The Cop Next Door

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

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!

James and Martha, a Tragic Romance of Chickens

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

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.

Remember to Remember

By David Barnes

   Have you ever been scared? I am not talking about that clutching your partner’s hand at the sudden loud noise during a horror movie scared. No, I am talking about the real kind of terror. The type that is birthed deep within and takes you to the point where you struggle to contain it leaving your heart racing, knees and hands shaking uncontrollably and some sort of primal knowledge brewing in the alligator corners of your brain of imminent ending to your life real or imagined takes hold. No, neither have I thankfully. There have been times when out kayaking off the beaten track in seas that were beyond my skill set yet I persevered and paddled on through it, all the while knees shaking slightly from adrenaline unseen by others within the confines of my kayaks’ cosy cockpit, but I have never feared for my life. I would put money on that being the case for most of us unless you serve as a fireman, police, or ER nurse, or soldier. It is service that takes individuals to this location when day in and day out they run the risk of being at risk of such dangers and random occurrence that may result in something tragic.

This goes on while we sleep away in our safe lives comfortable in the knowledge that someone is acting on our behalf as a guardian angel. Isn’t that great? I mean, really when you think about it we cruise through our daily lives in relative ease. Our anxieties when we first open our eyes in the morning are about what, car payments, rent, and putting food on the table? All important items to consider, but they are safe so imagine if you can, and this is the hard part because imaging scenarios that are out of our experience can be tough, but follow me if you will. You wake up in the morning, and upon opening your eyes and ears to hear shouting of commands, the grinding deafening sounds of heavy armored vehicles passing by vibrating the ground you stand on, and the smell, the smell of tremendous excitement melded with the sense of primal fear emanating from each individual surrounding you. You sit up in your bed swinging your legs over the edge and dressing quickly because those shouts are for you and your companions to join 25,000 others who are waking up and dressing quickly, hearts immediately pounding as they may have all night during restless sleep. Your morning on that morning will be different than any you may have in the future and certainly different than any of us safe at home living our safe lives will ever have.

You make your way outside to the throng gathering. To a man, lining up to get onto trucks to take you to ships to ferry you across the English Channel. You see those who you have trained in anticipation of this morning and the days and the weeks of mornings after it. You nod to your best friend as you move through the crowd who has been the one you drank with, and carefully shared your own misgivings about what is to come and what may befall those young men you have trained, Yours is a relationship birthed of intensity, of the unknowns, of duty and of well, given the time manly pursuits. That is a standard that after the coming events may be something to rethink as the unknown you are about to face will be loud and scary and the sounds and sights will deliver that primal bubbling over within you to the point of panic, which must be quelled if all who have trusted you will live to nightfall.

You are the one who is in charge of young men who if they follow all you have said and done might do well. Carrying only a side arm of small caliber to protect you, no helmet and only your wits about you when the landing craft lurches to a stop on the shallows still surrounded by the sea. Your boat is already showing signs of heavy use by the indentations from shrapnel and bullets. There are the sounds of engines, explosions, gun fire both given and received. The sand, wet and airborne from the impact of shells lobbed from above by your enemy who has been waiting for you for a very long time and what they see from their vantage points must have been the stuff to raise the faint fear within them as well.

There is an old joke by the now embarrassing Bill Cosby from a comedy album that I still enjoy. I try to separate the art from the artist, and to enjoy his style of comedy this is a requirement. The joke is about the Geneva conventions’ rule not to fire upon anyone wearing a helmet with a red cross on it and goes something like this.

“The average lifespan of an army medic from the time he hits to water to the time he almost makes it to the beach is around seven seconds.”

Anyone who has watched Saving Private Ryan (another movie where Matt Damon needs rescuing) and who has made it through the realistic war carnage of the first twenty-minutes of the adventure will know what my grandfather, a green beret wearing Royal Marine Commando saw when the gate apron of his landing craft splashed into the beach water. The deadly unknown revealed at long last and the panic brewing in his men was the inspiration to leave the unsafe box, the fish in the barrel of the boat to the less safe open expanse of a wet sandy beach. I see it as a kin to the burning building when one chooses to jump out of the window to certain death rather than remaining to burn to death. It is was a no win situation on Gold Beach on June 6th under fire from embedded gun bunkers and planes.

The fear escapes. All around him and you are the running shadows of men attempting to find cover and stay alive. The odds are against you and him as blood and sand fly. Bodies are obstacles to your forward movement now when a few hours earlier they were comrades in arms whom you may have shared an egg. You spin around and see your best friend go down. Hit across the midriff by machine gun bullets only seconds after leaving the sea to dry land. He falls, not yet dead but dying. He is cut in half and bleeding while watching the sky, the planes are flying over, the clouds of smoke and the sounds of war slowly going quiet as he reveals himself to himself in thoughts for the first and last time. You run to him and at his request you do his bidding even though the act goes against all you know and love, your soul torn by the irony of killing those who would happily kill you and at that moment doing their level best to do just that, and the act of dispatching your closest chum. Crack. You look one last time and run to find cover from the onslaught of German fire!

Boys and girls, we have it easy. You know it, I know it! I also know that looking at all of the noise of social media, the daily barrage of opinions being displayed as facts by people with too many agendas about wars in which we keep waging is too much to keep up with. We are a violent species and after surviving the bloodiest century in human history it seems with current events unfolding as they always seem to unfold that we remain this way and perhaps it is what we are. We also make music, the only incorruptible endeavor we have, so sit with that a moment.

The struggle is real when putting food on the family table, or paying for that car, or finding the money to keep a roof over your head. In all of the day to day we may lose track of what got us here to a relatively safe morning of the usual anxieties. You and I and most everyone we know do not wake up to hear the shouts. We do not have to dress quickly to meet our fears and possible painful ending by dinnertime. We have it good, real good, and have the responsibility to remember to remember what and more importantly who came before us. It does not matter if your opinion is for or against the acts of others in a very different time. We all would like to think it could have been handled with less human cost and with more progressive enlightenment, but it wasn’t to be that way. Whether or not you wear a poppy or agree that wearing one for a few days after Halloween is an adequate token of remembrance the fact is, they did it. They came to serve, and put a stop to a steamroller set in motion by one man with completely different idea of how all of your mornings would begin. 

Closing Time

By David Barnes

I’ve made mistakes in my life, one or two. I have a few regrets as I clear another birthday milestone this week. One or two regrets. To get to this age and saying out loud that you have no regrets, and feel clean of any miss-steps in life means you are either a liar, or died at birth. No one gets out unscathed. I look backwards more than I would like to. I do look forward and tweek my own anxieties by looking for trouble where there is none. None until I make trouble that is, and that is up to me, and me alone. I look in the rear view mirror far more often and it tangles my brain up in a different kind of anxiety knot.

Anxiety being a state of mind caused by the paralyzing notions of not being able to control events. Backward thinking anxiety is my cruelest self-harm. I had past events that were in my control in the moment, a place that I do try to center myself within. I was controlling those events, and movement through them with the people around me who were also involved. Yet, in hindsight they are seemingly uncontrolled events.

My mind twists during the final moments of a long busy restaurant kitchen shift.The hindsight machine spools up and I believe it is my fatigue that allows it to begin turning its wheels. It is the nature of the job, in my case as an aging porter with a few additional responsibilities added onto the rather vague job description. I go about the end of night clear-down tasks and duties without thinking about what I am doing as I have fallen squarely into the traps set by repetition. You forget about repetition as soon as you begin repeating a task done so many times before. The mind wanders into my other life. It is a slight of hand trick as I push through the last loads of glassware and cutlery and trying to fill the mop bucket with what remaining water pressure is left me. I am aware of my surroundings enough as my legs ache in that special way at that time of the night. I know I have to clear the dishpit in time before the line cook contaminates the dish machine with the greasy residue lining the bucket he used to drain the dirty water after cleaning the fryer. It is the mindless gathering of side towels and tossing them into the washing machine in the back of the kitchen pantry alcove. It is peeking through the pass to see if the last customer. The one seated at table six by the closed patio door has paid and left or is the floor mop still unaccessible because it is kept in a closet on the patio.. The customer is still there camping at table six with the last few drops of his drink and toying idly with a couple of french fries on the plate. I wait!

I reel back to a decade before when I took a dishwasher job due to a series of events that were in my control at the time, but did I make the wrong call? Did I miss-judge who I was dealing with at the time? I regret those months. Not the job, but the months leading to the immediate need for income, not matter how paltry. My mind crucifies me for that but I did also have control over who I was on that first entry into kitchen life and the confidence the chef had in me. Enough to toss the weekly charity group luncheon my way. I had complete control over that menu and execution on the day, which overlapped my regular prep list. Some things work out for the best. Go along to get along and sometimes the results are surprising.

At last table six has vacated and the front door to the restaurant is locked for the night. No late stragglers! The table has not been cleared however, and now my dish machine reservoir has been violated and is a dark brown oily mess. I reach in and pull the plug to drain the the machine. I have to do this in several short pulls or else the catchment box leading to the outflow pipe over flows onto the floor. Mopping or not in the near future I don’t want to add to my time and tasks. The knees are wonky now, the back is searching for a new home in another more quiet dimension.

Did I screw up my life? Oh, most definitely or else I would be doing anything, anything other than resetting a dishwasher so to clean a single beer glass and fish and chips platter, a fork and a knife. That first job in a hotel kitchen where the daily prep list white board was a dry erase cathedral of Monday morning dread was where I cut my chops. I found out what I was made of. It was where I learned, really learned to cook at the age of 48. I dabbled but the lessons taught to me mostly by osmosis have stayed with my to this day.

So why at the eve of turning 58 do I find myself muttering blue language at a long departed customer making me wait ten more minutes in a now empty kitchen while dishwater drips on my forearm as the last pints of dirty water flush away? Why am I regretting getting here? Why did I lose ten years to this lifestyle of having no lifestyle but the grind at work and sleeping when not standing in the loud hum of the range hood extraction fan and the smell of aerosolized food particles. What on earth told me to go back into the kitchen after a stint making real money for not so easy to work for people? Was it the easy route? Am I just that lazy or scared to commit to my first loves that I keep leaping from one kitchen environment to the next. Are these the excuses to the mistakes made along the way while travelling alone in the world? Working for the first time with people I can truly relate too?

I turn off the hood fan and for the first time in ten hours I am hit with the deafening silence and the awareness of how intrusive that mechanism is during the day. It begins with the clank of metal being pulled abruptly against metal. The drive belt tightening, the sound of air being pulled through the submarine tube of the kitchen’s working line. Air drawing through the small spaces and gaps in the back door of the kitchen. I feel it on my lower back all day as it is taken up with the smoke through the ceiling. My outside life, my real life is somewhere out there with the travelling smoke from burning fish batter. Is it real? My mistake ridden life outside the kitchen with a spread sheet of regrets that I keep finding in the mental archives only because my age seems to want me to begin some bizarre final tally. I cling to the idea of it. I fantasize about living that other life that I fit only into the short hours in between making tartar sauce and clearing grease traps.

Then in the windowless kitchen, it is dark outside and the cooks have signed out and gone home. No one stays for an after work drink. There is a server sweeping upstairs, the manager making money counting sounds at the front desk, and me in the back. Wiping down stainless steel. Double-checking the lowboy coolers for anything out of place, unwrapped or missed on the next day’s prep list. I fetch the mop from the patio closet and upon my return a pink margarita in a wine glass is sitting on my dish pit counter. I drink as I mop. Searching my minds eye for relevant news as to how to add voice over to some B-roll footage on a Youtube video project I have in mind. I try to think of ways to be a better partner on the weekends when I don’t want anything asked of me. To be present and available through the oft-times sleepy haze. I slowly fix, and resolve nagging issues in my other life. I have to get a head start as the hours in that world are short. It is then, sipping that cold drink that I find one non-regret. One non-mistake. The decade of slavery in the food industry has taken years of use off my joints, but it has given me a few moments each night to work out a few things as I lean into the end of a floor mop handle and make yet another dirty glass to wash.

Do Memories Lose Their Meaning?

John Lennon wrote a song that appeared on Rubber Soul in December of my birth year of 1965, and it is said McCartney helped to write it too. The lyrics go,

“There are places I’ll remember

All my life

Though some have changed

Some forever, not for better

Some have gone, and some remain.”

On this evening while scrolling through the photo archives and it is becoming late, my eyes are burning and the files are badly organized so to find one image requires the determination and fortitude the likes no one has seen, especially at the raggedy end of a long day. The images I was attempting to locate were for a completely different post idea that I won’t spoil here. However, during the search through one file folder to the next miss-or-unnamed file folder I came across a black and white shot I took in the way back time before digital cameras were in my kayak bags. When I looked at the picture a song, that song by the Beatles began playing in my head. Coincidence? Those place have their memories and this picture was taken on a trip to a place that I have been before, with other lovers and friends I still can recall.

This picture of my friend Micheal looking for his lunch on a patch of crushed shells only available at low tide on a cloudy day during a week, which only gave us one afternoon break, short that it was with sunshine. Just enough time to lay wet gear out on rocks to dry before the next set of rain fronts waddled in towards the Broken Group Islands. It is one of those places to paddle on the west coast that if you time it just right can be as intimate an experience as stepping back in time. I have been there and encountered no one else. I suppose kayaking in the shoulder seasons comes with the risks of tumultuous weather but doing so does have the advantage of offering a certain amount of wilderness privacy. Only those who like cold windy rainy days that continue on end will pull out of Toquart Bay and into Barkley Sound.

I have been here before and paddled out of the bay passing the Stopper Islands, and then that short hop to Lyall Pt. to the traditional first night stop over on Hand Island. Here I have weathered the heavy rains and the wind that pulled the campfire smoke out from one end of our tarp a-frame shelter only to draw it back in the other side, smoking us all out into the pouring rain. Hand Island is where I spent the first night with a good friend on a buddy trip. On that one we decided not to paddle in but instead rode the steamer. A legendary cargo vessel, the Francis Barkley down the narrow Alberni Inlet into the fog, eventually arriving in the Sound. The first night on that trip was on Hand where I forgot to make my dinner. Later insisting at the photo shop back home that they missed developing a roll of my film. The truth was I was too stoned to hit the shutter button that evening and only thought I took that roll of film.The one shot I have of that night was of Jon sitting with his coffee mug and headphones on listening to Ben Harper as the setting sun illuminated him. Jon makes every memory of the Broken Group Islands bittersweet for me now in these years after his passing. Do memories lose their meaning? My memories of that trip with Jon are marked with joyful moments on and off the water. From a wild afternoon testing our open water skills in rough seas outside the comforts of the calm waterways nestled inside the group of islands, and were rewarded for our efforts with the sighting of a whale breaching. A day paddle from our base camp on Willis Island where we found tidal sea caves to play in. The dinner time conversations that were about being out there and the appreciation of it all. Discussing the balance between being so far removed from the daily distractions that allowed both of us to speak truths and confessions that only the quiet of nature could inspire. And then there is the loss. A sudden absence and the death of any potential of ever doing that again with him that shadows those memories.

I remember events from these numerous trips to the Sound with different combinations of friends that were great fun and then there are the memories that gather in the corner of my mind clouding everything. I admit to allowing some of the negative events, and bad outcomes to colour my impressions of a trip even if it was mostly positive. In 2006, I was in a foursome on a paddle adventure week in early April of that year. We had to go back early due to some bad planning, but during those days and nights in the islands we had an unfortunate encounter with another camper that cast a dark shade over the entire excursion. I forget about the amazingly unusual summer conditions appearing on the coast that week.The good food we made, the stars at night, the last blink of the sun falling on the uninterrupted horizon. I remember animosity and whiny notes pinned to our tent complaining about us. I am only brought back from the brink of my gloomy recollections when I come across a photo of me in my kayak in clear water with a background that could easily be mistaken as tropical. That trip sucked! Our group dynamic was wobbly, a turf war with a camper who packed a few bags with unrealistic expectations to a public park, and two of our group forcing an early retreat back to civilization and dry clothing.

I have a memory of an undercurrent of frustration paddling on another outing when we got lost on our would-be last day when we should have been heading back to Toquart, but instead found ourselves facing the open expanse of Imperial Eagle Channel and the entrance to the Alberni Inlet. With compass and charts (pre-hand held GPS) we still managed to become completely turned around. On that afternoon with every island looking the same when we argued location and direction we were given an unsuspected treat of seeing creatures that rarely if ever come to shore. Blue Sail Jellyfish only found off-shore in open ocean had been blown in on mass by the previous day’s storm. As we paddled around Jarvis Island we became surrounded by thousands of them. Sadly the conditions and tides would force the colony onto the beaches to dry out in the out going tides and become food for the inter tidal zone eco-system. Such is the cycle of life my friends!

An hour later now pointed in the homeward direction with Hand Island in sight we encountered a less friendly group on the water. It was herring season. Millions of the fish come into the Sound each year to spawn the next generations. The water is milky with fertilization in coves and bays and that stuff sticks to your kayak as well that it does to the rocks seaweed and eel grass in which the eggs have been laid. With the herring comes the hungry. Inadvertently we had paddled between the fish and the sea lions. The lions roared. They have heads the size of beach balls filled with teeth and terrible breath. They are related to bears! I know that they could use a minty mouth wash because I was close enough to smell the exhale. Four or five jumped up only a few feet in front of our bows forcing us to back paddle in quick retreat fearing they might land on the boats capsizing us. I was later assured that a sea lion would not kill me but I might, if finding myself in the water with them be crushed in between them and most likely drown. They leapt all around, angrily wanting us to leave seeing us as competition. They adeptly separated my group leaving me bobbing in my small kayak alone near the some rocks, camera at the ready because after all as threatening as it was, it could be the one time opportunity to get a really up close shot of a raging sea lion. One of my friends still recalls the echoing thump heard throughout the Sound of my Pentax hitting the inside of my open cockpit as I tossed it frantically needing both hands on the paddle to reverse from a team of lions who had driven the smallest from the herd, that being me and were coming to finish me off.

It was later that night, after a day of accepting the navigational blundering, and took it as a sign to sit back, relax, explore a little bit more and be chased by scary beasts that the campfire smoked us out of the tarp shelter. Returning to my tent coughing I light my stove and accidentally melted a four-inch hole in the door flap. That memory does not lose its meaning! But that returns us to the question.

“And these memories lose there meaning

When I think of love as something new.”

Do memories lose their meaning. To answer that I would have to say a resounding no. I say this because with each day the next line of the song refreshed their meaning. Each day an old memory becomes something new. We see them with fresher minds eyes as time passes. They do change. Memories fade and are twisted with life events that come in the years in between and with age soften the rougher edges. Old tensions fade and are renewed with the communal knowledge shared within the people who experienced them. In the end, we should just be grateful for the times we had out there in the wilds. Seeing the things no one we know back home gets to see, or feel, or hear. Memories are the love I see as something new, especially while searching the photo archives.

Why am I Not Kayaking?

William Butler Yeats wrote in his poem Easter 1916,

-To long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.

-O when may it suffice?

It has been too long not actively kayaking and my heart is turning to granite. With every month that my kayak languishes on its backyard rack and only getting wet when it rains is affecting my viewpoint on the world, my day to day moods and at a deeper level, a sense of self that is burdened by the reasons why I am not kayaking more. It has been a slow progression to the place I find myself and my perspective. In the early 2000’s three friends and I made several paddling trips to the west coast of Vancouver Island. These were carefree days when for some chance of fate we all had the time in our schedules, and the money to allow for the time away. These trips spanning a week at a time with the weekends as bookends culminating in a rush home on the Sunday afternoon from far flung launch spots adjacent to long winding rutted logging roads.

Barkley Sound, Clayoquot Sound, Nuchatlitz archipelago where we slept on sandy beaches, camped in old growth forests, listened all night to the rising and falling of thundering surf, and one memorable night sleeping in my tent propped up against all my gear to stop me from rolling downhill at a thirty-degree angle. These adventures were birthed from beer inspired evenings planning locations and destinations using old fashioned guide books before the internet with all the speculations of what we might find. It always ended up being a bit of a free-for-all once we landed on the first islet to camp. Agendas tossed into the sea and the tensions grew within the group as a way to making the exploration of any area more immediate. If we don’t go there tomorrow and see that rock on that island we may never get the chance to do that ever again! We saw the rock, we tempted the gods by kayaking too close to cliffs as open ocean pushed rolling swells to shore without consideration of our fragility.We definitely made a black bear mad one day by paddling too near its rocky home and interrupted its lunch. We defied the incoming tides that threatened our camp. We saw whales, and we were humbled on more than one occasion. Our gang of sandy, sea salted miscreants managed to stay alive, paddle, eat well, sleep even better, and argue often, but only because we were trying to squeeze in a lifetime of experiences in our kayaks before it was gone. Did we know something internal and unspoken back then?

Hammock camping at its best.

Flash forward to present day through people moving away, family life, relationships and relationship issues, financial considerations, and what I have come to believe is the most intrusive factor to the kayaker life, having the time!

In the summer of 2021 a week after the blistering effects of a new form of climate crisis symptom, what was being called a ‘heat dome’ drove day and night time temperatures as high as 50 degrees Celsius, or 122 Fahrenheit. Myself and two of the gang made an impromptu escape for a heat wave over-nighter to a small island near our home on Salt Spring Island. It had been fifteen years since any of us pitched a tent together other than a few random evening paddles, this was the first camp situation and the signs of time were apparent.

Moving the kayaks down to a perfect low tide launch pad.

I will dispense with vulgar descriptions of the aches and pains and early morning old-man noises that murmured from my tent in particular as we woke from a late night of eating and drinking, more than I had in a while. The sun crept in to our shaded breakfast nook under the trees with our view of the Southern Gulf Island and glittering sea. The sun now an enemy to enjoyment.The early morning coolness gave way rapidly to the heat of the day. We were red from the day before and patches of sunscreen failure could be noticed and I felt over sensitive to the heat from having to endure a restaurant kitchen shift during the heat dome. We were grayer around the edges. Lines of time and too much time in the outdoors showing on our faces. Time. It gets to us all eventually. We took our time that morning. There was no imperative to leave early, to see that rock before time prevents it. In the old days we felt that imperative to get moving with agreements to get on the water in the early morning to avoid the afternoon winds that would make the next leg difficult. With two distinct factions in our group, the get going, and the get going sooner or later. Lets say we saw some wind, and were humbled by having our skill sets tested.

With age comes calm. The three of us took a slower pace when it came to packing the boats on the patch of seaweed and crushed shells that connected the island to a smaller outcropping at low tide. It was the sun that got us off our backsides, not the desire to rush around. The previous day felt like two days as after establishing camp we paddled around exploring where we live in a place we should never take for granted. Settling on a beach for a late lunch and only arriving back at the island campsite at sunset.

Years ago we could make a plan and had little to no impediments to carrying that plan to fruition. Ironically, now that we are older, in our fifties it is harder to scratch out time to do even the shortest of excursion. I know the factors that have interrupted my paddling career and lifestyle. I put the blame squarely on my own shoulders. I allowed outside and personal challenges to my kayaking to happen. I took on jobs that were physically demanding leaving less energy on the weekends to drive the inspiration to load the boat on the top of the car and head to the water. All excuses, and we all have excuses for not doing something. I did manage somehow to find the time and energy to train for the Yukon River Quest. (disclaimer, I was 50 then and full of beans) juggling a mentally, and physically demanding job at the time and a very new relationship with someone in which being together meant a ferry and some driving. So why have I not sat in the confines of my kayak’s cockpit since that hot weekend in 2021? Well, in 2022 I was simply overworked during a severe staffing shortage as aftermath of the pandemic years, but there were free weekends to dig deep and get out there, even if just for a few hours at sunset. Excuses, man!

Band of salty, sandy sea brothers.

This is the year when I sacrifice not my time in nature, not my time enjoying that sensation that endeared me to kayaking in the first place on a rainy evening with friends when I was pushed from the dock paddle in hand and felt like I was floating, because I was. Too long have I sacrificed to the whims of others, to the constraints of the workplace. Before my heart hardens completely it has been enough time to suffice. I must go kayaking! No excuses.

How to Paddle for the Last Time

How to Paddle for the Last Time

   There in that place we sat at sunset, Jon a few feet ahead of me and I nestled in a seat-shaped cleft of rock feeling the roughness of it as I sat. My cook pot behind me on the only relatively flat surface of a washed up log was boiling over in a mess of starchy froth pouring from under the lid and down the sides. The blue flame of the stove hissed and flashed yellow and his remained cold and unlit, forgotten. We were to say the least mesmerized by the last glimmer of sun going down over a bare horizon of an unbroken ocean. We waited for the fabled flash of light sailors describe as the sun disappears. We were slightly baked at the time so such events real or imagined would make for a full evenings discussion on the merits of being there, in that place at sunset.

   This was the first night of many paddle trips he and I would endeavour to take and one of the quieter as we seemed to be magnets for getting into scrapes and mostly lost at times. But while we sat awaiting a natural visual effect that by the way did not occur on that night or any other night that I have had that special opportunity, we had no idea that each paddle might be the last one. Who thinks like that? Each event was in a series of adventures he and I would jump into, sometimes at a moments notice gathering camping gear, food, gas and a sea chart. Our conversations on dark beaches listening to the waves into the night impacting to my way of thinking about the outdoors to this day as we were out there for the same reasons and chasing the same aesthetic.

   With like minds we set out to Barkley Sound aboard Francis Barkley, a sturdy cargo vessel that for decades dutifully delivered goods and mail to communities in the area that had not yet been connected to the greater world by roads. Down the winding Alberni Inlet in a dense fog we sat out on deck feeling the damp on a July morning looking at our kayaks balanced on crates below us in the open hold of the ship and straining eyes to make out the ocean. The anxiety crept in as slowly as the fog until by some luck the ship broke free of the gloom into open calm seas and sunshine. The week began with a pot enhanced sunset and wound its way through entering sea caves on low rolling swells, testing our nerves in narrow dark caverns. We tested our skills in open water in the outskirts of the safety inside the cluster of islands. There we met a breaching humpback whale barely visible behind the walls of deep swells that seemed to surround us until we scuttled back inside. The week found us luxuriating on several beach camps throughout the archipelago. The week ended at the same crowded dock where it began at a lodge that denied us access to the washrooms because we were not members of the kayak tour from that lodge. We were offered room temperature cans of Molson Canadian beer by a young server who took pity on us as we waited and whiled away the time until the Barkley returned for its trip back up the inlet. As foggy headed as that first night we settled in on the deck of the ship dozing and warming our backs on the smoke stack. It would not be our last paddle together.

   That came later, and then again in that place snaking our way up with friends on the San Juan Estuary near Port Renfrew on the west side of Vancouver Island no one would have thought it was our last paddle, however, sadly it would be at least in the physical sense. He passed in 2016 shortly before I would take on the most daunting challenge of my life taking part in the Yukon River Quest. He was with me there, in sprit and I had a moment while in line at the registration booth to get my number and prove that I had all my papers in order when I looked over to see a guy dressed as Jon would standing there. It took me out of the moment, the place, and the time and the bubble I was in. The next half hour that it took for me to return to Earth was quietly difficult. Of course it was coincidence, it was not him but I felt an eerie sense of comfort afterwards. This would not be his kind of thing. Running to his kayak to paddle non-stop for three days down a wilderness river attempting to get to the finish line before the elements of water and nature and fatigue beat him there. It would have been a place where we would return if I survived the marathon to spend a week or more drifting down the river towards Dawson City in our own time and in that shared mindful approach to encounters with the wilds. I wore his fleece cap at night under the chilly midnight sun. Was that to be our last, final paddle?

   The past few years have taken me on a crazy ride through ending of things and to the joys of rediscovering refreshing new life events, new things that are entered carefully and with lessons learned. It is the way of getting older, getting over the small things between people. It has been a period in my life when circumstances have kept me off the water more often than not and soon I hope to return, with a fresh energy and outlook. I think now which one of those will be my last paddle with someone else? How do we learn to make that last paddle trip, that last ever occasion for anything with someone we cared about when the end comes as something of a surprise? There are no good reasonable believable answers, and I cannot find even in my quieter moments an entry point to that question. None of us know how much time we have left, but some comfort in facing the inevitable and hopefully long way off destination for me is with a picture I took of the back of Jon’s head on that first night in Barkley Sound as the sun was doing its final act of the day on the natural stage before us. One of the few times that evening that I remembered to press the shutter button on my camera while my cook pot spat boiling rice water all over the beach rocks.

Wasabi Blues

   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.