My vision of the simplicity on the other side of complexity included community. So, when I had moved to Saltspring, I’d looked forward to joining the flow of local life. But, though people elsewhere knew and accepted me as an excellent educator and coach, on Saltspring I often felt like an outsider. Someone from “away.”
I met some interesting people through my Intros and Creating workshops. A few became friends. But none close. I feared many islanders saw ‘life coaching’ as a superficial form of counselling. A joke profession; me, its jester. Until successful with the skills and stucture of creating desired results, recognized differences between my structured, vision-driven, reality-grounded ‘creating skills and framework’ approach and the ubiquitous ‘chat about problems and offer advice’, favoured by so many coaches.
Confused about my self-image and my sense of how others saw me, I sometimes failed to separate Bruce-the-coach from Bruce-the-friend. Some people I knew struggled with that, too. I could be challenging to create lasting friendships with people you’ve had in workshops or coached.
My best male friend, Tom, a polymath woodworker, artist, and inventor of the multi-colour Skwish toy, lived at the end of the long, twisting Beaver Point Road in the far south of the island. He was 10 years younger than me, but older in so many ways: art, philosophy, tensegrity — the mathematical/structural approach on which he had based his toy — and his ability to get along with people of varied ideas and interests. I learned something new almost every time we interacted. But I didn’t like driving Beaver Point Road at night, especially if I had been drinking. The chance of hitting a deer was high. So, Tom and I often met in Ganges, at the Tree House Cafe for lunch, or dinner and drinks at Moby’s pub.
Despite my reluctance to drive at night, I asked Tom to wrangle me an invitation to one of his Southend group’s “interesting people” dinner parties. I loved the dinner, the engaging guests, the stimulating conversations, the deep, full belly laughs. I had to pace myself with the delicious selection of white and red wines. This is what I’ve longed for, I thought; grinning. I returned home happy and hopeful.
I was not invited to the next one. Or the one after that. Or any, ever.
Tom told me the hostess liked me; thought I had fit in well. But she had hoped I would connect with her friend, the single woman who she’d seated me next to. The friend and I had chatted pleasantly, but no bells rang for me. I didn’t contact her later. So, no more dinner invites. Again, I was confused. Did my lack of connection with the friend lead to me not being invited back? Or had I said or done something that put off the hostess? Or others? Tom thought it was the former.
*
Earlier, not long after I had moved to the island, the father of an old fraternity friend, a retired big time Calgary defence lawyer, invited me to a small dinner, hoping, he said, I would “shake things up.” Ralph had attended my first Free Intro night and we’d chatted after. He had heard from his sons that I was a ‘radical,’ but liked my self-description as a ‘maverick’ better.
“Walk your own path in this world,” he said, over coffee and the Tree House Café one morning a week later. “I think your ideas and approach to creating a life with heart will help many people get off the treadmill and on to their Hero’s Journey. “
Ralph was big on Joseph Campbell. I had read articles about Campbell’s hero’s journey because many of my might-be clients cited it. An ordinary person leaves the security and safety of home; they encounter varied adventures and overcome obstacles in other places, and return home a ‘hero,’ bearing a gift — a ‘boon’ to self, community, and society. It seemed similar to Castenada’s notion of ‘a path with heart’ but more proscribed. Ralph saw more similarities than I did.
The dinner was with Ralph, his wife, another couple, and me. The other man was a Calgary oil executive. Small in stature; big in hubris. When I mentioned I aspired to live simply with a small ecological footprint, he did not understand. He dismissed it as “hippy nonsense.” At several points in the dinner chat, I questioned the continued promotion and production of the fossil fuels that contributed to global warming and climate change. He said he didn’t believe either was real. When I pushed, Ralph’s wife kicked me under the table. When I kept trying to make my point about carbon-forced warming, she kept kicking me. I was not invited back.
Tom and I, together or on our own, were regulars at the Treehouse Cafe. Each of us, and a third acquaintance, had given Jill, the café owner, $1000 up front in return for $3000 retail worth of food over the year. Our cash influx allowed her to buy an industrial dish washing machine and eliminate headaches from wrangling wayward part-time dishwashers. It freed Jill to focus on other, more important aspects of management, and helped the Treehouse becoming one of the most popular and profitable dining venues on the island. Jill assured us that, despite all the food and wine we downed, she came out ahead.
Tom was my go-to friend for challenging conversations. He and I enjoyed spirited conversations about life, love, and everything. But if a second man joined us, talk could quickly shift to the cost of plywood or whether Makita’s power drills outperformed Craftsman’s. I’d feel lost, left out. If the “real men work with tools” talk continued, I left.
*
Well into my time on the island, I still found myself irked by what I considered “slights.”
I ground my teeth when the local paper devoted a full, second section cover to two recently arrived women, touting something like a “Soul Transmutation Through The Inner Gaze” workshop. The paper had printed little or nothing about me or my workshops and coaching approach. Nor had they reviewed Simplicity and Success. I confess I felt a touch of schadenfreude when the ‘Inner Gaze’ workshop failed to generate enough interest to run.
If my workshops had received that kind of publicity….
I also felt stung to the quick when the local Authors Guild rejected my membership request because Simplicity and Success had not been traditionally published. So, they didn’t consider me a legitimate author, and refused to let me into their club.
Standing outside one bookstore, after dropping off a dozen copies of Simplicity and Success, I had encountered the Guild president. I’d tried to reason with him. But he was adamant.
“No means no. Publish a proper book and we’ll reconsider.”
Anger boiled up into my chest. My fists clenched. I shook my head, then stomped across the main road toward the other bookstore to drop off another 12 books. Later, both booksellers told me Simplicity and Success outsold all books on the island that year.
*
I joined community action groups, hoping to meet people and contribute to local improvement. After a few frustrating meetings, I had tried to interest members in my ‘creating framework’ approach as an alternative to problem solving and brainstorming. And attempted to explain why neither rarely worked by itself.
Not that the groups didn’t create results. Some did. But many attempts were compromised — “half-assed by reactive thinking” as Tom put it over plates of paella and Chilean wine at Moby’s Pub. Driven primarily by reacting or responding to ‘problems,’ i.e., what they did not like and did not want — many groups lacked a clear, compelling vision of what they did want to create. I pointed out that acting without clear vision and an objective assessment of current reality led to ineffective strategy, tactics, and temporary results. When groups rejected or ignored my advice, I took it personally.
Am I too pushy? Do I step on existing leaders’ toes? When I challenge conventional thinking do I make people uncomfortable?
Jane, the long-time friend who had introduced me to Castaneda’s books at Springbank High — and who would become Tom’s wife — told me some of her friends thought I came across as “too teacherish.” Then became “prickly” when challenged. I listened as my stomach knotted, but resolved to simplify my suggestions and be less assertive.
*
Besides my workshops and coaching practice, some community interactions succeeded.
A church-based group asked me to coach them in planning a prestigious conference for colleagues from around the world. Squabbles between the group’s organizers had bogged down progress. At one point, I sat in the church office with one key organizer on one phone and the other on a second phone. After I had helped the two women sort out their issues, I coached them and the group to clarify what a successful conference would look and feel like. Once their vision was clear and shared by all, the squabbling gave way to cooperation and they made excellent progress.
Then, a week before the conference was to begin, their high paid, internationally celebrated keynote speaker fell ill. They asked me to take her place. Gratis. I delivered my much-practiced hour-long introduction to the creating process, its skills, structure, and benefits. Vigorous applause broke out as I ended the talk.
When I came off the stage, a prominent local activist shook my hand and said, “I didn’t know you could do that! It was an excellent, insightful speech. Almost like a professional.”
I winced inside. But, later, the man connected me with the Island community development office. I did a 5-week, 1-night-a-week workshop for them that was mostly well-received. But trying to teach 30 participants creating basics in a lecture format with little or no opportunity to practice frustrated me.
I got my most positive community feedback after the paper published my article, “Less Parking, More Walkable, Livable, and Sustainable communities.”
I wrote it after watching a woman in a shiny new Mercedes sedan try to muscle her way through market-day traffic by incessantly blowing her horn. Walking, I kept abreast of her and arrived at the same destination a minute before her. I thought the fiasco offered a chance to share my concerns about car-centred growth on the island. So, I went home, fired up my laptop, and drafted the article. I felt gratified and proud when the paper printed it and friends congratulated me.
But I still felt like an outsider much of the time.
*
To relax and decompress from work and failed attempts to connect, I walked and ran in Mouat Park, a 55 acre wooded area at the end of my street dotted by remnant old growth Douglas fir, seven-storey cedars, hemlock, and a green sea of ground-hugging shrubs I could not identify. A loop trail followed a crooked little creek until it turned away. The trail switchbacked up a steep hill, doubled back at the top, then zig-zagged down to the park and a short stroll to my house. Sometimes, I just sat beside the creek, listening to water burble and bubble over stones while I let my mind rest. Feeling immersed in the natural world almost always soothed my soul and replenished my energy.
In summer, I rode my mountain bike in 10- to 15-mile loops past lakes, forests, farms, and pasture land with curious looking horses. Part way through the shorter loop, I sometimes stopped and swam across a small lake and back. I loved cycling on hot days, especially alongside Saint Mary Lake — the largest on the island — when the road dipped down and the air cooled dramatically. Those 60- to 90-minute rides took me out of myself and my “poor me” ruminating.
But, as had happened in Canmore, Calgary, and Vancouver, if I pushed too hard or added an extra 30 minutes to my ride, I triggered the canker sore plague that lasted 10 to 14 days. Flu-like symptoms slowed me down, depressed me, and made it difficult to be social. I turned down invitations to parties and the bar because for 10 or more days of most months, I felt mild to put-me-in-bed ill. No doubt those setbacks contributed to my outsider feelings.
*
Despite being alone so much, I rarely felt lonely.
I loved my cottage; its wood stove in winter and sun-catching decks in summer. A cozy refuge in which to read, write and watch a few movies on tape. I shared the cottage with two orange cats — Marmeldo y Tostado — who kept me company. I had close to 1000 books. A hundred CDs and cassettes. Good wine in the rack. Decent coffee. My good friends Ben, Jerry, and Haagen were just a five-minute walk down the hill.
One Christmas, I was on my way to Whistler to ski with Al Whitney. As I waited for the Vancouver Island ferry to load, my car died. Butterfly-sized snowflakes quickly blanketted the emptying parking lot. A Shell station service drive changed a fuse in my Saab. But 100 metres after leaving the parking lot, it died again. The driver didn’t have time to sort out the problem.
“There’s too many summer-tire-assholes in ditches,” he said. “I’ll drive you home; come back for your car later.”
The next day, the service station owner told me I needed a new alternator and another esoteric part. But we would have to wait for them to come from the mainland before they could get the Saab road-worthy.
“It’ll be at least five days,” the owner said.
So, I shut the hallway door that separated my office and workshop room from the rest of the cottage, and let my machine answer phone calls. Warmed by the wood stove, I sat on my living room couch reading novels, memoirs, and detective mysteries. With Emmy Lou Harris, Ry Cooder, or Blue Rodeo on the stereo, and the cats curled up beside me, I felt as content with myself as I’d ever felt.
A couple times a day, I trudged around the snow covered Mouat Park trail, catching snowflakes on my tongue. The roads turned treacherous, and most people I knew got snowed in. But I loved it. Cocooned in the middle of a snowstorm, I realized I had tried too hard to be recognized and liked. And I could be happy and fulfilled without either.
*
In spring, I had an illuminating coffee conversation with a woman who managed a prominent activist group. She provided more clarity to my concerns about community, or lack of it.
We sat harbourside on a rustic café patio on a sunny, blue sky afternoon. Weathered wooden railings separated us from the plank boardwalk that circled most of the harbour. The aroma of fresh coffee and warm muffins blended with fish smells, but somehow combined to smell delightful.
“My husband and I found it quite difficult to fit in here when we moved from the US, twelve years ago,” the woman said. “Though I don’t think many here realize it, this place still suffers from its class-based British roots. So, it’s very cliquish. Our members are always arguing about who saved the most acres or donated the most money. They bicker about whose issue is the most important. Constantly juggling for power and control.”
I nodded, feeling lighter as understanding gelled. She chuckled; shook her long brown hair over one shoulder. I thought, It’s not just me! And let out a long sigh.
“I suspect,” she continued, “that some people slight you because you’re still, in their minds, a ‘newcomer.’ Also, you’re kind of non-conformist; a rebel. You don’t fit respected ‘professional’ categories they recognize or trust.”
I sucked a deep breath. “Say more.”
“Well, I’ve heard some resent how quickly you set up and got your own thing going—successfully. ‘Jumped the queue,’ I heard a woman complain. Others commented they find your promotional fliers ‘tacky.’ Silly, I know, but this place has a lot of unwritten, unspoken rules that you don’t play by.”
I laughed. She laughed. When we parted, I felt lighter, calmer.
Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke!
*
Walking home from the village centre, I recalled something Ken Low had told me when I started Earthways: “Do the best you can with what you have. And credit yourself for trying, even if others don’t.”
Leaning on the railing of a wooden bridge over the stream below my cottage, I stared at riffling, prismatic water and swaying green water plants. I asked myself, Isn’t it enough to struggle for heights? To use my ‘freedom to…’ to create programs that help people? And live the simple life I love?
Yes, I thought. It should be enough. It is enough!
To boost my feelings of competence and confidence, I mentally reviewed my successful programs: Earthways. Wilderness Travel. Yamnuska Mountain School. Banff School of Environment. Challenge of Change. John Howard Program. Environment Youth Corps. Personal and Organizational Mastery workshops. The “Best Seller On Saltspring,” Simplicity and Success.
Repeating that litany cleared negative thinking. And lifted my spirits. As I walked up the grassy hill to my cottage, I grasped that a Free-Lance Ronin’s life would have felt unsettled. Moving from master to master, lances for hire, mavericks like them would have always been outsiders. My pattern of moving to new places in search of more challenging ventures and adventures had hindered people from getting to know me well, or appreciating my background.
As I crunched up my gravel driveway to the cottage, I thought, I chose to stray from herds that constricted me. So why expect this one to embrace me?
And why care so much if some don’t appreciate that?
*
For five out of my last seven years on the island, I had an amorous relationship with Dawn — the cute coffee shop waitress I’d met during my first writing retreat on Saltspring. I believed she could be the love of my life.
Dawn was tall with dirty-blonde hair that flowed around her face and highlighted a brilliant, friendly smile. A runner in high school, she was still fit and active.
We had been friends for years. She invited me to watch her boyfriend play soccer. I went to her wedding. I started babysitting her daughter, Willow, when she was two years old, and who now, nearing 13, called me “my other dad.”
Willow and I — and sometimes her girl buddy, Christa — spent hours on the concrete pad at the rear of my cottage playing ball hockey. Our games usually involved the girls blasting slapshots at me in goal.Both were top athletes in many sports. So I wore magazines Tensor-bandaged around my shins to soften the sting of their powerful shots. One Christmas, Willow gave me a set of goalie pads.
Such a great kid! I loved her.
The end of Dawn’s marriage and the start of our relationship had overlapped. So, we’d had some rocky spots in an otherwise wonderful time together. One rocky spot lasted four months; the other almost a year. But love, I hoped, would triumph over adversity. In August of our last summer together, we spent an idyllic week at the Ecological Place on Marrowstone Island. Hiking the seaside paths, reading novels, taking photos, sitting on our cabin’s deck, sipping wine, and watching the sun slide behind the Olympics. Almost heaven. Dawn rolled over in bed one lazy late morning, smiled wide, and said, “I love you more now than I ever loved you before.”
I couldn’t think of a time I felt as loved as I felt then. But when we returned to Saltspring, Dawn seemed to drift away. I’d ask, “Is anything wrong?” She’d say, “No. Nothing.” But refuse to talk about her feelings. I felt little adrenaline spikes and chewed my knuckles more.
One day, driving around to garage sales, Dawn paid me little attention. When I asked her about it, she snapped at me. “Don’t be so paranoid. Nothing’s wrong.”
An icy shot of fear shot up my spine. My stomach felt like I had eaten a pound of bread dough. I struggled to hold my emotions in check; not to react.
*
A month later, the day before Dawn’s birthday, we had a pre-birthday lunch in Moby’s pub. Dawn ignore her food and stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the harbour view. I pressed her to tell me what bothered her.
“What’s with the thousand-yard stare? Us? Me? Something I did? What’s wrong Dawn?”
“Nothing’s wrong! Stop asking. If you think there is, it’s all in your own head.”
The next afternoon — Dawn’s birthday — I prepared a dozen sea scallops and a half-pound of fresh-caught shrimp for a pasta feast topped with a fennel-flavoured Mornay sauce. A bottle of French Sancerre and a California Sauvignon Blanc chilled in the freezer, nestled against two pints of Haagen-Dazs chocolate chip mint ice cream. Dawn’s favourites.
Earlier, I’d wrapped 10 small presents I thought would support her new plan to photograph backroads on the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island, camping in her van. A one-cup coffee maker. A Backroad Map Book. Battery-powered lantern and Camping Gaz single burner butane stove. Other things I thought would make her adventures easier. I was keen to surprise her with them. As I prepared our dinner, I tingled with excitement.
Dawn came over early, 5 pm. A faraway look on her face. She perched on the edge of a soft chair in my living room; I sat on the couch across from her. I asked if she wanted a glass of wine.
“No thank you,” she said. “I’m not staying.”
My heart dropped; my gut tied itself in knots. “What? Why?”
“I’m so sorry Bruce, but … I … I don’t love you anymore.”
While I reeled with shock and sadness, Dawn told me she had, from the beginning of our time together, aspired to be my good friend. But she’d feared that would not be enough for me, so had tried to love me.
“I did love you,” she said, standing to leave. “I still do. Just not that way.”
Her revelation crushed me; left me feeling angry, defeated, and sliding towards the pity pit. I had been to this place before. I hated it.
*
We stayed ‘friends’ because of Willow. And because they lived next door to me — separated by a 100-foot-wide tangle of small trees and bushes. I had widened a game trail through it (likely made by raccoons and deer) so Willow could visit easily.
One evening, I sat on my bed, watching the early TV news, when I heard my kitchen door slide open. Willow appeared in my bedroom doorway holding a bowl of Annie’s mac and cheese, looking upset.
“Can I eat with you?” she said.
“Sure. But why?”
“Mom was being weird because I didn’t want to eat in the kitchen. She said, ‘Go eat with Bruce if you don’t want to eat with me.’ So, I did.”
We sat side by side on my bed. Willow ate her dinner, then read an Archie and Veronica comic she’d brought with her. I watched the news and an episode of Seinfeld.
After 45 minutes, I nudged a sleeping Willow and said, “Hey, buddy, I think you should go home before too long.”
“But I’m not ready to stop being mad at Mom.”
“Okay. Then how about I come with you and we read a couple of chapters of your new Nancy Drew book? We can sit in the living room by ourselves. Huh?”
“Oh-kay,” she said, imploring me, “But don’t make me be nice to Dawn.”
We walked through the woods to their little house’s back door. Inside, Willow and I sat in a big easy chair in the living room and I read to her from a book about her favourite teenage sleuth. Dawn did dishes in the kitchen, puttering around to give us space. After a chapter or two of Nancy, Dawn came into the living room and sat on the couch at the end away from us. Willow made a show of ignoring her.
After I read another chapter, I told Willow I was tired of squeezing into the chair beside her. “My bum ache, Will. Maybe Mom will read to you on the couch?”
A brief grin lifted the corners of Willow’s mouth. Dawn smiled and moved pillows. I left the two of them curled up on the couch, lost in Nancy’s amateur sleuthing challenges.
*
After feeling sorry for myself for a few weeks after Dawn’s denouement, I had realized that for a long time I’d felt like a seed that had fallen on barren rock and failed to put down roots.
Dawn’s birthday confession surely coloured my feelings toward Saltspring. And my memories. But, at the time, I thought, This is not the best place for me to create a simple rich life on the other side of complexity.
Most locals who were going to buy Simplicity and Success had done so. I believed I’d saturated the local market for workshop and coaching clients. I still found it difficult to fit into social and community groups. My focus had shifted. I spent my days talking to people around the continent and on the other side of the world. With occasional sanity stops at the Treehouse and Moby’s with Tom.
*
When I had lived in Vancouver, I’d become enamoured of Cohousing’s mix of privacy and community as described in architects Kathryn McCaman’s and husband Charles Durrett’s book Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves. I’d joined the group that created Windsong, the first co-housing complex in BC. But, mindful of my lungs, I left when consensus shifted the location from Saltspring to Langley, east of Vancouver — downwind from the city’s brown pollution plume.
Now, thinking of leaving Saltspring, I took an exploratory excursion up Vancouver Island to visit the cohousing complexes in Nanaimo and Courtney/Comox. But the sky-high cost of buying into a co-housing complex shocked me. I looked for cheaper cottages or apartment in both areas, and on-line in small ski towns such as Trail, Red Mountain, and Kimberly. But rents in all those communities were beyond my budget, and far from majour cities and potential clients.
I began to think about Victoria. Staid old Victoria, with its reputation of being for “newly weds and nearly deads.” I had ignored it up to then. My old friend Kim asserted it had changed, and he loved living there. I trusted him.
The city-by-the-sea had good public transit meant no need for a gas guzzling car. I could coach via phone and Skype. Plenty of parks and mini-wilds to wander in. Terrific cycling terrain. Beautiful ocean and mountain views. Beaches. Closer to Celine!
I told only Tom and Willow when I decided to move.