Life claims its place

Everywhere.

Rambling the unknown trails

Out for a little gathering wander yesterday. I went with a friend searching for oyster mushrooms, but we didn't find any worth harvesting. It has been a little too dry the last couple of days. We did however score enough good food for most of my supper last night including a salad of greens made from Siberian Miners Lettuce and Lambs Quarters and Dandelion leaves, and some fir tip tea. Found a few fiddleheads as well and steamed them up on top.

Since the majority of voters chose to kill the National Park initiative in the fall, I have made it a point to wander on the little known and lesser travelled trails of the Island. Yesterday we were hunting for food in the Davies Creek canyon below Valhalla. I bet you didn't know that Bowen had canyons, but several of the streams and creeks of the Island travel through deep steep walled valleys that are beautiful, lush places of quiet.

So, looking forward to a summer of rambling in the quiet parts of Bowen and eating from the land and the sea.

Dangerous Dan has been at work

Dangerous Dan Cowan's 8 meter single track bike trick on the slopes of Mount Gardner.

Shake, rattle and roll

That little yellow dot is the epicentre of an earthquake that shook the island Tuesday morning.  No damage done, but a friendly reminder that we live in an active region of mountain building and land creation.  In fact that large island just to the west of us, Vancouver Island, is moving every steadily towards us.  It is part of what is called the Insular Superterrane, a region of tectonic plates that is slowly crashing into the edge of western North America.  In a few million years, Bowen Island will sit in a valley not unlike the current Okanagan.  We'll probably have nice dry weather and our descendants will be growing grapes and mangoes.

And as it creeps ever closer, The Insular Superterrane occasionally lurches a little and gives us a shudder.  In fact we're expecting the stormy geological weather to continue with light showers of tremors and aftershocks during a current swarm.  And who knows, perhaps the Big One will show up as well.  You can never tell, nor guess when it will happen, but it's a fool who doesn't expect it.

Better banter from baseball

Since the Bowen Island Men's Fastpitch Tournament wrapped up last August a lot has changed on the island. We have been through the tail end of a fractious national park debate and a bitter election in which the man who became mayor began his candidacy with a vicious attack on sitting Councillors he called the "gang of four" (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, that his knowledge of Chinese history or eighties punk is scant). In his first Council meeting, he began things by reaming out his colleagues and asking for a legal ruling on the extent of his powers to exclusively set the agenda.

The level of public banter and nickname coining has never recovered.

Which is why I am looking forward to baseball season starting again. In this excellent article, my bantermate-in-crime, Katalina "Chickpea" Bernard invites everyone to get down to the delightful Snug Cove Field, where bleacher banter is a fine art practiced by a select few throughout the summer. It is all in good fun, by the baseball can be deadly serious, and thrilling.

This is the salve we need. I'll be there every evening I can be. I love it. I'll probably be down there at 80 years old, calling out newly minted nicknames for the grandchildren of Adrien "BeBop" Belew, Brian "The General" Park and Sean "A dollar for my daughter" Delany.

See you there.

Rebooting democracy

It happens on every scale. A community, a nation, a people becomes bitterly divided on an issue and the civic conversation deteriorates to become nasty, rhetorically or physically violent and entrenched. Suspicion arises on every side and distrust, camps, territory and accusations fly. Perhaps someone launches a lawsuit, someone else accuses someone of unethical behavior. People who come forward to help are shot down if they can't be pinned down.

It feels like we are going through that on my little Island at the moment. Yes it is a #firstworldproblem, and in more ways than one, for what we are going through is happening all over the place at the moment.

Groups go through this kind of thing all the time. But this breakdown of the public conversation creates difficult problems and has real costs. When the public conversation is throttled by power or bullying or other non-dialogue behaviors we pay a real price.

So what to do? Well, for one I like Peter Block's take on things: transform the conversation starting with how you meet and then what you talk about. You cannot have a new conversation in the old format, so let's get rid of the talking heads and the power points and the raised tables. It's time to all come to the same level and discuss declarations of possibility that would inspire us all towards some action.

We need to find common purpose together, to open ourselves to each other and to host our own stuff so that we can hear other people and offer advocacy of our positions and ideas that makes us easy to be heard in return. We need to start from a place of renewed trust and good faith, even in people that might take advantage of our naïveté in doing so. We need to do that because restoring quality relationships is the only way to reboot the democratic conversation so that we might engage in some truly beautiful community building, nation building.

So, what declaration of possibility for your community can you make that joule inspire us all? What opinion, attitude or behaviour do you commit to letting go of so that a little more space can be opened? The work of cultivating possibility starts with all of us, and the burden is on skeptics. Transform your doubt into clear and legitimate dissent but keep your hope strong. Find someone across the aisle with whom you can reboot this precious space of democratic engagement, and don't let the cynics drive you apart. In the end, only they will gain.

Private über alles

In trying to make sense of the polarization on Bowen that was evident during the National Park debate, the Cape Roger Curtis saga and the recent election it has become clear to me that the political split on the island is not left vs right or developer vs environmentalist but rather public vs private.

So islanders, what do you make of this dichotomy. There are times and places when the public interest is clearly supreme - clean drinking water comes to mind. And there are times when the private interest is supreme such as what colour I can paint my house.

But what about at the margins of public and private? For instance your stance in the proposed piers at the Cape will probably depend on whether you see it as an issue of a property owner exercising a right to have a private dock in front of their land. Or whether you think the public access and use of the foreshore should frame the decision.

Likewise with ferry marshaling. Would it be fair to say that those who are pushing for a loop road feel an affinity for the private development of the Cove whereas those who are not in favour instead see the public interest in the parkland and wildlife as primary?

What do you make of this split? And would you be willing to engage in dialogue across these two world views?