Christmas Season ~ 2013
Hello all, greetings from Echo Bay, a week of silvery rain and
cloudbreaks after a week of solid freeze and sun. Weather is nothing if not
interesting as we are so in it all the time. Rain overflows the gutters, fills
up the speedboats tied at the dock, which may or may not have an automatic pump
which may or may not get jammed. Running down the dock in the middle of the
night to pump out your boat, or remembering to check on your neighbour’s boat
because they are out for a while and you said you would and you would just
shrivel up into a puddle if anything happened to their boat while you were
looking after it..
…or when it freezes up here and the first thing you do is fill
up all the containers you keep tucked away in a cupboard for this very occasion,
fill up the bathtub, then adjust the tap to the minimum flow possible which
will keep the water line from freezing up…but it freezes anyway and the
beautiful gratitude that fills you when the taps gurgle and the water flows and
you quickly have the first bath you’ve had in two weeks, wash your hair in the
steaming scented flow…and while you are in the bathtub a pod of Biggs
(Transient) orca come by and you can hear them blowing as you lie in the tub and
gaze up the hill at the trees swaying in the southeast wind, sipping on your
coffee and Baileys.
Well, you can see that gives life a little edge that just cannot
be found in an urban landscape…
We are a small and disparate crew this Christmas. Billy, and
next door neighbour Zephyr holding the fort, so to speak, at Salmon Coast
Research Station are our companions and Christmas cohorts.
Gone are the days when thirty people would fill our house with laughter
and friendship. In many ways it is a lonely place in Echo Bay these days and we
are lucky to have each other, my engineering genius husband and I, and lucky
too, to have the internet to connect us to all the beautiful friends we have
made over the years. And also lucky to have meaningful work that keeps us
occupied and stimulated each day, and an amazing environment in which to breathe
deeply, explore and marvel at.
Our thanks to those I met at Billy’s Museum last summer who seek
to know the Broughton Archipelago and love it, also to the visitors to SeaRose
Studio who brought their own spark to our world, who made us feel, with their
appreciation of our art, that we don’t live in a social desert..it just flowers
with the seasons…thanks for your friendship, Teri and Pat, Carl and Carol, Dale
and Pat, Daphne and the boys and many others. Thanks as well to the bookstores,
libraries, restaurants, Costco’s and churches of Vancouver Island communities
who hosted me and my daughter Theda Phoenix in our promotional tour of my book
and her CD in May; you all made us feel so welcome and
special.
Special thanks to my daughter Theda who takes time from her own
demanding schedule to help me out with this website. Theda you have really
supported me in this painful learning curve…
WWOOF Canada creates the opportunity for us to have helpful
visitors from all around the world, who help fill the woodshed, transplant
hydrangeas, weed the garden beds, gather seaweed and fallen maple leaves to
cover them for the winter. Our thanks to all the ‘wwoofers’ who came to us this
year, and to the ones who came and went over the last four years yet stayed in
our hearts.
2014 looms ahead, full of potential, full of the joy and
optimism a new year symbolizes. As we work to better the planet in small ways,
to help our friends and neighbours, when we are able, to support those who are
troubled and /or in the front lines of important causes, and to fulfill our
individual human potential, we remind ourselves we are all one; as one cell of
the body is, to the body, one human being is, to the totality of humankind. Keep
hold of the big picture…..
Sincerely yours, Yvonne at
SeaRose
RSS Feed
