Eliguk Outpost

The 'Feels" of the flickering light. It's apparent that our conduct changes on a bright sunny day or when all the lights are on in a cabin. It is well-documented that light therapy significantly influences our cognitive behavior. Light, that sneaky beam of energy, has a ninja-like ability to influence our feelings, get us going, and even mess with our health – and the kicker is, we usually don't know it's even happening! It's like a mood ring for our environment; the brighter the light is, we tend to get productive - we think about projects, deadlines, demands, and all things that need to be done. Meanwhile, dusk or dawn…

Will's journey to Eliguk ended early afternoon on a Friday, as he pulled up as close as one can get to the southern shores of our lake, six hours from 108 Mile Ranch. Mountain Man and the fur-pack awaited our friends arrival, and then they all crossed the one kilometer ride on the lake with the barge. After settling in back at the resort, the remaining afternoon was spent acquainting Will with the ins and outs of life at Eliguk, from feeding the dogs and chickens to monitoring the solar system and connecting to Wi-Fi. It had been a few years since Will's last visit, so there was a few…

Denouement - Leaving Clarity; Back Into The Abyss.       0130, pitch black dark on the bottom bunk of the Hudson cabin, lying awake. A wind event has been roaring overhead, moaning through the surrounding treetops, and rattling the cabin windows. Who wants to sleep? Especially on my last night here in the middle of raw Nature? Cozy in my sleeping bag cocoon, I mentally snuggle deeper, sighing in contentment as I savour the moment.       ‘Cra-a-a-a-cck!’       No thud. A ‘hanger’. Somewhere close by. There’s gonna’ be a lot of blowdown today. We’ve had three days of daytime big winds, up to 20 knots…

Day 6 - The Sense of Small      It’s still Day 5, but the idea came to me, as ideas do, unsought, unexpected, and in a lot of cases, unnoticed. Perhaps, because I write, I usually ‘do’ notice, most especially when alone and not distracted by people. Alone in the truck, alone in my Study, or alone in my head, but, not interacting with people. Crazy eh? Maybe I am. But the beauty for me, is I don’t care. I just go on being me, and let the criticism fall on deaf ears…which isn’t that difficult, lol, since I’m pretty deaf already.      So, what’s the idea? Well,…

Day 5 Alone - Into A Routine - And Contrast       Today’s theme is the incremental adjustment that has taken/ is taking place over the course of the past 4 days. I did anticipate this process, having gone through it many times in the past. After my divorce eons ago, I spent 10 years single, slowly transforming from a lost Soul to One who valued and protected his  solitude.      Similarly, as a single Soul living aboard my sailboat in the heart of a big City, when the Christmas holidays rolled around, and Families gathered, I would sail off to get lost visiting all my favourite anchorages…

 Day 4 Alone - Reminiscing       Seventy-one years on and I’ve come full circle. As a five year old farm kid, I had to use an outhouse, and haul buckets of water from the pump house. Here I am all these years later, and nothing’s changed, except I’m bucketing from a lake. What’s worse, while I was so ‘relieved’ back then once we ‘modernized’, and had water plumbed to the house, here I am now volunteering to step back in time. Go figure. Nostalgia? Or masochism?        Ah, but the wood stove makes all the difference. Back then, it was a coal furnace, and I was…

Day 3 Alone - Whether We Weather Weather’s Wind       “Easy peasy”, she’d said. “You’ll be bored,” she’d said! Wind screamed through the leaning treetops surrounding the cabin, moaned past the woodstove pipe’s chimney top and blasted a downdraft onto the dancing flames in the stove. The cabin windows rattled in sympathy.        Outside in the late afternoon gathering darkness, sideways snow streaked eastward down the lake, highlighted by the corrugated whitecaps tumbling before the driving westerly. A hundred and forty miles to the west, another major low pressure system was hammering the British Columbia coast.        ‘Well…I don’t think I’m gonna be bored.’…

Day 2 Alone - Metamorphosis “Ne te quiviceros extra” - do not seek the answer outside yourself. (R.W.Emerson - Self Reliance)       Solitude is such a wonderful Gift. So hard to find, or create, in modern Society, and even harder to understand. Even if you are single, the World is teeming both outside your door, and inside your ‘devices’. Avoid having these ‘devices’ and you are judged ‘behind the times’. “Get with the Times, Oldtimer!” Even worse, having the devices and ignoring them will have Folks calling you anti-social.       And what’s so wrong with being anti-social? Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay Self Reliance explained that man is faced…

                                       Day 1 Alone - Transitioning   Will Sturgeon - Hoofwrangler Intro     Well, I imagine everyone who regularly reads Jen’s Blogs knows what’s up. I’m spending a week out at Eliguk to feed the fire, the critters, and my Soul, while she’s off for long-awaited wrist surgery. As a ‘gotcha’ surprise, she asked me to write a few articles she could post on her Blog as her recovering wrist would prevent her from typing for a while.      So I should probably warn you, I write a lot of introspective…

The day has almost arrived, filled with anticipation and a bit of anxiety about how I'll manage the coming month (or possibly longer) with limited use of my right hand...I know it will feel as if it's bound behind my back! My carpal tunnel surgery is scheduled for the 5th, and fortunately, we've secured a resort sitter. This means my husband and I can venture out to the metropolis together, turning a challenging time into an opportunity for a shared outing together. It seems we've managed to get out and away for a supply run almost once a year now, thanks to all those who have come to our rescue.…