One Bear and Two Barenaked Ladies

Winter 2009

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

To view a copy of the entire magazine online, click here: WINTER 2009 WAVELENGTH MAGAZINE

by Lyn Hancock

This is the story of one bear and two barenaked ladies on a paddling trip to the Pinkertons in Barkley Sound. Bear with me as I give you the bare essentials of this adventure. Those opposed to nudity should now leave. They may not think this a beary nice story or me a beary nice girl.

Let’s get our bearings. Kalavati and I, the two barenaked ladies, launch our kayaks at Torquart Bay and paddle for an hour and a half to the pretty Pinkertons just outside the Broken Group Islands in Pacific Rim National Park. This is where I have the use of a cabin on two exquisite little islands linked by a bridge and surrounded by a bracelet of other little islands. In 1963 I studied bald eagles here from the same cabin that Kalavati and I visit now 45 years later.

Bears are residents here. You see bears foraging the shoreline of Vancouver Island as soon as you round Lyall Point and paddle along Equis Beach. You breakfast with bears poking around the mudflats at low tide as you sit on the deck of the cabin and sip your coffee. You retreat back into the bushes when bears get to the clam beds behind the cabin before you do.

It was in 1963 while spyglassing eagles from the front door of the cabin that I dropped my binoculars, picked up a gun and shot a bear. An assistant, several eaglets and my husband and I lived on this bear all summer, eating bear roasts, bear steaks, bear stew and stir-fried bear as the larder depleted.

But times and attitudes change, dry foods are readily available for summer-long trips in the wilderness, and now I shoot bears with my camera. And this is what this barenaked lady was trying to do that day in August when after days of dismal weather the rains stopped, the sun came out and Kalavati, my paddlemate, the other barenaked lady in this story, suggested we celebrate by baring our all. We took our clothes off and with oyster appetizers and goblets of wine in hand, we skipped across the bridge and along the boardwalk to the tent platform for Happy Appie Hour.

We celebrated in different ways. Kalavati froze in yoga pose. I fidgeted with my camera trying to get even better views of the picturesque little islands that studded the beach below us. Eagles chattered from trees on bigger islands in the background. The setting sun that soon would show this scene in silhouette could only add to the drama. We were Eves alone in Paradise.

I put down my camera and tripped over the wine. We watched in horror as the cedar planking turned red. Oh no, Eve is wineless in Paradise! Bear in mind that we Eves were also kayakers who had limited ourselves to one glass of wine a day. “Let’s lick it up,” said Kalavati, who soon would be off to India to an ashram.

“Bear down on it. Let’s take a picture of it,” was my reaction. “Wooded Chardonnay!”

And then a bear came to the party. It ambled onto the stage from the right, nose down, poking around the rocks for crabs a few metres from our platform. I pointed my lens and clicked off several shots, cursing the fact that this was a black bear against black rocks in the silhouette of a setting sun and was about to exit the stage to the left. It would soon be out of sight behind the bushes at the bend of the island.

“If it continues around the island to the dock where our kayaks are, I could get a shot of it from behind the bushes at the top of the stairs,” I told Kalavati. She meditates in crises. I crack jokes. “I wonder if I should put my clothes on.”

No time. I knew a shortcut to the bear’s possible destination where I could take its picture from the safety of a miniature raincoast jungle. So barenaked and brandishing my 400mm lens, I bounced back along the walkway, skipped barefoot across to the next boardwalk leading to the dock and I had barely made it to the trees when I heard sounds of thrashing through the bushes. I froze – and not in yoga pose!

I have to stop the story there. Bear with me again as I take you to another scene and bring on more players.

Some of you have met Jaime, my 25 year old kayaking guide from Belize, who works his way around the world with his kayak and stores his stuff at my place in between jobs. “You must meet Lyn,” he told his girlfriend, Nina, from America. “She’s my Mom.”

So Jaime borrowed one of my kayaks and brought Nina to Barkley Sound to camp on Hand Island about 20 minutes paddle from the Pinkertons. It was Nina’s first kayak trip. It poured with rain, it was windy, wet and cold, and they had forgotten their pots and utensils. “Take her to Jacques and Jarvis, it’ll be nice and protected in there,” I advised.

Now Jaime was at a crossroads in life, waffling between kayaking the world and settling down with a wife and children. He worried that for an adventurer like him, marriage might be unbearable.

It was in the lagoon between Jacques and Jarvis after a wild ride across Peacock Channel in a rainstorm that he saw Nina smile through the slits in her rain gear. He suddenly made up his mind and proposed. “Of course,” she beamed as they rafted their kayaks together, clutched each other’s rainclothes and kissed.

“And now you must meet your new mother-in-law,” said Jaime. “She is staying over there in the Pinkertons. Let’s go visit.”

Traditionally, when young men take

their fiancées to meet their mother for the first time, she is in her best dress, sitting in her best chair, and presiding over her best china set pouring a cup of tea. Not so, Jaime!

When he brought his fiancée to meet his mother-in-law, she wasn’t dressed in anything. She was barenaked, running through the bush, with camera in hand, chasing a bear.

Jaime is the one to tell the rest of the story.

“You should have seen the look on your face. You were so embarrassed. Your arms flying everywhere... Then you must have thought ‘what the hell’ so you spread your arms, shrugged and hugged.”

Well, that’s the bare bones of the story. But darn it, no picture. So next day I re-enacted the scene and Kalavati clicked one.

Remember this is a bear story, no bull. (Thanks Mary!)

Lyn Hancock is a Vancouver Island-based author who can most often be found fully clothed. Visit www.lynhancock.com.