So, where to begin... a lot has happened.
I got out for some kayaking last night, and I saw this bobbing orange Tide container/buoy. From a distance, it looked like a fin cutting through the water- so I edged closer to see. (no, self-preservation instinct not kicking in). As I got closer, the thing just looked surreal. Here was this Tide bottle getting dragged forward upside down, creating almost a wave action behind it. Something was obviously down there, dragging it forward.
So I grabbed the buoy, and started pulling on the rope, figuring some fish somewhere was caught, and if I could haul it up, create some slack- maybe it could get free. But that didn't work... so eventually, I was pulling up around 30 feet of rope, wondering just what the hell was at the other end of this line, until finally I could see what was hauling butt crossing the middle of English Bay. To my amazement, I was hauling up a big metal crab-cage with a really enormous crab in it. So much for thoughts of cutting the line- I would have doomed the creature to starving on the ocean bottom slowly. I dropped the rope, and the cage back down, and within moments, that crab was hauling the Tide bottle forward again. 20 minutes later, I noticed two other home-made buoys scuttling in other directions in the area.
Sometimes I go out kayaking just to clear my head. I can paddle out to the middle of the bay, and all I hear is waves and wind. The traffic, the people, the other boats all just fall away.
If you look away from the downtown, and away from the built-up West Side, you can pretend you're somewhere wild, and you can hear nothing of humanity's grinding, cloying noises. But you also have to pretend all the tankers aren't anchored there, that the cruise-ships aren't bellowing by, and that the forests with their hydro lines, ski-hills, and monoculture of trees are somehow the real thing. You can't look down, or you'll notice the doomed thing, swimming for its life- which it will not get to keep because we want it.
I paddled for two hours last night, but even the pretty sunset wasn't enough to blot out everything else.
