This coast is wet in the fall and winter. We get pummelled by atmospheric rivers that bring strong warm winds and days of rain from the south west. We get drizzled on by orographic rain. We get soaked by passing fronts. And the land drinks it up, the rivers swell and call the salmon back. If you don’t love rain, this is a very hard place to live from October through to March., when the light is dim and the air moist. Me, I’ve grown to love it. I love to be out in the rain, walking about, listening to it on the hood of my jacket, sitting by the sea and watching is dapple the surface.
This is a video of some Nuu Chah Nulth language speakers from Hesquiaht on the west coast of Vancouver Island on the north end of Clayoquot Sound. And not just any language speakers but Julia Lucas, Simon Lucas and Maggie Ignace. I first met Julia and Simon in 1989 on my first trip to the west coast when I visited their village for a week and got to spend time with them. They are revered Elders. Simon, who passed away in 2017, was a a lifelong champion for Nuu Chah Nulth fishing and political rights and Julia has been a knowledge keeper, educator and language teacher for decades. Maggie is one of the many Nuu Chah Nulth language learners who are building up their fluency thanks to videos like this and programs.
Largely inspired by a slow reading through this paper (“Over reliance on English hinders cognitive science“) I’ve been thinking a bit today about the Indigenous languages of this region and how they point at such different ways of looking at the world, while I sip team and watch the rain. While surfing and I stumbled upon this video today, noting that OF COURSE Nuu Chah Nulth has a word for “a person who walks around in any weather” and I was really touched to see Julia and Simon here.
For years Peter Levine, a moral/political philosopher who teaches at Tufts University, has been a must-read for me for his musings on civic engagement, democracy, policy, history and philosophy. Today he celebrates 20 years of blogging with the release of “Cuttings: a book about happiness” that is a collection of his collected blog posts on “Happiness” which is so much more than that title implies. The book is a set of reflections on philosophical texts, religious scriptures, and poetry, Buried in the text is a little observation that I suspect says something about who he is:
So we have a model of the humane and sensitive educated person as one who has been
— Peter Levine, Cuttings: A book about happiness v1.0, p. 20
habituated by the reading of moving stories to be empathetic and thus to show mercy or
otherwise depart from harsh decisions.
I have never met this person in real life, but his character shines through his deep and considered blog posts, and this collection is a lovely gift to savour.
The past few days have been spent supporting loved ones so I haven’t been out much but today I managed to get out for a walk and i went to one my favourite places to sit, a little pocket beach in my neighbourhood that has a lovely view across the Queen Charlotte Channel to the west wall of Átl’ka7tsem (Howe Sound) where, this time of year, the clouds and light and snow compose a lovely soft changing view scape. I was looking forward to a little bit of quiet communion with the resident eagles and seals and possibly catch a glimpse of one of the cetaceans who have been hanging around.
To my surprise, many of the local families in the neighbourhood had gathered for a Polar Bear Swim. This is an annual New Year’s Day tradition around here and there is a larger community gathering on the west side of Nexwlélexwm (Bowen Island) at Bowen Bay beach, which is a very popular spot. The community gathers and there is a big bonfire and bottles of Fireball and other high quality spirts are passed around and dozens of people take the plunge.
I have done that several times, but this year I wasn’t feeling it and so I didn’t have my swimming gear with me. And I wasn’t expecting a polar bear swim at our little beach. But there is was, my neighbours and friends taking the plunge together. There has been a bit of a trend since COVID to localize our community events a bit. Some neighbourhoods now do their own Hallowe’en instead of all coming to the Deep Bay loop, a flattish neighbourhood with two looping roads and full of families and haunted houses. It seems the polar bear swim has become decentralized a bit too. Not a bad thing as we get a bit bigger as a community, it is good to know and celebrate with the folks closest in proximity to us.
This afternoon it was +7 degrees and so relatively balmy for the swim. The beach was quite cleared from the King Tide + extreme low pressure event we had last week. Some of the huge old logs and stumps that have rested on that beach for at least 25 years were lifted and moved by the storm surge from a tide that was expected at 5.0 meters but was actually recorded at 5.6 meters. That came on as a deep low pressure system passed over us with 978 mb surface pressure which accounts for the extra 60 cms of sea level. That’s a huge tide, a once in a generation beach re-arranger.
And so it seems appropriate that these subtle but generational shifts in the social fabric of our place are accompanied by one in the very marine in which we are located.
Happy New Year.
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