Memories of sun, sea and naked brown bodies

Early September, autumn lacing the valley mist. We’re downstairs in the cabin, perched between the meadow and the creek, dark now the black night curled against the windows and the heat like treacle from the stove. Two pale-bellied mice for company, upstairs, up the ladder-stair, the last squeaks from Freya as sleep rises log by log up the walls of our little home. Outside, somewhere very close, snug in their own spot, the rain now stopped, the grizzly sow and her two cubs. We saw them again this morning just across the way, close enough you feel you know them, maybe because you know they know you, the smell of us, the smoke rising from our chimney, the pisses we’ve been carefully placing about, our human thumps and bumps and somewhat strained somewhat merry sing-alongs as we let them know we’re heading for the outhouse. They’re not bothered, we’re just a part of their world here in Precipice Valley, British Columbia, the soopalally berries ain’t what they should be, but the grass is still good grazing in the meadow.

A handful of days, a long trundle of a trek in Granny White Dragon (purring wonder), north north up into the edges, and a far cry indeed from the fair isle of Lasqueti, tucked in the midst of the Gulf Islands of BC, which is where we floated for four weeks from mid August. Our home was with Bonnie at Mystic Ridge Farm, and time passed slow like the hot sun day after day against our necks …

Lasqueti, off-grid, dirt-tracked and without a car ferry, is the pile of glimmering necklaces, a dragon’s hoard, that Jess brings along to the beach mid-afternoon. Another party (any excuse will do, say, the sun is shining, or some logs got cut, or it’s a birthday) and folk will gather, naked kids, naked adults, the sparkle of the sea and a bunch of hand-made beautiful necklaces from which to choose one that sits against brown skin and shines with precious stones –

Friendship .... We’ve chosen to stay for good long chunks in the places we’ve travelled to, and it’s worked. Connection comes with time, and sharing. And after four weeks on the island we’ve made some special links. With Bonnie, tough yet easy-going as it comes, a farmer and an artist, up for a good tune or a shared coffee around a simple table, ageless, young-spirited witch with a house made of shakes and an open heart. With Wayn, her hunk from the other side of the track, mercurial jack of all trades riven by passion, buzzing words and hopes and despair at the state of our place, beneath it all planter of trees and giver of hugs, true hugs. With Laz and Georgia from higher up the hill, who’d bundle us all into the back of the truck for another bumpy ride is search of a party, chasing baby turkeys with a butterfly net, and leaving Kai gasping with pleasure (‘LOOK, LOOK’) at their arrival on the farm. And then, like ripples from Mystic Ridge, or the great rising whiff of the organic garlic crop that we slept above in the barn, worked upon in the morning, ate in roaring chunks whenever the urge rose, the friendship of the beach bunch that we would often meet up with in the afternoons, welcoming us into their world, even their weddings; the caring, shining kids looking out for ours, alive to the world; the holidaying doctor who takes a look at the bump that Becs got on coral, then shares his birthday cake and invites us all to supper; the second-generation Scottish clan who dig out the pipes and improvise a Ceilidh by candle-light. And Rena, in her 80s, refugee from East Germany, who sleeps atop a giant rock and merrily shares her garden with the deer.

Music .... It’s a small island, 12 miles long, a population of 300 odd, and it throbs music, bouncing from the tinder-dry arbutus every-which-way. The mermaids feel the vibrations out at sea, from the most eclectic, eccentric marching band you could dream up, complete with attendant jugglers and fine hats, or from visiting minstrels who crash in Bonnie’s barn and jam late beneath the stars. Or simply Sarah lying on hot rocks on a beach playing a guitar.

The farm ..... By the end of our stint this beautiful spot had given us its rhythm. It’s a rare open patch in the thick forest of Lasqueti, tucked in below Mystic Ridge, with orchards and meadows and deep precious ponds. When Bonnie was about, the kids would be over at her place first thing, spring to their steps, trotting about with her in the circle of tasks. And when she wasn’t, away down south for stints on art courses, that circle became ours – out the barn as the bats went to bed, through the gate to free the chickens and gather eggs, turning on that spigot for the crop, this one for the garden, getting the porridge bubbling and the coffee brewing, creeping up on mother turkey with her clutch of eggs just about due, sticking a finger in the greenhouse soil, maybe in need of another dousing, saying good morning to Bruv, the horse that later the kids would ride bareback, spotting a tree frog slight as a leaf, feeding the rabbits, shifting the sprinklers about, yanking the generator into life. Then taking breath. In the beautiful open house, windows off ready to paint, the farm spilling in. Time for breakfast, like the ones I remember from days spent on a Cornish farm as a child, a farm breakfast after the first shift, the good feeling of the day rooted, and time to plot what’s now to get done.

Bill .... Been building a boat for 20 years. First he cleared a patch of land, thick with spruce and fir. Then he built himself a huge shed, for the boat. Then, like an afterthought, a shack within the shed, a cabin of a place to live in, with a tight kitchen and a bed above. And then he began to build his boat, a ‘China Junk’, no plans but an amazing eye and a bunch of well-thumbed photos of the one that’s sailed before, famous in the Gulf seas. And a mission. Nail by nail it’s grown beside him, dwarfing his ‘home’. You see now that his surrogate living space is almost already cast adrift, like the launcher on a rocket, because the boat is near there. It’s got no masts nor a name, but the spaces wait, forward, main, mizzen, sunk deep toward the riveted keel. Bill is on the home straight, carving gorgeous stanchions from small caches of cast-off tropical hard wood boiled long in linseed oil. They’ll sail far further than he. And soon, maybe even this coming summer, he’ll board. And wait. Patiently, it’s been 20 years after all, he’s an old man now, with time. For the water to rise, for first his shack to crack and splinter, castaway. And then the beams and struts that hold his dream erect will loosen, and she will rise graceful, and the masts will be of cedar.

Or so anyone would hope. It is quite something to have a dream. And something else entirely to bridge the gulf between fearing and fulfilling it.

The ocean ….

Rib

Poets write a lot, such trails
to leave like otters
on bleached driftwood. But what
of breath and body? Sit
here, for just a moment
(it needn’t be long)
your breath falls
in flakes, layered as the rising
tide, breath deep.

A splash upon the settled ark
of ocean, this vanishing
swept back beneath again, here
is my body
(do you see the furrow)

I am not alone. My fingers
rest upon the sandstone, here
beside the water, the rock
beats and the sea
exhales. In the shape of my shadow
under the moon
my breath is close and soft and
simple. Beneath the arch
of my foot
there lives this precious space, cupped
like an egg, or an opening,
or perhaps a word. So for now

I’ll reach far as I can, ravelling
unravelling across the sea, strong
as I’ve ever been. Just
for a while
about the humming bird
held in the ribs of the world.


A trace left .... We got an email from Annie (green-fingered wonder of the Methow Valley, Washington State) just a couple of days back, saying that she thought of us every close of day, as she shut the gate in the deer fence. This whole adventure would be so different if we weren’t working in the places we’ve stopped by. It’s that sharing again, getting wedged into a spot as food and hard work and conversation round the table at the end of the day are pooled. In Lasqueti, often, with rhubarb wine. And there we leave links that some time in days to come will have a Lasquetian shouting ‘knock knock’ at our door in Wester Brae, and restored windows at Mystic Ridge that will last some more years again, and a few fewer stones in the fields that Wayn will sow, and garlic in our pot.

Luce and Amelie ..... They arrived off the ferry with the tin-pot look and the charicature grumpy captain (does he spit tobacco?) as if 8000 miles and travel through the sky and a whole other world of higgledy streets in Tufnell Park, London were nothing but a gangplank’s hike. Freya and Kai racing through the dust to greet them, and we bundled them into Bonnie’s ramshackle van and homeward to Mystic Ridge. There, Lucy’s fingers were soon stained rich with blackberry juice, the plumpest ever, (this island grows anything and everything, even a banana, easy as a triffid), getting stuck in, helping with the windows, and Amelie diving for the sea. It was a very special visit, a week on Lasqueti, then over to Vancouver Island, all together, to hike in the Strathcona wilderness area. Like a foundation stone. We’re a good band.

Make-believe ...... Freya and Kai, 2 cheetahs on a hot afternoon, mum and dad working on some fence stobs: ‘ … and all the deer were killed, no all the deer were here but if they went past this line they were killed. I killed one little deer and then I threw it here and it whizzed into your spot. I caught a fat daddy one and they’re the juciest ones. Then I jumped over the gate. And then you sneaked through the hole again ….’

Becs painting ..... Carving out some time at last, springboard in the space and comfort of the farm and the rocky coast just beyond, the hidden corners that catch the light. Measuring time by the moon not the watch. Beginning to explore.

The wedding ..... Well actually two. Both at Squitty Bay, at the south end of the island, beneath the sheltering sky, fringed by sparkle. Kirsty (yet another of Scottish descent) and Alan were married in a good sea breeze, Rena’s wreaths jostling about their heads and dreams, and the locals out in their finest tattoos, bouffant shirts, hotch-potch frocks. Colour everywhere. It was our last day on the island, Luce and Amelie and the four of us were heading for the hills again, and what a fitting farewell tubor-blast it was. The party that night had the whole bunch of us dancing our sweaty socks off to the belly-groove of Lasqueti’s very own Marimba band, the pleasure of pulling beer in a flowery apron, the greetings the connections the fierce happiness of connection and all those limitless swims in the never-ending.

And that’s how we left, early next morning, with hangovers and a flat tyre.