♥️ Trees!

Tuesday was overcast but dry in the morning, and Sheba was showing signs of improvement, so I decided to take her for one of our regular trail walks. We only did a few minutes of walking however, because her limp quickly materialized. We came home for another slow and lazy day with Fred and Ethel. 

She is doing well with the prednisone. She takes it readily with hamburger whereas she hated her antibiotic medicine and would often spit it out. She is not driving me crazy for water or food, and she is still managing to sleep well through the night without needing to pee. I feel very relieved.

In the afternoon, the rains came. It was wet and dark, so we went into the village to shop for food supplies and then came home to chill in our nice warm and cozy home. Her Highness chilled on the bed with Fred and Ethel, and I did some meal prep for our dinners.

At 6:30, I drove to the ferry to pick up Ali and Pete. They were in Edmonton meeting their first grandchild. I drove them home. They are the most generous neighbours imaginable. Pete spent 10 days here re-doing the vertical supports that hold up my deck, and together we sanded and stained the whole surface, and it’s a mighty big deck. I take every opportunity to return favours to thank them.

I have traded a self-mutilating dog for an eternally hungry monster. She sits and stares at me, asking for food, right after eating dinner. Thomas the vet warned me that this would happen. When I watch TV, sometimes I wear my hoodie so that I can’t see her staring at me. But she’s happy and active and soon we’ll be walking, and that makes both of us happy. 

Thanks to mt fellow dog walker, Di, I have a fellow coming here on Friday to buck and split the tree that fell across my backyard. If he’ll stack it for me, I’ll ask him to do that as well. I suspect there’ll be a cord of wood for next Winter in that tree. I just bought 3 cords of wood that are coming in April. I paid $1,200 for that. I don’t know what Grayson will cost, and I don’t care. Getting my wood stacked will cost about $500, and Grayson could be $800. That’s $2,500/yr for heating. But it's much more than that.

My fireplace feels vital to my wellbeing. When I moved into the basement at the Tyrell’s, there was a fireplace in my bedroom. Steve and I had a fireplace in Vancouver for 12 of our 14 years together. Every morning when I wake up, I think: Fuck, I’ve got to go out in the cold and chop wood. That’s how every day of three seasons begins at Pinecone Park. 

But when I lay the fire, I sit on my lovely wooden bench made here on Gabriola, and I watch the fire grow. If I close the door too soon, the fire will go out, and I must wait until the pipe carrying the smoke up the chimney gets warm and makes the draught flow. So, I sit there, and I just watch the fire for about 15 minutes, and I feel like I used to do when I’d pull up a chair beside my 60-gallon aquarium, and I’d get blissfully lost in that watery world.

The price I pay for wood and labour yields much, much more than heat. My fireplace is raised, so when you sit near it, the heat hits you at body level. Fireplaces go with log construction. When I was ten or so, Don Tyrell would take me up the mountain. He was the PR guy for Grouse Mountain back then, and all the staff babysat me while he worked.

The lodge, where we had a room, was log construction, as were Don’s cabin on Hollyburn Ridge and Surf Lodge, here on Gabriola, where we came for the best Summer vacation of my time with those people. Logs are part of my life. My forest walks that thrill me so much, the wonder is largely the trees. As I sit here at my computer where I spend so much time, out the glass doors to the deck I see my studio that’s become a dry storage shed, with a wall of trees behind it.

My computer sits in front of a large window. In the early days, I learned that it’s good to frame your computer with a window so that every time you look up, your eyes adjust to distance vision, and that helps your eye muscles stay strong because we are always staring at the screen.

Out my big window I see my bird feeders, the shiny silver metal roof of Dave and Ursula’s yurt—it’s brand new. And then a wall of trees. I think I’ve got 40 or more trees on my lot.  Trees here in BC were of vital importance to the provincial government treasury. Citizen wars were rages to safe places of first-generation forest, people tied themselves to trees and lived on platforms to stop loggers. That’s when trees became a major concern of people here where Greenpeace was born. We sanctified the forest, and activists here gave voice to our trees. It helped bring white and first nations people together. I feel all that when I walk in the forest as well as the beauty and fragrance of all that grows.

And I get to live in trees as well.

For Beth: Last night, I watched Death at a Funeral on Kanopy. Mathew McFadden and Keely Hawes are actors I admire, so I thought I’d watch it. I always prefer a UK production over something from America. I thought it was going to be a murder mystery, but no. It’s a farce, and it’s a brilliantly structured, and performed by wonderful actors. I had such a wonderful time watching it. Andy Nyman as Howard is, for my taste, comic genius. His is a quite physical role. He’s so good at it, it makes me believe that a lot of Howard’s character is coming from Nyman, and not the director. I was truly aching from laughter whenever he was on during the last half of the film.

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We walked with our friends, at least part way. It’ll be good to see them, then we’ll be coming home to pass another slow and gentle day as a family at Pinecone Park.