Saturna Island, British Columbia. September 25, 2016. It’s 91.5 FM in this outpost of empire. KSQM. “Squim” they call themselves, somewhere out of the state of Washington. Playing nostalgia songs for island duffers like me lying around in our snot, resisting the urge to pour a gigantic bourbon at three o’clock in the afternoon. Jim Reeves. Dean Martin. Tony Bennett. Patsy Cline. Hoagy Carmichael.
It’s clouding up over Boundary Pass and in the midst of these reveries I decide to don some socks. We’re livin great days, bro. To our immediate south, across the pass, lies America. It’s in the form around here of the San Juan Islands. It takes other forms elsewhere, but around here it’s the San Juan Islands.
They’re where they’re supposed to be, and we’re where we’re supposed to be. It’s how we like it. Peaceful. We are keeping watch, but there’s not much going on so the breaks are plentiful and lengthy.
5:00 pm. Watch on the pass. ‘Who the cap fit, let them wear it’ as Mr. Bob Marley so eloquently put it. It’s our music now, coming out of the player. Thinking of dear Ted Cruz and how he has really demonstrated what kind of strange man he is. Now he’s for it. Hitherto he was agin it. Now he for it. Because the apocalypse is all got to be defeated, ya know? Thank you black people. And white people, a course. And all you Latinos out there. Luv ya! And, less we forget, heh heh, all you lovely ladies out there and all you women across this great planet of ours. Don’t ya luv it? Don’t ya? Tom Cruz? Cruz control? Cruzamania? 4 ½% of Americans are solidly behind me? Oktoberfest?
Boundary Pass is a large, pass-y type body of water with many moods and configurations. Actually, it’s just a body of water in what they call the Salish Sea, a name I don’t quite like, and that would be salt water. This is better than misspelling for fun. We’re gonna take a short break and take a leak at things. I mean take a look at things.
5:30 pm. States is cooking off some peat we brought home from Ireland 20 years ago. Lighting a bit of it in the wood-burning stove we’ve got going, transferring it to a little plate and bringing it over to me so that we may experience the fragrance together again. The smudge fire.
We gave this hunk of peat to her mother when we got back, and now we have it back as she has gone to South Granville Park Lodge and her house cleaned out. This is the truth.
6:15 pm. The sky and those streaks of cloud over the Olympic range of the Cascade Mountains is a magnificent sight. Due south. We’re straight north about a hundred miles from the “Olympic Peninsula”. Let’s get our bearings sorted out.
Blasting from the speakers now is “The Invincible Eagle” by Mr. John Philip Sousa, not only written but performed on several occasions when he was leader of the United States Marine Band. USMC, right? Semper fi semper fi….
Now I know that all you Americans out there are just itchin to get your hands on the channel changer so you can get on over to the latest recap on the 1st presidential debate. I’m out. I mean out on deck here in the gathering twilight. Check the map. It’s right here. We’re at 123.3 or so degrees of longitude west and 48.2 latitude or so north.
For some folks we’re harder to find than a chicken in a haystack but once you’re showed you never forget where you are. We just don’t have a TV and we’re loathe, right now, to check our devices. We’re in full loathe.
Out there shadowing the invisible border line in Boundary Pass an Orca class RCN ship out of Esquimalt naval base bearing east, northeast.
samoyeddogs 