From the Parking Lot: July 27-August 1, 2025

Anyone who knows the Salish Sea in the summertime will recognize this image of still, flat water at slack tide reflecting every imaginable colour at sunset.

This week we were travelling by sailboat through the Hul’q’umi’num speaking territories of the Gulf Islands in the Salish Sea. The posts this week reflect both my usual monkey-mind reading habit and some travel notes from the trip.

• July 27, 2025: systems and cycles: economics and other system
• July 28, 2025: quiet, prayers, and landscapes of war and peace: some theology, a book to read and blessed quiet
• July 29, 2025: place noting and place making: noticing place, making notes and making trade.
• July 30, 2025: connected through tsunamis, contentment, austerity and football: we weather a tsunami advisory, and I think about the good life, suffering and how football advocates.
• July 31,2025: a miscellany of things about time and pay warm water begs us to stay at anchor, and so I read about time and getting paid.
• August 1, 2025: leaving Hul’q’umi’num territories and good questions to ask: a really cute seal to wake up to, humpbacks in the Strait and some questions worth asking.

We’re on the ferry home from Departure Bay to Horseshoe Bay and then from Horseshoe Bay back to our own home island, where a weekend of fun is about to unfold featuring the annual Firefighters’ Dock Dance, and a remounting of the classic Bowen Island play The View, in which every possible island archetype is skewered by the ingenious satire of David Cameron and Jackie Minns. It’s a long weekend in British Columbia and the beginning of Lughnasa, the Celtic season of harvest and generosity.

I hope you enjoy reading these posts.