Prior to our time on Gabriola, we had never planted a Douglas fir, battled honeysuckle vines, or felled a Balsam. We couldn't mulch a trail to save our lives, and any fire we may have built before smouldered by comparison against the monstrous infernal blaze we created at Claire and Jan's.
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| This is a salmonberry. We foraged for them, like real hunter-gatherers! In Ken and Shirley's backyard... |
But our experiences on the island can hardly be defined in terms of the practical skills we gained: our learning was multifaceted. The "life lessons" are far more difficult to enumerate, hidden as they were in the forms of the people we met on the way.
As WWOOFers, we were welcomed into the homes of complete strangers, pronounced family, and treated as nothing less. We were the beneficiaries of guided tours of Gabriola Island; we participated in community events as locals. And from our privileged local perspective, we were more than favourably impressed by the town. Gabriola is a place in which nobody is a stranger, where not only does everybody know their neighbours, but they take as great a responsibility for them as they would their own family.
The people of Gabriola built a number of extremely successful, community-run operations, such as GIRO.
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| The GIRO clothing store |
The Gabriola Island Recycling Organization is a place where residents of Gabriola can be found in hordes on Wednesdays and Saturdays, sifting through a treasure trove of pre-loved neighbourhood belongings. GIRO had anything you might want, from knitting needles to porta-potties. We can admit to having found some treasure there ourselves!
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| Nancy outside GIRO |
Gabriola is also home to the Commons, another organisation put together and managed by the community. From the website:
"The Gabriola Commons is a grassroots community organization, managed by volunteers, that exists to nourish the social fabric of the community; to ensure the ecological sustainability of the land and assets; to remain in perpetuity as a public trust for future generations; to provide ongoing community service; and to demonstrate democratic and equitable stewardship."
Claire very kindly drove us to the Commons to show us around the youth and senior community gardens, the shared industrial tool shed, and the communal kitchens. When we arrived at the kitchen, the weekly shared soup lunch was in progress, and we were welcomed inside for a bowl of hot soup by those in attendance. It was good, too.
And who could have guessed that an island so small featured so many fascinating walking trails, through forest, down beaches, past lakes and estuaries? Or that this teensy hunk of land provided a home for a wealth of animal life?
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| From our trip to the alpaca farm |
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| "How you doin'?" |
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| One of Gabriola's 20,984,358,763,487 deer |
Our last day on Gabriola was three days long. On the first, we went to say goodbye to Ken and Shirley, and were invited to stay the night. We did. On the second, we went to the Farmer's Market and hit all the garage sales that Claire and Jan had told us about. We found dozens of Berenstain Bears books, and we couldn't resist: we bought the lot for $0.50 and dropped them off at McDonald Farm for our toddler buddy. When we returned to Ken and Shirley's to grab our stuff, we found the couple in the middle of saving a baby seal. They invited us to come and help. We did (to the best of our limited ability).
By this point, it was getting late, so we called on a woman we had met briefly at a dance two weeks earlier. She invited us to stay at her house: although she wasn't going to be home, she would leave the door open for us. She told us to let ourselves in, have a shower, and make ourselves at home. We did, very gratefully! On the third day, as we prepared to leave, this woman, who we now know as Uncle Cathy, told us that she was volunteering at the tango festival, and invited us to join her. We looked at each other and realised there was no way we were leaving on this day, either.
After a tango-Feldenkreis workshop, a milonga with live music, and a post-festival potluck at the neighbours', we returned to Cathy's where we had a small party of our own, not getting to bed until 3am. Special thanks to Cathy for her relentless hospitality.The following day, we farewelled Gabriola for good. We will miss it terribly.
An aside/series of anecdotes: This is Cathy's geriatric dog Clancy. Clancy is a peculiar pup, for a number of reasons. For one thing, she thinks she's a cat. She washes her faces with her paws like a cat, and she sits on a couch as a cat might, as shown below.
For another, she obsessively rearranges rocks. She digs furtively in gardens, in pools, at the beach, anywhere there might be rocks, in order to find the one rock that's in the wrong place. She will scrutinise an area until she's found the right rock. She will then go to any length to collect that rock in her mouth (we saw her thrust her entire head underwater for almost a minute once), and replace it elsewhere. Elsewhere could be two inches to the left, or a five minute jaunt away, but that placement was just as important as rock selection: it had to be perfect, and she wouldn't rest until it was.
Lastly, Clancy had an interesting affinity for a certain teddy bear. She wouldn't play with, chew, or partake in any other well-adjusted dog-behaviour with the teddy: she humps it. She humps with such fervour that her little head begins to thump against the ground, and...well, see for yourself:
Ah, yes. It was certainly a shame to say goodbye to Gabriola.
The Quest Quotient by Nancy Howie and Steff Werman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at thequestquotient2011.blogspot.com.
