Well, the year is nearly over, and Samhain is almost upon us. What a year it has been! As Robbie Burns once said, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley“, and that has been very true of our summer…chaos and plans going awry.
We got off to a good start, with a “new-to-us” vehicle (aptly named the “Blue Ghost“, which is neither blue, nor grey, nor black in color, but sometimes can appear to be any of those), and a new 9.9 engine for our MacGregor sailboat.
We made plans—camping trips on the Island that we were going to take in our new vehicle, buying new sheds to replace our old and decrepit ones, various boat schemes and themes… And then chaos slowly settled into our carefully laid out designs.
Periods of increased entropy seem to be a regular part of my life. My mind hearkens back to our last year in Prince Rupert, dealing with my mother’s mental health crises, our business’s slow slide towards bankruptcy, and a chronic health problem that dogged me relentlessly. My favorite song line for that year was “I’m still standing” (from “I’m Still Standing” by Elton John). Determination, motivation, and just plain old grit brought us here, to our homestead in Port Neville, and we’re still here!
Our first major trip of the year, at the end of March, was also our last one. We headed to Comox for my annual eye exam, which we combined with a family visit. As it turned out, that adventure ended up in many deep and difficult conversations about politics. The election fervor was just starting to reach its maximum pitch, and our riding was a hot spot Canada-wide.
In a region that is traditionally about two-thirds progressive voters and one-third conservative voters, we ended up with a mouthy, racist, extremist right-wing conservative as our representative. How could this have happened? He drove a hard, nasty campaign that included some potentially illegal activities, such as removal of opponents’ signs…and he split the progressive vote right down the middle between Liberals and NDPs. The result: he just managed to get enough votes to beat both progressive parties, and now the majority of the riding’s populace is represented by someone who shares none of their ethics or ideals. I’m still waiting for the other foot to fall on that one, but I know it won’t be good.
Extreme conservatism seems to be a thing these days. It’s raised its ugly head in Canada, the US, and Europe. Even our current Liberal government is more conservative than it is liberal in its policies and actions. All the years that we have struggled to embrace human rights, equality, and environmental conservation are quickly being washed away in this tide of rape and pillage, greed, denialism, and selfishness.
Personally, I’m not very pushy about my political views. Philosophically, I’m a social anarchist (see Social anarchism – Wikipedia). This is neither Communism (at least not as it has been practiced by Russia and China) nor Mad Max style anarchism (which is more rightfully called Hobbesian chaos, anarcho-primitivism, or anti-civ anarchism). I yearn towards order, not chaos—towards utopia rather than dystopia. In the consensual reality that we all live in, that means I either vote for a progressive party, or not at all. Extreme right-wing conservatism worries me, even frightens me. And, for the first time in my life, it is beginning to have a measurable impact on what I choose to do, and how I accomplish it.
So, after this brief political interlude, I’ll move on to our summer’s muddled chaos. The federal election was over, wounds were being licked, and then Trump went crazy. Tariffs were being imposed, Canada was being threatened with becoming the 51st state, and suddenly the world was becoming a much less stable and predictable place than it once had been. How did that affect us? Well, our grand project for the summer was to purchase and assemble two new sheds to replace the ones we had which were gradually disintegrating. We had decided on resin sheds, as they are long-lasting, and resist termites, carpenter ants, and rot, all problems that we have experienced. The sheds that we were going to purchase were manufactured in the US…and now were no longer available to us. I searched high and low for a Canadian manufacturer of similar sheds, but to no avail.
Then the summer northwesterly winds set in…a month earlier than normal. So June, July, and most of August were full of cresting white waves on the Inlet. Our usual summer drought was soon to follow, and I was busy irrigating the garden and the orchard (and very glad that I had installed an irrigation system last year). Quickly, our plans of summer camping trips evaporated as day after day we got 30-30s (30 knot winds with 30°C temperatures)—too windy to comfortably, or even safely, cross Johnstone Strait, and too hot to enjoy camping out anyway. So another of our plans came to naught. And there are people who still deny climate change!
Hoping that the situation with the US would resolve positively, and thinking that the sheds we wanted might come back on the market again, I started researching how we might get the shed kits transported to our homestead. In the past, we have used a towed herring skiff to haul large loads. However, the skiff is not safe to tow in heavy seas, such as we had been experiencing all summer. I had hoped that some commercial operation, with a larger, heavier, faster boat, might be able to deliver the shed kits at some reasonable cost. Well, nada on that one too. If we ever can find resin sheds again, we’ll have to get them delivered to some storage site in Sayward, and then haul them a load at a time in the herring skiff on those rare days that we get good weather conditions. That’s going to take a wee bit more than a little luck!
The summer wore on, hot, dry, and windy. We resorted to working on the never-ending list of tasks that needed to be done on the homestead. Ken decided that it was finally time to replace the fuel tanks on the Awen. We’d purchased new tanks for her two years ago, but hadn’t got around to installing them. And what a challenging job that turned out to be! I think the ship was built around the tanks. Ken had to cut through major deck timbers to get them out. The whole process took two frustrating months to remove the old rusty tanks, install the new ones, and rebuild the engine room and wheelhouse floor. It may have been a chaotic summer, but definitely not a lazy one.
The weather continued to play tricks on us. Unlike the past four years or so of drought, this year the humidity was very high. That made the heat less bearable, but it also reduced its drying effect. Some plants thrived…we had bumper crops coming on our blackberries and plums, decent crops on many other plants in our garden and orchard. Slugs also thrived—I’ve never seen a year with as many slugs as this one! Then, in a blink of any eye, the weather changed again. Early September brought the rains just as the blackberries and plums reached their full ripeness. We were able to salvage pick some of the crop, but sadly much was lost to the rains. On the other hand, we had the best crop of beans ever this year! So, some good, some bad.
Fall progressed, the harvest came in, we worked hard. Trump got crazier and scarier. Canada Post went on strike (again), so more of our plans got stalled, shipwrecked, rerouted, or reworked. The world is becoming a stranger place than it used to be. Still, we live here in the eye of the storm, watching, waiting, feeling some of the impacts, but living in relative safety. The song line that keeps going through my head this year is “You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometime you’ll find you get what you need” (from “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by The Rolling Stones).
