I live in a neighbourhood that is called "Seven Hills" by locals. I still don't know whey it is called that. It lies on a hill between Deep Bay and Miller's Landing. But it's only ONE hill, not seven.



At any rate, the neighbourhood has given its name to a B&B at the bottom of the hill, and the propritor of the establishment, Anne, has a blog!



So welcome to my growing list of the Bowen noosphere, Ann! I'll pop by next time I'm heading down the hill to pickl up my mail.

What a great day yesterday. I hooked up with my friend Leslie, father of four kids, and all seven of us bundled off together to do some beachcombing at Tunstall Bay. Leslie was in search of some cedar which he was planning to split and turn into a gate for his garden.



It was a really nice day yesterday, sunny and warm with a slight wind coming from the northwest when we set out, so it was a little chilly on the beach. But we quickly found a beautiful log which Leslie sawed in two with an old four foot crosscut saw. As we were hauling the log off the beach and tying it to the roof of his van, a couple of carloads of Saturday visitors from the mainland arrived in new luxury automobiles and fine clothes and stood around watching us. I had this distinct feeling of myself as a spectacle...a couple of hardy Islanders salvaging their own building materials while their kids ran around popping bladderwrack floats and looking for crabs, and playing in the caves on the rocky shore. It was like a scene out of an Enid Blyton novel. I could hardly restrain myself from laughing out loud.



To make matters more fun, one of the Island oldtimers and his son showed up right at low tide to launch a boat on the primitive boat ramp. Primitive begins to describe the ramp, only because there isn't a word that comes to my mind to describe pre-primitive. The ramp bascially consists of the road ending in a small drop off onto a rocky beach, which at low tide, extends about 40 feet out into the ocean. Buddy showed up with a rebuilt 1970s Jeep and they pushed and bounced their way into the water, pausing only to force the whole apparatus over a sizable boulder that didn't show up in their rear view mirror. I thought the trailer was going to come right through the bottom of the boat.



At any rate, they got the boat into the water where it started up in a cloud of blue smoke, took off a couple of hundred yards off shore and then gave out. It limped back to the beach and got hauled out on the trailer and they took off to make the necessary repairs.



By this time, the wind had died down and the sun was really warm. We sat on the beach watching seals and oystercatchers, mergansers and loons ply their trade near shore while out on the water fishing boats jockeyed for space with log barges, log booms and skiffs full of woodchips motoring up and down the coast.

On and off the island...travelling to various parts of the country and then home again for short stretches...it all makes for a very disengaging time.



So now I am surprised when I see that the daffodils are in bloom, the heather and lavender are flowering as well and the birds have really started into their mating calls in earnest. Black-capped chickadees and towhees are whistling and whirring in the forest and warblers are returning. It's lighter in the mornings and dusky until 7:00pm and the quality of light has changed too. Instead of grey scale landscapes, Howe Sound is painted in shades of blue. The old fruit tress in the lost orchards around Deep Bay and Crippen Park are in full bloom.



Spring really just arrives on the coast. One day you wake up and you're outside in short sleeves enjoying the sun, cutting kindling for the nighttime fire, becasue it's still cold. You notice the change in the soundscape and the colour and the light and it's just so clear that something has shifted. No more storms, lighter rainfall, more sun.



Bring it on!

I'm getting ready to hit the road again for a week, so yesterday I took advantage of an offer from my friend Roch to hike down to Cape Roger Curtis.



Yesterday was a beautiful day, a solid reminder that spring is on the way, and the soundscape in the forest is changing as red-winged blackbirds return and the chickadees launch into their two note territorial calls. The day was calm to begin with as the night's light Squamish wind dissipated and the wind swung north west. Over the course of the morning we watched as it came into Tunstall Bay out of the Strait of Georgia, developing into whitecaps by noon. And by then we were on the trail, having abided the morning at the Tunstall Bay Community Association clubhouse, overlooking the beach and a couple of river otters at play among the goldeneyes.



The Cape is the windswept south western point of Bowen and it sticks out into the Strait making it a great place to see wildlife and to taste the salt spray at the prevailing waves break on the rocky beaches. We built a fire on a secluded beach and roasted bison sausages, talking all the time, and watching guillemonts, geese and a young bald eagle. At one point I pointed to a seal that had come into our little cove and then stood in astonishment as it turned to face us and showed us its paws. It was clearly not a seal, but an otter, and an otter of that size could only be a sea otter, an extremely rare endangered speicies on this coast, who are making a comeback from the fur trade that decimated them. But they are a rare sight nonetheless and if I can get someone else to assure me that this is indeed a sea otter, this would be my first wild sighting of one.



I still smell of woodsmoke and salt. It was a good day, a day that reminds me about what is really important.

I've been off the island a lot lately, travelling in darkness mostly, out of bed at 5:45am and back home at 6:00pm. The life of a commuter.



Yesterday I had a very startling thought. I realized that I have become very disconnected from the island. Commuting does that, especially in the winter. I am out of touch with the tides, the birdsong, the sun and wind and rain. I couldn't tell you without looking what phase the moon is in, and I was taken by surprise at the sight of Jupiter high in the early morning sky the other day. I am just not as aware of this place, of nature, of me in my surroundings.



Today I got to stay at home and do some writing and Finn and I tracked a deer for a while in the woods behind my house. This old doe kept darting in and out of salal bushes, but she was leaving good prints and there was lots of scat on the regular deer runs so she was pretty easy to catch up to. Finn was thrilled, and so was I...finally reconnecting with this place.



THis whole experiences has given me a pretty profound insight into what it's like to be a citizen of Bowen if you are a commuter as opposed to someone who lives here full time. As we get deep into the community dialogue on the Snug Cove planning process, some this sharp delineation, between people who need convienence and are disconnected from the flow here and those who live here all the time and are sensitive to large scale change without context, well, this shapr delineation actually begins to mean something.



It's nice to walk in both pairs of shoes for a while.

Our family, and a large number of the kids and parents in our Learning Centre have been training in taekwondo. Our school,Bowen Island Taekwondo now has a website with some beautiful pictures. Have a peek.

I've been travelling: away to Saskatchewan, in and out of Vancouver, travelling with the commuting masses in the darkness of early morning and late afernoon. It has seemed that the island is really a dream, more a rock upon which my house stands than a real place. It is shrouded in darkness and covered in rain.



But today something is different. Today the day began with a sunrise that, from the Lion's gate bridge going into Vancouver, threw the silhouette of Mount Baker towering over the fog that enveloped all but the highest buildings downtown. And the day bloomed like a flower, becoming clearer and bluer as it went on until this afternoon, returning on the 3:35 ferry I was absolutely struck by the character and the spirit of this place. Sunlight glinting off a calm sea, air as clear as crystal, mountains green-grey and topped with pure white crowns. I remembered the island and the landscape as a continuing character in my life here, and started singing my summer song:

All the diamonds in the world

That mean anything to me

Are conjured up by wind and sunlight

Sparkling on the sea

It feels like winter is leaving.