Oh please, don't actually answer that!

I am on-line because I think this may help me cope with what's to come. Here I go, expressing myself to you hundreds of faceless readers, i.e. assuming this gets read.

For more than a year my husband, my in-laws and myself have been preparing to ensure we live well past the 2000 mark to a ripe old age.

I told them a dream I had a couple of months ago. My husband and I were standing outside our van, in the middle of the forest, staring into the distance. It was a beautiful and warm summer day but the view I was seeing was like a split screen; half filled with blue skies , greenery and lots of flowers and the other half, cold, greyish-white and very bleak. A man came running towards us out of that bleak half, wearing a winter coat, and he cried out to us that a storm was coming. I could see the storm brewing but I couldn't hear it. Now that I look out of my window, I see nothing but snow everywhere. When there aren't any vehicles passing by, the scenery looks just like my dream. It's breathtakingly beautiful but it is also so quiet and still.

If you have Y2K fatigue and you don't know where to turn, I suggest you put those thoughts aside and concentrate on preparations. To let the questions go round and round in your head is pointless, and so is to speculate what could be or hoped for. I guarantee if you haven't kicked the bucket before the year is out, you will found out whether your efforts were worthwhile. If you're anything like me, then you already know it is worthwhile no matter what the outcome.

Appreciation! That's what's so sad! Too little of it and too late to start! Isn't it exasperating when the money isn't enough to quickly gather all that you do appreciate in life?!

Well, be good, be kind and keep your wits about you. This is an exciting time we live in. Afterall, we are about to witness the dawning of the turn of a thousand years. Aren't we lucky!

Thanks Gary North! Now I live with my eyes wide open.

-- cornelia chia (djorr@pris.bc.ca), November 11, 1999

Answers

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Cornelia. And I agree with you this is an exiting time to live in and to share. We are truly blessed.

-- snooze button (alarmclock_2000@yahoo.com), November 11, 1999.

Welcome to the Forum, Cornelia!

Fatigue, bone-sapping weary. Savor each day. Too little time, too little $$, enjoy and relish every moment. Prep possibilities fly with the second hand, the days grow shorter, the wind blows colder, our hearts melt closer to each other. True love is eternal and glows beckoning torch of remembrance in the hereafter. We knit our bond with everlasting guide-sparks and pre-blaze our path to reunion.

What appears to be the end may really be a new beginning.

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), November 11, 1999.

cornelia

Nice to have you on the forum! I am in Victoria actually, nice to see more BC folk posting on the forum :o)

Hopefully you aren't in Van, but BC in general is in pretty good shape with the fundimentals, BC Hydro is one of the most open of the power corps, BC tel has restructured (notice the bills) and the Government has been proactive towards dealing with issues.

Gary North is far away from us in what he is dealing with. Even Ottawa is "over there". The US folks have different issues than we do.

Having a resource economy may be a problem if Asia tanks, health will be a wild card, glitches will be everywhere but I think the frontier spirit that BC has will insulate the folks alot more than the East Coast of the US.

Of course you may live in Van eh?

Drop me a line if I can help.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), November 11, 1999.

Brian...until the last 5 years I have always lived in the North West and Alaska. (Even lived up at Comox on Van Island) Now I live in Florida. There IS a difference in the people. The native Floridian, at least those who live in the country, will make it. Read The Yearling. That spirit is still alive and well. However, most people here are from the NE US and they are a different breed. There is, generally, a lack of pioneer spirit, of guts and inovation. They won't make it. So you are right...there really is a difference between east and west.

Taz

-- Taz (Taz@aol.com), November 11, 1999.

cornelia: Do you like to mudwrestle?

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.cum), November 11, 1999.

Socrates said we regather in our wisdoms if we experience earthly life again. I must say I often find myself with an oeverwhleming feeling that I've always kown this or that in crash coursing "survivalism" yet it was information I had pursued because I didn't know it. So much of it feels very natural to me as if all my life, every year of my life, I had prepared for a long winter. "Oh thanks, I remember now" is always in the lurk. Thus, I never experience fatigue but more as if I were putting my life back on track.

-- Paula (chowbabe@pacbell.net), November 11, 1999.

such a good post....until I got to KOS

-- Mabel Dodge (cynical@me.net), November 11, 1999.

Taz wrote

"Brian...until the last 5 years I have always lived in the North West and Alaska. (Even lived up at Comox on Van Island) Now I live in Florida. There IS a difference in the people."

Cool! You have been to the island! As I have never been down to the States much, it is "hear say" what they must be like, but only MPO.

But the island has and still is very hick driven. Mind you all the red neck stuff is minimized now, logging, fishing, mining and millwork is all leaving. My moms family is from the Comox area and I know that the folks were real bush back then :o) I am sure alot of the residual still exists here, we still have "hillbilly" types around. Complete with their own way of speaking. Quite a life.

Of course there is still so much inaccessable land over here that it will continue for some time. But even here is no match for the north of Canada. What a wild place that is. I feel privilaged to have seen that kind of life.

Survival is not a bunch of cans and supplies as much as it is attitude.

-- Brian (imager@home.com), November 11, 1999.

Brian,

I've visited Victoria's beautiful landscape.

Lon Frank had expressed the desire to hike a great trail when we get OTOS. I think it was the Appalachian Trail. I matched him with John Muir's Pacific Crest, or at least a west coast winkle walk {interested Git?}.

-- flora (***@__._), November 11, 1999.

We are interested!

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), November 11, 1999.