Saturday, February 12, 2011



Lions and tigers and bears Oh My! ! I have thought a lot of that line from the Wizard of Oz over the last days – A silly and whimsical and fun conversation that Dorothy and the Tinman and Scarecrow have as they enter the Enchanted Forest to give them courage. (just before they meet the Cowardly Lion) Have you read John Valliant’s “The Tiger – A True Story of Vengeance and Survival” ? Read that book and no beast will frighten you more than the tiger. Except maybe for Kalahari Lions. The Bushman never mention the lion by name in the daylight hours. Why risk waking a slumbering beast? And my mind is fresh with the warning signs about bear attack on the portion of the Juan de Fuca Trail that I very briefly traversed a few days ago.
All this rambling preamble brings me to the wonderful vacation I just had with my wife in the small, small village of Shirley in British Columbia. I am sitting in a hot tub on the deck of small cabin. Below me is the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I can smell the ocean and feel the spray of the salty misty that gets carried up 30 metres. I can see Washington State and the Olympic Mountains across the waters and the occasional container ship that traverses the marine highway. The ocean is for the brave and the hearty and I am neither. I am not a mariner; I know nothing of the darkness of the sea, of her anger, of her deep cold, of her temper, of her bounty. And yet I sit in a 40 degree C bubbling froth of chlorinated fresh water and dare look upon her.
Lions and tigers and bears Oh My! ! The Kalahari Lions at sleep during the day. When does the sea sleep?

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