Dane Reynolds is acquiring a taste for warm beer. Jamie O’Brien has taken up hunting birds with rounded stones. And the Bruhwiler brothers have built an afternoon bonfire that’s blazing well overhead and bordering on out of control. We’re burning shit just to kill the time. And not just wood, anymore, either. Other shit. A pile of fish guts. A discarded Jet Ski sled. A buckled surfboard. Burn, baby, burn. It’s better than the torturously repetitive conversations. Better than the long silences that seem exquisitely inconsequential amidst all this vast Canadian wilderness. Better than the nothing of waiting around.
Out beyond the tangled jigsaw of untamed headlands, the ocean remains flat. The flatness laps the beach and rattles the cobblestones into mocking laughter. The flatness stares down the cloud cover, causing sudden storm bursts that send us scurrying back into the claustrophobic confines of our of tiny cabin. The flatness waits and waits with a patience that we clearly lack. Before this is all over, the flatness will drive us mad. And in the end, the flatness will prevail.