I got the call today – the resort offered me the job!  I start March 2nd.

PHEW! 

Awesome.  Steady income, stability, solid ground.  The job that will buy us the time we need to build the foundation of our new life in Ukee.  What an enormous weight off my mind. 

This is very good news.

Would you like to come on a walk with us?

Hop in the car!

We’ll go to the Wild Pacific Trail.

Watch out for cougars:

Sorry Snack – er, I mean Bonus – you have to stay on the leash.

Look, here’s Brown’s Bay:

Hey, I found the path to Fletcher’s Cove!  It’s a muddy foot path that winds through the bush and brings you here:

Fletcher’s Cove feels like a hidden paradise.  It’s not hard to get to, but the path is easy to miss if you don’t already know where it is.

Guess who else loves Fletcher’s Cove?  The Stellar sea lions!  My favourites! 

They were too far away for me to hear, but we could see them all hanging out, enjoying the warm day. 

Low tide reveals a field of mussels, sparkling blue in the shy sunlight:

I don’t know enough about the shellfish in the area yet to know how to cook them, or even if these particular mussels are safe to eat.  I’ll check with my neighbours on that one.

We found one rock that had been scraped clean of mature mussels, and teeny tiny baby mussels, the size of your fingernail, were sprouting out from the cracks in the barnacled rock:

We found some green, squishy, deflated looking sea creatures.  I think they’re anemones. 

Oh stop that giggling! 

The fine beach sand was smooth and unblemished.  The water run off painted fractal patterns in as it ran into the sea:

When we returned home, a great blue heron was perched on top of the eagle’s tree, calling his rough, low gargle:

Well.  That was a lovely walk!

More pictures in the Daily Deer

I believe that community and family are the most important things in life.  People need people to survive, thrive and be happy.  The strength of a community has a huge impact on the quality of life of the people within it.  People helping each other, people working together to accomplish more than each individual could do on their own. 

The sense of community in Ucluelet is what attracted us to this little town in the first place.

Shortly after we arrived in Ukee, the community was slapped with the threat of the closure of our elementary school.  Either Tofino or Ucluelet would lose a school, and the losing town would have to bus their grade school kids for an hour to the last remaining school.  This attempt to divide and conquer our scrappy west coast towns was fought by both Tofino and Ucluelet residents *together* and in the end, we both got to keep our schools… for now.

But that slap ignited a spark in the community.

The fight is not over.  I think the threat to close the school was a smoke screen to scare the community into accepting even more cuts to the high school. 

Ten years ago, the high school had some pretty good programs.  It had a shop and some training programs to provide entry into the trades.  We *need* the trades.  The west coast communities are growing.  We’re building.  We need builders, electricians, welders and mechanics, but our high school has already cut all of these programs.  All that’s left is the academic stream – and what happens to kids in the academic programs?  They leave the community to go to university. 

Kids with access to trades training programs in the high school will stay in the community and help to build it.  They’ll be working in the community shortly after graduating from high school – we need them here! 

Young adults who would excel in the trades are being shut out of schools – they’re dropping out.  And now the province wants to hand down even more cuts, passing off the responsibility for finding millions of dollars to rural communities without disclosing how that shortfall happened. 

We need our trades programs back.  We need accessible education for ALL of the kids and teenagers in our community; if these kids can’t go to school then the families have to leave. 

Demographically, Ukee is comprised mostly of adults in their 30s with young children.  Most of the people I’ve met have moved to Ucluelet from somewhere else.  Like us, they moved here because they want to live in a small town, not a big city.  Our values are small town values, where kids grow up outside and neighbours care about each other. 

We don’t just live here, we love it here, and we’ll fight these attacks upon our community with determination and passion.

Statistically, one out of every ten people is some kind of queer.  Gay, bi, trans or straight-except-for-camping-trips.  So we knew that in a town with a population of 1,400, there would have to be a few queers about town.  We found their gender studies books in the second hand book store.  We knew they were here. 

After three months of networking, we finally asked the right person.  She apparently called her gay women friends and said “There are two more lesbians in town!”  A few days later there were posters for a “Lesbian & Bisexual Women’s social night” for this Thursday.  Last night.  On our knitting night.

We weren’t going to skip out on Donna and our knitting night.  Knitting night is my favourite night of the week, and why oh why does the queer social networker have to be on a Thursday? 

Donna said the same thing!  “Oh why Thursdays!  You’re going to steal my lesbians!”  No way Donna, we’re not going to ditch you. 

We were spinning and carding and knitting away last night, when Lily walks in and introduces herself.  And outs herself.  Halleluiah! 

So there are five self-identified lesbians in Ukee now, that we know of.  There are more in Tofino, I’m sure.  Maybe the queer social night will flush ‘em out.  Not that it matters all that much out here.  Everyone just goes about their lives like everyone else.  There are no night clubs or specialty book stores to separate us.  This small town has totally accepted us, people have welcomed us into the community, taken us under their wing.  I don’t *need* a gay community here in the way I needed it in Toronto, but it’s just nice to know who the other queers are.  That way we don’t feel like the only ones. 

We belong.

Just LOOK at who’s hanging around town!

 

No, this is not my picture.  I haven’t been fortunate enough to see this fellow in person yet, though I’m still hoping.  This picture is from this article in the Westcoaster:

http://www2.canada.com/westerly/story.html?id=9c5323bb-7bae-49a9-a6d7-272f842ad691

Kat & I took the dogs on this part of the trail just this morning.  Fantastic!