vancouver island & the pacific northwest

​​​​​​​The first golden rays of dawn stole into the bedroom.  It was a small room, masculine in its simplicity. The windows were plain, without coverings, and overlooked the sea.  The room itself was perhaps 10 feet by 15 feet.  In it was a table with several well-worn books upon it, a military footlocker, a number of hooks upon the walls on which clothing could be hung, and a large bed, upon which a man lay sleeping. 

Asleep until the light hit his face, Etom quickly awoke fully, his dark eyes opening and taking in the room.  Tall, perhaps six foot four, he rose, lithe as a panther, and padded noiselessly over to where his cloths were hung.  He pulled on his work shirt, barely getting it over his broad shoulders and chiseled chest, and pulled up work pants over his long, flat muscled legs, to cinch them with a wide leather belt that encompassed his narrow waist and sculptured torso.  

Etom pushed back his long, dark, curly hair, with its touch of gray at the temples, from his forehead.  His high cheekbones and aquiline nose should not have fit so well with his wide, sensitive mouth.  The ancient scar over his right eye should have left him an unbalanced look.  Yet, somehow, whether it was his quiet self-assurance, or the look of intelligence that glittered from his wide-set dark eyes under his deep brows, Etom was the quintessence of masculinity. Had Michelangelo sculpted David as a mature man, the result would have been Etom. 

He laced up his rugged boots, donned his jacket, and moved out from his cottage into the cool early morning.  Etom knew the task before him was nigh impossible: no man, no matter how strong or sure, could hope to complete it.  Yet, he could not, would not, fail to try.  He would put every ounce of his sinew, muscle and bone to the trial.  His neighbor, Leda, was a young widow with five children, and she desperately needed his assistance.  While he had provided her and her kith with the extra bounty he gathered from the sea and forest, it was not enough.  Leda’s youngest child had come down with that terrible fever.  For two months, his life had been on the line, and Leda stayed by his bedside throughout, wiping off his brow and feeding him as much broth as she was able.  

Leda could not, and did not, let her son, whom she had borne scant hours after the death of his father in a tragic accident at sea, leave this life as well.  The child’s fever finally broke, and he slowly regained his strength.  However, in battling for his life, Leda by needs surrendered her employment as teacher, and her mortgage fell behind.  She was now returned to the schoolhouse and at work, and again was making her current payments, but there was nothing she could do about the three delinquent sums.  The land she owned, the land that she and her husband had bought with their very last penny as an investment for their and their family’s future, was far more valuable than the mortgage balance, but Leda had no resources now, no family, since the sudden loss of her husband.  She feared she would lose the home and land, and that she and her young children would be thrown from it and left with no recourse but the poor house.  

Mr. Montague Cooper, the banker, had come out to her house the previous afternoon, and he told her this indeed was to happen.  A hard-hearted stick of a man, cold eyed, in his 60s, he was not one to fail to enforce an unconscionable agreement, certainly not one that benefitted him.  He told Leda that she must bring the mortgage current, or the bailiffs would remove her and her family, and hold whatever meager possessions she had as payment towards the debt.  Leda pleaded with him, asking if there was any exception or concession upon which she could maintain the only roof her family had.  Cooper coldly smiled.  “Leda, you have 10 days to either pay in full, or move out.  There is no excuse nor exception, none whatsoever, none except for the mulch clause.” 

Leda, grasping at straws, begged him to explain.  “Certainly,” he said in a tone redolent with undercurrents of both malice and self-satisfaction, “as is customary, your mortgage contains a provision that if you can spread 20 yards of mulch over your land in four days, that is 96 hours, the bank will simply add your last three payments on to the end of your mortgage.  However, no one can do this.  You, Leda, are small and slight. You of all people have no chance at all.  If you choose this option, you will fail, and instead of having ten days of continuing shelter, you will be thrown from the land at the end of the fourth day.  If you wish to invoke this clause, I will make arrangements immediately, but you are merely hastening your own departure.”  

Leda nonetheless insisted upon the trial.  Though small and petite, Leda’s fiery red hair spoke of her fighting spirit, the lack of quit that was within her.  She was perhaps five foot two, with almond shaped green eyes, high cheekbones and pale skin, a light dusting of freckles upon the bridge of her nose; Even in home-spun, her femininity shone forth like a beacon.  Leda still had the carriage and grace of a young woman, her shapely bosom and slender hips belying her motherhood of five children.  Not even the despair and depression of her current situation could dull her beauty, her presence.  However, this paid no account in the matter of money.  Cooper, with a dry laugh, told Leda he would have the mulch delivered at first light the next morning, and departed the premises. 

Leda sank to the floor, sobbing, fearing she had accomplished nothing but to advance the date of her family’s departure from the only home they knew.  In her despair, she did not see her oldest child, Sarah, leave the house and run to Etom’s cottage, past the tool shed with his wheelbarrow, shovel, and long contractor-grade metal rake….       

[Dear reader - please finish off the story as you think best.  I know you will find this hard to believe but I've not actually read a "bodice-ripper" so I have no idea what becomes of Etom and Leda.  I suspect there are several misunderstandings, chance events occur that have unanticipated outcomes, but that they live happily ever after.  I do promise, though, that this is the last piece of mulch I'll inflict upon you,  Tom]
 

xxxxxx

The Indentured Gardener

Many people find great joy in gardening.  For these good souls, working with the soil is a delight, they find harmony and happiness in toiling amongst the greenery.   I’m not a member of this crowd, however.  As far as I’m concerned, the ultimate gardening tool is a checkbook.  You can buy realistic plastic plants with a checkbook.  You can order gravel and concrete too, to cover up any hint of natural green that might otherwise escape.  If worse comes to worst, you can pay other people to garden for you.

I am explaining this to you because my spouse and I have an arrangement.  I can fly out to our house on Vancouver Island, even when she can’t join me, but only if I can be useful while I’m out there.  This usually involves me doing things with tools, lifting, toting, and otherwise engaging in strenuous physical labor.  Such was my mid-May 2016 trip.  Gardening was the overarching theme for the journey.

 

Earlier this spring, we had a retaining wall built, complete with terraces, leading down to a lower level in need of planting.  In what can only be considered a mixed blessing, one of our oldest friends is a master plantsman (take that, David Buncrest, you’re old).  His spouse is our architect.  David insisted, or at least that is how I recall it, that he would design our landscaping and garden, gratis.  This is an amazingly generous offer, since David charges the rich and famous up the wazoo for this very same service. 

The downside is that David has standards, and they don’t include plastic plants, astro-turf or the use of weeds as a focal point.  He in fact designed the aforesaid retaining wall, or more accurately, the three separate retaining walls with terraces, as well as the upper and lower paver areas.  Looking up at it, and from the right angle, the assemblage looks a bit like a ziggurat, stepping down towards the water, with a long flight of stairs running down its center.  I envision Aztecs priests, ripping the hearts out of vanquished warriors, and tossing the bodies down to the bottom.  Hmmm.  Well, on to the gardening.

​

Day One:

 

Sure, I may have an over - active imagination, but the retaining walls, terraces and garden area are nonetheless in place, and are waiting for me to do something with them. My job is to translate David’s instructions on planting to this now blank canvas.  His instructions as to the lower level were succinct: “Get decorative grasses, 75 or so one-gallon containers, plant them.”  I am not left wholly adrift.  He also gives me the formal names of two different types of grasses that he wants in the mix, and he referenced a group of pampas grasses for the area by the walk-out door, but of course these names are all Greek, or - to be more accurate – Latin, to me.  

I check the list of local nurseries, visit websites, and find a family owned nursery center known for its decorative grasses.  Well, it doesn’t get any better than this, I think, so I drive out to the far outskirts of town and pull in.  

I find the enterprise’s matriarch, dispensing plant wisdom to one and all, and solicit her assistance.  She looks me over, and she appears unimpressed with what she sees, as she immediately asks me who is helping me with the project.  She obviously hopes that I have a plantsman nearby, to save me from myself, but ultimately she accepts the fact that David lives in Washington, isn’t with me, isn’t coming anytime soon, and lets it go at that. 

 
She listens patiently to me, looks over the names of plants David has recommended, looks over the photos I’ve taken of the area into which the plants are to go, and then she issues her decrees.  First, we will outline the pavers by planting two dozen Mondo Green somethings or another.  Next, we will add 24 Japanese forest grasses, with their variegated golden leaves, but only because the land is so situated that they will get some afternoon shade.  She observes that these forest grasses will be more bushy and higher than the Mondo Green plants.  We then will add 24 Skyracers, to grow tall and true, maintaining a light green color until turning gold in the fall, bearing straight stalks with tufts.  As the final embellishment, we will try three variants of a particular pampas grass of which she approves.  I accept her edicts, albeit noting with some sorrow that the “we” she is using only applies to the selection of the plants, not their installation.  Time now for their individual selection.  We go over to the greenhouses.

 
I pick out a number of the designated plants willy-nilly.  She, on the other hand, choses plants much like a proud mother, sending out her best and brightest.  All in all, I end up with two of those two-wheeled nursery wagons, each completely covered in plants, and a third wagon that is about half full of plants, along with a bill for about $800 Cdn.  My muse asks if I can transport these all in one trip, or will I be coming back?.  She doesn’t realize that I’ve rented a Prius “V,” whichis the station wagon version of the classic Prius hybrid liberal-mobile, and this vehicle has more space than you can shake a stick at.  Environmentally friendly and able to carry small forests in a single bound.  One of her minions and I load up the car.  Plenty of space.  I could add a small tree or two.  However, while driving back to our house, all I can see out of the rear view mirror is an absolute jungle behind me.  I’m pretty sure I hear Tarzan and maybe an elephant trumpeting in the back.                 

I return home and unload.  All my new green children, lined up in rows, waiting to be brought down to the lower level for internment.  My trusty wheelbarrow and I transport them down, about ten plants per trip.  In an effort towards organization, I take the tag off one specimen of each type of plant, go upstairs and tape them onto a sheet of paper.  I add whatever relevant info I find on the internet about each plant variety.  I draw a rough approximation of the area to be planted, and sketch in a prospective placement pattern.

I take my chart down to the lower level.  The plants seem to recognize my uncertainty.  Perhaps they sense my fear.  Possibly I am anthropomorphizing the situation.  I start with the little edging plants, and try placing them, in their pots, along the edges of the pavers.  David has given instructions that they are to be planted at intervals of “two feet, center – to - center,” although whose feet I should use, and what center – to - center means remains a mystery to me.  I find I either have too many plants, or not enough, depending upon how and where I space them. 
 

I move the plants about some more.  I decide I better try placing the middle plants, to see how these look as part of the overall picture, so I start setting them out as well.  I dither, I change directions.  I decide it is now also time to place the background plants.  Time passes. I walk up the steps and look over what I’ve done.  I go onto the deck and look down.  I bring a folding chair down to paver level, sit and look about from it.  I re-adjust plants.  I finally decide the plants are as well adjusted as they’re going to be (and that I am not responsible for their happiness at anyrate), and I should just start planting them and be done with it.
 

The good news is this initial messing about uses up enough time that I only have about an hour and a half left for planting today.  I take my wheelbarrow back up to the front yard, and load it with dirt.  This pile is the remnants of all that new and expensive designer soil we bought last fall.  I bring my short handled spade with me.  I am now ready to start digging holes.  How tough can this be?  After all, this is the area we put in all that new dirt last summer, and that I came back last fall to cover with mulch.  Piece of cake, I figure.
 

Well, maybe not.  Again, let me note that Vancouver Island is one of the most fertile places on earth, at least for plants (the residents don’t seem any more fertile here than anywhere else).  Over the last winter, and with the need for heavy machinery this spring to construct the retaining walls/monument to past civilizations, the soil has somehow become compacted and also sprouted multiple rocks and clay.  I prepare for my inaugural thrust.  I slam the shovel into the ground.  It bounces right back at me.  After a few more similar efforts, with little to show for it, I try a slightly different tack.  I push down on the shovel, and rotate it, like a drill.  I pierce the mantle, and start into the rock and clay strata.  I pry, I push, I widen the hole so I can get the edge of the shovel under the inevitable rocks.  Ten minutes later, I have a hole about 10 inches in diameter, and maybe a foot deep.  OK, 75 plants, 10 minutes per plant, 750 minutes = 12 ½ hours of non-stop planting.  Won’t this be fun?
 

I put a bit of the good dirt in the bottom of the hole, force the plant and its root ball out of the plastic container it has come in (a task akin to shucking oysters, it turns out, but not as immediately rewarding), plop the plant into the hole, spread a little more dirt and possibly some joy, around it, along with a representative sample of rocks and clay, and “Voilà, one down, 74 to go.”  Repeat.  Repeat again.  I open up my first blister about the second plant in.  I put a Band-Aid on it and continue on.  Shortly thereafter, I have to put another Band-Aid on, since the first one falls off.  I learn my first work-around for non-sticking Band-Aids.  Duck tape.  It is much more durable.  Ultimately, I do get in fourteen of the little green buggers before it is time to call it quits, as it is high tide and my kayak is calling.  I leave the rest in situ, and finish the day in non-gardening pursuits.

 

Day 2:

 

I get up at the crack of dawn, since that’s when the sun comes streaming into our bedroom.  I head downstairs, drink coffee, power up the laptop, and do work-related stuff and otherwise delay as long as possible before going outside.  However, by 9:30 I’ve run out of all excuses so I trudge back out, shovel in hand.  I finish off the edging plants in about an hour and a half.  I go back up to the top of the wall, then go back onto the deck, and look down over my efforts.  I decide to do a little re-arranging of the middle plants.  I fuss, moving them a bit here, a hair over there, sure that there is a perfect arrangement that I am just about to find.

 
I become satisfied, or perhaps bored, so I start in on planting the middling class of grasses as well.  Each new hole is an adventure.  Some are collections of rock and clay, some of mostly just soil.  The initial thrust into the ground may either bounce back into my face, or sink in to the stops of the blade.  I find myself re-arranging spacing as I go along.  As the afternoon goes on, black clouds start pouring over one of the nearby mountain passes.  I hear thunder in the distance.  OK, I can live with this. 

 
About 3:30 pm, the first drops of rain tentatively fall.  About 3:33 pm, the skies open up.  I wheel the wheelbarrow, and various tools, under the deck and decide it is now time for my own shower.  I’ve managed to get in another 50 plants for the day.  I eat a very late lunch, and sit out on the roofed portion of the deck and watch rain bouncing off the leaves of the grasses.  Thanks, oh ye weather gods.  I have a legitimate excuse to stop digging.

 

Day 3:

 

Again, up at the crack of dawn, but not exactly outside until farther on into the morning.  I only have fifteen plants to go.  I finish off at about noon.  So, now all the green stuff is in.  What next?  Turns out I still have a bit of mulch left over in a pile up by the front of the house.  OK, I tote it down below, and spread it amongst the grasses.  Another hour passes.

 

Now, it’s time for me to dish the dirt.  The terraces adjacent to the walls are going to be used for vegetables.  They need to be filled with new, high quality, dirt.  The pavers on top sit above the ground.  They too need dirt in the areas around them.  Fortunately, I have dirt.  About 10 yards of it, sitting out front.  Oh joy, once more it is wheelbarrow and shovel time. 
 

I load up the wheelbarrow, and fill up the area behind the highest terrace. I do this again.  And again, and a whole lot more “agains.”  Having raised the surface level up to the top of the first wall, I continue on, now able to push the wheelbarrow to the wall’s very edge, so I can dump the load of soil over onto the terrace immediately below. Once this middle terrace is heaped high with dirt, I take my handy-dandy heavy-duty construction grade rake and I rake the soil over the top of it, and down to the one beneath it.  When all are filled, I smooth out the dirt in the terraces with the rake, and, for the final detail work, the push broom. 
 

Back at the top, I start building a wooden bulwark on the downhill side with a few stakes and some planks left over from various projects.  I fill in the areas around the top, and around the pavers from the deck.  This reduces the visible pile of dirt out front, to a flat area, with at most perhaps a half-yard of soil left.  Whew, done.  Now all I have to do is figure out how to keep the plants watered.

 

So, back to my laptop in the house, where I watch the video of how to program our sprinkler system.  Yes, for the first time in our lives, we have a sprinkler system.  More thanks to David, who has assured us that the plants he is bringing into our lives will need constant tending.  Another year of retirement savings shot to Hell, but it really is a lovely system, with valves, sprays, drip-tubes, piping junctures, and a control panel much like what one would find in the space shuttle. 
 

After a few run-throughs of the video, I head out to the garage, where the control panel is installed, to try it out.  What I don’t yet know, since our wonderful new system has seven different zones, is which one covers the back area.  I try them one by one.  Some of the zones are fairly obvious – big rotating sprinkler heads that swish about.  Some are just drip lines, and I have no way of knowing which one is which except by running around the house to see what is happening (actually, as it turns out, there is a very good way to know, since the nice man who installed the system wrote out a list of which zone covers what, but I haven’t found this yet - I of course find this list the next day).
 

I finally identify the correct zone, and watch it sprinkle its magic over our plants.  I program the system so it will water the grasses twice a week, which our local nursery owner says should be fine.  I put away the tools, take a shower, take four ibuprofen, and sit out on the deck.  On balance, this sitting out on the deck stuff, with a cold beer, is much more pleasant than the digging holes and hauling dirt stuff.  I’m now done with the gardening portion for this particular trip.  On to my next tasks…

​

 

 
XXXXXXX
 

######

...and, since I was writing on the topic, and channelling Hemingway at the same time...

...Finally, proving that I really should quit before I totally leave the rails, here is me channeling Harlequin romances....

Damn you, Buncrest, Damn you.

Hi David:

I have met your mulch, and it is mine.  All 20 cubic yards of it have been spread out upon the soil, one shovel full at a time.  The time it took to finish this task allowed me an opportunity to reflect upon why you set it before me.  My conclusion is as follows - you hate me.  Obviously, Vancouver Island, and Mildew Shores in particular, head the list of nature’s most fecund locales.  It’s a freaking rain forest out here.  Plants grow so easily, and so large, there are well documented stories of school busses that stopped to pick up children, and were immediately overwhelmed by the local foliage, dragged off the road and pulled into the forest primeval, never to be seen again. 

You nonetheless wanted me to bust my butt putting chopped-up cedar bark on top of dirt you made us buy by the dump truck load.  OK, I did it.  The mulch covers all. I note that I followed your planting scheme, putting the laurels along the border of Wiley’s house, where some of the soil is the deep, expensive, loam you made us buy, but the rest is clay and rock.  Takes a wee bit of effort to dig into that ground.  Sure, glacial till, you say.  Rocks brought from the far North and left at the ice age thaw.  Glacial till my ass.  This is the result of some other equally perverse plantsman having gone through the area in earlier times, and planting seed rock.  Even the damn rocks grow here – all water, all temperate climate.  What the hell was the need for this mulch?

You are attempting to break me, that’s all I can think.  You somehow find the vision of an old man, one who became a lawyer simply because he was utterly unable to engage in manual labor (wait a sec, isn’t that the name of that guy Donald Trump wants to deport - I know its Manuel something or another) amusing.  For four days I took the shovel, scooped up the mulch, dumped it into the wheelbarrow, trundled the wheelbarrow to an as-yet uncovered locale, and dumped it out, so that I could then take my very heavy contractor grade rake and spread the mulch carefully over the surface.  Tell me, you know how many wheelbarrows it takes to move just ONE yard of mulch?  I do.  The answer is way too many.  Multiply that by twenty, and it is REALLY way too many.  Add the fact that it was raining about half the time, and it also was WAY TOO DAMP.

So, you have stock in ibuprofen?  If so, you’ll have a merry Christmas this year.  You shilling for chiropractors?  You got a nephew or niece becoming a physical therapist?  All I can say is I will find a way to get back at you.  You’ll see.  Hmmm.  Maybe it will be a ........[Dear reader - please make up, and mentally insert, appropriate threat here - thanks,Tom].

​​​​​​​​​

Minerva’s final voyage.

100 is a fine round number of years to live.  A full century.  Minerva, born in a Saskatchewan farm town with outdoor plumbing and kerosene lighting, finished her five score years with en suite baths and halogen lights, in a community with highways, shipping, and a major airport.

However, we people are finite, and Minerva was one of us.  The end ultimately came for her, and was bravely faced.  Her family gathered about her as she passed on to her just rewards.  Minerva had directed that she be cremated, perhaps an unusual choice for someone from the Canadian prairies, where tradition held winter corpses stacked until spring thaw and internment. Minerva, however, had lived her final years on Vancouver Island, looking out over the Salish Sea, and she directed that her ashes be distributed into it.  She had watched her contemporaries pass on, undergo cremation, and she had watched the beautiful glimmer and sparkle as their ashes danced upon the waves, before sinking down to become one with the ocean. 

With cremation, Minerva’s remains were reduced to perhaps four pounds, and took up less than a square foot of space.  Her family, having gathered in honor of her passing, now addressed the issue of how to send Minerva out onto the waters.  Putting her in a coffee can and surreptitiously dumping her over the side of the local ferry somehow seemed indecorous.  With investigation, they learned the funeral industry has a solution – the “scattering urn” - a paper, gel or salt container in which a loved one’s “cremains’ can be sent out onto the waters, while its structure dissolves and slowly looses its cargo.

However, such a container, made of nothing more than fancy paper, cost $250 at the local funeral parlor.  Certainly, not a huge sum in and of itself, but one that would have struck Minerva as unacceptably expensive for a simple one-way voyage.  Her family could no more pay such a sum for their own convenience than they could refuse to honor their matriarch. 

They elected to work together, and to make their own cargo craft.  Papier-mâché was their choice, and their core material was a tiger striped orange paper, a color and pattern favored by Minerva in her lifetime.  Minerva’s daughter and two teenage grandchildren lovingly assembled her funereal craft, and a time was set at which all would gather at the beach as the tide freshened, let loose the dearly departed, and then remember her with love and respect.  The day came, the fragile ship launched, and prayers and memorials were said as the tide carried Minerva off into the setting sun.

The family spent the evening together remembering Minerva, confident in the knowledge they had done their best to honor her, that they had sent her off with dignity and reverence.

Next morning, as the family awoke and looked out upon the waters, glowing in the dawn’s light and alive with sea birds and marine animals, Minerva returned.  Her ship, to turn a phrase, had indeed “come in.”  Bobbing perhaps fifty yards from the shoreline, riding the tide, Minerva’s craft gaily danced across the water.  Apparently papier-mâché has different qualities from the other papers, gels or salts used for such vessels. 

The alarm was raised.  What to do?  Unlike a note in a bottle, a beachcomber who might happen upon and open this package at the shoreline, would not find a treasure map inside, but a very different surprise.  What if a beachcomber’s dog arrived first?  Suddenly, the brilliant and sensitive arrangements for Minerva’s departure from this world ran the risk of becoming the stuff of farce.

What to do, indeed?  Without a small craft to send out and retrieve the vessel, could this problem be dealt with from shore?  Perhaps someone with a surf rod could cast out that far, sinking the craft with a well-aimed weight or lure.  Perhaps one of the grandchildren could fire arrows from shore, puncturing the craft and allowing its cargo to disperse to the depths.  Could anyone swim out through the waters to reach it, and perhaps plug it below its waterline? 

Initial plans were discussed and found wanting.  Less conventional approaches were offered.  Time passed as the family agitated over the issue, and the ceaseless tide retreated again, taking the tiny vessel out with it.  Certainly all shore-based options for dealing with the problem receded, along with the boat 

With Minerva again sailing off into the sunset, the family could only hope the problem would cure itself.  Surely the craft would now deteriorate, allowing both paper pulp and Minerva to slowly settle into the ocean, where her fundamental grains could roam free for eternity.

The next morning, both the tide and Minerva rolled back in.  Minerva’s craft was perhaps a bit bedraggled, but nonetheless still riding the waves out in front of the house.  Steps needed taking.  What would Minerva have said, were she to wash up upon the shore and a stranger find her reliquary and open it?  Would not she find this as unacceptable as being undressed on the beach?  

Whether the wind shifted, the tide changed later, or our first watcher arose more early, Minerva was nearer to shore on this second morning. Still within the shallows, it took but a few moments to wade out and seize the craft.  Our early morning privateer, having captured her bounty, now faced her own moment of truth.  Should she bring the vessel back to port, rouse the family, and restage the funeral mass, considering the difficulties to date, or might it be better to scuttle the ship where captured, letting its cargo sink into the shallows, while taking and hiding the sodden but still floating shell in the recycling bin?

The story ends here, and the reader may opt for whatever outcome he or she wishes.   Certainly, the public message is that Minerva was lovingly and successfully launched into the afterlife.  Whether her ashes settled in 100 fathoms, or one meter, of sea water, the solvent powers of the mother liquid that gives us all life will send her essence travelling forever, her constituent elements to be reconstituted in future life and structure.   We are all mortal, but our fundaments are eternal.  Our spirit lives forever.    

​
deficit omne quod nasciture

                                                                                ######

​

From CBC News, March 3, 2016

Bottle of Biker Bob's ashes found on beach — again 

Ashes of Hugh Robert Nisbet — better known as “Biker Bob” — were discovered on Clayoquot Island 

By Liam Britten, CBC News Posted: Mar 03, 2016 7:24 AM PT Last Updated: Mar 03, 2016 7:24 AM PT

​

Bethany James holds the bottle that contains the ashes of Biker Bob on Feb. 20. That bottle was thought to have gone out to sea, but washed up not far from Tofino on Clayoquot Island. (Caleb Harding/Facebook)

For Biker Bob, the journey continues.

The ashes of Nanaimo's Hugh Robert Nisbet — better known as "Biker Bob" — were discovered on Clayoquot Island after an apparently unsuccessful attempt to send him across the Pacific Ocean.

"I was coming down the beach on the ATV … noticed a bottle with a message in it, picked it up and realized it was Biker Bob," discoverer Dave Walton told All Points West host Robyn Burns.

"I heard the story of him and just put two and two together. I thought it was pretty neat."

On Feb. 21, Caleb Harding and Bethany James discovered the bottle of Bob's ashes on China Beach. They resolved to set him loose the next weekend so he could continue the journey his widow, Maudine Pervil, sent him on two years ago. 

Pervil said the original plan was to take him to the lake near their cabin, sprinkle his ashes on his canoe, set the canoe loose and sink it by shooting it with his rifle.

Inclement weather got in the way of that plan, however, so the ashes were placed in a bottle and set off to sea near Nanaimo.

Now, after Bob's returned to shore twice, it's Walton's turn. He says he's not taking any chances. 

"We'll take him a mile off shore so he'll be good and free then," he said. "He could head far north. Maybe the next time he's found is in Alaska."

But first, he might treat Bob one last time. 

"It just so happens I have a Harley, so I was thinking of taking him for a ride," Walton said. "Someone already found him and took him for a beer at a biker bar, I believe, in Victoria. so I was thinking of doing somewhat similar the same thing, and setting him free again."

 

 

It was a fine day, a day in which a brave man would feel strong.  The mulch was delivered.  Twenty yards.  Cedar bark.  Dumped onto a pile by a snarling diesel powered tandem-axle truck that was covered in the scars and dents of industry.  The old man looked at the mulch.  The mulch looked back, challenging him, saying without words “do you, puny man with your wheelbarrow, shovel, and contractor-grade long and wide metal rack, believe you can conquer me?”  

The old man thought of the night before.  The scotch had been good.  The rum better.  He had slept deeply.  Now it was morning.  He knew himself, and knew what he must do.  With his shovel, he thrust deep within the pile.  He withdrew the blade, covered in mulch, and deposited it into the wheelbarrow.  Again and again he thrust.  Pivoting upon his hip, throwing the shovel’s contents into the barrow, time after time until it was full.  He then gripped the handles, and walked the wheelbarrow down, down to the lower level of the land.  He emptied it, climbed back with the empty barrow, and returned to the pile.  Relentlessly, he attacked, filling the barrow, taking it away to dump and then return.  When he had brought sufficient mulch below, he took his rake, long and wide, and spread the mulch over the soils.  The mulch was good. …….

The story below is true. It was told to me by my neighbours at a dinner party one evening, although I may have added a slight "shine" to it, as Samuel Clements would say.  However, the article that follows it, as reported by CBC News on March 3, 2016, suggests how little "shine" was actually necessary.  Apparently, my Vancouver Island neighbours are comfortable with less traditional funereal rites.  As I tell my poor, long-suffering, work colleagues:  "Vancouver Island - Weird and​ ​wonderful."

​This piece is from an email I sent to a friend of ours, a landscape designer and horticulturist who has been kindly helping us with planning the plantings around our new house.  Ever the perfectionist, he had come out to visit us in September of 2015, after having given us detailed instructions as to how he wanted our landscape terra-formed before his arrival, a task requiring various forms of heavy equipment and dump truck loads of remarkably expensive soil.  Upon his arrival, he decided he needed more dirt, more terra-forming, and the assurances that our retirement savings would be depleted by the upcoming year.  He did not, however, think we needed to plant yet, or to do anything else with the newly laid soil, at least until the following spring.  In October, however, he changed his mind.  He thought it would be best if I returned to our home, and covered the soil with some sort of top coat.  I did. The below email is my thanks to him.  The threat initially included in the email has been removed, and names have been changed to protect the guilty.

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