Political Refugees
It is brutally cold. The outside temperature this morning was -26 degrees Celsius, which translates into –14.8 degrees Fahrenheit. The sky is clear blue, but the snow is frozen icing on the evergreen trees and crunches loudly under foot. Like clockwork, Bob got up every two hours during the night to keep the fire going in the woodstove. I huddled between the flannel sheets, under the feather comforter, and listened to the cabin walls as the logs popped and snapped with expansion and contraction. A weather advisory for our area says that the Arctic outflow will continue with 40 to 60 kph winds. By Sunday there will be more snow flurries. Bob looks at me and says, “Tell me again. Why did we decide to live here?” In the summer of 2006, I wrote a newsletter to friends and family trying to explain that very thing:
"As I sit down to compose our third newsletter, I realize that many of you have no idea where we are, or what kind of living conditions we are experiencing. It is certainly different than my Victorian house, or our lakeside cottage on San Juan Island. It is more like our sailing days, but without the boat or the sea, and with a lot more space. Then as now we struggled with the lack of a viable communication system, and learned to live without much of what we had taken for granted for most of our lives. The difference is that now we are even more remote than we were on Middle Rendezvous Island in 1998. Then we described our location as 'a remote community that tugs at the outer edges of a great wilderness.' Well, we are now five hundred miles into that 'great wilderness,' and nine hundred miles from the San Juan Island cottage that we called home for the past six years.
We own 123 acres, only 13 of which is level, the rest climbs the lower slopes of Woodcock Mountain. Except for an open meadow in front of our cabin, the property is treed with birch, cottonwood, cedar, hemlock, spruce, lodge pole pine, fir, and Douglas maple. Along the streambeds are willow, alder, and osier dogwood. There is a spring and two mountain streams that run through our property, one of which we use for our source of water (and power). We are on a back road, ten miles from a major road, on what many would consider a good logging road. We must cross four narrow bridges, and navigate a series of hairpin curves and steep switchbacks, always watchful for logging trucks, free-range cattle, and the occasional black bear.
We have chosen to live this remotely, fully aware that there will be frustrations and difficulties. It will take time and patience to work it all out and we have plenty of that – well, not always patience. By the time the snow flies (sometime in October), we hope to have the micro-hydro power running at full capacity, a good hot water supply, firewood cut and stacked, windows weatherproofed, and some kind of communications system set up. Then we’ll have a kettle of soup simmering on the woodstove, bread baking in the oven, and snowshoes waiting by the door.
I can imagine what most of you are thinking right now – WHY? Why pull up stakes in a comfortable world and move into the wilderness and all that that entails? It is a question we have asked ourselves, and the answers change at any given time. Even now I struggle to define an answer. There are many. Of course there is the appeal of a new adventure. When life becomes too predictable, I become bored. Then there are all the unrealized dreams of youth, when I devoured books about the Oregon pioneers, listened faithfully to the radio series Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, “On King, On you huskies!” and repeatedly asked for Lincoln Logs at Christmas time to no avail. I was told that they were boys’ toys – girls get dolls, and I did. Yuck!
More seriously, I feel like I am a political refugee, no longer wanting to live in the country of my birth. I don’t want to be a participant, however unwilling, in the politics of fear, pre-emptive wars, and a consumer-driven economy gobbling up all of the planet’s resources without thought for future generations. Canada is not perfect. The controversial Atlantic salmon fish farms threaten the extinction of wild Salmon stocks; there is the threat of more logging in old growth forests, and a resumption of extraction industries such as coal mining and offshore oil drilling. Recently elected Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Conservative Party) walks hand in hand with the Bush Administration (Canadians call him a shrub to the U.S. President Bush) and is pushing to build up the Canadian military, which in the past has been small and for defensive and international peacekeeping purposes only.
But Canada continues to hold a worldwide reputation for neutrality, as peacemakers, and as leaders on issues such as climate change. Every man or woman on the street here will tell you that climate change is happening and that we need to do something about it. Canadian Tire, Canada’s own big box chain store, has an aisle in their stores devoted to renewable energy products. An informational pamphlet writes about the One-Ton Challenge. “The One-Ton Challenge asks each Canadian to take action on climate change and clean air by reducing personal greenhouse gas emissions by one ton, or about 20%. Each Canadian generates, on average, five tons of greenhouse gases annually. Half of these emissions result from home energy use for heating, cooling, water heating, appliances and lighting. As energy costs continue to increase, energy-saving actions will help save money and the environment at the same time.”
And finally, this adventure is a challenge for us to put our words and beliefs into practice. Can we find a way to live that is less detrimental to the planet? Bob likes to call it 'Ethical Living.' I call it reconnecting, for how can we as a people be good stewards to the planet we live on if we no longer feel any real connection to it; when we are taught that wildlife is dangerous, forests and woods and oceans are dangerous places, and that humans are here to subdue and tame nature? Tame? Oh please, save me from tameness, sameness. Let me walk on the wild side, throw a little risk into the mix and I will at least know that I am alive.”
Bob smiles. He now has the frozen water pipe thawed out, more firewood split, and as the early winter darkness wraps itself around the cabin, we settle in for another cold night.
...P. L. Morningstar
.
"As I sit down to compose our third newsletter, I realize that many of you have no idea where we are, or what kind of living conditions we are experiencing. It is certainly different than my Victorian house, or our lakeside cottage on San Juan Island. It is more like our sailing days, but without the boat or the sea, and with a lot more space. Then as now we struggled with the lack of a viable communication system, and learned to live without much of what we had taken for granted for most of our lives. The difference is that now we are even more remote than we were on Middle Rendezvous Island in 1998. Then we described our location as 'a remote community that tugs at the outer edges of a great wilderness.' Well, we are now five hundred miles into that 'great wilderness,' and nine hundred miles from the San Juan Island cottage that we called home for the past six years.
We own 123 acres, only 13 of which is level, the rest climbs the lower slopes of Woodcock Mountain. Except for an open meadow in front of our cabin, the property is treed with birch, cottonwood, cedar, hemlock, spruce, lodge pole pine, fir, and Douglas maple. Along the streambeds are willow, alder, and osier dogwood. There is a spring and two mountain streams that run through our property, one of which we use for our source of water (and power). We are on a back road, ten miles from a major road, on what many would consider a good logging road. We must cross four narrow bridges, and navigate a series of hairpin curves and steep switchbacks, always watchful for logging trucks, free-range cattle, and the occasional black bear.
We have chosen to live this remotely, fully aware that there will be frustrations and difficulties. It will take time and patience to work it all out and we have plenty of that – well, not always patience. By the time the snow flies (sometime in October), we hope to have the micro-hydro power running at full capacity, a good hot water supply, firewood cut and stacked, windows weatherproofed, and some kind of communications system set up. Then we’ll have a kettle of soup simmering on the woodstove, bread baking in the oven, and snowshoes waiting by the door.
I can imagine what most of you are thinking right now – WHY? Why pull up stakes in a comfortable world and move into the wilderness and all that that entails? It is a question we have asked ourselves, and the answers change at any given time. Even now I struggle to define an answer. There are many. Of course there is the appeal of a new adventure. When life becomes too predictable, I become bored. Then there are all the unrealized dreams of youth, when I devoured books about the Oregon pioneers, listened faithfully to the radio series Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, “On King, On you huskies!” and repeatedly asked for Lincoln Logs at Christmas time to no avail. I was told that they were boys’ toys – girls get dolls, and I did. Yuck!
More seriously, I feel like I am a political refugee, no longer wanting to live in the country of my birth. I don’t want to be a participant, however unwilling, in the politics of fear, pre-emptive wars, and a consumer-driven economy gobbling up all of the planet’s resources without thought for future generations. Canada is not perfect. The controversial Atlantic salmon fish farms threaten the extinction of wild Salmon stocks; there is the threat of more logging in old growth forests, and a resumption of extraction industries such as coal mining and offshore oil drilling. Recently elected Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Conservative Party) walks hand in hand with the Bush Administration (Canadians call him a shrub to the U.S. President Bush) and is pushing to build up the Canadian military, which in the past has been small and for defensive and international peacekeeping purposes only.
But Canada continues to hold a worldwide reputation for neutrality, as peacemakers, and as leaders on issues such as climate change. Every man or woman on the street here will tell you that climate change is happening and that we need to do something about it. Canadian Tire, Canada’s own big box chain store, has an aisle in their stores devoted to renewable energy products. An informational pamphlet writes about the One-Ton Challenge. “The One-Ton Challenge asks each Canadian to take action on climate change and clean air by reducing personal greenhouse gas emissions by one ton, or about 20%. Each Canadian generates, on average, five tons of greenhouse gases annually. Half of these emissions result from home energy use for heating, cooling, water heating, appliances and lighting. As energy costs continue to increase, energy-saving actions will help save money and the environment at the same time.”
And finally, this adventure is a challenge for us to put our words and beliefs into practice. Can we find a way to live that is less detrimental to the planet? Bob likes to call it 'Ethical Living.' I call it reconnecting, for how can we as a people be good stewards to the planet we live on if we no longer feel any real connection to it; when we are taught that wildlife is dangerous, forests and woods and oceans are dangerous places, and that humans are here to subdue and tame nature? Tame? Oh please, save me from tameness, sameness. Let me walk on the wild side, throw a little risk into the mix and I will at least know that I am alive.”
Bob smiles. He now has the frozen water pipe thawed out, more firewood split, and as the early winter darkness wraps itself around the cabin, we settle in for another cold night.
...P. L. Morningstar
.
posted by Looking for Hope | 4:59 PM
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