Hi all!

 So I have started a new blog, specific to the Outside Passage (West and North coasts of Vancouver Island) trip. It's accessible at http://outsidepassage.kiliii.net. That's the blog that will be updated on my current travel positioning as I paddle through August.

Well Holy Shit.

I have to admit that it really nice to finally break down and buy camping gear that is new for once. But I just blew upwards of $1000 on equipment for my upcoming expedition, and it's really primarily because of safety-- charts, GPS, VHF, PLB.

Going solo is really a tough thing. Noone is around to bail you out, and off the West Coast of Vancouver, even the Coast Guard takes a while to get there, if anyone is around to receive your VHF distress call. But the whales don't mind, and that is exactly the point.

It's easy to justify gear with safety in mind. I actually picked up a tiny little backpacking cot that keeps you off the ground for the comfort, because of my shoulder injuries and the need to keep excellent shoulders to paddle 25 miles a day. Bugs me, I guess, but at least I know this upcoming trip is the prototype for the next expedition, the one that will be in a primitive kayak with primitive gear. Lots to learn, and lots of living to do!

So! For those of you who don't know yet, I am planning a solo paddle of the west coast of Vancouver Island in August.

It's 330 miles of open coastal water, filled with jellyfish, black bears, gray whales, orcas, and salmon. I am very excited to be heading out there to make the trip happen, it will be my longest solo trip by far-- 30 days. I plan to be on the water 24 days and have 6 days planned for downtime due to weather. I plan to average 15 nautical miles a day, but am shooting for 22 nautical miles a day so I can take a break if I need to or have extra time to stay down due to poor weather.

Van Isle's West Coast is not an easy place to paddle, though it is supposed to be extremely beautiful. Offshore reefs, surf-pounded coasts, and routine gale force winds (25-30 knots) certainly make the trip a real challenge to stay safe. I am counting on both being in excellent paddling shape and making good solid judgements, hopefully supplemented by good skill in handling large swells, wind and surf.

Of course I'm paddling a skin-on-frame kayak. I haven't built my optimal boat for the trip yet, but it's in the works. I'm planning a 16 foot shallow V-bottom that will be the next incarnation of my latest design, the Tlooshe. I'll be paddling with an Alaskan-style paddle from Norton Sound, and a Greenland-style designed by my friend Brian Schulz of Cape Falcon Kayak.

I plan on eating mostly fish, (deer?), and sea critters for protein, and will be carrying a few dry staples and maybe some dry veggies. Part of the objective for the trip is to scout for next year's Dancing Hawk apprenticeship paddle, hopefully in a place where we will be remote and able to have fun in protected water and have lots of food on the fin.

 More to come as preparations are making me very busy!

 

Whew!

 So I've been having intense shoulder issues for a year and half now, and finally broke down and went and saw a sports therapist who specializes in kayakers. I am very very glad I did-- first off, he had a discount for those without insurance, paying in cash. I guess insurance companies don't really pay that well these days...

My therapist told me that despite my injuries, no permanent damage has been done (hooray, no rotator cuff tear!) and gave me a bunch of exercises to do. Essentially, what has happened is that sleeping in poor positions exhausted my rotator cuff muscles at night, and then when doing tough physical activities during the day, my other deltoids would compensate and take over, resulting in bad shoulder blade movements. After a long period of this, my body retrained itself to start moving my shoulders in a retarded way and now I've  got to retrain them. But... I can go kayak the west coast of Vancouver Island this summer! Hell Yea!

This makes me very very happy. I was fuckin' worried for a while that I would need surgery.

So I am about to head out the door to our two-week long San Juan Islands Kayaking tour, to be feasting on wild oysters and rockfish. But I had a fantastic weekend, and I'd liek to fill you all in...

 My good friends Brian (of Cape Falcon Kayak) and Ginger (of Manzanita's Fair Trade Store) run a permaculture paradise on the Oregon Coast, a 6 acre parcel that is only a year in the making, but already has tons of garden beds, chickens, pigs (well, until the blackberries were gone) and a greenhouse, and many smaller buildings. It's off the grid, relying on a ram pump from the creek for water and solar/hydro for energy. Very cool stuff. I brough the interns up for a long day of digging and filling garden beds in exchange for some surf kayaking lessons and a chance to hang out with both Brian and Gin.

 Well, working in the garden on a hot hot day is fun as hell with so many people. Dirt flew, elderberry rotos were hacked to pieces and lots of grunting was to be had, since elderberries are essentially small trees with serious roots. We had to get them out to prep beds. Ginger had been making them herself, what a champion.

The next day we went out for some kayak surfin'. As usual, Taylor hopped a surfboard, but the rest of us popped into kayaks, either Brian's new F1 surf sea kayak, or into a whitewater boat. I've been having lots of trouble with my newest sea kayak design, so I was very happy to give Brian's F1 a ride and learn what it really feels like to take a serious rough water kayak into the surf.

The waves were 5ft at 11sec. Doesn't sound like much, but the long wave period means a massive amount of energy behind each wave. It was nice to have lots of time between successive waves to turn and think though.

Went out, rolled a couple of times just to get wet, then I started out through the rewash foam. Then I started turning back around and surfed my kayak sideways on top of the breaking waves, in and out, towards shore and then out again.

After riding in some good watery foam on my side for a while, I went out farther punching straight through, when I got to a trough and a big set wave (8 ft) hit me and I tried climbing out of it but got turned and rolled under. I rolled right back up, my usual slow and steady way, then got hit by the next wave in the set. Soon as I got under again I held my breath and waited until the wave passed over, then rolled up, grabbed a quick breath and got hit by the third set wave and went under again. This time, my boat had gotten turned around, and without a good full breath of air, I couldn't wait and fight the force of the underwater portion of the wave which had changed side. I popped out of the boat, got whacked a couple of times real good but held onto the kayak by its cockpit lip and my paddle. The rip held me out for quite a while, but eventually I got back in and emptied out my boat.

Meanwhile Noah and Jack were closer in in the rewash and practicing their rolls. Noah pulled some rolls out there in the rough water, and Jack handled himself quite well in the roughwater in his whitewater boat.

I took off again, got some more fun waveage on the side, and watched Brian, the master, go out and get plowed into by the big breakers. A great day, and full of satisfaction. My crew is ready for Puget Sound.

Oysters.

Okay, I finally have the box. It's a little blue box and it lets me record. This is my first attempt, tell me what you think. Recording is way harder than it seems like it should be.

It is, of course, written by the Decemberists but is definitely my own take on the song. You can hear my new and improved violin fun with the not-so-heavy instrument.

We Both Go Down Together.

This last weekend I spent sitting on the top of cliff face overlooking the Columbia River, sitting still at dawn, waiting for a deer to come by so that I could touch it. The meadowlarks sang like thrushes full of teenage passion, and the dawn came up like the end of the world. And I was at peace.

My interns were also at peace, I presume, all of five of them, tucked away in little hiding places on our island in the middle of the great Columbia River, N'Ichi'Wana, waiting to 'touch' a deer, scare the shit out of it (well, I presume), and listen to the golden sound of native Shooting Star flowers rustle against the bunchgrass.

That's sort of typical of one half of my life. As a native lifeways mentor, I am always learning about how to get back to the important lessons from my ancestors. On the other hand, I am sitting here at my computer, my guitar and microphone crowding around me, waiting to be played and recorded. Photographs of my boats (I teach skin-on-frame kayak building) and the trips my little community of friends have gone on in them, cover the walls of my house, as well as coiled root baskets and cedar bark hats.

I often forget I live a fairly interesting life. But life is an exploration, full of mystery and new beginnings in every small thing. There is so much to learn, right where I am. A few years back I kept traveling all over the place, China, Ecuador, Australia, Alaska, on the road or in the sky for years and years. I learned a ton. On some level, though, I feel like I've learned more just by learning how to sit still, and be in one place, be in my on skin and sitting on the land listening to the birds that live in my home.

Sometimes I think that it mainly has to do with food. Being raised Chinese has meant that I eat anything that once flew, walked or swam. I love squid. So much so, that I decided to learn how to build kayaks to go squid-fishing off the Oregon Coast here. I still haven't made it out to the offshore upwelling (a couple miles offshore) for squid, but in the meantime I have learned all about building boats, kayaking long distances, and about the ocean's winds, currents and waves. All just so I can have fresh fried calamari. Or maybe calamari pad thai.

Community is such an important thing to me. All the adventuring I do would be for naught without friends and lovers to share it with. It's one thing to go out for a week and go fishing, and quite another to go kayak around the Puget Sound islands, come back with rockfish, and find camp all filled with the smells of fried oysters, fresh miner's lettuce and steamed crabs, and the sounds of music and singing and laughter.

I live in the middle of Portland, a great big city, because I believe strongly in the power of culture and people and community. Without the city, I would have no interns. I wouldn't have people that pay me to take make art with a camera. I wouldn't be able to go get a drink and listen to an oldtime band.

Life is good. It's spring, and the starlings are nesting in my kitchen vent. I hear them twittering every morning and it makes me smile.

Sometimes... I forget that the random going-ons in my life that I take for granted are somewhat interesting to other people. I was thinking about what to write today when I realized that what happens at my house would probably be kinda neat.

1. Claire is downstairs skinning a raccoon. For some reason, it has a rather large butthole, and so we've had lots of joke about Giant Asshole Disease, which we hope isn't contagious (but of course we all know someone that's got it).

2. Taylor is smoking hides in the backyard and the lovely scent of cedar smoke is wafting throughout the neighborhood. He taught a hide-tanning workshop this weekendand I've been very impressed by how well he and Jack handled dealing with six wet soggy deer and sheep hides.

3. I've been working on my blowgun for hunting geese. I took a very straight piece of Japanese arrow bamboo,split it open, hollowed out the nodes, then put it back together and glued/wrapped it. Now it shoots 24" birch darts with ridiculous accuracy about fifteen yards. Haha! We also some tobacco poison cookin' in the drying room.
If you didn't know already, nicotine is a deadly poison when concentrated, but it's only deadly when absorbed into the bloodstream. So we are concentrating some dried pipe tobacco and prepping it to hunt waterfowl, which is much easier to handle from a kayak (the blowgun) than a bow. Bit of an experiment, but then again, so is so much of the old ways that the world has mostly forgotten. We'll need it all again soon.

Okay, so I had a great bugger of a flu this week. But last weekend I did get to play with these little fellas. So now you can share in my joy of spring as well!