Lake Laberge, part 2 (the red light)

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The numbers on my handy elastic-band-wrapped GPS did not jive well. There was so much distance between the time on the  clock and the distance to the next way point,  and the long anticipated ending of the Lake Laberge section of the marathon, called Lower Laberge. Paddling through heavy winds on grey/green frothing lake water in a head down take no prisoners attack towards the shore and the Cathers Point monitoring station took its toll on me mentally and indeed physically. I was a hurting puppy as I waved and called out my number to volunteers and onlookers on shore with clip boards dutifully recording the progress of each paddler as they struggled past the check point. If not for the winds my paddling friend on a stand up board and I might have missed the checkpoint all together. In our defense we were slightly distracted with attempting not to drown in the wind waves. Soon after the passing of the point the weather took another change of the many that had already occurred. It was choppy but manageable now and the breeze only slight but still in my face. The forecasted tail winds did not find me until much later on and then only a cruel joke of a wisp of air that could barely move a falling feather from its downward course.

The lake was proving to be my hardship and my challenge. The idea of the hundreds of kilometers ahead fell away as too abstract. All I knew was that I had to take my kayak to the end of the lake. Beyond the many gravel beaches and high cliffs. The rolling toes of rock that poked out into the lake ahead of my bow and hiding the deep coves on the other side. These notches and meanderings in the shore line caused Glen, the paddler boarder and myself to be scolded more than once for exceeding the limits of how far away we were to be from land at any given time. As means of another excuse it was no our fault. The land fell away as we maintained a straight course. It became a bit arbitrary to us but each time a monitoring craft came broadside and told us to paddle in another hundred meters, we complied, muttering complaints the whole way.

Glen and I kept each other company for a couple of hours but soon he found a head of steam at the sight of the terminus of the lake. It was late, and much later than I had anticipated still being on the lake. I was behind my time and feeling the twinges in my shoulder at each stroke reminded me of how far I still had to go before I could climb out of my kayak. At sunset, of as much of a sunset that we would receive as the sun dipped to the spiking tree tops only to bounce back up again slowly I saw what Glen had seen before me, the red light! I looked at my map and sure enough that was my finish line from the marathon paddle across the lake. I was joined by a tandem kayak with two women who were laughing and telling stories to while away the time until they too could stand up on shore. I picked up the pace as best I could by counting ten hard strokes and five easy ones. Little by little the right hand shore fell away as we made the slow cut across to the return of the river proper. The red light blinked and eventually in what seemed hours to pass I had that light behind me at last. I rounded the curve to find a small pebble beach housing several kayaks and canoe. My pal Glen was there sipping something from a bottle and appearing weary. We all were, that unhappy crew of last in the pack stragglers. I am assuming the same nagging ragged thoughts of defeat were blinking like that red beacon in the backs of our minds. This race is against the clock but in more ways it is a race against yourself, the self-defeating monologue and a personal narrator either inspiring you or spitefully and unfairly attacking you in the shadows while navigating your own lowest moments. I discovered in the final hours of the marathon the truth of mind over matter. It is actually mind over body as one failed the other manged stubbornly to carry on the end.

I tipped my boat on its side after a burly and friendly volunteer pulled my bow far up the round stones and crawled out on my hands and knees. I had been in the seat for nearly twelve hours without break and my limbs were failing me. I managed to maintain an image of physical sturdiness as I rummaged for my night bag containing warmer clothing as the temperatures dipped overnight in the nearly dark under the midnight sun. I took the bag, wobbling on my ankles to the flat patch before the alder trees. I needed to pee! Finding a spot away from people I found the relief of that and of warm dry fresh clothes. I lingered on shore longer than I should but needed to replenish my spirit. I put on my headlamp required for safety so we could be spotted on the water, I sipped cold tea, and popped open a can of Red Bull which I balanced between my deck bag and hand made stand for my GPS. I sat, and pulled the spray skirt forward over the cockpit and the same burly and friendly volunteer asked if I was set. I was. He lifted my kayak and I with ease and with the help of the rolling rocks slid me backwards into the river. I spun around, waved goodbye and too the first paddle strokes into the next section of zig zag elbows and miniature rapids in the dusk of early morning on the Yukon River. This is where the real adventure and reality of the length of the race sets in. The red light was only the teaser to what was to come.

 

 

If you missed it, here is part one of my hours on the famous lake.  Lake Laberge is very long, Part One

Making Room for Beer is a Good Excuse, I guess.

   If it does not take five burly assistants to help carry your kayak to the water’s edge you are already doing something terribly wrong before your trip even begins. There is no need to travel light when touring in a kayak yet again and again I see people skimping on the small pleasures that make an outdoor experience better. I mean really folks, it’s not like you are carrying it all on your back like say, some sort of backpacker. Small stones, wood, maybe witches and of course as we discovered thanks to Monty Python, ducks float easily. So does as demonstrated by a paddling companion some years ago, a large glass jar of pickles! I have done both backpacking through places like the West Coast Trail and up and down some of the local mountains, and I have also done even more kayaking miles and I can say that my years of kayaking over mountaineering and trekking is largely due to not wanting to wear my household on my back ever again. It still astonishes me how much weight I can load into my kayak’s hatches and various nooks and crannies without it sinking under the burden of my dietary desires. The first few paddle strokes are hard but once the momentum is built up the vessel glides through the water without much effort, unlike the first few foot steps with a heavy pack. That never gets easier and there is no such thing as momentum.

   I concede that making your pack as light as possible is necessary when going up and down things or across them for many days and nights. Your menu changes with that necessity from the gourmet to what doesn’t taste great but keeps you fuelled for the next day. It is all about food. It should somehow go beyond just eating for the sake of it or to replenish what you have used up all day in your efforts to get from A to B.  On the aforementioned trip on the WCT where the ruggedness is equal only to its beauty my group and I packed our bags as though we were kayaking for a week. To say overkill would be an understatement with each of us possessing our own tents, stoves, pots and of course for the most part non-backpacker foods. We had a ten pound bag of fresh vegetables that became the punishment for any bemoaning of our fates due to weather or terrain the previous day when it was handed to you to carry. On the first night it took all four of us to heave the packs up into the trees. The veggies were eaten on the last night. Should we have planned better, yes! Should we have shared a stove, pots and brought dry noodles and nuts instead of corn on the cob fresh on the cob? Yes! Did we enjoy that darned corn over the campfire on a beach of pebbles that sounded like a rain stick being tipped back and forth when the tide and waves rose and fell over the small rocks, yes! There is a time and a place for such luxuries and that time and place is when kayaking.

   Valdes Island lies a few kilometres north for Salt Spring Island. From my home on Salt Spring it was only a couple of hours of steady paddling and navigating away from the opening of Porlier Pass to get to my camping spot. It was the August long weekend and I misjudged how crowded that beach camp may be forgetting of course that it is also a destination for power boaters coming across from Vancouver Island. The only piece of tenting real estate I could find was a patch of sloping crushed shell beach inches above the high tide line demarked by where the seaweed and a partly submerged log. I made do with what I could get and after setting up I set out on the water for a sunset paddle up the shoreline to admire the eroded sand stone cliffs. On my return I saw a woman pushing her tent pegs into the same holes that mine were in. I rushed ashore to confront her but before I reached the shell beach she was calling out an apology and offered to share some of her summer sun warmed beer with me. Who could refuse such an offer?

   Her name was Jean and she was in her early sixties. Her solo journey paddling the entire Gulf Island chain from Victoria to Nanaimo where she lived was coming to an end, it was her last night camping. After the previous night marooned on a smaller cliffy island due to a low tide and no way to move her kayak down to the water she was low on supplies with no time to detour to gather more. We sat up that night chatting and watched the fireworks igniting over the distant small town of Ladysmith sipping our beer that I had dunked in the ocean to cool. The next morning I pulled out my bag of goodies to make coffee and breakfast. Jean pulled out a cup from her smaller bag and filled it with instant coffee and a bit of milk that I am certain would be curdling, topped it with cold water, and drank that nasty gritty mixture down like a trooper. She made a gurgling noise. It was hard to bare witness.

“No! I can make you a real coffee if you want. Use my stove! I will do anything not to have to see you drink a second cup of…that!”

Jean refused my offer stoically. Cold soaking her meals each day and enduring the privation of even hot water for a cup of morning coffee without complaint, at least outwardly, but did the simple meal plan add enjoyment to the epic solo journey she was doing? I turned away to light my stove to make a fresh and hot mug of coffee with my miniature espresso maker because I could, and prepared a bagel with salmon capers and cream cheese. The guilt of eating this breakfast feast caused me to sneak away to a hidden location up the shore while dodging the milling throngs. I had planned a two-day outing but had packed enough food for a family of four. I get it; she wanted to travel simply and lightly. Making room for beer is a good excuse I suppose, but to take on such a trip and not enjoy the menu seemed to discount some of the satisfaction of the journey, at least in my eyes. I sent her on her way with a bagel with the works before she left to catch a forgiving tide to go through Dodds Narrows, the last hurdle before she reached home. What floats you ask? Pickles which have been scientifically proven to float, small stones, witches and wood as well, but this paddle foodie would say that you can also float a full satisfied stomach. Cold soaking is for masochists.

How to Paddle for the Last Time

How to Paddle for the Last Time

   There in that place we sat at sunset, Jon a few feet ahead of me and I nestled in a seat-shaped cleft of rock feeling the roughness of it as I sat. My cook pot behind me on the only relatively flat surface of a washed up log was boiling over in a mess of starchy froth pouring from under the lid and down the sides. The blue flame of the stove hissed and flashed yellow and his remained cold and unlit, forgotten. We were to say the least mesmerized by the last glimmer of sun going down over a bare horizon of an unbroken ocean. We waited for the fabled flash of light sailors describe as the sun disappears. We were slightly baked at the time so such events real or imagined would make for a full evenings discussion on the merits of being there, in that place at sunset.

   This was the first night of many paddle trips he and I would endeavour to take and one of the quieter as we seemed to be magnets for getting into scrapes and mostly lost at times. But while we sat awaiting a natural visual effect that by the way did not occur on that night or any other night that I have had that special opportunity, we had no idea that each paddle might be the last one. Who thinks like that? Each event was in a series of adventures he and I would jump into, sometimes at a moments notice gathering camping gear, food, gas and a sea chart. Our conversations on dark beaches listening to the waves into the night impacting to my way of thinking about the outdoors to this day as we were out there for the same reasons and chasing the same aesthetic.

   With like minds we set out to Barkley Sound aboard Francis Barkley, a sturdy cargo vessel that for decades dutifully delivered goods and mail to communities in the area that had not yet been connected to the greater world by roads. Down the winding Alberni Inlet in a dense fog we sat out on deck feeling the damp on a July morning looking at our kayaks balanced on crates below us in the open hold of the ship and straining eyes to make out the ocean. The anxiety crept in as slowly as the fog until by some luck the ship broke free of the gloom into open calm seas and sunshine. The week began with a pot enhanced sunset and wound its way through entering sea caves on low rolling swells, testing our nerves in narrow dark caverns. We tested our skills in open water in the outskirts of the safety inside the cluster of islands. There we met a breaching humpback whale barely visible behind the walls of deep swells that seemed to surround us until we scuttled back inside. The week found us luxuriating on several beach camps throughout the archipelago. The week ended at the same crowded dock where it began at a lodge that denied us access to the washrooms because we were not members of the kayak tour from that lodge. We were offered room temperature cans of Molson Canadian beer by a young server who took pity on us as we waited and whiled away the time until the Barkley returned for its trip back up the inlet. As foggy headed as that first night we settled in on the deck of the ship dozing and warming our backs on the smoke stack. It would not be our last paddle together.

   That came later, and then again in that place snaking our way up with friends on the San Juan Estuary near Port Renfrew on the west side of Vancouver Island no one would have thought it was our last paddle, however, sadly it would be at least in the physical sense. He passed in 2016 shortly before I would take on the most daunting challenge of my life taking part in the Yukon River Quest. He was with me there, in sprit and I had a moment while in line at the registration booth to get my number and prove that I had all my papers in order when I looked over to see a guy dressed as Jon would standing there. It took me out of the moment, the place, and the time and the bubble I was in. The next half hour that it took for me to return to Earth was quietly difficult. Of course it was coincidence, it was not him but I felt an eerie sense of comfort afterwards. This would not be his kind of thing. Running to his kayak to paddle non-stop for three days down a wilderness river attempting to get to the finish line before the elements of water and nature and fatigue beat him there. It would have been a place where we would return if I survived the marathon to spend a week or more drifting down the river towards Dawson City in our own time and in that shared mindful approach to encounters with the wilds. I wore his fleece cap at night under the chilly midnight sun. Was that to be our last, final paddle?

   The past few years have taken me on a crazy ride through ending of things and to the joys of rediscovering refreshing new life events, new things that are entered carefully and with lessons learned. It is the way of getting older, getting over the small things between people. It has been a period in my life when circumstances have kept me off the water more often than not and soon I hope to return, with a fresh energy and outlook. I think now which one of those will be my last paddle with someone else? How do we learn to make that last paddle trip, that last ever occasion for anything with someone we cared about when the end comes as something of a surprise? There are no good reasonable believable answers, and I cannot find even in my quieter moments an entry point to that question. None of us know how much time we have left, but some comfort in facing the inevitable and hopefully long way off destination for me is with a picture I took of the back of Jon’s head on that first night in Barkley Sound as the sun was doing its final act of the day on the natural stage before us. One of the few times that evening that I remembered to press the shutter button on my camera while my cook pot spat boiling rice water all over the beach rocks.

Wasabi Blues

   Five days after 9/11 with that horror fresh in my head I took my place in line for the outhouse. Walbran Creek marks the unofficial middle of the most strenuous hike you will find known as the West Coast Trail, or W.C.T. White sandy beaches, a fresh water flow coming from the deep forest and lots of places to pitch a tent makes this ideal. The Creek is a location where weary travellers tend to rest up after coming north to south via Bamfield, a small coastal town or south to north via Port Renfrew, another tiny blip on the shoreline map. Caked in mud as I and my group of four were we could use the creek to rinse off a few crusty items, make a fire to dry the rest and take a day off from climbing ladders and struggling on quicksand ridden muddy paths. Walbran Creek also offers one other thing, a piece of civilization known as an outhouse. My advice to all is bringing your own toilet paper for a more enjoyable repast inside the squat hut, and because this is a gathering point there will be a small community of tents and people from all over the world to get to know there may be a line. I love talking to strangers but on this unreal week in the wilderness I was by chance in line behind a couple from Germany who I had taken out kayaking about ten days previous. What are the odds? I told them the terrible news from New York and in the days before viable wifi and cell phone reception the trail was a way out of knowing anything about the world beyond the next hurdle on the rugged path ahead. Of course, they were having none of it and did not believe my tale that always sounds like an action movie plot. Planes hitting the World Trade Center and other targets simply sound ridiculous, even two decades later. I imagined that the world was engaging in end of the world shenanigans as we spoke.

   It was not just the potential for World War III mysteriously lurking on the horizon and shadowing our journey like a cougar who had possibly stalked us the day before, it was also my good friend’s 27th birthday that night. We were not good backpackers. There were four of us, myself and three women, and before you say a word about what a lucky guy I am, I can tell you that it was not always an every man’s dream. I also learned more details than I needed to know, ever! That said we packed for our week trekking in the woods like we were doing what we were accustomed, kayaking where weight of ger is less on an issue. Each of us brought a stove, pots sets, food for a month and the dreaded vegetable bag containing of all things four corn on the cobs, still on the cob. It was a worthy punishment to be given the bag for the crime of being whiny on the trail the day before. We were all overloaded but lightened the load somewhat with the birthday feast of vegetable sushi rolls. Our friend as it was her birthday took care of us. She brought little gifts for each us and argued to make the sushi. I had a plastic water bottle filled with red wine that may or may not have been improved by days of giggles and drops on the hike. I shared it out and by that time the sushi was served. There were enough ingredients for one long roll and as we were entertaining guests the roll was stretched with each of us having three or four small slices. Our guests were a couple of lads who met on a kayaking tour in Tofino consisting of a kayak guide and his new friend who had been convinced to join on a hike of the WTC. Another German I might add. We lifted our cups of giggled red and toasted the birthday girl and our good fortune to all be out there on the trail. The toast chased by a piece of sushi followed immediately by a group spit take, rice, carrot, cucumber and red wine sprayed into the campfire. She had a tube of wasabi paste and to lighten her own bag had squeezed it in entirety into the one roll trapping the green dynamite inside. With little in the way of a plan B meal at hand we used the wine to slightly deaden the pain of each sushi slice. Nasal coughing, choking, snorting and wheezing laughter got us through that night, and the only outhouse at Walbran Creek collapsed the next morning. No one was hurt, but wasabi may have been involved.

Is Everything Boring Now?

Is Everything Boring Now?

   Is everything boring now? I ask this because of the reaction I had at being front and center witnessing the final few footsteps of a great trek that had begun five years before. The Trans Canada Trail begins and ends at oceans depending on which side of the country you take your first footsteps, Pacific or in this case Atlantic. Most people if they have the opportunity will hike a section of two of this wilderness path but one person decided to go the whole way with an amazing detour to the Arctic Ocean. Melanie Vogel of Germany wetted her toes in all three of those oceans and gathered blisters for the rest of the journey west.

   It was a spectacularly sunny blue skied Saturday in November when I took my own urban hike under the canopy of brightly coloured tree leaves from my girlfriend’s house to a local coffee shop. I grabbed a cup to sustain me on my journey to the sea walking at right angles to the route Vogel was taking to the ‘point zero’ marker of the TCT at Clover Point Victoria BC.

A small crowd was gathering there, some expressing confusion as to where she would be arriving. There is another zero point on the same shoreline road named Mile Zero which is the terminus of the Trans Canada Highway. I was early and so was the reporter from the city news who had come to cover the event.  I did not want to lose my early bird spot with my camera so struck up conversation with the reporter who had been on the Vogel story for some time. She spoke of how the past couple of days had been hard on Melanie Vogel as she reappeared in society after so long hiking alone, well that is alone with her husky/lab cross,  Malo. Being overwhelmed by well wishers, media interests and blistered and bandaged feet was the back story I was told as the reporter, looking through her video camera could make out the crowd that had joined Vogel for the last leg.

   The group closed in on the final steps of a five year journey and I wondered as I crouched down to take video from a low angle to make her appear bigger, I wondered what she must be thinking. I could see it in her eyes as she walked past me. There I could see a mix of fatigued bewilderment, gratitude, relief, regret and release that fell from her being with each footprint. Malo just enjoyed the treats and attention. She touched the signpost, hugged Malo and dipped her feet in the cold water as Malo stole the show rolling in a pile of seaweed when his own pack was removed. Moments later the media jumped her. She sat on a log, hugging Malo as people asked for pictures with her. She agreed to them but was in the images in body only. I could tell she had retreated into a bubble. Shoeing away the reporters for a moment by telling then that she had little to say than she had already said in so many previous interviews, and they were surprisingly respectful letting her savour the moment and somehow process the end of the journey. That was when I packed up and headed back the way I came. The long way home seemed fitting that afternoon all things considered. The question I started asking myself as the event unfolded remained and enforced by my observations of those around me. Is everything boring now?

 Is everything boring now because everything is immediately at our fingertips? Is everything boring now because with a device in hand we cannot get lost because it will tell us exactly where we are just by opening an app? Is everything boring now because every life experience, both real and imagined is available through a content producing public all over social media? I ask this because for a brief moment on that sunny Saturday everyone looked up. They took part in a flash community. They engaged with each other and actually talking to strangers about the anticipation of this woman walking across the country to end up sitting on a log hugging a wet dog. The moment of community was short lived and I watched them all retreat back to the default settings our society has fostered in the last decade or so. The excitement over, the ant hill returning to regular business and off we went into our regular lives. I noticed one young woman who as she walked past me held an expression of boredom. It didn’t take. The random and to me very exciting emotionally provocative arrival of Vogel sent my throat to stiffen and eyes, I admit filling at the corners as she walked up to the sign post. This woman might have felt a short blast of excitement but it washed over her leaving her feeling, meh. Was I imagining this? In my caffeinated state I was jumping in and talking to reporters like a pro, and to total strangers, I love doing that! So, I quickly asked the young woman what she thought of it all.

“It was cool, I guess.”

Me: “Could you see yourself doing something crazy like that?”

“Oh nooooo way!”

Me, laughing knowing me. : “I can!”

She chuckled and left. Okay, so not a good example of going on a multi-year hikes as something seen as boring, but she was bored, almost instantly. All mystery and imagination has gone into the existential junk drawer. Everything has become all too available. The things that other people do and we get to watch on You Tube and Instagram have become a kind of entertainment and not seen as exceptional. We even go as far as to critique the video quality of someone’s life dream adventure that they go to the trouble of sharing with us online.

   I have written trip reports that I hope give information about a place to hike or to kayak, and that some of my words may actually spark the imagination of the reader. I do hope that, and not that I have become entertaining.

Something special has gotten lost along the way. The way we acted out during the pandemic, the so-called break down of social norms all feel like a live version of the nasty comments threads I read on the interweb. I believe that it is due to the lack of running room. There is no escape for the in coming information, data and video. Over-sharing is killing us and we are acting out of boredom.

   I own a flip-phone. I know that some of you reading that will scoff. Why would you use something so useless you might ask? I don’t owe an answer but I will say one thing. I very nearly burst into tears at that sea side marker when a woman and her dog arrived from an mighty journey, a solo journey of many kilometres and delays due to Covid restrictions giving her the chance to spend a year and a half in the Yukon, which is one of my favourite places on Earth. Maybe owning a phone that just makes phone calls saves at least a portion of my soul. I was not bored before, during or after on my walk home that day. In fact, I was stifling the emotions the entire way home and at watching my video of the event at home felt that rush yet again.

   It is a complicated world we now live in. Do we throw away our devices to save our collective spirits? Are we all in need of an intervention and some form of a 12-step addiction program to at the very least find some moderation in the use of the digital drugs? Inundated from the moment we wake up by the noise of other people over-sharing. It has dulled the senses. It has made everything boring. Before you say it, yes I do partake in the sharing of things on the internet. I admit to getting lost in video clip vortexes when I get home from work that is tough to jump out from. I am as susceptible as any to the dangers of over-sharing of others. To say, that was cool, shrug my shoulders and then walk on to the next thing is something I can’t do. I have been thinking about Melanie Vogel all week. I wonder how she is making out in the strangest days she will experience after the hike, and I wonder what the next morning was like. Did she enjoy a good cup of coffee on some balcony and gaze out over the cityscape or did she pull the covers up over her head and let it be? The event of her last sore footsteps that afternoon struck a nerve, a pin was placed on the memory map and I cannot be bored by that.   

Stay in your Lane, but Howl if you want to!

Stay in your Lane, But Howl if you Want To!

   The separation between God and man is equal the space we have driven between ourselves and the natural world that we sprung from millions of years ago. In the recent decade I can see the changes and distancing from one another that have occurred and the unfortunate divisions driving us to become more insulted from each other. We are a society of ones. I blame the combo platter serving up the internet, a once useful creature that slowly was made corruptible and its cousin, the constant distraction machine of the cell phone. I dare you humble reader to find one single coffee shop anywhere on the planet, not just the western so called advanced nations, but anywhere that does not contain caffeine drinking inhabitants sharing tables who are glued to their phones. Not sharing life’s little stories of family and friends. Not arguing over the state of the world at large, not communicating with one another at all. Simply captivated, and so completely adhering to this captivity of scrolling through nothingness that they, we have successfully removed each other from each other while praying to the good God social media. We suck!

   It is our own fault that we are so focused on nasty little trolls and info-tainment that we are missing out on the experience of being living creatures. It is why we are experiencing something other than engaging in zombie-like meat puppetry in the glow of our personal screen time. We suck!

   It is our nature I suppose to wander away from what keeps us sane and whole. It is easier to blame the other, to seek ways of deferring responsibility for our own actions. The combo platter does the trick and the buffet of it all fills us up while somehow at the same time leaving each of us empty in the existential stomach. I would argue that the years of wandering from our natural beginnings only exacerbated the speed in which we have run to a place of avoiding each other as real people not abstracts on a phone screen.

   The human critter does not want to think of itself as small. We beat our chests and tell the old faithful myth of how we are the top of the food chain. We think and I dare say believe that we are the leader of the pack and not part of the natural world. Tell that to the jogger being chased by a cougar and ask him or her if they feel superior or just dinner. We are big, stupid bumbling animals who really have not advanced much from our days fashioning rudimentary tools from wood, bone and stone. We are now big dumb bumbling creatures with bigger tools that are smarter than we could ever be, yet we pat ourselves on the back for how brilliant we are. We suck!

   There are a few of us who are trying to reconnect, maybe not so much with each other but that we did the nature thing on the weekend, place selfie here. An industry rose up supplying social malcontents who want to engage with their true selves and touch a bit of human history by sleeping rough in a thin nylon enclosure while the wind whistles, and a twig snapping sends them reeling into a primal fear of that awareness of not being on top of the food chain. They, like me are the thrill seekers who want to sense that anxiety at the sound of a twig snap. It is a rush man! When we lose that grip on the personal human kind myth and embrace our true place in the scheme of things, to humble our egos and understand finally that it is not something to be embarrassed about, to be small. If we see the natural world as small, in how could we be on same the level of grass, or a tree in a field, a bird, a worm or an amoeba? We are! It is exciting to be small, to be part of something finally and against all social motivators to the contrary. That is why people buy tents, sleeping bags, cook stoves and hiking boots. It is why we invented horrible terms such as nature bathing. It is why I did all that and then expanded my purchase history when launching knee deep into kayaking. It is why people go outside. There is something primal speaking in the depths of who we are reminding us of why we are. Do we have to suck?

   On an island in a small chain of what looks like from thirty thousand feet to be chips broken away from the whole of Vancouver Island is a long crescent-shaped sandy beach at the base of a the abrupt and deep green hillside. One end of that beach is wild. The surf breaks violently after the smooth rolling swells of the breathing ocean meet the rocky shallows and rise up against themselves to fall in a rough line of shore for hundreds of feet. The other end of the curved shoreline is calmer. Protected by a rocky outcrop of land creating a safe warm soft armpit of land to slide a kayak into without getting wet in the attempt and naturally at that place is a perfect camp location. It offers a white sand platform for your tent if you enjoy your tent filling with sand, and a level wooded area that is sand free. It is a human place with park trails and a green cone toilet out in the open and oddly facing the hiking trail. It feels safe from all that uncomfortable proximity to our natural past.

   On morning I and my companions woke to find that the trail was not just being used by humans. My tent was in the sand. I like the sand. It gives way under me when I sleep and camping on the coast without getting sand in your tent, or coffee cup for that matter is a ridiculous notion. My tent had tracks leading to it and around it on both sides. There were no signs of any of the night dwellers investigating my abode, only seeing it as the only obstacle on the way to the fresh water stream falling from the deep woods into the sand around the rocks from where I slept. Wolf, bird, cougar and raccoons had come to visit over night. Not one twig snap was heard.

   Later that afternoon we saw a wolf appear from the head of the hiking trail. It was followed by a backpacker named Steve who was out for a hike of that side of the island with his German Shepard. I still have a grainy photo of that dog from when it arrived at our beachy home alarming us as we made hasty plans on how to get rid of what we thought at the time was a human habituated wolf.

   The next day found us still on the beach. The fog of morning just would not let go of the shoreline and the next safe place to land our boats was hours north. We stayed put and spent the day lounging on our own self-satisfaction of having this blissful location all to ourselves. A rare and beautiful thing! If not for the lack of palm trees we could see the area as Hawaiian. White sands, the roar of waves getting louder as the tide rose, and the hush later as the tide receded. The mists clinging to the green steep hill and the colour of the water had us in paradise mode. It was time to take the deep dive into the past and away from the myth. We grabbed some snacks, cameras and tucked away the rest into the relative security of kayak hatches and set out to hike to the wild side.

   The shore is longer than it appears and taking our time, taking pictures of each other in self-congratulatory images to show off back home. We marvelled in the forms, sounds and patterns of the sandy environment. Eventually, stopping in our own tracks to admire and question the single file set of footprints coming from the trees out on the sand and at their terminus, a pile of feathers and disturbed red sand. That gull had a bad morning as the tide was still going out, the kill was fairly recent and we all now felt watched. Time, what is that? The year, the minute the second erased all connection to the now when standing over a single line of wolf tracks. We sauntered onwards with prickles rising on the backs of our necks.

   Under a log held up by a pair of exposed seaweed covered rocks and down into a gully formed by the constant dredging of the sea’s daily incursions we all admitted later to sensing that crouching under that log signified the entrance of the older world. The nature that we came to do was a real, in-your-face-Jack moment. Primal is the only word worthy of describing the feeling of not belonging. We were not in our place. Nature had separated us from it. All our attempts to touch it, to climb back into the womb were dashed. We cannot go back and the limbo move required getting under the log rubbed it in intensely. Had we so totally lost our way in the world that the wolfy end of that rugged place drew a line in the sand? You do not belong here! You suck! GO HOME!

   We do not do ourselves any favours by hiding behind our phones. We are not just distancing from each other but creating an environment of apathy towards each other that can only contribute to the growing climate crisis. We need to interact once again with each other, not by memes, or one line texts, and find a course back to community which has been so sorrily lost. That wolf nest at the nature end of the beach set the stage. I felt lost on the walk back to camp. I, and all my fellow humans have waited to long to come home again and home moved on. We had our end of the beach, they had theirs. Climate change has been a bulldozer leveling the playing field for the human race. The planet is changing and we are not. We just are not changing. Nature has drawn that line in the sand and is moving on without us. The planet will not die, however you and I have questionable futures.The question remains how do we find the path back away from the trolls, and the endless energy put into scrolling the nothingness to where we can stand at our end of the beach and point to what was, and what is. knowing that even though all in nature has had enough of waiting and put the log up that we are still part of them, as they are part of us. Howl if you want to against the silence of a coffee shop filled with zombie scrollers. The creatures strolling by my tent knew that the beach can be shared, it is time we learned how to as well.

A Day at the Spirit Animal Zoo

A Day at the Spirit Animal Zoo

  The inside of the tent was bright that morning as it is every morning on a summer camping trip to the west coast. The air was yellow and blue reflecting the coloured pattern of the thin layer of nylon that separated me curled up snug in my sleeping bag, and the 250lb black bear seen as a menacing blurred shadow sniffing at my tent. I could not move a single fear locked muscle and the restraining feel of the hooded mummy bag didn’t help the sensation of being trapped against my will. The bear had me dead to rights and could if it pleased used me as a kayak camping enchilada. Thoughts raced across my mind, rational thoughts on how and why a normally timid coastal black bear would venture into my encampment on the shores of a very busy and noisy bay of motor boaters? Hell, I was kept from sleep most of the night by the sounds of a family group up the beach and the drunken warbling of its matriarch as she sung along to old time rock and roll tunes. My Sherona by the Knack had never been covered with such passion, and so many times in a row.

   With the sounds of generators, dvd players, outside voices echoing in the bowl shaped bay and the Knack on repeat how, I thought would a bear come anywhere near? It must be very hungry! I’m toast, paralysed in a bag. The tent walls rustled and that was the end. I woke from the dream and regained the use of my limbs and in seconds my wits returned under the heavy breathing. But there was still something outside my tent, something brushing against it and then the sound of rain. Wrestling in a subdued near bear encounter panic I escaped my sleeping bag and unzipped the triangular flap to my enchilada cave. My head popped out into the sunlight and silhouetted before it was a man in a bucket hat and shorts holding a coiled up dog leash as his golden retriever pissed all over my tent fly.

“Sorry.” He muttered and called his dog back to the dinghy he used to take the dog for a pee on my tent from his 40ft sailing boat anchored in the nearby still waters of Roscoe Bay.

   I sat on the mossy ground, ignoring the picnic table provided and listened to the hiss of my coffee maker doing its duty. It had no idea what I had just gone through, but that was not what it was about. My coffee maker’s hiss was the sound of civilization. A return to the over-populated boater bay I settled for the day before when the hour was getting late and the setting sun had fallen behind Vancouver Island. The gurgle after the hiss meant relief. Nothing bad can happen when you are sipping your first cup of coffee in the morning while camping, it is a rule. I had little concern of a black bear waddling down the path leading directly to my tent spot. I could relax and ponder the horrors of the morning with some self-doubt about my fortitude in nature. I thought I was made of tougher stuff, but my subconscious sent me into a waking sleep paralysis instead of grabbing my flare gun and lighting up that bear’s insides.

   Years later on the Yukon River after a twelve hour stint in the kayak seat without rest I arrived at Lower Lebarge checkpoint at the northern end of Lake Lebarge. The sun had only gone down slightly below the tree line and would soon be on the slow rise. It was shortly after midnight when I stumbled rubber legged up the beach covered in round river stones to firmer flat ground. There was a smell of BBQ but I don’t recall there being food served. I had my bag of clothing designated for the chilly overnight paddling hours of the three day long marathon named the Yukon River Quest from Whitehorse to Dawson City the epicentre of the great gold rush era. I nearly toppled over attempting to change my clothing and even found a place that would serve well as a tent spot, if not for the sense of urgency we all felt to get a move on. The next section of the river was a reward for the long mind-fucking shore topography of the lake which is one long shallow bend around one rocky outcropping obstructing the view the next rocky outcropping. It would take many hours of paddling in at times unpredictable waters before the red beacon light signalled the entrance to the river. The reward was faster water, zigging and zagging through cliffy canyon-like terrain that is said to be visually stunning in daylight hours. In the sheer dusk of the hour the headlamp light could make out some features but the rest were lost to my eyes.

   It doesn’t take long to read the water and understand where to point your bow to make full use of the flow and give paddling arms a rest. Steering left and right, and then another fast right, go straight and into the next set of mini rapids. By 1am and a snack of gummy bears chased with a five hour power shot drink followed by an ill-advised Red Bull I was drifting a little. Letting the waters take me downhill to the Bering Sea thousands of kilometres away. I scanned the shore looking for anything that would indicate the light was getting brighter. I seemed to remain dusk for a long time. I saw the weak sun peek in amongst the sparseness of the hinterland forest but it was not yet friendly to weary kayakers on a daft mission to beat the clock. What I did see was a deer. I was in luck but there was no one around in canoe or kayak to share my good fortune of witnessing a rare thing indeed. I couldn’t believe I was drifting at the same pace as a white deer tip-toeing and struggling somewhat on the loose sandy incline to the water’s edge. It pranced and jumped as if as startled at seeing me as much ai I seeing it. In an instant it was gone. The deer jumped up the sand bar and while in mid-flight burst into a cloud of sparkles. I assumed it teleported and would reappear sometime, someplace later.

   We were lost in the archipelago. Left became right somewhere during the afternoon of leisurely exploring the islands with no names, some only identified with a number, some with nothing at all according to the sea chart sealed in clear plastic on the deck of my kayak. Being lost was what we did best. Myself and three others had paddled many days and many locations together and would inevitably on each occasion get thoroughly lost. With little care in the sheltered safely from the wild open ocean that the islands provided we decided to stop and get clearer bearings. Choosing a muddy beach of one of the nameless islets where the dark wet soil met a small green grassy clearing that must have been at some distant point in the past, a homesteading site. The patch was too flat and too clear to be anything other than that. The beach faced the inland side of the island group and was as calm as a pothole puddle. The west coast makes mud. West coast mud is the type of mud that reminds you why as a kid one of your basic phobias and terror was to inadvertently encounter quick sand. The mud looks almost dry on the surface. Deceptively assuring the traveller that stepping upon it will mean solid ground not the ‘you will only sink faster if you struggle’ sand that will swallow you up whole unless there is a long sturdy vine within reach that you can use to pull yourself out.

   I stepped out of my kayak and lost my sandal instantly in the deep quagmire. I looked up while reaching elbow deep to retrieve it and that is when I saw a normal coloured deer dancing in the grass. Hopping back and forth and we all saw it. I had witnesses! This deer was working it, prancing on ballerina hooves. Spinning and jumping about. Was this a greeting, or a warning not to come ashore lest ye be damned, or it could simply be that the deer at the late summer berries and had a buzz on. In a blink it was gone, and so was my other sandal.