You want a what where?

Living where I do and fishing as a hobby, I think I've cultivated a reasonable understanding of the locale. Tides, wildlife etc.

There is a company from Alberta which wants to develop the Cable Bay area, which covers a piece of currently unmanaged woodland from the Cable Bay Trail in the West, to the Eastern shore of Dodd Narrows across from Mudge Island. No problem so far. New developments going in all the time around Nanaimo. It's a growing place, even with the world economy in the state it's in.

One of the things I've heard is that the company wanting to develop the area want to put a Marina in the area. My brow furrows in perplexity because the narrow channels in the area make for some quite tricky navigation at certain states of the tide. I know this from trying to fish in Dodd Narrows, which at anything but the brief period of slack water is troublesome to say the least. Mostly the tidal flow jogs along at around four to six knots (just under 7mph or slightly over 11km/h). During neaps and springs the tidal flows are reputed to reach sixteen and a half knots (Just Under 19mph and around 30.5km/h) in the neck of the narrows, which is well above the 10km/h coastal speed limit in BC. Certain types of craft can zip through without noticing if they give it some serious welly. On the other hand, trying navigate against the tide, or even with it in say a sail boat with a relatively small auxiliary engine at the wrong time can prove at best embarrassing, or at worst, alarming, although no one has been killed down there for quite some time. At times (about twice a day) the Narrows look like a set of white water rapids. Even further down where we live, some rather ugly looking vortexes form and you can hear the tide as a sort of background roar.

Local opinion goes that the developers of Cable Bay will try to 'flip' or sell on the land when permission to develop has finally been approved. I have no axe to grind one way or another, but my own thoughts are; they want to put a Marina where?

Pollen & Wolf

Now we're finally seeing some vaguely springlike weather, the Birch buds have broken and there's grainy pollen all over everything. Cars, windows the lot. We had a small Herring run, but a month later and much smaller than last year, although it was big enough to bring both Steller's and California Sea Lions into Dodd Narrows. A few days ago there was one California Sea Lion (Steller's don't bark) barking away somewhere North of Round Island at about eight in the morning. Then there was a shot and there was no more barking.

At Easter we were graced with a raft of Surf Scoters ululating as they took a break on their way somewhere; they're later than last year too. Local legend has it that everything is much later than usual. Although this year we haven't had the Black Tail Deer plundering our tulips like last. Little sods. I've been getting in a little fishing, although I seem to keep missing the right state of the tide. Neighbours have suggested I try my luck at a place a couple of miles hence where there's a nice steep drop off close to shore.

Oh, and there's been a couple of Wolf sightings so local gossip informs me. I wondered why Dog has been kicking up these last few nights. He must have been hearing the call of the wild.

Have purchased a copy of the Writers Market Guide, and the next month or so will be punting my MSS around Vancouver and Toronto, see what turns up. If nothing, then I'll try further south and see if I get a bite from there.

Fish?

Just had a look out of my kitchen window while making a cup of well-earned tea and noted a lot of bird activity over on the shore of Mudge Island. I'll go and have a look with Dog in a while and see if there is an early April Herring Run going on. It's a month late but what the hell.

If this proves to be the case, tomorrow I will purchase that new fishing rod I've been promising myself and renew my salt water fishing licence.

Life's a beach

Still winters day down in the Narrows this afternoon after a good mornings work. Dog and I went to stretch our legs down by the cold clear waters. Me to watch the Grebes. Buffleheads and occasional Blue Heron, and Dog to find any old bone he fancied crunching.

I often think that a Beach is the charnel house of the sea. It's where all the odds and ends cast into the deep tend to wind up. We get a lot of logs because they escape from the daily log boom traffic. The whole foreshore is made up of pulverised shells and larger rocks, periodically resculpted by a stormy night. No analogy, just an observation.

Still plenty of snow lying about closer towards town. Just when you think you're about to get rid of the last batch, down comes another. Fortunately the new all weather tyres on the van cope very nicely thankyou.

An Austrian researcher thinks he has found the cause of belly button fluff; but quite frankly I'm not shaving my belly, which he claims is the 'cure'. It's like all this anthropogenic climate change' nonsense that keeps on popping up in the news. Fluff. Fluffy news about fluff all.

There's fish out there

Walking Dog this morning, I cast my eyes down to the waterfront at the choppy tidal vortex that forms every high tide half way down Dodd Narrows opposite Mudge Island. Flecks of white scum, like petals, floated in five or six metre long stringy slicks up the channel. The shallows were a particular shade of turquoise.

Could all be a trick of the light of course, but conditions do seem to mimic the early stages of last years Herring run. May be worth getting my fishing kit out.

Foggy bottom

Todays little sojourn down to the waters edge saw me entering the set for a Hammer Horror movie. Thick layer of mist up to two metres above the water flowing down and dispersing from the neck of the narrows, then a thin haze up to about sixty metres or so. Dog splashed happily in the shallows like a two year old with his first pair of galoshes, and I inadvertantly upset a couple of the local Blue Heron population that flapped away croaking complaints. A Stellers Sea Lion was snorking and snuffling while it hunted in the middle of the channel, with no signs of human activity but the far off mournful klaxon at the Duke Point ferry terminus. Very peaceful.

Yesterday I was happy to see the return of our local Bald Eagle population. I was within fifty feet of them when we simultaneously spotted each other. They cussed me in fluent Eagle, and I just stood there marvelling at the sheer size of the damn things. Wingspans broader than I am tall, and talons the size of my hands. This means there's fish out there. Wonder if we'll get a repeat performance of last years Herring run when fish were being sold at five dollars a bucket?

Continually watching the exchange rates. Looks like we'll be moving the last of our funds out of sterling, but I want to see how the markets react when the reality of the new US Presidency hits home. Maybe Barack Obama will do the smart thing and keep fobbing off the wilder assertions of the environmental lobbyists, and look after his country first. As for the country of my birth, I have the horrid feeling that the UK economy may end up doing a Weimar because the pillocks in charge know less about sound economic management than a lightly stunned Lemming. Either way, we have to be prepared to shift our funds to where we lose the least. If commodities drop a little more, it may be worth buying gold again. Although the best time to do that was last year.

Anyway, back to the grindstone, I have work to do, and may even get some plot mapping done on the sequel MSS.

Fog in the Narrows

Woke up this morning and did a bit of a double take. Down in the Narrows, a dense ribbon of sea fog obscured our view of Mudge Island, the water, and everything up to sixty metres high over the water. It was flowing North to South down the channel at about 15 knots (My estimate)like a slow river of indistinct grey slurry. Above this line the sky was totally clear.

Very strange, but we've had a lot of low cloud and fog recently. The past two days have had sunny periods where it looks like God unzipped the clouds over the city for a few hours during the day just to see if everything was okay with Nanaimo, then zipped them right back up again at night.

Price of Gas is perplexing. Most Gas stations are selling it at 93.9, a rise of 19 cents from two weeks ago. Oil prices haven't gone up that much, so what in the hell is going on? Are the Gas companies trying to make some extra bucks before that idealistic fool the Americans have elected screws them with extra taxes to prevent the non existant 'global warming'? Shut up Jones, you've MSS to write. You promised Wife you would ignore the issue for a while and took a serious work break.

Today the Weather is a side issue, we're going to the movies to see 'Defiance' starring Daniel Craig.

Update: Gas prices seem to be associated with currency fluctuations affecting the Canadian Dollar....

Sea Lion surprise

Took time out from the day job to take Dog for a good walk along the sea front and came across this piece of waterfront theatre macabre, a decidedly deceased Sea Lion. Possibly a Steller because of the lighter coat colour and wider, flatter snout. It's also over the maximum size (2.5m) for a California Sea Lion. The one in the pictures I took is 2.74m long as close as I could measure.
The scale in the picture can be ascertained by the tape measure, which is stretched out to twelve inches in the top picture (305mm) and twenty four inches (610mm) in the picture below. As you can see, the corpse is pretty fresh and despite the gulls having pulled the eyes out, is in pretty good condition. Another couple of tides will change things though. My smaller walking staff as seen in both pictures is 50 inches (1.27m)long to give a further idea of scale.

Now this is the third dead marine mammal I've come across in the last four months or so on the same hundred metre piece of waterfront. On this one there were two blemishes in the pelt that could possibly be bullet holes, but I can't be sure because I've only ever seen bullet holes in people before now (Long story, one I'll save for another day. Suffice it to say I didn't cause the holes in the people).

Two dead seals and a Sea Lion washed up within four months on the same stretch of shoreline? That I think pushes the envelope of coincidence a bit too much. Has someone been potting the local Pinniped population? I'm told that it happens. Possibly as a measure to protect the local Salmon population, which is currently at a low.

Local weather gossip

Local gossip reports that there have been falls of snow on Mt Washington (Which probably means nothing) and frost on cars in Nanaimo in the early hours of Wednesday morning (Frost in Nanaimo? Good gravy Gertrude! What is the world coming to?).

Lots of Black Sea Nettle jellyfish have been washed up at the high water mark of late. The peak of the infestation has gone now, but these a nasty little critters with a painful sting, so Dog and I have been avoiding the waterfront. According to some sources this is all the fault of that pesky globule warming, but according to the more down to earth is nothing unusual.

The seal that was killed a couple of weeks ago is now just bare bones and the rags of it's pelt. The skull appears intact, so maybe my initial thoughts about it catching a crack on the head from a speeding boat were wrong.

Anyway, this week it's Thanksgiving weekend. Wife and I will be giving thanks that we still live here, despite the forecast for rain on Sunday and Monday. As soon as we get our next tranche of immigration paperwork dealt with, hopefully in the next two months, we can take up all the offers of work that now keep getting thrown our way.

God bless Canada, BC, Nanaimo, and all our friends, old and new. Not forgetting our local immigration officers, the Central Vancouver Island Multicultural Society, The local library, ICBC, and everyone else who has been so darned helpful. Happy thanksgiving to you all.

Fog

Looking out of our front window early this morning beyond the trees across the road we saw a pale blankness where yesterday our view had been full of scenery. Honestly. "I didn't lose it." I remarked.
"Okay. Who photoshopped Mudge Island?" Wife demanded with a grin.

We've been here a year and never seen fog like this before. Although maybe we blinked because it's burned off rapidly, and in the space of twenty minutes there's only a slight haze in the air. Panic over.

Another casualty

This mornings walk along the foreshore found another dead seal within ten metres of where I found the first one a few weeks ago. This time it was an adult. Again, no camera, so no picture. This one had a big bloody wound in its throat and the head looked smashed in.

There hasn't been much leisure boat activity in the past week, but have seen a few fishing boats heading up the narrows at full tilt. Maybe the Seal just wasn't quick enough to get out of the way and got killed by a passing boat. On the other hand there was a Sea Lion cruising up and down on on the Western side of the channel early Friday morning, and they are known to kill Seals on occasion, so maybe that was the cause of death. Doesn't matter, I shall keep Dog away from the waterfront for the next three weeks while the greasy, adipose odour of rotting blubber clears.
For his part, Dog is fascinated by these things, but I keep him off just in case he catches something nasty from the corpse and ends up poorly. Big Vets bills are the last thing I need right now, as I'm waiting for confirmation of another job offer and money is a little tight right now.

The Socialists I see are all crowing over the banking collapse, claiming it is the 'death of capitalism'. In your dreams, boys, in your dreams. The money hasn't gone, it's just moved around a bit as it always does and the market has a bit of a surge as the players buy up the bargains. Rather like picking up pristine stock at a fire sale. 'Smart' money always buys in at the bottom of a downturn like this. That's why it's called 'smart' money. That's good old fashioned capitalism for you.

I always wonder thusly; if Socialism is so wonderful, why do the Socialists always have to kill a lot of people to make it work even very badly? I cite Soviet Russia, Communist China, Cambodia, yadada, yadada. They've racked up a bigger body count that a million Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.

Silly Boats

A pleasant Sunday Afternoon was spent wandering down to Swy-Y-Lana lagoon at Nanaimo for the 'Silly Boats' festival. This is a series of races in home made boats built out of anything you can find in your garage. The only snag is that all construction has to be completed in four hours.

Wife and I watched the horseplay and duckings and one heat (Won by one of the local 'So Serious' Coffee Shops) before ambling off out of the heat of the day.

I also took a couple of shots of the local Seaplane Terminal. Although only one company is represented here, a total of three use this facility, flying to and from Vancouver, and anywhere you care to charter them. Never fails to amuse me.

Dragon Boats

Last weekend, Wife and I pootled off to the harbour to watch the Dragon Boat heats. Quite a pleasant way to spend a lazy Saturday, watching other people get all lathered up and sweaty paddling like the furies of legend were after them. The Dragon Boats actually move quite quickly with a crew of twenty all digging in and paddling in unison with a determination and vigour that might make Oxford and Cambridge look to their laurels. I took a couple of pretty rough video's which are going up on Youtube. Still haven't invested in a decent camera, so the sound is non existent.
What really tickles me about this place is that the air is so clear you can see snow on the coastal mountains on mainland BC some forty or fifty miles away. Truly gorgeous.

A theory of Human remains

Whenever I walk Dog along the local shoreline it’s easy to think of all the recent news stories about human feet being washed up on the beaches of local islands, wondering if such an item would end up under my eyes.

What occurs to me is that BC has a lot of relatively fast flowing rivers that dump everything west of the Rockies into the currents that flow along and between the coastal islands. Where the gap between landmasses is relatively narrow, stuff gets washed up in tidal estuaries, isolated shorelines and more commonly in increasingly populated areas.

One of the things you are also constantly reminded of is that BC is still mainly wild country. Less than 100 metres from where I sit typing this throwaway prose is completely unmanaged woodland. In parts of the province that’s all you’ve got for hundreds of miles. Trees and game trails without a trace of man’s influence. Most of the forest sloping hundreds, or in some cases thousands of feet down to the nearest creek or river. Raw creeks and unclimbed bluffs, which are at first sight a rock athletes wet dream. Did I mention that the Canadians are an outdoor people?

When mishaps occur this can be a place where help can be slow in arriving, if at all. In most of the province there is no mobile phone signal because there are no towns and suburbs to serve. Ergo, no phone masts, and in many deep valleys, even on the Trans Canada Highway, no radio coverage or reception. You screw up in the wrong place, and help may be a long time coming.

Every other month there are plane crashes where the victim’s bodies are never recovered, boating accidents that never get reported. Walking ‘off trail’ is very popular, and occasionally people get lost, are attacked by wild animals, or simply walk over a cliff and are killed. Flash floods or the deep chill of the Northern Winter claims others. Some commit suicide, and occasionally someone is murdered. Some die of natural causes. Their mortal remains often lying where they fell, and where the moods of wind and water send part of their bodies tumbling downstream. Down the rivers and into the sea where the natural process of decomposition reclaims the various chemicals of the organic soup that goes to make a human.

Body parts protected by slow to decompose artificial materials, such as sneakers etc, will float, buoyed up by their lighter than water components. Disarticulated by decomposition, they bob along the currents and tides, nibbled at by passing sea and river creatures, until they arrive on a beach, and if found by someone walking the shoreline, instantly become a tabloid headline.

There you have it, my personal theory about the body parts appearing on British Columbia’s beaches. No serial killers, no massacres, no drug lords with a bizarre fetish for tossing away the amputated feet of their executed rivals, (Well, perhaps not as many as the sensationalizing media would have us think) but simple human cock up, and the occasional hoax.

Update: Paragraphs 5, 6 & 7 corrected. I really should proof this stuff like a short story before hitting the 'publish' button. Apologies to anyone offended by my glaring grammatical errors. I have kicked myself.

Hazards to navigation

Down in the Dodd Narrows is not really a place for full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes boating at the moment. There really is a lot of floating log debris out there. I put it down to the tides, which have gone from quite low, right to the bottom of the inter tidal range, to right up to the top of the beach, which floats off all the massive logs that have been resting quite happily on the foreshore for some time, now letting the currents gently waft them out into the middle of the tidal flow to lurk in wait for some hopelessly gung-ho boating individual in a hurry. No one has been sunk to my knowledge yet, but I'm sure that come the weekend there might be some dented or holed hulls.

While walking Dog, have been pondering the nature of the term 'Extelligence', which was coined by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen of Warwick University back in 1997. Although some have criticised it as being little more as a neologism, for myself, being a wordsmith of a middling sort, I'm inclined to think that all words began that way, and the field of Computing releases a flood of jargon into the English language every year, as did the Space age, the industrial revolution and every societal adaptation before and since English began to be formalised in medieval times. English is a constantly evolving language, whose main rules are often treated as little more than rough guidelines by those who claim it as their mother tongue.

My own personal definition of extelligence is 'If you don't know something - look it up'. An Internet connection can make you highly extelligent to a degree, but then you have to use your own intelligence and reasoning abilities to examine the source and compare it against other sources. To put it in the words of my forbears; 'Don't believe everything you read'. You have to learn to be discriminating instead of just regurgitating the opinons of others. A quick Google (Itself a recent word-invention) on any given topic will find the web sites and opinions of any number of 21st century snake oil salespeople selling 'health' products, promoting whatever it is they have to sell; be that Gadgets, Philosophy, Politics, Holistic Therapies, their own particular brand of hypochondriasis, Religion or cult.

Although I have a fairly jaundiced view of my own level of intelligence, and question it on a daily basis, I'm often astounded at the failures of reasoning in others, and often have to work very hard to conceal that surprise. Wife constantly chides me for 'frowning' (i.e. scrunching up my forehead in amazement) when I see or hear something that jars or conflicts with previously held reasoned conclusions.

Although having considered that, perhaps I am just cautious in navigating the hazards of mental navigation. Hmm. Cute. Back to the MSS.

Dolphins!

Sighted in the Southern part of Dodd narrows at around 10:15, a lot of splashing out in the middle of the channel. At first I thought they were two of the Sea Lion population come to pay us a visit, but before I could get a good look, they were gone. At around 12:00 they turned up again. Two of them, and this time I got a good enough look to definitely identify them as Dolphins and nothing else.

The fins had a particularly sharp profile, which leads me to suspect that they were White sided Dolphins known to be native to BC, although I could not be certain, only having a set of old 7x35mm binoculars. However, they were just mucking about in the water, hunting and generally plaguing hell out of the local fish population. Until two large power boats bimbled up and down the channel, sending the Dolphins diving for safety. Our local seal simply regarded the intruders with his (Her?) habitually mournful expression before diving and heading for the shallow side of the channel to the west of Round Island.

Spent four solid hours down at the waterfront, casting and ledgering until just before three at slack tide with no luck. However, my casting has improved dramatically, and nine out of ten of my casts are well over twenty plus metres. Even managed one or two closer to forty metres than thirty. No fish though. Not even a crab like last time. Never mind.

Wife has been monopolising my ageing 'pooter, having been given the job of rewriting mini biographies of some of the local worthies for the re-opening of Nanaimo's Museum and chopping the prose down to 175 and 75 word chunks. She asks my advice every so often, which is gratifying. I'm also a little amused by the folk who get a bit carried away with the written word. Some of the offerings Wife has had to rewrite have been heading over the verbosity event horizon and accelerating. However, it's easy for me to say this, I've been writing to wordage limits for years, and précis kind of becomes second nature after a while. All it takes is years of abuse.

The manuscript is looking better, although I'm going to have to research a little more plasma physics so my characters sound like they know what they are talking about, even if I don't.

Oh well, it's our Wedding Anniversary tomorrow, and after that we're both helping out at a Kids event down at the Waterfront on Monday. Meeting on Monday night, followed by a busy week. All this and the price of gas going up. Hi ho.

First catch, Tempura batter and good feeling

The past couple of days I have been away from the keyboard, fishing and cooking and generally chilling out. Not much to do on the work front, and as output on the writing front has been bombing along at 3000+ words a day, I have elected to take it easy and rethink some of the story lines. Wife monopolised my battered old Compaq for her Museum project, and I have been making myself scarce in case she asked me to help out.

Today my fishing activities actually bore fruit. Took advantage of the very low tides and decided to do something about my casting technique. As I have blogged before, I can't cast for toffee, or anything else for that matter, and I was determined to find out why. Fixing a 20z weight to my line with a one metre trace, I farted around until I managed to make one cast of over forty metres. This may not sound much to the experts, but for me it was a superhuman effort. Then I looked at what I had done and tried to replicate the technique. After a couple of embarrassingly muffed efforts, I began to drop my casts at a moderate distance from the shoreline. Thirty and forty metres out, spinning the lure back through two to three metres depth of water. I was quite chuffed. I was even more amazed when what I thought was a snag turned into my first catch ever in BC waters. This little guy was hanging off the hook as I reeled in, pursued by something silvery looking, around sixty centimetres long which turned and flipped into the depths as my catch broke surface. Even though he was of edible size, I wasn't interested as at just under 150mm across the shell, there wasn't enough crab meat for two.



Next item of interest was a Live Lewis Moon shell right at the waters edge. Only a moderate sized one at about four inches diameter across the shell, but still, quite a find. I've found much larger specimens like the one in the photo below, but those have been dead tideworn shells, without much of the colour of the live one above.

Oh yes, I also finally cracked making Tempura batter after many previous woeful failures. I would have taken a photograph, but they were eaten before I could find my camera. Shame.

My paying job is going a bit slow at present, without much happening. Just glad I'm not on commission only, at this rate I'd starve. However, as with all these things, you have to keep going. Something always gives in the end.

Current learning

Today, joy of joys, I finally got my BC fishing permit and this afternoon proceeded to the shoreline to cast my bread upon the waters.

Not that I was expecting to catch anything, although after about half an hour I saw something big and silvery jump out of the water in mid channel. It must have been as long as my arm. Sadly, the bugger was also well out of my reach the best part of a hundred metres off. The currents in the Narrows were as fast as I had anticipated, and quickly swung my lure towards the shoreline and the weed beds. Reeled in and cast again, although I've always been pretty ashamed of my casting ability. Despite being able to pick up large and heavy objects without so much as breaking step, I can't cast to save my life. Can't throw overarm for toffee either. God, it's so fucking embarrassing sometimes. It's not as if the power isn't there, my physical strength is quite impressive, it's just my lousy timing that makes me throw like a dysfunctional toddler.

An hour and two rock snags later, both my fancy ten buck lures had gone and I decided to call it a day. The tide was all wrong, and I was inclined to think I'd picked a poor spot. The tide is too fast just at that spot, and to keep your lure further out you need a much heavier ledgering weight. Not that I'm unhappy. It was beautifully sunny, and I had the beach, such as it is, to myself. There's always tomorrow. I'm working tonight.

Currently the temperatures are a very pleasant sixteen Celsius, and I haven't taken my Polaroid shades off all day. Yeah. Still a chill in the wind, but the forecast is for more of the same all week. I can do this.

You see something new every day

Yesterday's novelty was watching a log boom do a U-turn in the narrowest part of Dodd Narrows at low tide. Was walking Dog in the morning and noted the amount of boat traffic going north. Around here it's usually so quiet at this time of year that five boats passing through the channel is rush hour. I counted eight, plus a log boom being chugged north by one of the ever busy tugs. At first, the tug kept to the far side of the channel by Mudge Island, letting the other traffic go past. As it got level with Joan Point something odd appeared to happen. A blue hulled sailing yacht, a fifteen metre boat with two masts which had been following the seventy five metre long boom had to stop and go backwards.

Being a curious sort, I ambled up the foreshore and took a look at what was going on, having a quiet curse for not having brought binoculars for once. Damn me if the tug was now facing south at the 'wrong' end of the boom, it had turned south where the channel is less than a hundred metres wide. The blue hulled boat was moving backwards under power. For ten long minutes I watched the tug shunt and heave at the hundred or so tons of logs blocking the channel until it had the front of the boom facing south. Then, with a creak from the towing cables that I thought heralded the break up of the corral of heavy floating timber, the tug began the arduous job of turning the boom north again. Still at low tide, still at the narrowest part of Dodd Narrows. Another ten minutes and two boats from the direction of Duke point came south on the relatively shallow side of the channel closest to Joan Point, then the blue hulled yacht and two other boats headed north towards Nanaimo. The tug and it's log boom were snugged close to the deeper side of the channel next to Mudge Island, just holding steady with the current.

Other stuff include our two resident pairs of Bald Eagles are back hunting with a vengeance. Early morning and late afternoon is the best time to see them hunt, dive bombing the surface and coming away with a struggling silver form in their talons. These guys are big too, full grown specimens with well over two metre wingspans. Their droppings can be found all along the foreshore.

On a more sombre note, I notice that Wikipedia is infested by people who don't care about accuracy, only putting forward their own world view. A piece in the National Post (see Wikipedia's Zealots) I learned about from Small Dead Animals outlined the difficulty of updating the terribly useful online resource, when your entries could be deleted at will by someone with a political agenda. There's an Information War going on. A propaganda machine that Goebbels would have been proud of is perpetuating it's own view with a complete disregard for accuracy. They are intelligent, they are organised, they are funded, they are committed, and they frighten the socks off me. What is their real agenda? It isn't truth, and that's a fact.

This does not alter the fact that there is still snow on the top of Mount Benson, and at the current rate of decrease, it may stay there for at least another week or two, the longest in anecdotal memory. People have noticed against the avalanche of pro warming propaganda, and are guiltily mentioning it like they are speaking heresy just before the next scheduled Auto da fe. During a haircut yesterday, my Barber raised the subject. My workmates have noticed. Our friends on the island have noticed. The heat death of the universe is not upon us, and they openly wonder what all the fuss is about.

Aftermath

Took the camera with me to get a closer look at what the snow had done at the weekend and came up with the following shots;


Had to get my hatchet out and cut my way through quite a tangle of downed trees and branches just to get down to the shoreline.


Down at the shoreline, this was the view up the Narrows towards town.


Heading back towards the old boat ramp Dog and I came across this half metre thick Arbutus tree. The wood was healthy enough, but when these things go, they hit hard enough to shatter like glass.
This fir was almost sixty centimetres across at the point of breakage.