Pacific NW

Expeditions

The day began with eggs benedict at the local restaurant. It was a good square meal and an omen of the rest of the day’s unusually odd and fantastic events! Justin went off and did his last-minute town chores while I combed the docks asking for local advice on timing Skidegate Narrows correctly. Everyone gave me a completely different answer. The coast guard said “If you go on the rocks, just do it after 1600 hours so we can get overtime pay.” I topped off our water tanks and hitchhiked to the gas station up the road with two jerry cans. Expensive gas!! 10 gallons for $50.00 Canadian. Ouch! Hitching back was an experience. My car did a U-turn in the road and swerved over to pick me up. Inside was a questionable man that was prepared to take me down the road in the direction he had just come from. “Just throw the cans in the back seat there. You see, if I was an airline pilot I would say “no” because you have dangerous and illegal and flammable cargo, but we’re not in an airplane so I don’t care”. OK, I thought, this will work. On the way he told me of his idea he’d been formulating to hitchhike across Canada with a hinged jerry can, containing his whole camp. “Then everybody’d pick you up, heh, because you look like you’re out gas. So I saw you standing there with those cans and couldn’t believe it, so I had to pick you up. Then when you get to town you just put the can into a canvas sack and you look normal”. At the marina I hopped out and thanked him for the ride, met Justin, and we cast off and bid farewell to Queen Charlotte City. A brisk wind piped up as we entered the infamous narrows. Mile after mile of shallow winding passage, with strong currents and a constantly changing bottom. Large parts of it go completely dry on a 6-foot tide! Today we were lucky and passed without incident. Once through we found ourselves on the wild west side of the Queen Charlotte Islands. The combination of gale-force westerlies, steep chop, and an alternation of thick fog and searing sunshine forced us to seek immediate shelter. Any harbor in a storm. After anchoring and relaxing the tension of our narrows transit away for a few hours, we set the crab trap and rowed to shore. What we found there was an experience like no other. We picked our way along colossal pillars of cedar and spruce in complete silence. The place had a feel about it. Not only were we in an unimaginably vibrant and healthy ecosystem, it also felt like we had gone back in time somehow. Eventually bringing ourselves to speak in whispers we agreed that the feeling was not of our imaginations, but of something instinctual and rooted to a deeper past. I have no idea why it was, but I felt ageless and was brought to the verge of tears of joy.