There comes a time in every fledgeling blog where a man must step away for awhile and take a respite from the face paced life of digital journaling. This time came for me. And I have to say I was pretty sure that no one would notice I was gone. I thought this little stage of mine was playing to a relatively empty audience (other than you mum). But I was surprised to get some comments from people wondering where I had gone. So thanks for checking in and I’m sorry I was gone for so long. I’m sure you were scared. But I am alive and ready to web log another day.

I spent 7 glorious days on the Queen Charlotte Islands, known to the Haida tribe as Haida Gwaii. Words are pathetic little infant toys in the task of trying to describe this place so I will try and let me photography do some of the work. I will be posting new pictures on the site in the days to come but you can always go to the Haida Gwaii section of the Places page on my photo site as well.

A funny thing happens when you spend 7 days without running water, very little electricity, sand everywhere, the ocean at your doorstep, the whole time pooping in a hole. You feel peaceful. I forget what thats really like. To take in a breath and let it out, the whole time not worrying about how you are breathing and why you breath that way and what made you the way you are and why can’t you breath better and be better and look better and act better. This neverending self effacing monologue that rides shotgun with us while we all trample over oursleves to “succeed”. In our quest to hold the mighty American (and Canadian) dream aloft and accomplish great things, we all just become a quivering mass of neuroses that can’t even take a breath without tearing our hair out about it. And out there, in my happy place, with my sister and her boy Fisher, and her estranged lover Colin I find myself connecting with a community of people and world where that isn’t entirely necessary. It’s still there. Neuroses abound. But it’s not helpful in day to day life and people can work, live, love and eat without it. I think its because the closer we are  to nature the more humble we become as people. In cities we are kings, each of us. We lord over our little kingdoms and each of us is hot on the pursuit of a life that we all read about in magazine growing up. The world around us is just an amalgamation of shops to outfit us, eateries to fuel us and museums, theaters, and galleries to educate us. But nature is nowhere. Especially in Los Angeles. There are no seasons. When it drizzles the city shuts down. Animals are dogs on leashes and a few birds, a skunk smell in the middle of the night and a coyote sighting if you are lucky. The day before I left Haida Gwaii I sat next to a rotting beached whale that was playing the part of food to bald eagles and bears. Talk about humbling.

So I get back to LA and I find myself in line at IKEA trying to buy myself a shelf. Thinking the whole time that in my Haida life I would walk down to the beach and find a cool piece of drift wood, and mill it, and put it on a wall and have myself a shelf delivered to me by the ocean. In front of me is a woman buying a bag of stones, little colored rocks, for four dollars. We are all so separate from the very thing we rely solely on, our little hunk of water and dirt flinging itself through space, that if we need some rocks we would sooner buy them in a little bag than go pick them up ourselves for free. It gives me shivers.

But it has also renewed in my the belief that life in a city doesn’t need to be this way. And while I must retoxify to a certain extent just to maintain my insanity . . . I can also take some small steps towards acknowledging our little space rock a little more. There is more to come . . .

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