Monday, August 17, 2009

The view from my front room

Today Dodd Narrows is the colour of bright beaten steel, rippling and glistening in the late afternoon light. Our view framed by white primed architrave of our small apartments front door and fine pebbled concrete steps. From there the pale brown dusted green of a Canadian Summer lawn in the front yard bakes bordered by an aging brown picket fence. Beyond that, a steep grassy bank leading down to a roadside culvert. Here is where I have lived for the past twenty months or so, writing and working. The opposite side of the road is bordered by a three metre Leylandii hedge, a telegraph pole carrying electricity cables and a boxy electronic repeater belonging to the Shaw cable company bearing number 1128.

Almost hidden by the hedge is a square section white brick chimney stack capped with two louvered alloy stove cowls to draw the hot air from below when a hearth fire is lit, which it seldom is. The American lady who lives there during the summer months was taken ill recently. Her dog, an enthusiastic and loveable Flatcoat Golden Retriever, has not been around for several weeks. I can only assume the rest of her family is looking after him right now. The brown painted weatherboarding and northwest facing clerestory vent windows are all I can see of her house from where I sit. Beyond and to its left are two Douglas Firs and one of the curiously smooth orange barked Arbutus trees. After that is my view of the steely bright water, on the other side the Fir tree clad long barrow of Mudge Island, rocky shoreline a distinct sandy colour in this light.

Occasionally a yacht, sails furled and under power, dinghy tender bobbing in its wake, will drift northbound up the narrows towards Nanaimo Harbour. Sometimes powerboats will growl through at full speed, roostertailing white behind them. Small canoes with outboard motors will carry rod and line weekend fishermen out to where the big ones are mid channel. Every day we will see a Log boom, a three hundred metre plus long hawser linked scoop of logs being strenuously hauled, bullied and bumped southwards, sometimes northwards, dependent upon destination. Some for processing into paper pulp at the Harmac or the plywood plant on the other side of Duke point. Maybe Ladysmith, Duncan, or across the border to the USA. Maybe once a week we see one of the massive tar black hulled tugs, low and squat in the water, all brute strength and Diesel muscle, boxy white superstructures punctuated by square windows at the sides, hauling the rust and iron oxide squareness of a construction barge.

Overhead come the regular seaplanes on their passenger bearing missions to Vancouver and Victoria, turboprop and radial engines making their own archaic propeller driven sounds. The engine notes as distinctive as music to the accustomed ear, and bearing their own little mystique to West British Columbian skies.

During the summer, especially at weekends, it is not unusual to see lines of assorted boats queuing up to use this relatively narrow piece of water. A motley collection of pleasurecraft from a billionaire’s power yacht, scaled down ocean liners to Kayakers paddling against time to beat the six knot current that rips through the sixty metre neck of the narrows on a normal tide. At Neaps and springs, the current can reach a vicious sixteen and a half knots, forming tricksy vortexes and rips to carry unwary paddlers far south of Round Island before they can retain control. In the winter months this torrent roars, gushing southwards at the flood, but on languid summer days the narrows show their deceptively gentle side; silently running through tidal cycles, patiently grinding down beaches of discarded clam shells to pinhead sized grains.

Near high water mark this material forms whole speckled drifts bordered by crab haunted pebbles and sandstone shingle among man sized boulders of the local sandy grey rock. Otter and Gull discarded crab shells, pink and fragmented, add occasional spots of colour. Two landslide shattered trees sprawl across the shingle foreshore, one supporting colonies of dark blue shelled Mussels where its trunk lies mostly beneath the water, upward jutting branches forming convenient perches for fish hunting birds.

Up and down the strand every sub tidal rock coarsened by the calcareous teeth of barnacle encrustation, and bearing current stunted clumps of bladderwrack. Whip like kelp stems with their distinctive bulbed ends litter the intertidal zone. Tide uprooted eel grass adds highnotes of green to the high water mark. Weathered and discarded logs, refugees of long ago log booms populate the high water mark where they high tides and storms periodically rearrange them like some complex natural game of jackstraws dotted with occasional items discarded from passing boats. Above yellowish grey sandstone lined shorelines the deep upright green of Douglas Firs, Pine and Spruce stand at attention, ready to march over the landscape in countless regiments at God’s bidding.

These are the shores of Dodd Narrows, a relatively small but tranquil location by grandiose Canadian standards. When the humans aren’t about the Common Loon ululates its distinctive wailing cry. Where the Bald Eagles wheel overhead, spotting for passing Salmon or Herring near the surface, in early March glutting themselves on Herring as the shores turn a pale milky green with fish spawn. Shores haunted by Blue Herons and ululating rafts of strangely beaked Surf Scoter ducks.

851 Words minus title

Flesch-Kincaid Grade 11.2

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