The Captain

When I was young – and I must have been less than 5 – I met a most remarkable man at Qualicum Beach.   I just went to the local papers on the internet and learned that ‘Captain Robbie’ - Robinson died in 1957 when I was 7.   I remember his old house and the boathouse on the waters edge that was near judge’s row.

I was wearing bone colored Ivy League shorts and a blue and red stripped tee-shirt with bare feet - standing on the beach gravels with Brian Welch beside me.   He introduced me to his grandfather who was preparing to go out by himself in his boat to fish. I was a bit worried about him as it was getting late and the sun was heading into hiding. He was a good fisherman and a good man, I could tell that.   I could feel that when I met him. His daughter came across the street from visiting with her mother – the Captain’s wife and expressed concern to him about his solitary fishing. She had red hair and was Brian’s pretty mother

Captain Robinson moved slowly and carefully through the ritual of preparing his boat and boathouse for his fishing that night. No movement was fumbled or wasted. He was a ‘Captain’ so he likely knew what he was doing. He filled the engine with fuel, he placed a life jacket under the middle seat and pulled the boat on its dolly down the beach toward the high and rising tide – He pulled the dolly up a bit and then left. I could see the light houses on Texada and Hornby and Denman spill across the water. I heard the engine start and watched him head out to sea by him self.

Then Brian told me he was blind - my mind never really accepted that truth. That is until yesterday when I looked up his name and found that Captain Robinson had lost his sight completely in a battle at Vimy Ridge as a young soldier and lived his life fully and even now has touched me. Until yesterday I thought he was able to navigate using the lights at night. But today I can finally accept that he was fully blind and I have no way to understand the depth of his courage or the faith that he held in his heart.

Autumn Wind

Today as I walked, I noticed the green cottonwood leaves struggling to hold on to their branches in a strong wind by the river. But the yellow leaves from the upper branches seemed to let go so willingly and so peacefully. It was easier for me to identify with the greenish leaves on lower part of the trees that held tight to their branches right up against the end of their useful time to the tree.*  The wind seemed so alive and the leaves fluttered or flew through each inevitable moment. There was no past or future for the leaves. They held no memory of being a small sweet scented bud in the beginning.  Their intimate attachment to the tree they sustained through the summer was never emotional. They left their memories and their attachments on bare ground for lonely minds to rearrange.  It seems that when the time comes for a leaf to be free from its branch - it just lets go.  That instant of letting go is as full of peace and joy and excitement as other other instant for the leaf.  The leaves I watched seemed to have no concern about where they would land or just how they will circle back into life.

It seemed as if the trees and the leaves that I walked by today were helping me to understand that feelings of loss and emotional attachment may be artifacts of memory - the negative part of these feelings belong to mind and disappear completely in the tide of a present moment as it surrenders to wonder and gratitude.

* Deciduous trees have to let their leaves go as winter approaches because it just takes more energy to sustain them than they are able to produce and the tree would be left to run on a deficit of food and water. The very waxy broad-leafed arbutus tree and the native rhododendron leaves are both uniquely evergreen in our countryside. I also notice that the red papery bark of the Arbutus tree peels away in the winter to expose chloroplasts spread throughout the greenish underbark of the tree. Needled trees like fir and hemlock and pine are also "evergreen" and can keep their needles through the winter as they don't stress the tree's resources too much. But I notice the cedar trees at this time of year - they shunt their wastes into 1 or 2 cedar boughs at the base of many branches which then turn brown and fall away from the tree along with its small cones.