The Woods

A brief and highly personal memoir that probes the unique and sometimes unsettling tenor of life on one of BCs smallest gulf islands. The measure of ones success here, the author discovers, doesnt rely on status or income, but on the ability to adapt both the rigorous outdoors of the Pacific Northwest and equally challenging human community of need, trade, and negotiated civility. These are stories of the people and families who sought refuge here, for different reasons and with different outcomes: a multi-talented retired sea captain who cant do enough for people and who just happens to be a cross-dresser; a city contractor whose idea of relaxing in the country is to spend his time running noisy power tools; a septuagenarian library curator who has happily re-discovered men and Scotch; and of various other transplants making their way through the tricky terrain of island living.