Rainy Days and Fridays...

...are often good. Rain starting today shortly after dog walk and lasting until well after naps. But then the clearing—first a subtle lightening of the gloom, then the occasional shaft of bright, and then clear blue sky, and you start to ask yourself if it really was a rainy day.

But you are quite sure it was, and are thankful for it because the powder room got trimmed out and the staircase walls got their sixth coat of paint (searching for just the right color).

And when the sun finally broke clear, there was just enough time to realign the misalignment; and now we have 2/8ths of a boardwalk/pier.

Just before the rain...

After the clouds cleared away...

And, as we were sitting down at the water's edge, admiring the stubby pier we noticed gulls working up and down the shore, delicately dipping their lower bills and scooping up tidbits (like skimmers). Apparently it is an early hatch of some kind of shad fly, although with the cold water, it seems far too early for the main explosion.

Misaligned

Like the cartoon in which railroad tracks being built from different directions fail to meet when they finally come together, or the one in which the bow of a canoe just built points up while the stern points down, the hinges on our first section of pier and the hinges on the ramp missed each other, by, in our case, a wide margin. An unanticipated miscalculation caused by the fact that the ramp was built a while ago using 2x4s and the new dock section was built recently using 2x6s. On the positive side, a solution has been devised, and will be implemented tomorrow, rain permitting. (We have a forecast of heavy rain, and if the forecast materializes we may be restricted to indoor trim work, of which there is no shortage).

Earlier it was a little boat work in Gore Bay followed by lunch at Buoy's. Got the shrink-wrap off the boat, and Sue power washed everything above the toe rail. Norm was affable and thought a launch sometime next week was a fine idea.

Thanks to Sue for the photos.

Just Like Dock Work

New dock section sitting on top of boardwalk.

Pax doing his part, though it is pretty clear that he is not a dockshund.

Exemplary day—thunderstorm in the morning, then clearing to bright sun and a fearsome west-wind. A perfect day to be in harbor and not out battling the whitecaps.  With all the moisture, the Kagawong river continues tripping over itself in its rush to the bay, but today it had to muscle its way out past the westerly blow and incoming rollers.  After a slow start we made three sections of new dock.

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The Helmsman

O BE swift—
we have always known you wanted us.

We fled inland with our flocks,
we pastured them in hollows,
cut off from the wind
and the salt track of the marsh.

We worshipped inland— 
we stepped past wood-flowers,
we forgot your tang, we brushed wood-grass.

We wandered from pine-hills
through oak and scrub-oak tangles,
we broke hyssop and bramble,
we caught flower and new bramble-fruit
in our hair: we laughed 
as each branch whipped back, 
we tore our feet in half buried rocks
and knotted roots and acorn-cups.

We forgot——we worshipped, 
we parted green from green, 
we sought further thickets, 
we dipped our ankles 
through leaf-mould and earth, 
and wood and wood-bank enchanted us—-

and the feel of the clefts in the bark, 
and the slope between tree and tree—
and a slender path strung field to field 
and wood to wood 
and hill to hill 
and the forest after it.

We forgot—for a moment
tree-resin, tree-bark
sweat of a torn branch
were sweet to the taste.
 
We were enchanted with the fields,
the tufts of coarse grass—
in the shorter grass—
we loved all this.

But now, our boat climbs—hesitates—
     drops—
climbs—hesitates—crawls back—
climbs—hesitates—
O be swift—
we have always known you wanted us.

     —H.D.

Mildly Wild

Buttercups and anemones are blossoming.

Adaptive management in practice—the higher water has killed off much of the vegetarian that used to be growing on dry land, and vast quantities of it have washed ashore. Here we are using a fourchette a foin to clear it off the beach.

And in the afternoon we began building the new boardwalk and dock, necessitated by the higher water. We are using nicely engineered hardware, which is something not readily available in the wilderness.

Wilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by civilized human activity. It may also be defined as: "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet—those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with roads, pipelines or other industrial infrastructure."

So, clearly, here on Serendipity Lane we are not in wilderness. However, we do have wild. The expanses of water all around are truly wild (although affected by human induced things like quagga mussels). We have all kinds of Insects, and many other creatures who think of them as food. We have a great variety of birds and herps, and many mammals. Furthermore, the human population per square kilometer is tiny, at least at this time of year. What we lack, if we wanted to be a wilderness, are large carnivores.

I suspect that if humans were to remove themselves from this Island for the next 500 years the only detectable difference  would be more a frequent presence of bears and wolves (who are already on the Island in limited numbers, I am told).

Wilderness, I submit, is a place you have to walk into, where you have to leave behind all human contrivances. No cells, no wifi, no 911, no carryout, and only a limited amount of freeze-dried. Wilderness is where you are off on your own, using what you know, what you can do, and what you can hunt and gather—just like your distant ancestors.

Here on Serendip we have a road, hydro, and wifi—so not wilderness. But the dead skunk down by Geiser's has remained dead in the very same spot for the past six weeks, without any human intervention, and while it still smells, nothing is left but a backbone.

This morning at 4 a.m. according to the stone-age device known as an iPhone, the non-wilderness all around us was absolutely quiet. Not a breath, not a peep, although the pre-dawn sky was showing brightness. The silence was profound and remained, as the brightness increased. Then, after about half an hour (human time) some early rising bird made a tentative attempt at song, and then a tree frog remembered its evening ecstasy, and then a breeze came sneaking along the shore and started rustling the poplars.

Three hours later, when I got up and put on coffee, the sun was bright, the birds were winding down their morning's work, and a brawny wind was sending noisy surf along the shore.

Ah, Wilderness! 

Cobwebs on the Truck

A trip to Gore Bay to check out the new self-tailing winches on Heliotrope (and pick up a few groceries) along with a good stomp on the gas pedal cleared the cobwebs inside and out.
Foggy morning chill suggested a fire in the stove, but by afternoon the sun was bright and warm. 
Easing back into project mode—Sue on the landscape today, and me making picture frames. Apart from the more-or-less full time residents, we remain the only occupants of this stretch of paradise. All quiet on the Serendip.

The big water seems to be continuing its rise.

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Oread
Whirl up, sea—
whirl your pointed pines,
splash your great pines
on our rocks,
hurl your green over us,
cover us with your pools of fir.

     — H.D.     (Hilda Doolittle)

Back By The Bay

Driving through rain all day. The swales full here, so it looks like the Island got a lot of precip. Nice to arrive and find everything working (hydro, water system, internet) after a week of shutdown. And here is a short video of yesterday's championship softball game:

Family Tree

All five up in the air at once (with a little help). Delightful (and delicious) belated birthday picnic hosted by Bri and Renee. Seventy candles is pretty much a forest fire, but the grandkids very helpful in blowing them all out.

Grandkids

Summer in Whitewater

Just for the experience, Pax and I did our traditional big loop walk, but in the summertime. I got home dripping sweat, but Pax was able to take a dip in the creek about half way around. Quite sure we both prefer a winter loop.

There is something to be said for yellow peonies.

Later in the afternoon when the sun was not so intense I planted out a few remaining tomatoes along with a few peppers. The garden is now devoted to a smallish set of those vegetables amongst a substantial number of Oregon Homestead winter squash. All these plants were started out by, and most of them planted by, the master gardener at Sunny Slope Farm.

No beets this year because of the weed problem. And the fabric covering seems to be working well—squash growing well and not a weed in sight.

Busy

Errands in the morning, landscape help at Riverknoll in the afternoon (followed by dinner). Fine summer day, though hot working in the sun.

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A key term is practice: meaning a deliberate sustained and conscious effort to be more finely tuned to ourselves and to the way the actual existing world is. “The world,” with the exception of a tiny bit of human intervention, is ultimately a wild place. It is that side of our being which guides our breath and our digestion, and when observed and appreciated is a source of deep intelligence.
     —Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild