Home  >> Stories  >> The Tale Spinner #2012-42

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IN THIS ISSUE

• We get letters from Burke Dykes and Geoff Goodship
• Darcy describes a solo paddle board adventure in the Salish Sea
• Tom Williamson forwards some things to think about
• Here are some daffy definitions from the Washington Post
• Tom Telfer tells the real story of the three bears
• Here is a timely story about a politician´s choice
• Sites are recommended by Bruce Galway and Catherine Nesbitt

CORRESPONDENCE

Burke Dykes writes: I have not mentioned my adventure with tomatoes this year. Nursing them along was quite a job. Ultimately they did ripen, but they were so small! I put in two cherry tomato plants (Sweet 100s) and they are still producing heavily. The only trouble is that most of the fruit is just barely over a cm in diameter, but they are delicious. Oh, and the skins are a bit thick. I also have one Early Girl plant which is producing; again, the fruit is small, tough skinned but delicious. And I have one generic Roma plant - same story as the Early Girl. Just a poor year for tomatoes. My farming is hindered by the fact that the only place I can cultivate is at my partner´s house, and her soil is the worst I have ever seen. Four inches down it is fist-sized boulders imbedded in clay hardpan, almost like concrete with very large aggregate. Oh, to be back on the farm in the Yakima Valley!

Geoff Goodship writes: I enjoyed Frank Pollock´s adventure. Please pass my enjoyment of his story on to him. I´m afraid my serious hiking days are over.

A new friend of mine, Darcy, recently sent me an adventure. He rides a SUB, a stand-up board, meaning a paddle board something like a surfboard. Along with two friends, he recently entered an event I sponsor each year, the Discovery Passage Passage. This event attracts canoes and kayaks, but this is the first time anyone has tried to cross the Discovery Passage on a SUB. Those tides can be fierce at times, but we had plenty of safety boats, including the Coast Guard vessel.

A few days later, Darcy decided to attempt a solo paddle (12 km) to Mitlenatch Island. The part that I really lived through in his story was the point leading up to the decision to risk it, for I´ve been there a few times. I am quite sure this is the first time anyone has paddled a SUB to Mitlenatch Island. Why? Well, the sport of stand-up boards is relatively new, at least in this part of the world. There are only three people into boarding in this community. Finally, the seas around here can be quite rough, and the tide on most days travels faster than a canoe or kayak or SUB.

I am attaching his story.

Darcy writes about Mitlenatch, an island best paddled solo, or

HALF WAY ACROSS THE SALISH SEA AND BACK

Sorry, boys, it had to be done. Mitlenatch: I looked at it over the flaccid water while out paddling last night, the low evening light putting it just in sight. Why not, I thought - I have tomorrow off and the weather will never be better. I tried not to think about it or plan, but to just go if it felt right in the morning. I like to have my coffee, not to be rushed.

We had talked about paddling there all summer on stand-up-boards, but the timing was never right. It had to be done, if nothing else, just to prove the utility of stand-up paddling.

Those of us who see Mitlenatch know that it floats around out there, always seeming closest to where you are, whether north in town or 20 km south. It lies in the middle of Georgia Strait, about 12 km or seven miles offshore, seemingly about as far as one can get from anything else in Georgia Strait. It is generally agreed that Oyster Bay, about a five-minute drive from my house, is closest.

It was close to 10:00 a.m. when I launched at high tide with a light wind rippling the water. I considered whether it would pick up or die off, and thought it couldn´t hurt to paddle out for an hour or so before making any real decision.

I thought about some of my childhood inspiration - Heyerdahl, Cousteau, Haston, and Bonnington, the Silver Surfer, but I am always reminded of something I read in a book for hobby machinists who build mini steam engines: "For some, adventure is measured in thousandths of an inch." Seven miles is not a long way, but out there all the same; a small adventure, maybe a three-hour paddle and then back again.

An hour in and it started to glass off and by the time I was half way, the sea was flaccid, the air warm in the September sun. The sky reflected in the sea and the dirty grey deck of my board shone wet and shiny in the sun. I really felt like the Silver Surfer gliding through space. Mitlenatch seemed about 30 minutes away before the current grabbed me and pulled me north, adding another 30 minutes.

(click to enlarge)

Mitlenatch sits where the tidal streams meet from north and south and separate again to make their way back out around Vancouver Island. It sits like Ayers Rock in the middle of the water. Primeval- looking rocks and scrubby trees, it´s classified as a desert of sorts, and cacti grow there. It has a wonderful little beach on the north side of polished granite stones, small as peas on one side, and increasing in size to walnuts and tennis balls, sorted by the sweep of the sea as you walk from west to east. I picked up a jade green one about the size of a pigeon egg and put it into my gear bag. I took a picture of myself beside the park sign to prove I was there, and then my battery died, so no pics of such a wonderful place.

I can´t believe it´s been over 20 years since I last stepped onto Mitlenatch. I was always planning a trip but never quite getting on with it. The first time I was there in that hot dry summer of ´81 with Dennis Bissegger. We paddled there from Whaletown on the hottest day of the year with little water, and found none on Mitlenatch; parched, we pressed on to Savary. The last time was with Gary Robinson, and we left from the same beach I left from this morning.

I was displeased that my camera battery had died as there was lots to take snaps of, so you will have to read on with a pinch of tolerance for my rough descriptions. I have explored a lot of small islands on the BC coast, the west side, north coast, and Haida Gwai. Mitlenatch is one of the best, craggy rocks joined by a tall grass meadow, and higher up, thick tall bushes of salal and Saskatoon berries, with high-sided tunnels cut through. The island is primitive but inviting, making you think you could survive a long time if you were left behind there (like that movie Island of the Blue Dolphin). There is a cabin built into a crack in the rocks, once the home of a hermit, now the shelter of summer caretakers. It was clean and tidy. Outside I found an apple tree to my delight, as I have a passion for lost orchards. It was more of a bush really, but loaded with sweet apples. Unlike Eve, I didn´t just take one bite, but stuffed my lifejacket with a dozen or so, perhaps to make a Mitlenatch pie.

I headed back to the beach and dined on fresh fruit, granola bars, and water. I took a swim, mostly for the anti-inflammatory effect of the cold water; I was still a little stiff from my previous day´s impromptu three-hour mountain bike ride. The water was cold but it felt good. I wanted to linger, but it´s the responsibility of solo paddlers to go while the going is good.

I paddled around the back side of the island, being careful to circumnavigate it, and staying intimately close to the rocks, watching seals and birds, until I heard the roar and howling of some 30 sea lions, two of them were fighting. I am told that bears and sealions evolved from a common ancestor, and it takes a skilled taxonomist to tell the skulls of the two apart. I gave them a wide berth and headed west.

The sea was glass smooth, not a breath of wind and getting quite hot. I could feel the heat on the black neopreen of my wetsuit legs. I knew it would be three hours of paddling back, so I worked on deliberate buttery-smooth strokes, steady, feel the glide, don´t push too hard. The sun high overhead now turned the sky and the water into a single shade of blue; I had to focus on something tangible to maintain balance. Watching the wave curl off the board, I thought of Tessier and other blue-water soloists gliding over the planet surface, deep out in the ocean. Only the scale was different - them on their yachts in the ocean, me on my board in the Salish Sea. I looked for bits of flotsam to measure forward progress and try to judge whether I was being pulled north or south by the ebbing tide.

Feel the glide, my mind drifted. I thought back to my first boat trip on the chuck, with my dad in our little wooden clinkerbuilt, we spent the weekend puttering up Indian Arm and back. It´s my first memory of an earworm as Paul McCartney´s "Hands across the Water" became lodged in my head, and I imagined that somehow I was able to pick up radio signals as they endlessly bounced and echoed around the steep walls of Indian Arm. A giant moon jellyfish, the biggest I´ve seen, appeared like me, gliding through space with each peristaltic pump of its body. I thought of the Orion project and the book "The Starship and the Canoe," nuclear-powered spacecraft propelling through outer space like giant jellyfish with each nuclear explosion. Feel the glide, each pull of the paddle like a little explosion.

I could make out the red roof of a house at Storries beach, and the white house high on the bluff off York road, and finally the row of A-frames at Oyster Bay where I wanted to go, maybe another hour. About a half hour out, I sat down to have a drink and cool my hot legs in the water. There was not a sound, not a ripple in the water, dead calm. I relaxed, dangled my legs, watched a sailboat I had seen earlier now becalmed; and not 30 feet away, the closest I have ever been, three porpoises came lazily along. I was amazed at how small they were. They disappeared for a few minutes, then came up even closer, then they were gone.

Just as I paddled into the beach I saw a school bus go by, so it must be about 3:30, I thought. Not bad, five-and-a-half-hour round trip. My feet were numb and legs a little stiff, but it was worth it all. In the words of Joshua Slocum, "To anyone considering such a trip, I would say go." ED. NOTE: For a video of the island, click on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEXbvB4SNCY&feature=related

Tom Williamson forwards

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven´t thought about it, don´t have it on their schedule, didn´t know it was coming, or are too rigid to depart from their routine.

I got to thinking one day about all those people on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an effort to cut back. From then on, I´ve tried to be a little more flexible.

How many women out there will eat at home because their husband didn´t suggest going out to dinner until after something had been thawed? Does the word refrigeration mean nothing to you?

How often have your kids dropped in to talk and sat in silence while you watched "Jeopardy" on television?

I cannot count the times I called my sister and said, "How about going to lunch in a half hour?" She would gas up and stammer, "I can´t. I have clothes on the line. My hair is dirty. I wish I had known yesterday. I had a late breakfast. It looks like rain." And my personal favourite: "It´s Monday." She died a few days ago. We never did have lunch together.

Because we cram so much into our lives, we tend to schedule our headaches. We live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are perfect.

We´ll go back and visit the grandparents when we get Steve toilet-trained. We´ll entertain when we replace the living-room carpet.

We´ll go on a second honeymoon when we get two more kids out of college. Life has a way of accelerating as we get older. The days get shorter, and the list of promises to ourselves gets longer. One morning we awaken, and all we have to show for our lives is a litany of "I´m going to," "I plan on," and "Someday, when things are settled down a bit."

When anyone calls my "seize the moment" friend, she is open to adventure and available for trips. She keeps an open mind on new ideas. Her enthusiasm for life is contagious. You talk with her for five minutes, and you´re ready to trade your bad feet for a pair of Rollerblades and skip an elevator for a bungee cord.

My lips have not touched ice cream in 10 years. I love ice cream. It´s just that I might as well apply it directly to my stomach with a spatula and eliminate the digestive process. The other day, I stopped the car and bought a triple-decker. If my car had hit an iceberg on the way home, I would have died happy.

Now ... go on and have a nice day. Do something you WANT to, not something on your SHOULD DO list. If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting? I had a friend from high school that I was always going to call and never did. The other day her name was in the obituaries, so we never had that chat.

Have you ever watched kids playing on a merry-go-round or listened to the rain lapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly´s erratic flight, or gazed at the sun into the fading night? Do you run through each day on the fly? When you ask, "How are you?: Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done, do you lie in your bed with the next hundred chores running through your head? Ever told your child, "We´ll do it tomorrow," and in your haste, not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch? Let a good friendship die? Not called just to say "Hi"?

When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift - thrown away. Life is not a race. Take it slower. Hear the music before the song is over. "Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here, we might as well dance!"

Here are some of the winners from a Washington Post contest

INVITATIONAL WORD PLAY MASTERS

Presidental: A wide grin emanating from the Oval Office. - Gayle Knutson

ussues: Issues shared or inherited by virtue of being in a committed relationship. - Michael Bertani

placebow: clip-on tie. - Timothy Cree

Analize: To make something crappy by studying it too much. - Wayne Hoit

homogenius: my very smart gay friend. - Rick Starr

caranoid: paranoid but correct. - Chloe O´Connor

bicicle: ice that goes both ways. - Emily Hempel

pollutico: politics polluted by industrial dominance resulting in global imbalances. - Stephan Tychon

adnoying: Causing annoyance to internet users with the bombardment of pop-up advertisements. -Deborah Rowland

Nogotiation: A losing-losing policy-making strategy often employed by elected officials, most recently and most noticeably during health care reform, or equally as recently, but less noticeably by me unsuccessfully, with my spouse (to be read as partner). - Name Withheld by Request

Tom Telfer forwards the true story of

THE THREE BEARS

It´s a sunny morning in the Big Forest, and the Bear family is just waking up. Baby Bear goes downstairs and sits in his small chair at the table. He looks into his small bowl. It is empty. "Who´s been eating my porridge?" he squeaks.

Papa Bear arrives at the big table and sits in his big chair. He looks into his big bowl and it is also empty. "Who´s been eating my porridge?" he roars.

Momma Bear puts her head through the serving hatch from the kitchen and yells, "For Heaven´s sake, how many times do we have to go through this? It was Momma Bear who got up first. It was Momma Bear who woke up everyone in the house. It was Momma Bear who made the coffee. It was Momma Bear who unloaded the dishwasher from last night, and put everything away. It was Momma Bear who went out in the cold early morning air to fetch the newspaper. It was Momma Bear who set the table. It was Momma Bear who put the cat out, cleaned the litter box, and filled the cat´s water and food dish. And now that you´ve decided to drag your sorry butts downstairs and grace Momma Bear´s kitchen with your grumpy presence, listen good, ´cause I´m only going to say this one more time ...

"I HAVEN´T MADE THE DARN PORRIDGE YET!!"

Does this sound familiar?

POLITICS

While walking down the street one day a female head of state is tragically hit by a truck and dies. Her soul arrives in Heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.

"Welcome to Heaven," says St. Peter. "Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so we´re not sure what to do with you."

"No problem; just let me in," says the lady.

"Well, I´d like to but I have orders from higher up," replies St. Peter. "What we´ll do is have you spend one day in Hell and one in Heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity."

"Really, I´ve made up my mind. I want to be in Heaven," says the head of state.

"I´m sorry but we have our rules." And with that, St. Peter escorts her to the elevator and she goes down, down, down to Hell. The doors open and she finds herself in the middle of a beautiful green golf course. In the distance is a club house and standing in front of it are all her friends and other politicians who had worked with her, everyone is very happy and in evening dress.

They run to greet her, hug her, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at expense of the people. They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster and caviar.

Also present is the Devil, who really is a very friendly guy who has a good time dancing and telling jokes all through the evening.

They are having such a good time that before she realizes it, it is time to go. Everyone gives her a big hug and waves while the elevator rises. The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on Heaven, where St. Peter is waiting for her.

"Now it´s time to visit Heaven." So 24 hours pass with the head of state joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a good time and, before she realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.

"Well then, you´ve spent a day in Hell and another in Heaven. Now you have to choose your eternity."

She reflects for a minute, then the head of state answers, "Well, I would never have said it, I mean Heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be better off in Hell."

So Saint Peter escorts her to the elevator and she goes down, down, down to Hell. Now the doors of the elevator open and she is in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage.

She sees all her friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags. The Devil comes over to her and lays his arm on her neck.

"I don´t understand," stammers the head of state. "Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and club and we ate lobster and caviar and danced and had a great time. Now all there is a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable."

The Devil looks at her, smiles and says, "Yesterday we were campaigning. Today you voted for us!"

SUGGESTED WEBSITES

Bruce Galway forwards this link to a five-minute video apparently produced by a retired accountant in the US, Hal Mason, who reviews the US budget, and very simply concludes that the US is about to implode unless steps are taken to remedy the situation, with the accompanying pain that will bring. It is a non-partisan message - neither Obama or Romney is mentioned. It is simply a plea to smarten up. This does not just matter to the US - the entire world is built on the US economy. We need to care about what they do about their impending evolution into the same kind of peril that Greece is in right now:

Bruce also forwards the URL for a video of a group performing a shadow show called Shadow Land. They are so flexible - almost like a group from the Cirque de Soleil:

For those who are watching the US election campaign, Catherine Nesbitt forwards a still-relevant speech by Franklyn D. Rooseveldt:

Catherine also sends a link to a video which explains how information travels via the internet:

The latest issue of CARP Lifestyle has a helpful article on how to protect yourself from cyber crime:

If you are concerned that the Conservative government has signed a trade treaty with China, without any consultation with the Canadian people or a single vote in the House of Commons, which will become law on October 31 and be binding for 31 years, Elizabeth May urges you to sign the petition asking for an open debate on the treaty:

On the same subject, Leadnow.ca asks you to sign their petition to stop the Canada-China trade deal and its unprecedented giveaway of our natural resources to foreign control:

To check out the features of the "freedictionary", which changes daily, go to