By Peter Christensen

Op-Ed Commentary

Why is it, years later, in a different place and during a different life, old friends appear in dreams; dreams so vivid, intense and long that they wake you up bundled under layers of blankets in the wintery dark promising to remember the imagined dream conversation word-for-word.

Last night I dreamt I was standing on a familiar wharf visiting with a friend who made ‘the journey’ a few years ago, a surprise heart attack took him. Big Mike was as real as a friend I talked to on the street yesterday. Mike and I were standing beside his boat, Equinox, talking about the past summer’s fishing season, about the weather and boats, always we talked about boats. Mike had been a commercial fisherman.

We both admired seaworthy boats. Mike hand-built his fishing vessel in a local Oona River boat shop in 1968. Equinox stood out among many. It had a classic working hull, a long deck, a tall cabin and forward wave splitting prow. Mike was well over six feet and a strong man. He built the Equinox when he was young and fished it in all weather for 50 years.

The ocean is a tough environment and boats that are neglected, even for a season, decline rapidly. We had diligence in common, we kept our boats seaworthy. Mike’s and my mutual love of the North Coast people and waters handily tied our friendship. We stood, stretching and swaying gently on the wave driven pier, eyeing the lines that tethered known boats and we talked about weather, tides, fishing and boats, always about boats.

Mike and I were unlikely friends, however circumstance brought Y and I to live at his home base, an island community where a few sea hungry souls hung on. Oona River, on the way to Kitkatla, a Reserve community further out, got hydro in 1990. Twenty-five sea miles from Rupert, the tenacious will of the descendants of the original settlers, a few new homesteaders and its proximity to Rupert saved Oona River, located at the south end of Porcher Island, from becoming a tangle of old buildings falling into the ocean.

It is unlikely that Mike and I would have met, let alone become friends, in a larger place where people mostly stay involved with persons of similar work history or their large extended families. We had no friends from ‘town’ in common. In Rupert I would have been considered an outsider, one of those who float their dreams at a local dock, a nuisance taking up needed space; however, begrudgingly accepted because they spend money at local businesses, acknowledged if they stay more than five years!

The ironic thing about large ‘communities’ is that there is little ‘community’ outside of who you think you should know.  Some will debate that statement and rightly defend their friendships and associations, however, that is the point: in a larger place you stick with those with whom you have similar background or occupation.

It takes resilience, flexibility, and cooperation to live in a remote community of a dozen households with little in common except the sea, wildness and a love of coastal living. In a small place like ‘the river’ you unintentionally depend on each other, unlikely friendships come into being.

Dreams, like friendships, fill experiences that weave our ongoing sense of self with the present. Dreams lead us to memories that make us who we are. Life is not simple. It is complicated.

The image of Mike and I standing on the dock and what was said is fading, being carried away by morning awareness and present demands. Analysts say that these seemingly long dreams take place in a moment, though that would be hard to prove.

This morning there is new snow. It erases tracks made last week. As the new snow accumulates, I shovel a pathway to the woodshed, to the car and then clear the decks. These actions written by my labour will stay until they are erased by the sun or rain or more snow. My labour, it seems, is more permanent than my dreams.

– Peter Christensen is a Columbia Valley writer and poet.

Article Share