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| ANOTHER MUST-READ NEWSLETTER FROM SHOAL BAY
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October 4, 2005. One of the rewards of researching, writing and publishing the Waggoner Cruising Guide is receiving and sharing with you Mark MacDonald’s newsletters from Shoal Bay. When you meet Mark, you will realize that everything in this newsletter is true. The only way to meet Mark and see Shoal Bay is to get in the boat and go up there. Judging from the way the docks fill up all summer long, that’s just what is happening. – Bob Hale
SHOAL BAY NEWSLETTER
pub, marina, culture, crab
shoal bay, east thurlow island, british columbia, canada, v0p 1b0
October 3, 2005. Advice is no longer being accepted at Shoal Bay. We will take a check, but please leave all of your advice in your pocket. We got loads. There is no possibility that you could offer me anything that I have not already received. Don’t even bother, I got it already. Give me a check.
I have no time to mourn the end of a spectacular summer, for I am far too busy celebrating the coming of a breathtaking fall. I continue to arise every morning and dreamily smile as I gaze out over the water. I refuse to succumb to some imaginary ailment, supposedly brought on by the shorter days and cool grey shades of winter. It is heavily overcast right now after a very rainy night. Great clouds of mist are being held down to earth by the treetops. I can honestly say that there is no other place on earth where I would rather be.
We have been working most of the summer on preparations for two arrivals next spring. In a lovely area just across the creek are the modest beginnings of a monumental vegetable garden. Beside the vegetable garden is the housing for the new Shoal Bay brood of layer hens. In some form or another, next spring there will be fresh eggs and vegetables in the bay. We creep ever closer to becoming self-reliant. Thusly we are severing yet another of the thin strands that bind us to that festering, corrupt, corporate monster that is the rest of the world (the part where you live). Becoming self-sufficient while living off-the-grid in an otherwise dependant world is truly satisfying.
It took a massive amount of hand clearing this summer to make way for the veggies. No tractor or dozer, but lots of hardworking hands chopping down huge alder trees, clearing away endless prickly, nasty-ass salmonberries, digging roots and breaking fertile ground. It always impresses and amazes me how the most hardworking people seem always to be the unpaid. Or maybe it’s the hardworking people who end up unpaid… mmm… well, either way, it’s getting things done in Shoal Bay.
The vegetable garden will be an evolving thing that I hope will grow in size and stature as years go by. Input and actual involvement by boaters and visitors in the garden will be essential to its very survival. It will be the responsibility of the people who reap from the garden to be personally involved in its makeup, maintenance, and even design.
The garden rests in a wonderful setting overlooking the sea. I will very much try to make it a lovely place to take a little time wandering, reading, or just sitting, while spending time away from the boat. Everyone not only will be invited, but be expected to help weed, clean, and make future plans. It will be in many ways a community garden, a boater’s community garden.
The chicken coop was an abandoned building that emerged from the brush being cleared for the garden. I was told that the building was last used as a pig pen/chicken coop, and was built from materials saved from the last building left from the original town -- a brothel. I will build a new enclosed run for the hens attached to the coop and hopefully they can wander around the property scratching on nice summer days. Then back into the coop at night. Where miners were getting laid a hundred years ago, eggs will be getting laid soon.
The laundry/shower shack was up and running all summer, and was a big hit with boaters and locals alike. I have never smelled so damn good. This summer people were willing to walk right up and speak to me regardless of the prevailing wind. Clean clothes and multiple hot showers made for a whole new level of hygiene, both on and off the docks at Shoal Bay. The shack has a great little porch for sitting, and is equipped with a new washer and dryer as well as an indoor shower stall and a cool outdoor shower overlooking the bay.
There will soon be a nice sink and toilet in the shower room as well. I had set an old toilet down where I planned to install the new one, just to see how it looked. In spite of not having a hole under it, not being bolted down, not having any water in it or to it, leaning against the wall, and no handle, somebody walked in and took a giant crap in it. The loyalty of unpaid crew was severely tested when that chore was assigned. The toilet was removed.
The entire (almost entire) dock and floats have been pressure washed and are to have new railing installed. There is even some talk, rumours I suppose, of a new ramp and other upgrades. All of these of course are most welcome, and an upgraded clean dock makes life better at Shoal Bay for everybody, residents and guests alike. Pressure washing the dock has been a miserable, dirty job that several of us took turns at, but the end result is such a striking improvement it has been worthwhile. We will hope that the improvements and upgrades continue.
So the other night, When I first came to Shoal Bay and decided that it was where I was to be, I was not thinking of a resort of any kind, a business of any kind, or generating any income. I felt that I had found my own personal paradise. I was thinking of myself exclusively. Here was a place where I could have countless wonderful visions and gradually watch them materialize, using my own two hands. A place where nature is a bigger part of my life than traffic or television. Where I would could be responsible, not reliant. Where I am directly and immediately rewarded by my good efforts. I hope to thoughtfully build this place into a home for myself and my own, selfishly. If there are people like yourselves who choose to come here and share this with me, and in doing so help in some way to carry out this dream, then you are indeed welcome. But do not think that it is for you that I am here, or it is for your joy that I labour. It is not. I am here because all of this makes me who I am. I am afraid it is up to you to figure your own damn lives out. I’m O.K. now.
I read once where in being offered the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo had been given the ultimate canvas with which to work. The guy who wrote that had never been to Shoal Bay.
Thanks for your patience, and by the way, peace.
Mark
www.shoalbaylodge.com
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