In my "mind's eye"...sea creatures!

How tiny Joan looks as she paddles ahead of me and alongside one of our favourite landmarks - or, perhaps, "seamarks". Paddy's Milestone is exactly one nautical mile from our usual home-based launch spot in Maple Bay. It rocks! And not just because it's a "big rock". It rocks because every time I see Joan paddle by it with Mount Maxwell on Saltspring Island in the background, I'm humbled by how small and fragile we are, and how relatively brief is our time here on earth.

That rock has been there, perhaps, for countless millennium. Indigenous people paddled by it, just as we do...maybe a thousand years ago, or longer. It was a different time, a different world, and, perhaps they too wondered about it. Who knows how it got there? I can't begin to imagine. It could well be that the ancient paddlers had a clearer sense of the answer to that question?

How wonderful it is to "imagine", to wonder, to form fanciful images and pictures in one's mind. It's a "childlike" activity to engage the imagination - for nothing is impossible, the need for "good order and discipline" and the expectation for rational explanation are yet unborn - and quite unnecessary. To imagine, like a child, is to be liberated from "adult" cynicism and doubt. It is to live with wide-eyed-wonder and to embrace the only "moment" we really have - the present one. It is to appreciate those around us and live without judgement of others.

As we paddle by Paddy's Milestone on our way to Octopus Point and across the Sansum Narrows to a simple breakfast on the beach in Bourgoyne Bay, in my "mind's eye", I imagine the giant sea creatures in the ocean depths beneath us. The very "thought" makes me shiver - but it's a shiver of excitement, for the imagination is engaged and a flood of deliciously scary images come quickly to mind.

I simply can't imagine the finest High Definition, wide screen, digital, home theatre system...coming even remotely close.

D.

Ah yes, so what about the "covert recce mission" of the last posting? It was a success, but nope, still can't talk about it - you'll just have to use your...imagination. :-)