A Pidwell Morning

Winter 2009

A good beach is the starting point for a day that rejuvenates the soul

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 Dan Lewis

Sleep in until eight. Now this is wilderness camping – or at least a holiday! Listening to the VHF radio marine weather forecast in the tent: it sounds like a no-go day. Fine. I’m still knackered from yesterday’s long day of paddling in fully loaded kayaks. I open my eyes: it’s a spectacularly beautiful day. Bonus!

We are camped in a place we newcomers call Pidwell Cove. It is about an eighth of a mile long; reddy-brown sand. The first such beach we’ve camped on in three weeks (sandy beaches, although common enough on the west coast of Vancouver Island, are rare on the North Coast of BC’s mainland). I walk the length of the beach a few times, then jog, then sprint, working up enough sweat to dive right into the cold ocean to fully awaken and begin the day.

A quick wilderness morning snack of a shared apple, some crackers with honey and hemp hearts, and I’m off for a pre-breakfast toodle (an aimless paddle with the intent to play and explore spontaneously rather than actually go anywhere).

Paddling east along the southern edge of Swindle Island: the shoreline is stunning. Massive granite sections – big hunks of red, brown, and purple cliffs – extend upwards from the sea to the coastal fringe forests above. Millbanke Sound is to my right, exposed to the open Pacific, source of the wee swell washing me up and down as I paddle in close to the steep shore. Eight eagles come screeching into the bay.

I notice small waves breaking on a reef offshore and head out to investigate. I find an isolated ridge of rock and park myself at the eastern extremity. I start to realize that I can hang out here for as long as I want to. A timeless eternity – no deadline, no ‘to-do’ list, nowhere to go and no one expecting me.

Just sitting there, hovering in clear water about a foot above the rock. Appreciating the immense beauty of small things: the nudibranchs in the water, washing helplessly to and fro with me; the gazillions of tiny fish, made visible only by their tiny shadows; the barnacles frantically waving their feet; the blue mussels and orange seastars clinging to the shallow reef below. Occasionally bigger wave sets arrive. I catch a few and surf over the reef, deliciously close to feeling the bite of those barnacles, then resume my contemplation between waves.

So rarely do we take the time to watch a day on our blue planet unfold, and how precious to have not only the time to do so, but also such a wild place to do it in! What a vista laid out before me – to the east, in the foreground, the assorted islands in the vicinity: Price, Lady Douglas, Dowager and Athlone; in the background, the mainland: from Don Peninsula up Seaforth Channel to Bella Bella, King Island and Dean Channel; then south to Namu, with distant Calvert Island barely visible under a pillow of cumulus clouds.

The sun is beating down, heating the day up quickly enough to actually see it happen, especially if you’re slowed down enough to notice. The islands and mountains are breathing, with puffy cumulus clouds over land the visible manifestation. Clear blue summer skies are everywhere else. The wind is a light breeze – so much for that wind warning! But I do notice early signs of a front approaching: the halo around the sun and the high cirrus clouds. And above it all, the stars and planets, invisibly whirling about their orbits. Seldom do we think of them above when we can’t see them.

Cruising the outside of the reef, I’m still wearing my helmet, avoiding the sketchy-looking moves – taking the easy rides, just relaxing. Three dozen harlequin ducks swim by, small blue and cinnamon ducks with strikingly ornate white facial markings that breed on rushing rivers in the Rockies, then spend the rest of their year in the surf-swept rock gardens of the Pacific coast. I finally reach the western tip of the reef and, succumbing to the call of hunger, head back to camp.

Evening now. Four harlequins swim right by our little campfire at high tide, barely twenty feet away. Poking their heads down into the water like mergansers, riding the surge up and down the beach with the flotsam. Perhaps they are preying on the tiny surf perch I felt underfoot and saw them darting off in the shallows this morning.

The front moves over around sunset: first a high thin veil, taking 15 minutes to pass over, next a layer of alto-stratus clouds. The color of the sea fades from the aquamarine it has been all day — the colour of Bonny’s Japanese glass ball, the first she’s ever found, still gleaming blue in the dying light of a perfect midsummer day.

Dan Lewis and Bonny Glambeck operate Rainforest Kayak Adventures.