Knowing your landbase ensures your best ability to survive.

The first organizer of the Vancouver Peak Oil Citizens Group, Max - a highly like-able young permaculturist and eco-activist - renounced the post allegedly, because he foresaw our powering-down and transitional efforts going to s***. I remember hearing this information from my predecessor, Steve. I was told that he was off, ‘walking the land,’ trying to find out ‘where it is at.’ As I began to Contemplate Max’s life-path, I also began to question more of my own plans for the future. Put it this way, if I am to use the folks at LATOC as a yardstick, I am woefully unprepared, ripe for the die-off. A secure home with crate-loads of ammo is the de rigeur minimum - or so the message boards would have us believe.


I have about a month’s worth of food and some basic emergency supplies. The usual suspects: the fresh, bottled water, the excess propane, the Katadyn water filters and purification tablets. Oh, and next years’ seeds are in cold storage.

And when I plan it comes down to this: I plan to plant more beans next year. I will double the potato plot to make room for some early and mid-season varieties. Other than that I plan to to take a last trip to the Old Country - preferably before my Grandmother dies and before the civilian air-fleet is permanently grounded.

I find it so hard to make contingency plans for my existence when I am so bloody caught up in living that self-same existence. And, despite being the son of a farmer, I am also a former quasi-urbane metro-sexual. I am the product of the eighties and the British Education combined - probably not what you would call true survivor material. To this end, I hope it is not all Mad Max hair-do’s and pointy sticks anytime too soon!

Ultimately, wheresoever I am now, is exactly where I am connecting with my landbase. Presently that is Burnaby. Often I project into ‘A Long Emergency’ scenario. Often, during walking meditation along the perimeter of my immediate landbase, a voice will percolate upwardly through my being:

“The H.Y. Louie Distribution Warehouse is the best place for food reconnaissance raids (as it is hidden.) The war zone will be on the other side of Lougheed, about the Costco loading bay. Yes, that is where the gun-fire will be…”

Knowing your immediate landbase ensures your best ability to survive.

While a significant number of my fellow activists are eye-balling Nelson as a agrarian utopia, I pose the question: Can the Kootenay landbase accommodate a post-postmodern diaspora of this kind? I fear it may not be able. Moreover, how will the indigenous population feel about any prospective exodus?

If it all goes to hell-in-a handbasket, I will evanesce into the woods like the best of you. Until that time I am going to more intimately connect with my locale. I am going to find the mythical spot where the best blackberries grow on the borders of Lake City; where the most reliable natural water-source is in late August.

I will prove to you that chantrelles grow here. Once I find them.