunted minds who dared use the solid outer walls of the structure as backdrop to their makeshift garbage bag and torn tarp abodes. Shame on the church council and more shame on the city council for supplying the fencing and moving those off the street opposite the church with more high fencing that only forced the folk out to the sidewalk, further enraging a council that previously pushed out a small tent city so those tired wanderers had to scatter to alcoves and nooks all across town. I don’t care where you sleep, you just can’t sleep here! Move along!
The chill deepened and began sneaking into any soft unprotected places in my armour. No one on the street, only the city wanderers and me, and by looking at them and myself in a mirror of a shop window I could not see a difference. My dress that day with the exception of nicer shoes was close to those wandering with me. My pants ill-fitting and my rain jacket an alleged surplus garment for some off-shore military, dark green with a bright orange inner liner and needing a wash. My cup steamed in my hand as I scooted across the unoccupied intersection behind two fellow travelers. Each of them wearing seemingly identical black outfits and ill-fitting pants while possessing a body posture speaking the language of two who were conspiring on plans for the rest of the day. The bent pair looking like question marks shuffling, holding bags containing God knows what? It began to occur to me that it was not them that seemed out of place in the city, but it was me. I was the outcast outsider intruding on their territory. These sidewalks and alleys and alcoves were theirs and theirs alone. I was to them the unseen and unwanted soul. I was not one of them as I could, in a red hot moment find acceptance in that coffee shop even if I did walk in with a beverage that I had not purchased from them, and sit down at a window table with impudent charm of someone who was seen outwardly at least as normal as the girl behind the counter.
I saw one or two ‘normal’ individuals sprinting to jobs insulated mugs in hand somehow navigating the dangers of the cross-walks all the while staring at and scrolling on cell phones. The wanderers paid little or no attention to them at all. Why on earth would they? The normies had nothing going on that was of interest to the wanderers on an oppressively cold morning. Movement was key and whether they shuffled fast or slow it did not matter, warming them by walking to ease the discomfort of lying on hard ground for the previous night was all that concerned them.
I shuffled in my own way occasionally glancing at my watch as I strolled down the wasteland avenue towards the tourist shopping district close the water when in my peripheral vision I was jolted from my sleep walking by a locomotive headed right for me. She crossed the street at an angle and was aiming for the sidewalk just ahead of me. Her arms swinging like an angry metronome beating out the rhythm and pace of her uncontrollable madness as she jumped the curb in a leap as though jumping a large imaginary puddle. Faceless as she passed with the briefest of glances to see she had a pointed nose and undeveloped chin. Head down driven by the badly wired one presumes bird nest of a brain. The needle, the pipe the home life and the damage done all pushing her as juggernaut of the street. The actual embodiment of all that is awkward, and mistreated and indeed powerful about the human spirit and hers locked away in a cold place as uncomfortable and icy as the temperature of the concrete we walked upon and all that surrounded us.
She, with her arms swinging madly to propel her faster away from the ghosts that chase her is the city’s dark little secret. We see her every day and discount her without truly being able to recount her likeness to anyone else.
My coffee grows cold in my cup and I find a receptacle to make a deposit of it. The cup is now as unseen as she was an hour ago and again an hour from then. Out of sight, out of mind and searching my watch for signs that time had advanced, it had ever so slowly back towards the time when I was scheduled to return. To drive away in my car to a warmer place with errands to run and dinner to plan and the wanderers plotted the rest of their day.
She is always there.
Camping Recipes and more!
Posted by paddlinboy in Dave's Rants, Ravings and Rambling., HOW-TO, The Hungry Kayaker on August 27, 2024
It has been a while since I last sat down to write a new post here. I have not been writing much, but I know my own cycles and with the approach of the fall I will be back inside at the computer tapping out stories once again. Even though I have not been a vigilant poster it is not to say I have been sitting on my backside doing nothing at all. The year has simply escaped me so far. In March I got out of my warm bed very early one morning and got in my kayak with the mission of paddling all the way around the largest of the Gulf Island, Salt Spring Island where I live. I had done it a decade before and with more time on the water back then I made the trip all the way around in record time. This spring I was about a half hour off my previous mark and landed well after the sun went down. I thought that after a few years, yes years without much kayaking this go big or go home day 12 hour day paddle would jump start a season of regular paddles. I was wrong. With the exception of a rather chilly morning to shoot a camping food video for my new YouTube Channel “Kayak Cook” in April I have not had the chance since to sit in my boat once. I work in a restaurant and the hours get longer as the days get busier.
On Monday night I am planning a weekend paddle, or even an overnight trip. By Wednesday I am scaling it down to a short outing. By Friday I am looking forward to napping all afternoon on my girlfriend’s sofa. It only gets worse as the summer progresses but it is ending. September is on the way even though around here the weather has felt more autumn-like all through August. The past two weekends I thought I could go camping but each weekend ended up being high winds, rain, thunder storms and repeat. Labour Day is coming up and well, good luck getting any privacy in the marine park campgrounds. The latest plan now that the days are getting shorter, the hours are not so intense at work and my energy on the weekends is coming back to reasonable levels is to go for a couple nights of camping locally the week after Labour Day. We’ll see, and I will keep you posted and perhaps even in video form as I hope to film the event, with an emphasis on camp cooking.
As I said before, I have not been lazy. I have found the time since the spring to shoot a number of camping recipe videos for my channel and now that I have a decent playlist with another video dropping by this weekend if the editing gods are kind I am happy to introduce it to you all who find me here.
Kayak Cook on YouTube is where I have put my around Salt Spring Island paddling video, some winter hikes and of course a growing number of fun, easy often one-pot camp cooking meals and recipes.
Kayaking from Dawn to Dusk
Posted by paddlinboy in Dave's Rants, Ravings and Rambling., Kayak Trips on March 20, 2024
To save my soul.
By David Barnes
A year ago I repaired and repainted a nearly twenty-year old wooden kayak that I built in my living-room without any idea whether or not I could get it out the front door when it was finished. It did but not without clearing every box of cereal from the top of my refrigerator when the back end swept through my kitchen. She has been my constant companion and I would dare to say, even at the risk of offending my current partner and those who came before that my kayak has been the only ‘she’ to never sink me. Though unlike my current partner and those who came before my kayak is very high maintenance. She has been dragged over sand by overly helpful do-gooders causing most of the varnish to be scrubbed off in the process. She has been bounced on rocky landings, tossed on wavy landings and ravaged once by otters. Newly painted red she has been renamed ‘Big Red’, but there has been times when Patches would have been an obvious tag. She has had more work done on her bottom than most Hollywood celebs. Graphite, marine paint, loads of epoxy and strips of fibreglass, putty, and Gel Coat. In her early years a couple of pieces of Duct Tape were employed on a wilderness trip to cover a hole punched in her stern on one rough landing and a collision with another kayak.
She has kept me safe and relatively dry on both sides and rugged shores of Vancouver Island, my local Gulf Islands and even the 715kms of the Yukon River Quest paddling marathon under the midnight sun when I decided sitting for 72 hours in a kayak with little to no sleep was a perfectly grand idea. And then the dark times. Work got in the way. Time and tide never seemed to align with my increasing fatigue as an over the hill restaurant kitchen warrior. The hours are long, the work is physical and by the time my days off arrived I had little left in the tank to even lift the kayak on and off the car. I have a relationship as well where I live on one island and she on the other and my weekends require travel. Excuses? perhaps, but it is, was and is what it is. During the Covid years I managed to get out with friends for a single easy overnight camping trip to a nearby secret little island. That was three years ago!
I have seen a decline in my mental health over the last few years and especially in recent months. Travelling through the long winter months of endless rain, cloudy skies, chill, and my nemesis of the drizzle eat away at my reserves until by spring I feel depleted. What always got me back on track was getting outdoors. Since I was a kid growing up on an island with easy access to nature. Forests, beaches and witnessing those micro events in the small space of moss, or grass or trees kept me connected, safe and secure in who I am. There have been periods in my life where I drifted away from that connection, taking it for granted as ever-present unseen and ready when I was if I needed to sit by a stream and watch what it does.
One such time was in my thirties when I was immersed in work and was invited to go for a mountain hike by a high school friend who had become an avid climber and alpiniste. I hiked up that mountain with him, his soon to be fiance and another mutual friend. Two-thirds of the way up as we left the tree line below us I stopped on a bare rock with spots of of ancient lichen painted upon it and decided that was far enough for me. To the dismay of my companions I did not summit but instead chose to sit there, make a pot of noodles with my newly bought camp stove and take it all in. I had an epiphany of sorts up there that summer afternoon with the bees, the view of the Strait of Georgia, and a few vibrant alpine flowers. In a dizzying return to that of what I instinctively knew as a child I made a big turn in life. I hiked down and for days I could barely walk but I knew things were changing. I joined in on a few more such trips, made it to the top of a few mountains and then was introduced to kayaking on a rainy summer evening. Dragged from my pint at the pub and plopped into the seat of a rental kayak by a guiding friend of mine. She pushed me from the dock and I felt that sensation of floating. Before I took my first stroke of paddle blade to sea water I knew I had leveled up!
Years of evening paddles after work, grew into trips to the west coast of Vancouver Island paddling in huge swells that elbowed themselves against the cliffs and returned to bounce me around happily not being smart enough to be scared. I grew as a kayaker learning wilderness tricks the hard way with a group of guys that I stuck with for several trips to places where the morning after setting up camp we were still alone. No people, not DVD players blasting Lord of the Rings from the next campsite. No sounds at all except those that nature provides. You would not think so but the sound of a raven cawing at dawn is not as serine as you may believe. It can be damned irritating, much like the seagulls and very much unlike the thundering hush of waves meeting the beach.
I won’t distribute blame for why I drifted a second time in my life away from the thing that makes me, me. Lets just say the majority of it is in a mud puddle at my own feet. There was a decade of sporadic paddling trips locally in the world-class Gulf Islands Marine Park, but even those dwindled until I began training for the Yukon. I found the time and energy after work to train, though that job started early in the day and I was off work in mid-afternoon. Kitchen work starts when it is scheduled to start, and if you work closing as I do there is no such thing as a fixed clock-out time. After the Yukon my paddling time dropped to nothing. With it, intrusive thoughts began to grow. I was not happy, and by saying happy I am trying to find a relatable word to describe the floating sense that something was terribly wrong. Then there was the pandemic. We, an entire planet of people are suffering and showing definite signs of un-diagnosed unrecognized PTSD. In the days of early pre-vaccine turmoil when we were told one thing one day and something else the next the one constant at least where I live was they closed the parks. I couldn’t even go for a walk in the woods. To this day I believe that was one of the worst decisions the authorities made. Studies show the mental health benefits of walking, being outside in nature especially.
Those years, when just weeks before the lock-downs I opened a YouTube channel with the mission statement of inspiring people no matter what your size, shape, age, ability to go outside even if it is just to walk to the local coffee shop. Somehow deep inside I knew that starting that video channel would pull me back to where I needed to be, then shut the whole thing down, until recently. Taking the advice of my own channel I inspired myself to go outside, reconnect and to beat an impending case of the February blues took my camera and filmed myself taking hikes. One per week for the entire month. It gave me something back. Not only did I feel fresher after each hike, the shoots gave me structure and a purpose to go out even in a rain storm to hike. The freshness was short lived and like any addict will know getting that next fix is key and the real challenge.
I began with the idea of finding the time, and energy whether it was in me or not to go do one trip, or an outdoor event per month. I understand the challenge of that idea as I am well aware of how fatigued I will be in the mid-summer rush when the restaurant is at its busiest. I don’t make New Years resolutions but I do resolve to do this one small thing of once a month outings. A day hike, or paddle. A one or two night camping trip with the kayak. It is doable, if I make it so.
I began thinking about how to start off the season. The weather has been unseasonably horrible with snow flurries and below zero temperatures. I knew however, I had to keep the momentum going after a month of trekking the island’s hills and shoreline. I decided an overnight trip to Wallace Island would do and I could prepare for a cold night out. The paddle time across to the camp spot is short so as not to over do it but enough time in the boat to knock off the rust on my muscles and skill set. I scanned the forecasts with religious fervour, and then I began looking at tide tables. Why not I said to myself. Why start small and sensible when you can start big and ridiculous?
I typed in a few dates into the tide prediction website for any Friday or Saturday in the near future and finding one such weekend when the tides lined up with the time I needed to paddle through Sansum Narrows which is the gap between Salt Spring Island and its larger neighbour of Vancouver Island. It would require getting on the water before dawn to catch the tide as it changed to an ebb in the right direction for getting myself and Big Red though the gap of whirlpools and small but at times formidable tidal rapids. I needed to time my travels in such a way as to ride that tide and hope to make it to a point when it changed direction once more to give me a ride all the way home in my attempt to circumnavigate all of Salt Spring in one day.
I found my day and as luck would have it the winds died, the sun came out and as a reward for my efforts to get back out there I had the first real warm spring day ahead of me. At 6am on a Saturday morning I loaded my kayak by headlamp light.
Speaking into my GoPro with the sun rising behind me I babbled on without any coffee in me that morning as the first paddle strokes began what would be a long day out there. I made good time, better than I had anticipated after years away for kayaking. It is like riding a bike, but I was unsure of my endurance levels. To resolve that, and because I like back-up plans I brought along a tent, sleeping bag, food, and extra water. Oh, wait! five hours into the paddle I realized my back-up water supply was still on my kitchen counter. I am out of practice and my lack of caffeine fogging the brain in the early hours of the day were to blame. I was now committed to the full day no matter what. I was less concerned with the over night temperatures being a little chilly as I was the prospect of having only a bag of chocolate covered raisins, a few snack bars and no water to make my camping meals. If I had to bivouac someplace it would suck. I would not perish but the thought of sitting on a log somewhere nibbling on raisins had a depressing appeal.
I floated through the narrows with ease getting up to double-digit speeds and after a short break on a pocket beach I began the long process of paddling around the round fat bottom of the island. Dodging ferries and racing pleasure craft with the impressive towering snow-capped Mt. Baker in the distance. I saw the next leg back up northwards and was more than half way there when I underestimated just how fast the last hour or so of the ebb would be as I ferried across the Prevost Island to shorten the paddling distances. I went from a nice pace of about 8 kms per hour to a staggering and demoralizing 2 kms per hour. A twenty minute crossing took more than twice the time and I stopped, grumpy and weary on a small space of barnacle encrusted oyster shells to think about my life and wait out a bit of the tidal period.
Back out there I started to make progress as the tide slackened and shifted to one that was in my advantage, but by this time I was running out of day light and energy. It was to be a near 70 km paddle and fighting the current took some wind out of me. I knew how far and how long it would take to get to my put-in, I just had to keep paddling. Soon I made the crossing, the last of five point to point traverses of the day to the shores of Salt Spring and the last leg of the journey. I was tired to say the least. The sun was racing me home and I knew at a certain point I would have to pull the headlamp out of my cockpit bag and resolve to packing up in the dark. The last of two landmarks, Walker’s Hook came into view. What I had thought was another kayaker far ahead on approach turned out to be a rock with a marker post. Wallace Island which is in full view at my launch spot was just a thin sliver rising up out of the water but by the hook had formed into an island with clear familiar features. I was in sight now of the last marker before the car, Fernwood dock. It took three-quarters of an hour to get there but I did and took a video clip as I passed between the pylons as two Canadian Geese did a fly-by against the golden light of a sun that had moved on.
I could not have asked for better conditions for an ambitious day on the water. Go big or go home turned out to be the right decision after all. It stands out in my mind as one of the finest days of paddling I have had, and I have been ever so fortunate to have had many days of paddling. As for my mental health I can say this. The aches and pains distracted me from any demoralizing intrusive thinking that first night as I struggled with discomfort from places I have not had them before. Is this getting older? Is this it? I did give in to the end of days thinking. The end of my days that is. I will turn 59 in a month. I did the math. There are only so many more years I can go out and do ambitious things. My elbows hurt. I have never had sore elbows. While fully realizing that I never thought I would get this old I say in bed pondering the fact that it is all down hill from here, or uphill with sore knees. I had better get inspired to start packing in the nature while I can. That is the lesson of the day. We are all locked in still. Attached to our phones and disconnected to extremes. Covid days gave us permission to go even deeper but now, more than ever it is time to look deeper and well passed the doom scrolling. To connect with the earth while we have the time to do so.
I went to work on Monday afternoon in a giddy mood. My co-workers noticed. Dave is not giddy, he must be high. No one asked but I think they thought that I was on something. I was. I had returned to my former self during the dawn to dusk kayaking day of days.
The Cop Next Door
Posted by paddlinboy in island life on January 14, 2024
The old sergeant had us dead to rights as we emerged elated at our self-rescue at the crest of the shoreline cliffs below his house. To me he was old, very old indeed. He was to a 12-year-old’s mind what a faded and musty old book would look like as a person. Once a tall man with a long face, graying around the edges but still holding onto a fierce hard cover authority in his demeanor. I believed that he was most likely put out of sorts with the new sorts moving in around him. It happens when you gain age and have a solid lock on once was. Young families who would allow children to run boundless. The types who embraced a new hobby farming lifestyle with chickens running loose next door in the yard. Goats nibbling and dogs that sneak through the fence and into his beloved garden. To say that old man Shank was a curmudgeon might be entirely unfair. The Ebenezer Scrooge of our country street he was not. He and his wife led a quiet life and I can remember only a handful of encounters with her their gated driveway. Although, his house was avoided at Halloween not because he was terrifying, but because his spooky driveway was. Beyond the gate it swerved into the swallowing darkness of thick forest. He was a product of another time and he kept a friendly distance from the rest of us wild animals who invaded his small island from everywhere else.
After school I would trek home with books under my arm up the hill at the end of the harbour and stroll the twenty minutes to my house. This would have been the usual trip home but it was my birthday, my eleventh, and the first present of the day was that the tide had gone out. The run home was half the time, and twice the fun if the beach route was open. I was having friends over for the occasion and we doddled as we rounded the bend in front of the dark dank rotting boathouse which is at present the site of a local pub, and slid sideways skiing down the rusty but slick iron rails that angled down and into the sea.
The smell of the harbour was an intense mixture of stagnant stuff washed up and dead, sea weeds and fish parts left from gulls and eagles, opened shellfish and once even a baby harbour seal washed up with a nasty gash down one side most likely inflicted by a boat propeller. We hiked along side this seaside goop layer tossing rocks at the water and at each other as that is what ten and newly achieved eleven year old boys will do. In our staggeringly slow progress we had not seen the water was rising. It was no matter as soon we would reach my house and cake and fun and games and nonsense would ensue. However nature caught up to us and we cut short the hike just feet from the trail head on my homestead’s side of the line. There was no going forward, just up.
The line we could not cross without detection was directly in front of his living room window and imagine his surprise at watching four young lads panting and giggling from the epic climb to the safety of the edge of his garden. Moments later the laughter was silenced. We stood, sheepishly at the rust red-painted fence rail separating his side from our family’s property with old man Shank standing behind us like some sort of horrid, aged once gun-toting totem pole of our doom. We were innocent, we were just young at heart with no concept of the importance of property lines, or tide tables, or common sense.
Our trespassing was not at issue. Our scaling the cliffs into the neighbours back yard was not the crime we were now standing in the docket facing prosecution from both sides of the fence. It was all we four of us represented something to him. A new generation that would shape his pristine bucolic island into something that allowed kids and dogs to run rampant in his beloved sea view garden. He let out a whistle towards our kitchen where he spotted my mother passing the window, not calling to her by name but with a shrill tone which only added to our anxiety. He was summoning her, it was not a request but instead an order. This was real! Some long moments passed and we hoped against all hope that she would not emerge to face the oncoming storm. Then, to our heart pounding sadness she came out the kitchen door, red-faced as she understood the situation at hand. We were on the wrong side of the fence.
“Are these yours?” he asked gruff with that wheeze that old men get in their breathing by achieving a certain age after a certain amount of cigarettes are smoked. To this I believe my mother, according to the expression on her face was tempted to plead ignorance of my and my cohorts very existence. “What did they do?”
What we did was fairly straight forward and perfectly reasonable. Walking home from school on a narrowing strip of beach made from crushed clam and oyster shells. It should be noted that we were walking home on a garbage dump of sorts. The shells crushed, broken and tumbled over the ages were once packaging for the living creatures that the local native population thrived upon as sustenance. The middens of shells are scattered throughout the Gulf Islands. One man’s pop can is another man’s empty clam shell. Personally, I think the left over containers of the natural world are far preferable to the man-made floating debris islands our packaging creates in our time. The natives made beach materials, we make a mess that will never break down entirely and serve as little purpose after being discarded as before. I digress, but maybe that is what results in whiling away many days laying on a mossy rock staring at the clouds and admiring the miniature world within the moss under my head.
Where was I? Right, the crimes at hand. When walking on that narrowing strip of beach it did not occur to any of us why it was shrinking. At points it was becoming a matter of scrambling over rocks protruding rudely from the shore instead of wandering around them. The water had engulfed these slots as we goofed around and aimed our mischievous sights on a partly sunken boat just off the land near the base of the steep trail to my house. The small wooden boat that was once home to a notoriously horrible man about town who owned a pair of mean dogs who would later run afoul of my father and our family. Had I known what was to come in the next year I would have launched much bigger rocks at his abandoned craft. We four tossed stones at the wooden hull and pilot’s cabin that still remained above the water’s surface. It began as a game of skipping stones but when one pebble ricocheted off the bow, all bets were off and a volley of rocks targeted any part of the boat. Big points to hit the cabin, bigger points still to nick or break the then intact panes of thin glass or the cabin’s windows.
I don’t know who threw the winner that put a hole in the greasy glass knocking a layer of grime and film left in the inside of the window by that nasty soul. A rush of eager and urgent rock tossing followed in hopes of not only finishing off the glass entirely, but the other two dusty and intact panes as well. Smash, ping, clunk, yes! Number two was split in half and the remaining section of glass formed a triangle with one curved edge. The water rose up the hull and spilled into the cabin. Water was around our feet and the distance to the trail head now cut off by the deep. The only way out was up, and the only way up was a rounded segment of rock forming a cliff to some ledges and brush that could be used as hand and foot holds to gain the rest of the altitude needed. The tricky part was that we would be on the wrong side of the fence line with too much horizontal distance to accomplish. We began the accent and the rest as you know, history.
Old man Shank had no cares about us wandering into his gardens. He was once, so very long ago a boy as well and knew the folly of that state of being. What he could not abide, and I have to admit as a ‘grown up‘ that what we did was beyond just childlike abandon. We were jerks and vandals and it was all so much great fun! To him that was our crime and we were to be firmly punished that is if he could convince my mother who was not amused by the end of the tale and our “ya, but…” interruptions claiming innocence and begging leniency. After all it was my birthday, and we were not late getting home, and my shoes and socks were not wet, and…It was of no use. He released us into her custody pending hearing. We clambered quickly over the railings and into the kitchen without a single look over our shoulders to that old retired Mountie. We were in the right, we were defiant, and we were secretly losing our cool while watching the adults discuss what would become of us for five whole minutes at the fence.
She returned to the kitchen and told us that since it was my birthday the punishing would not happen until the next day. How to put the watering hose to a perfectly good birthday party. The phone would be involved. That damned wall-mounted rotary dial phone that was the cause of so much pain and anguish all through the years of my kidhood. From doctors appointments to dentist appointments to being invited to work for nothing all weekend for a family friend hauling wet firewood up some god-awful muddy slope to a wheel barrow that had a wobbling wheel and only one handle. I hated that phone and after my birthday dinner was served, and presents and cakes finished, she was on the phone to parents. The cabal of evil. On Salt Spring Island in those days it was virtually impossible to get away with anything and get home safe. Before the internet there was something faster than the fastest wireless signal of modern times. It was the Salt Spring wireless system of parents, the dirty rats who passed the time by passing on surveillance information about other parent’s kid’s activities, good and bad via rotary phones. I was grounded even before opening the front door on several occasions because of some rumour I took part in some foul deeds with my bady friends. As for old man Shank, I rarely ever saw him after that day. He was elderly and more so every waking day. His garden prospered as his chrysanthemums won prizes at the Fall Fair every year most likely due to the dog poop.
Winter’s Chill
Posted by paddlinboy in Uncategorized on December 27, 2023
By David Barnes
A green Christmas was inevitable on the west coast of British Columbia so aptly nicknamed the ‘wet coast’, and Salt Spring Island was not to escape the rain-filled season the season of mud, oh how I hate the mud starting in October until the sky faucet was slowly turned off by April. December could be the angry child of the year with tantrums of blustering warm winds, higher than high tides and rain that made each of us regret any suggestions back in July that a summer rain would be a welcome relief. There was water everywhere. Roads would close, basements would fill and the mud would spread across our kitchen floors no match for any mop head. The clouds that formed in late October would begin to cry chilly tears ruining costume after costume on Halloween nights. I once wrapped myself from head to toe in toilet paper to be a mummy. By the time I hiked into town for the fireworks and festivities of the night I was merely a paper mache mess of bedraggled and soggy tissue.
November would follow with a wind begotten from some nasty uninhabitable pocket of the North Pole spinning the rain in a sideways direction that was always without fail was in my face like campfire smoke. December, that joyful month of anticipatory glee was marked by weather events could be foul two-fold. The sideways rains and winds howled sending the harbour into a tizzy of grey/green white-capped waves un-mooring boats and flooding the basement of the hardware store built on stilts over the water near the old ferry wharf. The air was always milder in December with any visit of the Pineapple express, a smooth bath of warmer air from the south Pacific and the first marks made on a new Christmas bicycle was always the caking of mud from puddles at the bottom of our hilly unpaved driveway. The other sign of the coming Christmas was the appearance on December 1st of the elf. He, said my mother would sit atop our chimney and take notes daily, reporting weekly to the North Pole as to whether I was being well-behaved, or not! His arrival put a damper on things and at least the Elf on the shelf has the guts to show his face.
It was January when the landscape changed overnight virtually on the same night each year. New Years Eve we rang the old brass cow bells when the long adventure of waiting up til midnight was afoot. The night air was different from what it had been a week before during the warm Christmas cheer and food and red table clothes and toys and the smell of room temperature red wine in glasses. On New Years Eve we stood, cold-footed on moss-covered rocks under spooky trees in pajamas clattering our bells and whooping into the darkness while down the road a trumpet blared and the following morning, the beginning of the year was greeted by distance wincing of bagpipes at dawn. The neighbours were a musical bunch. The island renewed ready for the events of the coming months and within the next seven days it would snow. It always snowed! Not in small amounts
It was January when the landscape changed overnight virtually on the same night each year. New Years Eve we rang the old brass cow bells when the long adventure of waiting up til midnight was afoot. The night air was different from what it had been a week before during the warm Christmas cheer and food and red table clothes and toys and the smell of room temperature red wine in glasses. On New Years Eve we stood, cold-footed on moss-covered rocks under spooky trees in pajamas clattering our bells and whooping into the darkness while down the road a trumpet blared and the following morning, the beginning of the year was greeted by distance wincing of bagpipes at dawn. The neighbours were a musical bunch. The island renewed ready for the events of the coming months and within the next seven days it would snow. It always snowed! Not in small amounts
It was January when the landscape changed overnight virtually on the same night each year. New Years Eve we rang the old brass cow bells when the long adventure of waiting up til midnight was afoot. The night air was different from what it had been a week before during the warm Christmas cheer and food and red table clothes and toys and the smell of room temperature red wine in glasses. On New Years Eve we stood, cold-footed on moss-covered rocks under spooky trees in pajamas clattering our bells and whooping into the darkness while down the road a trumpet blared and the following morning, the beginning of the year was greeted by distance wincing of bagpipes at dawn. The neighbours were a musical bunch. The island renewed ready for the events of the coming months and within the next seven days it would snow. It always snowed! Not in small amounts. There was no non-committal snowflakes falling without care in dithering directions, but with gusto and panache that sent all of us reeling to bed hoping the busses would not run and the snow day declared.
The island version of a snow day was unlike any other. Any accumulation over an inch would shut the island roads down. I would often attempt the trek to school if only for the supreme satisfaction of being sent home again as there were not enough students or teachers available with the busses off the road to make an official school day possible. On those excellent mornings, in the dark I would prepare a lunch as I had almost every morning while watching a cartoon or two. With the light of day barely flickering I set out, skidding down our steep drive to the narrow country road. It was a choice of walking uphill to the school bus stop or downhill to the school, which to my bad luck, or perhaps fortunate luck was the same bloody distance. I chose to go downwards. Tides would determine my course some mornings as we settled for a small acreage that included water frontage on the harbour. The elementary school within eyesight on the opposite shore I would undertake the treacherous decent down the forest path of slippery fallen leaves buried under snow to the beach. There is an unearthly strangeness to a beach covered in snow to the tide line. The white seems to be out-of-place and encroaching on the sea in defiance of all that is normal. Waves lap at the snow bank forcing it backwards to the rocks and forest. More snow falls at low tide and the battle wages once more with the moon as allied friend.
I walked to town on my road on this particularly soft snowy morning. The heavy falling flakes that I watched from my attic bedroom window were large, and wet. The temperatures rising just enough to ruin their downward dance. By the time I had reached the midway part of my country trail the tree bows were pressed to the ground creating caverns to crawl under with stealth to avoid releasing it all down the back of your neck. The colours of the early morning had muted to a dullness of blue that made everything around me appear monotone and unsaturated. I walked on with only the gentle crushing of piled snowflakes under my boots to break the din of silence, my pace in keeping even tempo to the sleeping world.
My foot falls were the first human marks in the newly fallen snow other than a few advanced troops of early morning wandering deer and funny birds leaving spread finger marks. Alder leaves fell decorating the snow at the edges of fences. Was this on purpose I wondered? Was this an act of defiance in some sad attempt to recover the earth with leaves as it happened all through autumn? The one cottage between my house and the main road to town had a light. A bare bulb pointing outwards like an accusing finger from the top of the front door. It shone on the pathway to the front gate jarring me from my revelry. I wished it would go out. To leave me in the twilight of morning and the glow of new snow. The sun rose over the horizon filling the harbour with orange, yellow and red. A fire of snow and the day begins.
Without a doubt it was an official snow day but I stayed at school for a time enjoying the way a school feels when half empty of staff and kids. Most of the overhead lights were out. Classrooms darkened looking like abandoned cities bereft of population, noise and attention. The playing fields dotted with puffy-garment kids running, rolling snow and leaving tracks of green in doing so to make forts and great snowball fights. I would go back home the way I came because the tide was high, but by now the scene was awful. Snow ploughs had destroyed nature. Scared the land with the needs of grown ups to get cars on the road for some unknown reasons.
The hill back to the seclusion of my home road was a mixture of slush and the dirty snow rolled up in icy curls by the plough blades. I escaped back to the land of snow as our road was not a vital conduit and meant it would rarely see a snow plough. Cars had marred the snowy road surface with wiggling tracks and visible tread marks. One would be found abandoned and shamed with one or two wheels in the ditch. The trees, some losing their loads with the warmer air, while others held tight content to sleep under heavy blankets until such time as to wake once more. Thump Thump Thump, all around me as the branches stretched and tossed the weight away. Seed pods and twigs littered the ground and small funny birds would feast, the magic of morning had faded to the reality of a snowy day on the island.
Our driveway, steep and creepy at night if you were so unfortunate to be walking where the twigs and branches would reach out, even to the middle where you should feel safe to spook you into a terrified heebie-jeebie inspired run to the house would become an Olympic downhill raceway in winter. Even six inches of snow would seem like a foot as you rode head first down the serpentine beginning at the tire swing strung from a small Arbutus tree adjacent to the house, and down to the bottom lands of the apple orchard, the rutty path to the pump house shack and the slowly sinking rusted and broken Volkswagen station wagon once blue turned a shade of algae blue/green. On one snowy afternoon when I had so packed down the snow by toboggan trips that it would not melt until long after the surrounding snow was long gone, and to the utter frustration of my father I decided to ride my go-cart down the icy luge track. This ended in a roll-over after a non-stop heart pounding thrill ride to hell that elapsed over the span of a minute proving that smooth plastic tires and a stick for a wheel break were no match for solid ice, but it had to be tried nonetheless!
Nights during the time of snow were a magical realm. After dinner I would happily retire to my attic bedroom aloft with views of the back yard and down the hill to the orchard and the roadway. If there was a god overlooking my childhood he or she would grant my wish, the explosion the hydro transformer on top of the phone pole due to a fallen branch and light up the night, thus plunging the neighbourhood and our home into darkness. One can hope. A cool darkness unlike any other kind that was rescued only with candle light. The fire on the pole would eventually go out and the hush of night would roll in around our house. Strange that even in the darkest of night without a moon to assist there is ample light to see your landscape by? Who plans that anyway? I would gaze out towards the open-walled shelter housing our cow, Honey, who seemed oblivious to the time of year and munching on straw. House cats left small footpaths in and around the shelter leading to the front door of the house. The Japanese plum-tree, a pink ball of soft petals in springtime was a white cotton ball wearing a white woolen hat in winter. I would settle into bed now, watching the fat flakes begin to fall and it was cold in the house.
Our wood stove, a hippie killer as they were called back in those days was given this dubious title due to the tremendously flimsy thin-walled construction that would glow an alarming orange at its sides if the wood burned too hot. Although it did work the poor thing pumped out heat but without much enthusiasm, and though heat was due to rise by its nature, somehow my room remained exempt. I snuggled in for the duration of night with as many blankets as I could gather. The funky atmosphere of my bedroom’s colourful stripped wallpaper and multi-coloured and textured floor covered in the most inexpensive floor coverings found, carpet samples. It was an odd room, with odd walls and angular roof lines. By my bedside a clock radio quietly playing (if the power was not out) Rocketman by Elton John to the glow of the red LED digits and this particular tune remains a comfortable old friend and reminder of nights such as those. A funny wooden lamp with a ship’s wheel that actually spun rested next to my radio. The lamp shade cast a burlap-clad warmth. On the opposite side of my bed, two panned windows that opened upwards and held closed with swivel latches that moved sluggishly under the weight of too many coats of paint. Beyond the windows’ pane the winter of my childhood.
I would drift in and out of waking dreams under that melding of soft rock and the hush of the space heater’s weak fan. Vivid so these dreams were that one would inexorably wake me to full awareness of the electric appliance and its dangerously warm plug. Short of setting the attic on fire I reluctantly switched my heater off and dropped back into my covers with it still close at hand for any warm-ups during the long night ahead. House fires be damned, I would be warm!
A Merry Christmas to All of You
Posted by paddlinboy in island life on December 22, 2023
By David Barnes
A merry Christmas to you all.
To all who feel joy, and to all of you who feel an indescribable hole in your being that you can’t quite put a finger on, but you know something is wrong.
To anyone who has loved and lost in the past twelve months. To those who have renewed with new found affection for the world, though it is some days falling into that indescribable hole.
To those who work on Christmas morning because you do not have family so with unsaid resignation shrug it off as just another day, ignoring the loss of the hours you could spend doing anything else, even on Christmas morning.
A Merry Christmas to those who have had to say good-bye to a pet this year and during the holidays miss them more.
To anyone who missed out on an opportunity. To anyone who was handed more than they could handle but mustered through to shine, if only to the admiration of your own self for doing so.
To those out there wandering wild of mind and body as you swirl un-sheltered and lost in the abyss of addiction or illness.
To those who serve, whether it is your drink, your protection, or your ultimate unaware well-being. To be blissfully unaware of that well-being means those who have served are doing it well, quietly so in the background.
A Merry Christmas to children fore this season is a mind-blowing extravaganza of over-whelming stuff. And a special Merry Christmas to the parents who take a breath, or a stiff drink and let them run it out until well after their bedtime and your patience has become thin.
To those who have chosen a new self. Pronouns be damned! Good for you and Merry Freakin’ Christmas because to do so in a world somewhat hostile to change and in one that makes it all more complicated than it need be takes commitment to your true self.
To those who don’t believe what others believe, but accept and embrace and love none the less because it is not the right thing to do, but a human thing to do.
To everyone suffering because others don’t understand. A Merry Christmas to you as well.
To those being bombed, to those in fear of the next explosion and either way, your future is in peril. Be well, be safe and keep you head down. A Merry Christmas to the powers that be who decide who lives and who dies, who is bombed and who is not and for reasons unknown to all. To you I say listen, those are your children too who pay. The future is a blank page so use that ink well.
A Merry Christmas to cats, to dogs, to goldfish, and hamsters. To the family milk cow waiting for you in the morning, to the sheep waiting by the barn for the feed at the early dusk of winter. To the lone horse on a sloping field wearing its heavy blanket now sprinkled with Christmas morning snow flakes.
To those far away from home and a home cooked meal. To the taxi drivers who get us home. To the dishwasher who is the last one out of the restaurant kitchen on a cold winter night wearing an apron, his only protection from that frosted air from the open back door causing a misted breath to rise from the freshly mopped floor.
A Merry Christmas all living out the remains of a life with others of similar age in homes away from the old home you knew for so long. May the day bring laughter, a hug or two and a grand meal.
To those who remember the magic over the money this time of year. To those whose feet get cold for standing too long gazing at the Christmas lights. A Merry and a Happy and a hot chocolate for you…peppermint sprinkles!
A Merry Christmas to all of you.
Brighter Stars
Posted by paddlinboy in island life on December 20, 2023
A Christmas Story
By David Barnes
The last breath of the summer air of August blows us all into the next chapter of September. From waking up on that morning decades ago feeling fresh and limber in a body with a future compared to the creaking hinges that are my joints on this morning in my late 50’s, to this day, I am aware each autumn of a drastic overnight transformation. How does the world know it is time to change? Why is the light, the air, the shadows and even the morning dew different on that first September morning than it was on the last morning of August? The answers to all of this evade me but the changes are true and subtly spectacular.
A grey rain cloud meets edges into the unbroken blue skies and a spotlight sun, and the leaves on the verge of change by their inevitable unbreakable cycles of natural are oddly illuminated and feel abstract against the clouds above. The air is not yet crisp with an exhausted resignation to what is coming in late October or November, or the monsoon rainfalls of a typical west coast December, but hinting with the essence of leaf mold and moister winds off the ocean.
Fall on the west coast can be tricky to predict. September’s little alterations in style from her summer cousins may give way suddenly to tantrums of rain, fog, and thunder. Although I am born in April to an equally erratic month of weird weather I feel September has always been mine. I am at home in her ways. I enjoy hikes in the first of the fallen leaves from trees willing to give them up early to rush into that good sleep. September is the month that is about the last birth of something before it has to sleep from the exertion of that birth. What follows is the sullen days of mid- October. The shoulders shrug of a month that leads one to the melancholy through the spark of Halloween’s fireworks and mischief to the reflection of a chilly Remembrance Day. There may be a ghostly sense of guilt with it for the outrageous free-spirited antics on the 31st in the shadows of the coming holy day held in honour of the fallen. It is the first stage to a winter’s table set. The warmth, the comfort and the fine china, brass candle holders, and pewter serving dishes of the Christmas Day’s table.
What September does not know in its distance of time is the magical qualities in which we dress the holiday season. It had no knowledge that when fall once comes around that in a few short weeks as the sun visits for less and less time, and gives way so the night gets a chance to stretch its legs. Winter is the night when all of the natural world sleeps but in the middle there is a little magic. Christmas is coming and the joy of being a kid in simpler times before the confusion and abstract noise that gadget, and the outside influences of an internet bring. In these times when our brains are taught to envision life in more performative ways and changing things forever more by hacking chunks off our collective ability to enjoy imagined things. Can I get a selfie of that?
What September with all its wonderfulness is not aware is the sneaky thrill of padding downstairs from my attic bedroom careful not to set off the alarm klaxon sound of each creaking wood slat and stair that could bring the sleeping parents to life. To make it to the living room, to the resting place of Holy Grail of the Christmas tree and where the faint white fairy lights entwined with garlands of freshly trimmed green cedar bows and artificial pine branches. Plastic branches that could not bend into a serpentine spiral in nature but given a few soft lights casting pine needle shadows on the wall and mantle, anything is now possible to the young mind.
The tree in the corner by the large window is decorated with old and new. Family favourite ornaments that may or may not be intact are hung nonetheless among the prickly branches and brought to life with lights. Outside the glass reflecting the lights of the season is a landscape jumble of Fir, Cedar and the ungainly Arbutus trees with fern and wild salal growing at their feet. It being the Pacific coast it is raining, but there maybe unlikely hints of snow on the sleeping rock garden below the back deck made slick by whatever came from the sky.
There is quiet now. December has landed and September is forgotten. The beginnings of the coldest month just ahead holding back the snow wished for at Christmas and hopefully to delay the first week of school after the holidays. But the weeks leading up to the big day are where my thoughts take me right now.
The air around the month of September does change. It is a pinch of this, and a dash of that in the brew of making winters. December also has a feel to the air. It hits you like a ton of bricks some years causing eyes to water slightly and nostrils to burn from the aching cold that will not bring snow but only frozen rain and north winds. It can be a month of the Pineapple Express as we locals like to call the unseasonably warmer temperatures and at times violent storms that blow in the Christmas season causing store front lights and decorations spinning and tilting. Waves lapping loudly under the old wharf where once a ferry docked and now the Lion’s Club sponsored Santa Ship arrives in early December introduced by fireworks and the big man himself, and crewed by pirates and scary clowns disembarking from a festive vessel creaking hard against the dock. Bag pipers playing bag-piped murdered versions of carols to entertain waiting children and parents and grandparents clutching hard fast to paper cups of hot chocolate that could very well been fortified by a drop or two of something stronger by a granddad who understands the joy of the night.
It is the week in between the ending of the school days for Christmas break and the landing of Saint Nick’s pirate ship. It is the annual carol hay ride. Not as in the romantic Dickensesque days of horse drawn carts, but instead a long flatbed trailer used to transport heavy machinery now covered in loose hay and butt-numbing hard bails, the scent of which still resides in my sense memory. The hay ship where we huddled was drawn by a rumbling tractor with a local farmer at the helm, or a volunteer from some charity club or another. On the years of heavy rains and winds from the South I am not sure it even went off, but on the real December nights, those carved out with the moist chill under clear skies that confused your exposed skin into not knowing what to make of the sensation, the hayride happened.
It would be arranged to meet at a certain time and at a certain predetermined location. A few of us kids up for the challenge of singing to the empty village and later to the warmer welcome of the inhabitants of the old folks homes, and the hospital long term care patients, and all the houses in between as the tractor towed us onward.
On one such night it was cold, a real authentic dry cold that is so foreign to my part of the world. It was clear out and only a soft mist gathered in lower pockets of fields and forest. The first hour went by, and we filled the evening air with songs of joy and holiness intermingled with tunes more commercial in truth to create Christmas to those without faith. We sang of Drummer Boys and of Reindeer, we sang of hope and of loneliness too. Harking of angels and living snowmen all came to call and the touch of hands to elderly frail fingers as we selfishly used the seniors center to warm ourselves while simultaneously warming hearts of those who had seen so many Christmases.
We walked out into the cold night once more to clamber aboard the deck of our manger ship on route to our next destination clearing our throats with coughing and grunting to attempt to release breath unwilling to sing at the shock of being returned outside. I looked up as there were few street lamps to pollute the view to the night sky. The hay bail below my bum cold and hard at first then warming to meet my body temperature and the deck of our carol ship jerked ahead as the tractor laboured to get that small bit of friction needed to haul the weight. In that instant, I felt the touch of a mitten-covered hand fumbling to grasp at my own mitten-covered hand. It was the girl of my pre-adolescent dreams sitting next to me this time on the hay wagon and I felt her warmth brush me. It was all I wanted all I needed and all anyone could ask for on a night such as that one. In those last hours of my kidhood before the confusion of hormones and the chaos of losing childish things to the dark took inevitable hold and knowledge of inevitability was yet unknown to me. In that time so fleeting dwelling in pure innocence using clumsy fuzzy knitted flippers we struggled to hold hands. We sang, and smiled the rest of the night and gazed between songs to the stars above unaltered by the veils of what covers them on hot summer nights that were clearer and brighter.
James and Martha, a Tragic Romance of Chickens
Posted by paddlinboy in island life on December 14, 2023
By David Barnes
They, the chickens that is roamed freely in our yard for a year before my family, newly transplanted former suburban dwellers turned laid back rural hobby farmers began acquiring farm animals such as Honey the Jersey cow with those long lashes over large loving black holes of eyes. My dad thought at first it would be a great idea to own a cow and have fresh milk and dairy products available right there in our own back yard, until the reality of 4am milking set in. Or the goat, my childhood nemesis who rammed me at any opportunity, there were the chickens. The first and easiest to care for entry level farm resident. After months of letting them run about the property and roost in the tree branches it became clear that we were missing out on a large number of eggs that were laid hither and yon left to rot in the bushes.
To become serious chicken keepers a proper structure was built. The large plywood coop tucked away deep down in the hollow, a dark grotto behind the large pink-blossomed Japanese plum tree allowed our flock to grow. My baby sister endured many tortures inflicted by me when tending to the chicken palace in its spooky locale. From high up in my attic bedroom window I could see nearly over the top of that plum tree and the adjacent mount of rock with the fallen but still growing Arbutus tree, its branches hugging a section of the boulder that was another key feature of our backyard. I could see clear to the road in autumn when the leaves fell, and I always had a clean shot from my window. The key is to learn how to put a significant top-spin on the pine cone as it leaves the hand. Wet green new cones were the preferred ammo as well.
Before the days of lobbing cones at my sister forced to wear a heavy winter hooded coat in summer as armour when tending the chicken bunker in the woods we had a few raggedy chickens and a few ducks that I forgot to mention wandering the garden. We kept bantam hens. Small feisty creatures that gave colourful eggs and though rather small, were delicious. The eggs, not the hens. There was one rooster, James who quickly took a particular liking to one black bantam hen named Martha. It seemed a rightful match, if in name only and they strolled the gardens together daily. He was protective of her and for the most part ignored the rest of the flock. They were often found snuggled together under the tree or back porch. Martha, her iridescent feathers gleaming in the noonday sun was James’s main squeeze. If a threat appeared he would begin wild flapping and hustle the hens to whatever safety he felt appropriate keeping a close eye indeed on his girl friend.
I have seen roosters defend the flock before and as recently as last summer when my modern day brood of two roosters sharing a coop with a few oddly matched assortment of hens had an unwanted visitor. I watched as one rooster tucked tail and ran inside the coop hiding while the other rooster, Arthur held his ground against and invading raccoon. He gave his life so others would live and I watched the horror of him being dragged though the chicken mess, his neck and head dangling limply. On a side note the other rooster, Ginger who ran chicken and hid from the raccoon was found face, or should I say beak down in the food trough within the week. Perhaps the hens took some vengeful route. No one took responsibility. Perhaps they had enough of men and their folly.
Back in the 70’s we enjoyed our free-range uncooped chicken friends for about a year as they relaxed in unrestrained chicken splendor. Looking back on all of that now it seemed that they represented my family at that time. Wandering loose in the outback, untethered and without a clue, yet somehow making the best of things until one horrible day. I have fond memories of conversations with chickens scratching the porcelain of our claw-foot bathtub because my sister insisted on giving them regular baths, and more than one with young James the rooster. They were entertaining and to this day I care about them and at the Fall Fair each September make and effort to go to the tent where the roosters and other fowl are presented, washed and preened in hopes of blue ribbon prizes just to make chicken impressions at them. What on earth is he saying they ponder. I am certain that my pronunciation of particular chicken hot takes and topics is a little off. None the less, I like them!
It was on a Sunday afternoon in summer and I had just reassembled the badminton net on the small grassy patch near the plum tree, and it was not uncommon to see birds of prey lofting over our two-story character house as they rode upon the rising thermal drafts. They were hunting mice, smaller birds and many a day I watched in awe of eagles diving into the harbour and drawing out of the water great big fish. On this day, it was our yard that posed the most interest and from one predator in particular. A hawk, sleek and beautiful made several passes over our yard. The dangerous shadow it cast alerted James into action and he scurried in a panic to gather his brood into a cluster of clacking hens and pushed them to the shadows at the base of the house out of sight. Martha scampered away from the group and was in the open, chirping and cooing and it was at that moment the hawk dove so fast it nearly was beyond the visions ability to follow. Passing inches over the terrified hen causing her to instinctively flatten herself to the ground in hopes the soil might swallow her up. James ran out to her and on the second pass the hawk bold as a day light cat burglar took a swipe at poor Martha sending her toppling down the driveway.
James had no idea his rescue attempts now were in vain as the shock and impact of the hawk’s attack killed her dead on the second pass. The hawk landed close by the still black body of Martha poised to enjoy a well-earned meal when James struck from behind. He was not tall, a stout fellow with fluffy feathered feet and a multi-coloured feathered coat. Standing barely ten inches tall James madly took the hawk down. Straddling him in a fury and tussled dust. Hens ran in all directions and we would not see a single fresh egg for a week due to the trauma. James flipped the hawk over and took a few severe pecks with his wings beating before in one last triumphant blow, James the mighty bantam tossed the hawk by the neck through the thin-pane grubby glass window of the basement. The hawk was dead and James within minutes was gone as well from the shock and blood loss unaware his lady love was also dead. The yard, a mess of blood and feathers never felt the same after that day. It was the Gettysburg, the Alamo, and the D-Day of the chicken world all rolled into one. A spot and a shattered window that was never mended would stand as a place of remembrance, place in my memory where a 10 year-old kid from the suburbs learned about life, and about death and about loyalty. It would stand as well as a place when one chicken said, No More!
Go Blow Your Own Horn
Posted by paddlinboy in island life on December 13, 2023
By David Barnes
After a life long, long distance relationship with religion I have one belief and that is they are not for me. I have no debate with those who par-take. Worship who and what you want. Love whomever you wish, its all good by me, oh and stay away from weaponizing any of them and we will be fine. No one coming to my door waving a book of carefully cherry-picked scripture and the like. Believe what you want and how you want, just leave me out of it. It is a touchy subject. Wars have been started under their banners, not to mention all manner of other unsavory dealings. There are bad apples everywhere I suppose so best not to bring the whole thing down to their level, but it is fair to say, at least from the keys of this type writer that I have made my peace with the Jesus gang and found solace elsewhere.
When your life train arrives at the station of certain birthdays you are made aware of the myriad of life choices made during those years. I have made peace with some of them, working out the meanings of others, and realizing the consequences of each. If there is a theme, and I do mean in the most accidental of terms as when I began writing it was without any plan whatsoever, I simply began scrolling though the faded hard to grasp childhood memories and hoping that I could sand off any tarnish that might be obscuring clarity. That said, running through the stories are a current of people. We are influenced as kids by adults, and peers alike. They guide our thoughts, directions and choices damned the results. Life is in a nutshell, haphazard. But some hold the nut cracker and show you the way if you are awake enough to pay attention to what is being shown, or told to you at the time. If I knew then what I have come to understand today is that there would have been more music in my life had I just blown my own horn.
April 1979. Springtime’s faint sun came to an earth begging for some warmth that it had not felt since September of the previous year. Salt Spring Island’s quiet waking from winter was interrupted by the chorus of trumpets and a hearty Hasanna Hosanna emanating from a concrete bunker. Frank Richards of the Gulf Islands Driftwood newspaper reported in between the police blotter and the classified ads offering tractor services and stump removal that the musical playing at the Elementary School’s activity room, the cold cinder block auditorium used for indoor sports, school assemblies, concerts and the occasional play was new to the Salt Spring Players. It was to be an ambitiously elaborate stage with raised boardwalks he added that would intersect with the small audience seating area of loose chairs. There were ramps for motorcycle riding apostles to enter the stage, there was a rough looking scaffolding set up where the priests would argue, debate and consequentially condemn Christ. Our amateur group of players was to attempt the epic of Jesus Christ Superstar.
This rock opera as you may know is based on the last days of Christ’s life. It had played on Broadway and small town stages alike for years. One might not put much weight to it being produced on my little island in the Salish Sea but it was done, and by people some of whom had never sung, nor spoken on stage before and done in such grandeur. It was a community event played to entertain the community and no one else, although most of the island’s population seemed to be in the performance leaving a small few to sit in the audience section on uncomfortable plastic chairs.
The performance made overnight local heroes of Judas who appeared on stage riding a BMW street motorcycle with his hair down to the middle of his back singing accusations to Christ about the poor. A school teacher wearing a tie to signify the authority of his position as Pontius Pilate featuring a spectacular lighting affect to help intensify the flogging scene. And a real estate salesman with a pony tail emerged with a strong voice as Jesus. I never made the cut in the band, nor as a member of the youthful singing chorus belting out praises on high that echoed uncomfortably in the terrible acoustic surroundings of the activity room.
The closest I would get to singing out loud and singing out strong along side of those big three characters was when I contributed badly to the sound track of JCSS along side my old vinyl record that still plays without a skip forty-five years later. If I was pushed to place a sound track to that part of my childhood it would not be songs from other records. Not the Kiss album that I played to the great aggravation of my dad that resulted in an early Christmas gift of a super pair of headphones by my mother to keep the peace. They also served well to drown out his insistence of playing military marching band music. My background music could also have been a selection of loud offerings from Queen, or from Jefferson Airplane, or Zeppelin, and maybe even Piano Man played at nauseam, but instead were songs sung with hard rock passion and fervent drama about a guy who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or perhaps a fictional composite of several prophets and spokes-folk of that time and the centuries afterward. It was not because I liked the play, I had the soundtrack, a Christmas gift blasting from my weak second-hand RCA speakers long before our way off Broadway island theater group engaged in the production, a collaboration between the Anglican Church leader and the school band teacher. I just got a charge from it. It had to be played at high volume, not so God could hear the songs and story but because it was hard rock, man!
These two people, the local producers, a paster and a band leader would play pivotal positions in my young life. I went to church each Sunday with my parents though after a few visits to the quaint house of the Lord my dad began opting out. It frustrated me no end that he got away with this and I still had to go. How did he achieve the get out of holy morning card and I had to go through the repetitious charade once more? Over the months and years of church time I was indoctrinated fully into the flock at the local Anglican Church led in prayer and ‘new-age’ hippie-hip sermons by the light-hearted and overtly warm personality of Reverend McCalman. On entering the church by the sea you would first see the wall-sized hand-woven mural completed by believers an at the helm my mother who was a noted fabric artist. Crafted with hand dyed local sheep wool depicting a sunrise or sunset scene, I could never figure out which. Finding an appropriate pew my mother, sister and I along with other young families the church was recruiting on the island were lulled in slowly to the soft purr of Cat Steven’s tune, Morning has Broken, played on the organ.
It was fitting as this young paster hip to the times gathered the flock with enticements speaking that the church was no longer a stuffy fuddy-duddy cavern of musty ways and rituals. Well, my friends there is no escaping most of it, but McCalman managed to rewrite the weekly event into something more palatable for the younger crowd. Gone were the guilty finger-pointing sermons now replaced with more uplifting messages spoken from the pulpit as the high school art and french teacher illustrated in thick squeaking black felt marker simple drawings on a large blank piece of newsprint paper of what was being said on an easel with us kids gathered around staring up, necks craning in abject wonder of it all. Actually, the floor was hard, the words boring, but the drawings and the process of the images appearing slowly as any sentence could be spoke were mesmerizing to me. The scent of that black felt pen imprinted forever in my senses. The hymns sung were from small red hard cover books and sadly not even McCalman could rewrite the lyrics to improve the groove. As much as he would have liked to rewrite the entire scene the dogma of it all carried through and eventually I lost interest and like my father before me, found better activities to occupy my Sundays to the great annoyance of my mother.
I left my church but not before I was pulled in fully and confirmed with several weeks of preparatory lessons one on one with the kindly paster, who was a great friend to the family and comfort to my mother on many occasions. After that, like the older kids I was given the Sunday morning occupation of preparing the room for service. I wore simple white robes and sash. I lit candles, filled goblets with Jesus’s blood and piled the platter high with wafers. I helped McCalman prepare for his performance as well before he moved to the main entrance to meet and greet each person as they arrived with a warm handshake or hug. During the sermon I sat with the other kids, but the soles of my sneakers sticking out from under mt robe’s hem distracted somewhat from the authenticity of the event. After service we gathered downstairs for coffee, tea and catch-up conversations. A community rallying point for finding willing hands for jobs to be done, activities to be planned and inquiries if someone had a rooster to lend out for a month to entice the hens to lay. I along with and cohorts now back in street clothes wiggled into the church’s crawl space and talked about cool stuff like what happened to the Fonz on last week’s episode of Happy Days. Once we even smoked!
I was never a follower, believer or subscriber. I went along with it each Sunday, I played the part for a long time but was never crucified. When things got silly Christ should have walked. That was what I did.
It was something I could not put my finger on at the time but I knew in my heart and soul that I was not digging the situation and removed myself from it. I was well aware of the performative sameness each week. The mouthing of words and ideas that would fade in the minds of the parishioners long before the ending of that week. Songs sung, Cat Stevens again and again but I just didn’t get it. I was confronted with the fact that I was faking it and resolved myself as a card-carrying atheist at the tender age of 12. Heavy stuff for a kid. I don’t regret the time because it helped form that part of me to who I am and what I believe today to be true, at least from my own perspective. I still don’t get it, that Sunday must go to church thing. My new place of renewal is not inside a box, not in a home nor a building devoted for a purpose. My Sundays may begin in a coffee shop but usually end in the woods, or on the water in my kayak. Nature is my keeper and I shall not want as long as there are a few trees to wander under. To Peter McCalman I still offer respect and love. He was a genuine sort and to this day that is something I hold as important.
When I began Grade 8 in high-school leaving the earned and coveted top-dog position as a Grade 7 in elementary school I had to take band class. On the first day we were told what the class would be about and handed music books filled with confusing dots and sticks on lines with squiggly icons and numbers. My first horror of high-school was discovering that music was math! DId that mean the Beatles used algebra to write Across the Universe? We were instructed to read up on how to read musical notes, it was a week later that we were challenged to choose our instruments. Of all the cooler instruments on the table for me to choose from and we all wanted drums, to my great chagrin I was handed a slender case containing a clarinet. My parents were big band fans and so they were elated. They had visions of me becoming the next Benny Goodman. I was crushed that I wasn’t chosen to play something with more status, like the saxophone or trumpet. The sounds emitted from the wide end of the black shiny flute when I pinched the reed and blew were the sounds made by kittens being crushed in ancient rusty vices, slowly, very slowly, screaming, choked and tortured. I discouraged myself from practicing in my room each night under the pressure of the parents a floor below due to the sounds, music? Noise I created. I irritated myself with the noise.
I soon found a way of mimicking the fingering on the chrome tabs and pedals so that the band teacher would not guess that I was faking, I even puffed my cheeks. I was certain I had him in the dark if it were not for the fact that the woodwind section was unfortunate enough to be seated up front in class. Week after week I played my part and my fingers played the appropriate positions to the sheet music on the stand before me. I let the others make the sounds for me and my silent mime would be drowned out by those seated on either side of me. I could keep this up forever I thought and maybe the next year I would branch out to other instruments in my quiet chorus of none.
One day, band leader kept me late after class. He sat me down and told me that if I actually played my clarinet I would probably become quite good as he could see my fingering was exact and all I had to do was blow. Practice, practice, practice he told me, and that I should stop miming playing and actually push air through the instrument. I was well and truly busted! Much like my church experience my band class tenure had been one of not quite getting it, leading to fakery. I soon left the class for a much preferred period of art class. The moral of my play acting in church and in band class resulted in my being seated in the audience during the exciting performances of Jesus Christ Superstar that ran an extra night beyond its originally slated three-night run. Had I stuck it out in church and played along with that groove I might have been part of that play. If not an actual singing role in the holy chorus at least I could have portrayed un-credited shepherd number 3. or been the guy clearing up the dishes after the last supper. I looked good in robes.
KAYAK WRITER 