I've just come back from a tour of duty aboard a boat called the Lasqueti Daughters. It's a barge built entirely from scratch by our skipper, Peter, who lives on the aforementioned southern gulf island and is 4 for 4 in the girl-child production department. The barge is rustic and cozy, like a cabin at sea. I lay in my berth at night looking at a 4 x 8 sheet of straight-grained, entirely knot-free fir. "You should see the wood I used for the hull," Peter told me.



Yep, cozy all right. I now know the cadence of the Oakmeister's snores and I also know what Rosalita's panties look like left behind on the towel rack in the shower. The work unfolded in Seymour Inlet, on the B.C. mainland just off the northern tip of Vancouver Island, in a place called Woods Lagoon. Which I can describe as this sort of treeplanter gulag of person-high salal and gnarly, unclimbable rock bluffs and blackflies and insipid snotty weather. Salal, BTW, is that pretty greenery you often see in flower arrangements.



Last week I saw muddy toothbrushes nestled among the dirty wool socks. I drank water a shade halfway between chamomile tea and pee. There was homemade vodka in coconut milk. I poured bootsoup out of my Vibergs. I looked down at my own feet and thought of a scene in Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions when Kilgore Trout wades ankle deep through a stream of toxic waste. I doubt the makers of Bag Balm, AKA the "nut butter," know we've been using it for our various chafed parts. Every morning with the smell of bacon there was this familiar, Pavlovian dread.

In a week I'll be sleeping under a crisp white duvet at the Intercontinental in T.O. Book Expo! By all means, Book Expo!! I took the photo tour that came with my reservation. It's Valhalla, I tell you. I'll be thinking of it, all next week, as I'm lacing myself into my boots.