Should I stay or should I go?

Spring 2009

To get to really know a place, one has to embrace it

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

To download a pdf copy of the magazine click here: > DOWNLOAD

by Dan Lewis

As a paddler I am torn between a desire to hike and paddle everywhere – to explore every nook and cranny of each and every rock and island on the coast – and a divergent desire to just stop, look and listen to the nature around me. No need to chase after it, just wait and let it come to you. This conflict manifests in my desire to explore my backyard here in Clayoquot Sound thoroughly, versus my dream of paddling the entire coast of British Columbia.

Becoming intimate with Clayoquot Sound is a modest goal by the standards of the modern globetrotter. And then there’s the rest of the B.C. coast. Twenty years ago I set a goal to paddle down the Alaska panhandle and the B.C. coast all the way to Washington. Again, a fairly modest goal compared to many modern expedition kayakers. How have I done? Pretty good, but recently I revised my plan – I figure at this point I’ll be doing well if I can simply paddle the entire B.C. coast in this lifetime.

That’s why Bonny and I have spent parts of the last three summers kayaking the North Coast of B.C., from Prince Rupert to Bella Bella. The level of intimacy we have been able to find up there reminds me of what it was like when I first started paddling down here. I felt then that I knew a place if I could name the major channels and islands, if I could look across the bay and knew the name of the far point. I’ve come to accept that B.C. stands for Big Country – it would take many lifetimes to possibly get to know it all. When I visit a First Nations village up north, I know I am a visitor who might pass through once or several times at most. Back home, I am getting to know the different tribes a bit, even learning a smattering of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth language. It is a completely different experience.

My inner struggle was perhaps reflected in my choice of books for our expedition this summer. For the first leg of our voyage I brought along Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, the original 1855 edition. “I lean and loafe at my ease,” he wrote, “observing a spear of summer grass.” My kind of guy! And indeed I did take opportunities to do just that. We spent days just sitting under the tarp, scanning the horizon and both ends of the beach, waiting and watching for wildlife to appear.

We were not disappointed. One day on Porcher Island we were watching humpback whales spout offshore, but kept being distracted by flocks of Townsend’s Warblers – fluffy fledglings the size and shape of golf balls flitting through the spruce branches not six feet away, their wee buzzy voices begging for food, nearly choking as their harried parents stuffed bugs into their gaping mouths. Another day I was sitting on a beach, intently staring at the place were I had just seen a wolf slip away into the forest, hoping it might reappear, when I noticed in my peripheral vision a big bull orca leading a pod past the bay. When Bonny showed up I was so flabbergasted I could barely explain that I was actually in the process of looking for a wolf. The whales blowing off the point were only the side show!

Some days I would get in the kayak and just toodle about – easy days of fun paddling. One day, in a light northwest breeze under a cloudless blue sky, I went to fetch water in a nearby cove. Reflected sunlight dappled overhanging cliffs burdened to the lip with moss-carpeted rainforest, water droplets refracted sunlight like miniature prisms as they dripped into the saltchuck, and I sat in my boat picking plump ripe blueberries. Heaven on earth! It reminded me of a summer holiday, as I wrote in my journal (although 2008 featured some of the worst summer weather I have ever experienced).

By contrast, the book I brought for the second half of our expedition was John Muir’s Travels in Alaska. I used to think of Muir as a mountain man, climbing amongst the glaciers of the high Sierra, not a paddler. Turns out Muir is a sea canoeist: “For those who really care to get into hearty contact with the coast region, travel by canoe is by far the better way… With plenty of provisions packed… in rubber or canvas bags, you may be truly independent, and enter into partnership with Nature; to be carried with the winds and currents, accept the noble invitations offered all along your way to enter the mountain fiords, the homes of the waterfalls and glaciers, and encamp almost every night beneath hospitable trees.” One of the better descriptions of paddling I’ve ever read!

It was hard to read Muir while on the trip. I kept getting the feeling that he would not be reading books while out in the wilderness. He would be sucking every last morsel of sweetness from the day, even on days when most of us would rather hide in the tent and, well, read a good book. For example: “Next morning was cloudy and windy, snowy and cold, dreary December weather in August, and I gladly ran out to see what I might learn.”

When I complained about not getting out in the gnar as much as Muir would have, Bonny would console me by pointing out that Muir had hired a crew of Tlingits who would paddle the canoe while he sketched, set up camp while he roamed about looking for glaciers, and cook meals to which he could return after dark.

In the end, I try to achieve a balance between my allegiance to home and the urge to roam. I’m getting to know my backyard pretty well – I’ve paddled over four thousand miles in Tofino harbour alone! And I’m hoping to continue paddling the north coast in years to come. Ultimately I realized this summer that one could spend an entire lifetime getting to know any particular place. Whether close to home or far afield, the coast is alive and amazing wherever you go.

Dan Lewis and Bonny Glambeck operate Rainforest Kayak Adventures in Clayoquot Sound.