Large Fierce Mammal

Use of this picture represents neither criticism nor endorsement. (Source: https://www.smartpreppergear.com/best-bag-for-bugging-out-when-shtf/)

“EDC is a current era initialism for “Every Day Carry”. As used in the common vernacular, and at its most basic, it unsurprisingly refers to accoutrements and items of equipment and associated accessories an individual may find it necessary, be called upon, or simply want, to carry daily — spectacles, wallet, watch, keys, mobile phone, pen, hopefully a knife, flashlight, sunglasses, professional credentials, disposable lighter, a condom or two for the hopeful — things like that.” ~ EDC — The Appetizer

Throughout history, the items people have found necessary to carry around with them reflected the necessities of their everyday life. For the most part, these were of a practical nature, and as society progressed in complexity, came to include artifactual expressions of social position. The sword of a nobleman for example, forbidden to the commoner absent temporary authorization in time of war.

The soldier’s “kit”, the cowboy’s “outfit”, are examples of the way one’s every day life will shape what is considered important to carry daily, whether or not you choose what gets included, or it’s chosen for you. EDL can be expected to shape EDC, as it were, and this will hold True until a society creates, or is at least perceived to have created, a “safe” space wherein self-sufficiency becomes a choice. Then we find the development of two extremes — heightened demand for dental care resultant from teeth overused to open packaging, and people who clank when they walk in their preparations for everything, and nothing, simultaneously. EDL no longer drives EDC.

“Everything in Nature is about efficiency and balance, which is why life is, first and foremost, an exercise in energy management. For example, the Way of the Wild demands of each parent that their offspring be made self-sufficient as quickly and efficiently as possible. A tool need not be a physical artifact – rest assured that skilled parenting is a Tool – but to be True it must help, not hinder, such processes, and must never represent a brilliant answer to a question that was never asked.” ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday – Tools

My professional skillset includes decades of training and experience in identifying and quantifying threats, assessing risks, planning and equipping for when (not if) things go wrong, as well as more than six decades of days in which the worst outcome was mild inconvenience. Nonetheless, the Dread Prophet Murphy ever lurks, and fortune favours the prepared even as it makes no promises it won’t turn you into a grease spot no matter what you do, and I make no claim of immunity in the face of this constant. Every one of my scars comes with the story of a teachable moment. (more…)

“Pocket dump” posted by user Andrei to https://everydaycarry.com

EDC is a current era initialism for “Every Day Carry”. As used in the common vernacular, and at its most basic, it unsurprisingly refers to accoutrements and items of equipment and associated accessories an individual may find it necessary, be called upon, or simply want, to carry daily — spectacles, wallet, watch, keys, mobile phone, pen, hopefully a knife, flashlight, sunglasses, professional credentials, disposable lighter, a condom or two for the hopeful — things like that. (more…)

Literature is effervescent with the weaponry of Heroism, binding the bearer to the facing of perils unimaginable to the mere mortal he or she subsisted as before the day of chosenness. With this endowment comes a sacred duty to right ancient wrongs and rid the world of the darkest evils in a fight unto death, if needs must. No retreat! Only forward!

The Maytag Repair Man, with whose professional travails I share absolutely nothing.

On the day I graduated from high school in 1975, my plans for postsecondary education were directed toward a career in Aerospace Engineering. It would be four years before I came to realize how the end of hostilities in a conflict half a world away had changed all that before it even left the starting gate.

While the world of airplanes and rockets, high performance jet engines, precision guidance systems, and remote sensing isn’t all about finding and killing an enemy, that dark side keeps the lights on in a lot of factories. The sudden absence of an active, high intensity conflict — specifically, the Vietnam War — gutted the aerospace industry worldwide to the degree where contracts serving airlines and general civil aviation needs were barely enough to provide big names — meaning big employers — with anything better than a controlled descent as they circling the drain.

And so it came to pass that I one day found myself looking backward at four years of student debt, ahead at another two yet to go, and the grim prospect of being ejected at the end of it all, fresh and new in a job market awash with unemployed but vastly more experienced and better qualified people.

Notwithstanding my distaste for the trite expression about what one must do when life bestows lemons, what came out of the situation was undeniably a case of making something palatable from the available fruit.

It is well known that the horrors of war are a crucible of innovation spawning technologies and techniques intended to grant the forces of their developers lethal superiority over the enemy, and cancel out that other’s  countervailing efforts. When a major conflict dies down, those heretofore secret methodologies have no choice but to come out into the light and go looking for honest work. So it was for things that used to be dropped into the night from blacked out airplanes, or hand planted by reconnaissance patrols along jungle roads and trails where the vibration of too many footfalls or a convoy of trucks, served as the catalyst for an air strike. For electronic eyes that could detect a living presence — even a vehicle that hadn’t been running for hours by its thermal emissions against the background — so Spooky would know exactly which rock to shoot under. While their specifics may have been classified, their existence wasn’t even a badly kept secret, so if you knew where to look (as I did), much could be learned, and even built, with knowledge and a trip to your local Radio Shack.

It stood me in good stead that I had grown up the son of a highly skilled electronics technician from whom I had acquired the knowledge and skills required to earn me full access to his workshop. Likewise that, as you will have guessed by now, I had no small amount of interest and knowledge, both self-acquired and paid for, in the subjects of electronic systems designed to capture and display imagery, detect threats of every stripe my suite of available technologies could manage, and communicate an actionable state of affairs to those with an interest in the matter.

The die was cast! The electronic security industry was on the cusp of a revolution as manufacturers of military surveillance, target detection, and secure communications technologies obtained the necessary clearances to demilitarize their products and slick them up for the civilian commercial market; all at the time I was finding myself in need of a job. Living in Halifax, Nova Scotia at the time, I cozied up with the Yellow Pages, made to a list of security companies already established in other areas like guard services, private investigations, and guard dogs, and started calling around looking for any with an interest in expanding into electronic security.

By the time the name of Whynacht Security ever came to be engraved on a shingle and hung out to flap in the wind in 1983, I had already been doing business as a security consultant for two years, one year each for two Dartmouth based security companies, evaluating equipment for standardization, writing job specifications, and training technicians in the arcane arts of installation and troubleshooting. Compared with the tools we have at our disposal now, everything we were using back then was first generation, and it fell to system designers and installers to understand the strengths and limitations of ultrasonic, passive infrared, and microwave motion detectors; glass breakage detectors tuned to the specific fracture frequency of glass, seismic and vibration sensing systems to detect people passing over paved and unpaved surfaces, or attempting to mount a chain link fence.

Coming forward to a century most of us Cold War kids didn’t believe we’d ever live to see, this industry now parallels defense specific applications and no longer feeds on the castoffs of war. Professionals in the field are called upon to address fast growing threats that can metamorphose in scope and damage potential almost daily, developing and applying tools and methods that are becoming progressively more specialized.

Meanwhile, the light commercial and residential security and surveillance systems market is awash with do-it-yourself or barely “professional” mass market security products built on proprietary subscription services that leave sensitive and highly personal information and imagery in the hands of third or fourth parties that most likely will not be located in Canada, and therefore are not subject to the privacy and consumer protection laws you might think apply to the relationship. And because so many crave the illusion of security over the reality, ’twill ever be thus.

This being the case, you would think a dinosaur like me would be, by now, the security version of the allegorical Maytag Repair Man. My phone logs and the odometers of my vehicles will put the lie to that.

As it turns out, not everyone wants the illusion.

Was this the sentiment, or something else?

So here we stand, Goode Reader, at a point from which to reflect upon what happened to bring us here.

For this to make any kind of sense demands that you must have first read each of the previous five episodes, so on the chance your first landing here is this article today, links to all preceding Covey Island Shenanigans are provided below for your convenience:

• Backgrounder
• A Pattern Emerges
• You Can’t Go Home Again
• What Do You Tell a Man With Two Black Eyes?
• What Do You Call 200 Lawyers at the Bottom of the Ocean?

From the perspective of my life experience, and as I have previously written most particularly here, my meetings with Raven and Porpoise were blessings of Nature. Affirmations in keeping with what Jim Keating described — “Look for the mini-miracles, the odd synchronicity and sublime messages that walking this new path brings to us. If you see them, they are confirmations that you are on the right track.”

But is that all that they were? Was that what was going on this time? In Truth, I struggle with the comparison because my experience with, “… mini-miracles …”, “odd synchronicity and sublime messages” is of clarity wrapped in subtlety, unmissable by the attuned but invisible to the Great Unwashed. Those first two events, playing out as they did in their singular similarity, carried all the subtlety of a punch in the nose. In this, I believe a different message, or set of messages, was being conveyed.

And then we have the matter of the rowboat that couldn’t go home, and the line it wouldn’t cross that bore a striking resemblance to the course steered by both Raven and Porpoise years before — northeast to southwest.

Next, the failure of the Mi-Pet-Val II’s battery and the fury of an unforecast windstorm that very nearly swept her off the island, only to be saved by Michael’s timely answer to the call of a full bladder. Or is that what called him? Was the timing a little too perfect? Was it his cry of dismay that woke me to noticing his empty sleeping bag, or another kind of call? Whatever it was, the ‘Val II’s rescue had to take place within a very narrow interval of time to be successful, and there we were. Odd synchronicity indeed.

There was the subsequent failure of my own radio battery, and a morning greeted by a stout wind blowing with increasing vigour back the way we had come to reach the island. Its direction — northeast to southwest. In retrospect, the very direction it was blowing the morning we embarked on the trip when it was hitting the ‘Val II square on her nose.

Was it all a sequence of messages, steadily decreasing in subtlety as they went unacknowledged? And why was I such a key ingredient? While there were trips I attended that were unremarkable beyond being a great deal of fun, and many more in the course of those 20 years that I couldn’t find the time for, during which nothing untoward happened to anyone. This begs the question, why did all of those on which something did involve me?

Was it me alone, or me in concert with the other two members of the Olde Guard — those three of us who landed together in 1975? While I was certainly the one upon whom the most focus was placed by whatever forces were at play, whenever I was there, the others were as well.

If indeed a message was being conveyed, it could be interpreted negatively through the encounters as:

• “Hello. You should go back.”
• “You really shouldn’t be here. Follow me.”
• “I MEAN it.”
• “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!”

And yet I can say with certainty that I never, at any point in these events, felt that my life was in danger. Certainly, some situations arising from them were inherently dangerous to varying degrees, but I never felt a sense of malice or viciousness in it — more one of heavy handed playfulness at worst, and in a way that felt … personal.

In retrospect, the way things played out suggests another set of possibilities — that I was (am?) a point of convergence upon which events were focused. Taken together, and absent further investigation, I feel that rather than representing a single coherent message, an argument can be made that this was all about presentation of problems to solve.

If that was what it was, were they aimed at me, or was it my presence that brought them to being and called them to action? Through it all, I was the same person, but over the years between visits, a very different Man. And so the puzzles and problems became more challenging?

At this point in time, all is mystery made of more questions than answers, and the maybes could go on all day.

Thank you for reading, and I welcome any observations or personal experiences that may seem relevant.

To say I was frustrated at the sheer bullshittery of discovering my radio battery dead would be an understatement of monumental proportions. Literally overnight, the situation had morphed into a bag of shit to hold.

The reaction of the rest of the party when I delivered the latest situation report was predictable, ranging from acceptance with a willingness to move forward to, “We’re all going to die!”

I reminded everyone who needed it that the situation was far from what would be categorized by any professional as an “emergency”, and in fact, since the plan for the trip didn’t even include departure before early afternoon, it hadn’t even transcended simple inconvenience. The island we were on was uninhabited but it was far from being up the ass crack of nowhere, and while we weren’t exactly pissing distance from land, we were damn close to it.

“An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.” ~ On Running After One’s Hat, All Things Considered, 1908, G. K. Chesterton

An unexpected turn of meteorology had nearly blown our gallant vessel away, but due to the vigilance and prompt action of her Captain and crew, she was brought to shore undamaged. No one had been injured beyond what one would expect from a spirited roll in the hay — a few scrapes, scratches, bruises, and pulled muscles (some of which had yet to fully reveal themselves) — no supplies had been lost, the wind was warm, the sun was out, and we still had liquor left!

My morose companions were still gathered by the beached ‘Val II as though mourning a loved one, and I was facing the cove as that final point of enlightenment fell from my lips. I remember I was reaching in my pocket with the intention of inserting some hope in the spirits of the downhearted by explaining the purpose of the aforementioned Erma device when another turn of events motivated me to abandon explanation in favour of demonstration.

A large sailboat with at least a half-dozen people visible on her deck rounded the north arm of the cove, riding the stout northeast wind under minimal sail on a course that would take her straight past us.

Immediately pulling out the two “pens”, I checked the safeties and thrust the one containing the red flare at Peter Boulanger, the only one there other than me who had ever operated one. I told him to pass it to me when I asked for it, and readied the one with the “crack” cartridge for myself. You see, Peter and I had practiced this drill before on backwoods canoe trips, the idea being to attract attention with the BANG, and then signal the situation with the immediate followup of the red flare, that being a recognized signal of a maritime state of distress. As I waited for the approaching boat to reach its best point of vantage, I urged my companions to spread out on the beach so they could be clearly visible, and then to wave their arms and make as much noise as possible.

When the boat reached what I felt to be the go point for signalling, I noticed all of its occupants were looking in the direction she was travelling so none appeared to have even noticed the bright white Cape Islander, let alone her frantic cheering section, on the beach in Meisner’s Cove. I fired the first cartridge, there was a muffled “pop” an oscillating “whoosh!” as its rocket streaked up and over the cove on a plume of white smoke, and a second and a half later came a thunderous “BOOM!” Even as the rocket was still on its ascent, Peter was pressing the second launcher into my outstretched hand so I stood, ready to fire, when the blast came and six faces turned to look toward the beach.

There was another “pop” and a streak of sparks mounting skyward before igniting a brilliant red star that was starkly visible even in the morning sunlight as it coasted up and over the apex of its trajectory. My message sent, I joined the rest of the group in yelling, waving both arms, and beckoning, even pointing to the ‘Val II in hope of conveying some sense of our predicament.

The response of those sailing past was to cheer at the sight of our flare as though what they’d heard and just seen was some sort of delightful firework display, smile and wave, and then continue on their way. If disbelief could sink a boat, every one of those cocksuckers would have drowned that day.

Fire, breakfast, and more coffee ensued as we evaluated developments and formulated an egress plan. While it was possible that another boat crewed by smarter people might happen by, and so come to our aid, and we needed to be prepared for that, the northeast wind across the mouth of the cove — accelerating by the look of the waves racing before it — promised to make that less likely with each passing hour. Deliberations led to Me, Michael, and Peter standing on the beach next to the rowboat, looking at the sea conditions, and discussing options.

As things stood these were two in number:

1. Wait out expiry of the drop dead clause of our expedition plan. Specifically, if I had not been heard from by 18:00 on the day in question, my operations staff would attempt radio contact with me. If unsuccessful, a further attempt would be made to contact the Mi-Pet-Val II on Marine VHF. If that also failed, a vessel would be dispatched to investigate, and I had every confidence we would all be back ashore by 20:00. Confidence born of knowing that my staff knew they needed me back if anyone was going to get paid next Friday.
2. Michael’s proposition, which had two of us taking the rowboat back to Herman’s Island and the Baker family cottage thereon, to organize extraction of the rest.

Obviously, in between and in concert with these, were five more unexpended chances to signal passing boats, should any make an appearance, but under the circumstances we weren’t counting on those.

Option 1 simply involved waiting in a still well-stocked and comfortable campsite, and on the surface would appear to be the best option considering the risks inherent in Michael’s idea. On the other hand, the weekend weather forecast had long since diverged from that reported the previous morning, and what we were seeing in real time gave every appearance of getting nastier by the minute for anyone on the water in anything other than a large boat.

On the plus side, the winds and waves, while high, were not yet what any of us considered suicidal. All three of us were strong Men-At-Oars, the wind was blowing in the desired direction of travel, the water was warm, and the boat crew would be wearing personal flotation devices. On the down side, conditions were treacherous enough to preclude a change of oarsmen en route as remaining afloat demanded maintaining course so as to keep the boat stern to the wind and following seas. The boat was flat bottomed so, lacking a keel to maintain course during a pause in propulsion, would quickly lose way, turn side to the waves, and soon be swamped; likely capsized.

For Michael’s plan to succeed, then, would require that one man rowed while the other bailed like there was no tomorrow. The island had been formed by glaciation during the last Ice Age, and parts of the sea floor of Meisner’s Cove were strewn with boulders, some the size of a small car, that had been dropped as the ice melted. Mid-beach, where we made landfall, was sand out to a considerable depth, so the plan was to take that route to deeper water, and then gradually turn southwest while still under the relative shelter of the island. Done right, the boat’s course would converge, and ultimately merge, with the travelling waves and she’d be carried along, both by the sea under the boat and the wind above pressing on her hull and the bodies of her crew — a technique Peter and I were actually practiced in, albeit in a canoe on one of Nova Scotia’s shallow, open, windblown lakes.

We knew that once into the wind and current proper, there would be a transitional phase while the boat accelerated from the speed imparted by human input to that demanded by the elements, and during that interval both Men would need to do their part to perfection. In a canoe, following waves would break either side of the pointed stern, and if large enough, roll in over both sides into the canoe where they needed to be dealt with promptly by the bailer before the next wave hit. After the boat and sea were travelling in concert, the paddler simply needed to maintain enough speed to keep the boat aligned with the following waves and pace them as much as possible so the frequency of waves breaking over the stern was diminished.

That all being said, our row boat was no lightweight, graceful, deep keeled lake canoe. She was built more as a tool than a means of efficient transportation over distance, so in this she was designed more for toughness and longevity than agility and seaworthiness on the open water. Built of stout wooden planks, she was wide and stable, but heavy, flat bottomed, and square sterned so we expected that while her ass end would be helpful in catching the wind once underway, it would take quite a hammering, and receive no small amount of overflowing waves, before she accelerated in the aforementioned transitional phase. We also expected that phase to be made all the longer by her weight.

If all went to plan, and the boat made it to the eastern point of Hermans Island, it would be an easy transition westward out of the wind into the lee of its southeastern point for a relatively relaxed pull in calm water back to the wharf. This provided, of course, that the turn out of the wind was made as close to shore as possible. Too wide a turn would leave the boat wallowing in the troughs and literally sink the enterprise with the destination in sight. At least then, while the boat might be lost, the shore could still be gained by determined swimmers.

The die was cast in favour of Michael’s not unfounded concern for his Father who, he knew, would be off to save us all in an inadequate craft no matter the conditions and damn the torpedoes. The longer we left it, the greater the risk to anyone on the water in boats the size we knew would be being used.

The plan revealed to the doubtful rest of the party, and time being of the essence, the rowboat was soon readied for launch with water canteens to quench parched throats. Michael at the oars by right of his Captaincy of the ‘Val II and his overblown sense of personal responsibility for the situation, and Peter in the stern with the bailing bucket, having won the coin toss against me for the privilege. Three of us gave them a sound shove off the beach and into the cove.

“They’re not LAAAANG for this world!” I said, mimicking an elderly Scottish pepperpot.

There was no reaction from those in the receding boat, but my words brought a ripple of tense laughter from the group, and a cry of dismay from one woman — a Pharmacist as I recall — who I knew couldn’t swim, was afraid of boats, and I had come to know considered camping to be cruel and unusual punishment. Something you do after you survive the plane crash or shipwreck while you’re waiting to die of thirst, starvation, exposure, or all three at once.

All humourous predictions of doom notwithstanding, we watched them transition smoothly into the white capped slipstream of the passing sea, Michael and Peter rowing and bailing respectively like men possessed, and kept them in sight until we were sure they were no longer likely to be swamped into a desperate swim back to the leeward south shore of Covey Island.

Ruins of a shed and deck/wharf at the southwest end of Meisner’s Cove, as it appeared in 1991, five years before the expedition. Photo credit: Bob Layton

With nothing left for the party ashore but to pack up camp in readiness for a speedy loading of the rescue boat and then await its arrival, I encouraged this by example. And so the gear, tents, their owners and custodians presently came to rest in the lee of what was left of a small shack someone had built, abandoned, and left to rot on the beach (see photo above, taken five years before we were there).

Enlisting the group in the gathering of kindling and driftwood, I soon had a fire going, and so coffee, hot chocolate, snacks, stories and songs were keeping spirits high, even among the fragile first (and after this, only) timers who I could see kept sinking into an unsound reverie that had them stewing over how they had reluctantly sidelined their doubts and fears at the behest of those who told them it would all be fine and lots of fun. Those people never knew that, were this to be a real shipwreck that might lead to cannibalism, I had already picked them while they were still plump and tender. Anyway, notwithstanding dark thoughts and self-imposed gloom, someone resembling me had everyone laughing when a boat was spotted rounding Hermans Island and then turning into the wind toward us.

The boat belonged to one Patrick (Pat) Burke, a local barrister, who speedily, generously, and with no small degree of intrepidity, contributed his vessel and person to the cause. As previously mentioned, Mr. Burke was not the only lawyer involved in bringing the adventure to a successful close, for our own Michael Baker, Captain and saviour of the Mi-Pet-Val II, and legitimate claimant to the illustrious title of 1996 Coveys Island Rowing Champion, practiced likewise.

There is a joke, first told to me by a lawyer, that goes:

Q — “What do you call 200 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”

A — “An excellent start.”

As funny as I find that on the most visceral of levels, I for one would unreservedly grant dispensation to at least two of their number.

Equipped with a fully charged battery, the ‘Val II was crewed and made her own way back, the Goode Captain Baker at her helm.

Click on this aerial photograph to enlarge it and then locate “Little Herman Island” at the bottom center. Note the point of land projecting toward a dock on the larger “Hermans Island”. Count two more docks down along the larger island’s south shore — the second one is our embarkation and return point. Now locate “Covey Island”, and most importantly “Meisner’s Cove”, the scene of our persistent drama.

There’s an old joke that goes:

Q — “What do you tell a man with two black eyes?”

A — “Nothing. He’s already been told twice.”

There are some who might say that after what happened on my last trip, what you’re about to read should have come as no surprise.

As aforesaid, I first set foot on Covey Island in the Spring of 1975. Today I shall begin the chronicle of events for my last visit, in the Summer of 1996. A trip notable from the outset in that it was to be the shortest ever planned — a mere overnighter spanning Saturday to Sunday — and included the largest party. Ten souls, consisting of four women and six men; four married couples and two bachelors. It would be the demands of family, children, careers, and the complications of divorces that would make this the last Covey Island expedition mounted by the Olde Guard — those three of us who had been there together on that spring day in 1975, and on every following eventful day chronicled above, awake or not — that brought further adventures to a halt. Perish the thought that it may have had anything to do with anyone taking what follows personally.

On that Saturday morning in 1996, a spirited wind was coming out of the northeast as the Mi-Pet-Val II steamed headlong into it on her way from the Baker Family dock on Herman’s Island to the shelter of Meisner’s Cove. Forecasts predicted a sunny day, wind continuing out of the northeast through the day and all night with a chance of rain overnight, and a likelihood of showers the following day. Nothing to dampen our spirits or alter plans.

We were towing the trusty old rowing boat that figured so prominently in our last episode, and had served us well for two decades of runs to and from shore while the ‘Val was moored in the cove. With the predicted northeast overnight wind however, and the fibreglass hull of the ‘Val II being more accepting of beaching than her wooden predecessor, our stout captain planned landfall for high tide, and to anchor her to the shore at wading distance to be out of the wind. This meant she would be high and dry at low tide, and so unable to evacuate any member of the party in the event of a medical emergency at an inconvenient point in the tidal cycle, but this reality had been discussed and accepted under the umbrella of compensatory measures.

You see, the Goode Mrs. Baker, of whom I have previously spoken, was a Registered Nurse of no small experience and skill while I was both the Director of Emergency Measures for the Municipality of the District of Lunenburg, and in command of the Emergency Operations Centre that ran dispatch operations for five fire districts and two police jurisdictions. Beyond my own skills and knowledge, this meant that I was in possession of a battery powered base radio capable of making direct contact with my 24/7 operations centre as well as ambulance dispatch, any provincial fire agency, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Department of Natural Resources. The ‘Val II was also fitted with a marine VHF radio for routine and emergency Coast Guard communications, and adding to that our stock of medical supplies, we felt no qualms about being beached between tides. In extremis, there was also the trusty rowboat, soon resting safely on the beach well above the high tide mark, if push came to shove.

Landfall and camp setup were uneventful and sheltered from the worst of the wind by being in the lee of the cove’s north arm. As soon as I was feet dry, I deployed and turned on my radio which had been fully charged as of the morning of our embarkation, and did a radio check with my Duty Dispatcher. That being successful, I turned the radio off, stowed it, and set to work.

Tents were erected, equipment and supplies brought ashore, field kitchen and campfire established, and a wonderful day spent exploring the island through the eyes of some members of the party who had never been there before, or heard any of its history.

It was while I was preparing the fire for the traditional first night Steaks and Lobster that I noticed Michael, intrepid captain of the ‘Val II, back in the boat, sitting on her stern, looking down and obviously swearing, as we say, a blue streak. Curious, I walked over to ask what he was doing and learned that her battery was dead. I don’t recall if I ever knew what he was doing that disclosed this but, after hearing the news, I ran a few tests and performed a few remedial actions of my own to confirm it. Dead as a nit. No battery meant no starting the engine and no use of the marine VHF radio.

“No worries,” I said as I hopped back to the sand, “I’ll call in and get my people to call your Father for a fresh battery delivery.”

“No! No! Don’t do that now!” Michael cried, “Do it tomorrow. I don’t want him all worked up tonight. You know how he is!”

I have to admit, I did. While I had known all of the Baker family from my childhood, I also knew Michael’s Father Gilbert, AKA Gibby, professionally in his capacity as Chief of Police for the Town Of Lunenburg through my own capacity as designer, operator, chief cook and bottle washer of the dispatch centre that handled his department’s communications.

As I walked back toward the fire, the bullshit shedding part of my brain kept reminding me that I was in possession of what was now the only working means of radio communicating with the outside world existing on the island. I did go so far as to go to my tent, turn on my radio and key up the local provincial repeater to satisfy myself of operability, and then turned it off. I then returned to the fire, resigned to the granting of Michael’s request as those of us entrusted with chef duties hove to in our labours.

Day turned to dusk, and thence to night; Steaks and Lobsters long since cooked and devoured, the ladies abandoned the fireside revelry in favour of the tents when the start of light rainfall a little after midnight gave us all a gentle hint. The remainder — all the males — erected some shelter, donned wet weather gear, poured another dram, and stoked the fire to wait out arrival of the high tide so we could ensconce the ‘Val II in her overnight perch before turning in ourselves. Satisfied that she was as well secured as she could be with her anchor line pulled taught across the beach, her anchor well lodged by one tine in the sand, the other lodged behind three large logs and a half-dozen barely movable boulders, we retired ourselves.

It was almost two hours later when I woke to the sound of large raindrops hitting the tent and strong, steady wind in the trees … and something else that might have been the tail end of a dream. Sheltered by a wooded hill, the tents were in no danger of collapsing, but when I noticed that Michael’s sleeping bag was empty, I got up to look outside upon a scene not unlike a peek behind the shower curtain of Hell.

In the short time we’d been in bed, the wind had changed from the northeast around to the east so it was now blasting with unforecast fury straight across the island’s central pond, across the beach, and out over Meisner’s Cove. With it came wind driven gobbets of rain, and what they lacked in volume of fire they made up for in sheer size. Anyone exposed to them wouldn’t take long to get wet.

There was enough moon coming through fast moving rents in the overcast for me to see the white, high prowed hull of the now fully afloat Mi-Pet-Val II bucking like a wild thing in the cove, still attached to the beach by her anchor which was clearly nowhere near where it used to be. And then I saw Michael, dressed in nothing but his white briefs, sitting on the beach with both heels leaving drag marks in the coarse sand as he clung tenaciously to the upper tine of the anchor that projected upwards between his legs like the rampant pecker of doom. Behind him I could see the long, dark furrow the lower tine had ploughed on its way to the cove after the anchor shed its ballast with a hearty, “Fuck you and your logs and boulders!” As I watched, the ‘Val II bucked and Michael’s feet were in the water.

I turned my head back into the tent long enough to yell, “Michael needs help on the beach! Get up!” and then I was in headlong barefoot flight in one of those seemingly interminable runs that you know in your heart will get you where you’re going a day late and a dollar short.

My Chariots of Fire run down the beach took only seconds, but everything else seemed to be going twice as fast as me. I had barely cleared the tent door when a brief lull in the wind released enough tension in the line for Michael to stand up, get his shoulder under it, pull down and lean into a hopeful plod upwind. I skidded to a stop next to him just as the wind found its voice again, yanked the line tight and brought him to one knee. As I seized the rope myself I was heartened by seeing that all but one of the tent’s denizens had followed me with such haste that the first arrived seconds behind me, and the rest within seconds of each other. For his own part, Michael never gave up, but I could see from his face he was ready to drop from exhaustion and relief.

What woke me was most likely Michael’s cry of dismay when, awakened by the rain and wind, he went outside to relieve himself and saw what was happening. He kept calling for help after that, but every sound he made was either drowned out by background noise or blown out across the cove, away from all hearing.

We successfully reined in the ‘Val, resecured her, and posted a rotating two man watch on her for the rest of the night. Poor Michael was absolved of watch duties and banished to the tent to get some sleep, only to be admonished as he entered nearly naked, sand caked, and soaking wet, by the missing specimen who had slept through it all. What passed between them then I cannot say but that it resulted in a rapid exodus from the tent by the erstwhile slugabed followed by missiles that turned out to be a shirt, a windbreaker, and a pair of boots launched one at a time, one of which delivered a wakeup call. Michael was always a kind Man who would never dream of sending anyone off to stand watch inadequately equipped to meet the elements.

By sunrise, I had used my campfire skills to get a warming, drying fire blazing and coffee distributed among the saviours of the ‘Val II as the first of the distaff emerged to inquire why we were all up so early. The wind had dropped and returned to the northeast before resuming its fury. Now in the lee of the north arm of the cove, the ‘Val II lay untouched, and the tide having run out, she was high and dry anyway, permitting a thorough inspection of her hull. A tough young thing, our mount may have been spooked, but had sustained no damage beyond a few scuffs.

I looked at the now resurrected Michael, inhaled the last of my third cup of coffee, and said, “We need a battery. I’ll call it in.”

This time he offered no word of protest.

So back in the tent, I uncased my radio, deployed its antenna, and listened to the sharp click of its power switch as I turned it on. No power light met my eye, nor any squelch when the transmit key was pressed. The only means of off-island radio contact also had a dead battery.

The battery was a large block that attached to the bottom of the radio with two clasps similar to those that latch down the lid of a suitcase. I unlatched it and inspected the points where it connected to the radio itself. They were bright and undamaged, but using the blade of my Swiss Army Knife I cleaned them anyway before reassembling the rig. Still no joy.

Enter “Plan B”.

The Erma SG 67 “signal pen”, as its name suggests, is a compact device about the size and shape of a standard Sharpie marker, designed to fire an assortment of signal projectiles. These are plastic cylinders about an inch in diameter and an inch-and-a-half to two inches in length, depending on the nature of the projectile to be fired. Cartridges screw into the business end of the launcher “pen” which can then be fired by drawing back and releasing the spring driven striker by means of a thumb operated stud, and cartridges are red, white, or green flares that are launched on a ballistic trajectory by a blank .22 rimfire cartridge molded into the base and that burn brightest as they coast through the apogee of their arc, or “crack” cartridges (known now as “bear bangers”) which launch a rocket powered projectile that spirals out a couple hundred feet before exploding with a thunderous bang and a puff of white smoke. I was equipped with two pens, six red flares, and six crack cartridges, so I loaded one with a red flare, the other with a crack cartridge, and dropped a couple spares of each in a pocket before heading back to the beach to address the shipwrecked throng.

Picture rowing like mad toward that copse of evergreens in the middle of the picture, only to meet up with a hard “NO!” and a bitch slap to the right about halfway between here and there. Click to enlarge. Photo credit: Rolland C. Reynold

As with all things born of youth, over time, expeditions to Covey Island fell progressively more under the thrall of life realities afflicting their participants, and so became sporadic overall, with some occurring in my own absence. I can no longer recall how much time lay between the events described in our last chapter and those to be revealed here, but I can say with certainty that what follows occurred the next time I was there.

On this particular day, Meisner’s Cove was the scene of another odd experience, this time involving me, Mrs. Cynthia (Cyndi) Baker, wife of the intrepid captain of the boat, and the wooden rowboat we used to ferry people and cargo from the anchored main vessel (by now the Mi-Pet-Val-II) to the beach and back. This again played out in the early morning, but after breakfast when everyone was up and about, when I undertook my customary once-per-camping-trip oar powered circumnavigation of the island. As I was preparing to set forth, Cyndi approached me to go along for the ride, and as the wind was light, I accepted her kind offer of the extra ballast.

My normal course took me clockwise around the island, heading first around the northern limb of Meisner’s cove, but this day I decided to do the trip in the opposite direction, and everything was ordinary until we approached the beach on our return. Mi-Pet-Val II was anchored mid-way up the cove, in sufficient water so that low tide wouldn’t leave her high and dry. The tide being high at the time, I took a course around her before turning east toward the beach for the last few pulls home. Halfway between the ‘Val and the shore though, something funny happened.

As though caught in a strong cross current, the bow of the boat veered abruptly to the right (my left since, as rower, I was sitting facing the stern, and so away from our direction of travel), as though given a strong and sudden shove or pull. So sudden in fact that it nearly knocking us both onto the port side gunwhale and caused the opposite oar to pop out of its lock from my reactive force on that side as I registered the turn and automatically tried to keep us tracking straight. We now found ourselves drifting slowly south from residual momentum, and parallel to the beach, with it lying about 50 yards off our port beam. There was little wind, it was high tide, I noticed that the water showed no signs of a current either on the surface or disturbing the seaweed below, and after having been turned we weren’t being carried with any kind of speed along the beach. I reseated the starboard oar in its lock and attempted a left turn back toward the beach only to find this was, for whatever reason, not allowed. No matter how hard I pulled on that single oar, the boat would not turn toward the beach, and all I accomplished was to move us further south parallel to it.

At this point, my passenger asked me what I was doing and I explained what she had apparently missed as I made a wide turn to the right that would put us in position for a high speed straight run for the beach that I hoped would carry us through whatever was happening in the water. As it happened, as soon as we reached the same distance from shore as before, the boat seemed to suddenly slow as it once again veered right, again ending up drifting parallel to the beach.

“What in hell is going on?” My passenger asked.

“It would seem we’re not allowed back on the beach,” I replied.

However, progress is not made by those who listen to reason, and so we formulated a plan. On the run in from the Mi-Pet-Val II there was a prominent and huge submerged boulder that had been clearly visible to the north of our track just about when we got turned the first time. We resolved to return to the ‘Val for a short rest, and then make another run for the beach. As soon as my passenger spotted the rock, that would be the signal for me to drop the port oar in the boat and focus all my efforts on the starboard one in hope of overcoming the invisible current that was pushing the bow off course.

At her signal, I executed the plan and was soon standing off the seat as legs and back strained against the oar to no avail. Finally, the oar popped free of its lock again and I nearly fell on my back on the bottom of the boat at the unexpected loss of support. Drifting again, and feeling played with.

By this point, our travails — mostly the swearing actually — had attracted the attention of the company ashore, and it was only when we enlisted their aid, having them follow us south along the cove until we found a place where the track we were “permitted” to follow converged sufficiently with the beach for a line to be thrown to them, that no further resistance was offered. From there they handily towed us back up the beach while those of us in the boat used the butt end of oars to fend off the rocks, and thus finally successfully made our way back to the original launch point.

Whatever had afflicted us had not been encountered by any of us veterans before, and multiple runs from the beach to the ‘Val for the rest of the trip met with no impediments. Lacking a larger sample of experience, one assumes an errant current and leaves it at that. Yet as I sat on the beach looking out over the cove later that day, I was recalling the path flown by the Raven, and swum two years later by the Porpoise, and how it seemed to mark the line that had proven impossible to cross under the impulse of my own muscles.

Another uneventful camping trip followed that one, but the one after that was … eventful … and unfortunately saw things veer decidedly toward the life threateningly nasty side.

Meisner’s Cove on the west side of Covey Island, looking east over the water across which the Raven flew and the Porpoise swam. With this picture as reference, I would have been sitting just below the grass line just to left of the dark terrain feature on the right edge of the beach, while the path followed by both the Raven and the Porpoise would have taken them from left to right across the foreground. Click to enlarge. Photo credit: Rolland C. Reynolds

“For this to be experienced I needed to be exactly where and when I was. So simple and yet so profound.” ~ Moments of Magick

Welcome back Goode Reader, to this second chapter in my chronicles of camping trips spanning 20 odd years, some more odd than others, to Covey Island, Nova Scotia.

The first two oddities were encounters with wildlife that, though wondrously thrilling, were only rendered remarkable when the second happened two years later. Differing only in time and the animal involved — the first a Raven and the second a Porpoise — there was the same Man (me), performing the same actions, for the same reasons, in the same place, on the same island, at the same time of day, under the identical weather conditions of a calm, misty sunrise, when I was the only Human witness to the visit of a fellow Traveller.

On the first occasion, I was sitting alone on the wide stretch of beach at the south edge of Meisner’s Cove (see photo above and map with aerial photo at the top of the previous chapter here) in the early hours before anyone else was up, tending the morning cook fire as I meditated on the glassy calm of the inlet in which the Mi-Pet-Val lay at anchor. Abruptly, my attention was drawn by a powerful and rhythmic swoosh, swoosh, swoosh, coming from my right and getting louder. Looking in that direction, a huge Raven materialized against the gloom of the wooded north arm of the cove on a heading that would take it straight across the water in front of me. With not a breath of wind to raise the slightest slap of a ripple on the beach, I watched and listened as the Raven passed, dwindled, and ultimately disappeared around the south arm of the cove to my left — swoosh, swoosh, swoosh ….

I felt honoured, to be sure, but in the moment, and not yet being the Man I am today, I chalked it up to right place, right time, and returned to the tasks at hand.

Two years later, and under identical circumstances, my attention was once again drawn to a sound from the direction of the north arm of the cove; this time sharp and loud enough in contrast with the stillness of the morning as to set my heart to pounding. As my eyes scanned the beach, woods, and water of the cove in the direction the sound had come from, the dark back of a Porpoise broke the surface, its blow hole emitting a misty spray in concert with that same sound — PSSSSSHHHHHT !

As had the Raven, the Porpoise, which seemed in no particular haste, passed majestically before me as it crossed the cove from right to left — northeast to southwest — rhythmically breaking the surface to breath every twenty seconds or so — PSSSSSHHHHHT … PSSSSSHHHHHT … PSSSSSHHHHHT ….

By this point, even the me of that time was not so uneducated as to miss the pattern. Groundhog Day with Raven and Porpoise.

Map of Covey Island and vicinity (click to enlarge).

Aerial photo of Covey Island and vicinity (click to enlarge)

Covey Island is 108 acres of Crown land located in the mouth of Mahone Bay, north of the shire town of Lunenburg, at 44.421932N, 64.30451W. A history of the island from the earliest colonization of Lunenburg and its environs was compiled by Linda G. Layton and published by the Mahone Islands Conservation Association on 24 May 2019 as History of Coveys Island in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada. As far as I know, this presently stands as the most thorough treatment of the topic.

The island has been the scene of fell deeds, previously chronicled here in the October of 2011 as The Payzant Family and That Which Befell Them, and I will wait while you click the title and read the result before we go further together.

No, seriously. It’s mandatory. Get back up there and don’t cross this line until you’ve done your homework.

I first set foot on Covey Island in the Spring of 1975 as part of a three man party of volunteers consisting of Peter Boulanger, Esq., Michael Baker, Esq., and me — dispatched on a mission to bring back driftwood and assorted decorative oceanic detritus. We came by means of the stout wooden Cape Island Boat Mi-Pet-Val (pronounced “My Pet Val”), belonging to Lunenburg’s Baker family who used her to fish Lobster and Mackerel when in season, and for entertainment at other times.

This was one of those other times.

One of our unimaginably youthful number, the larval Michael Baker, captained and piloted the vessel, and as the eldest son of that fine Clan had contributed the first two letters of his name to be the first two of hers, followed similarly, albeit at slightly greater length, by his younger siblings Peter and Valerie in order of age. The cargo we sought was intended to be used as embellishments for the hall that would house the Graduation Dance (what we called a prom back then) for our Grade 12 High School class, the theme of which was something nautical that I no longer recall the specifics of.

So by that spring of 1975, I had long since heard the story, and it was on the day of this visit that I first saw the famous rock, blood stained by all accounts of local lore. By my observations, whatever was used to mark the granite, whenever it was applied (or reapplied), is far more tenacious than blood, having suffered only marginally from the elements since 1975, let alone 1756. The photo below shows the rock as it appeared in 2018 by which point it had lost the larger lobe that made it resemble the ball of a large foot with prominent big toe as it did when I first saw it 43 years earlier, yet the portion generally interpreted to be the palm of a hand remains to clearly explain the interpretation. That being said, in 1950 none other than the Esteemed Helen Creighton wrote of it —

“He put his hand on the wound, which was bleeding freely, and then pressed it on a rock where the imprint still remains. At times it is seen clearly, a perfect impression of a man’s hand with four fingers and thumb, and tinged with the red of blood. At other times the imprint seems to fade away. It has been the subject of much speculation ever since…. Mr. Payzant was left with his hand upon the rock and it is thought that the heat from the fire burned the imprint in indelibly.” ~ Folklore of Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia

Photo credit: Rolland C.Reynolds

Blood or no, after that first expedition at least one major annual camping trip to Covey Island became a fixture of two decades of summers for those of my circle who enjoyed such rude adventures, carried safely to and fro at first by that same old trusty wooden boat, and ultimately her larger fibreglass successor — Mi-Pet-Val II. Most of the time things went as you would expect; exploring, fishing, swimming, snorkeling, steaks and Lobster on the beach, and stories late into the night. A dram or two may have been involved. But while the stories told around those fires inevitably included references to the late unpleasantness of the French and Indian War, let it be known at the outset that I have never witnessed anything ‘supernatural” while on or near Covey Island, at least insofar as most know and use the word, nor is what follows offered as anything so limiting or mundane as “ghost stories”.

That being said, there were four incidents from my personal experience there that fit snugly into my long established reasons for not believing in coincidence or serendipity because I have come to know there are things you don’t find so much as they find you, and this requires connection to something transcending mere chance.