Enchanting Desolation

“From our ancestors come our names, from our virtues our honours.” – Proverb

What’s in a name? Some history apparently, as surveyor Captain George Vancouver came to the British Columbia coastline from Hawaii in 1792 to update Captain James Cook’s charts. Vancouver idolized Cook, and he modeled and later adapted much of his own leadership style after the famous British explorer and cartographer.

They’d been to the Pacific Northwest 12 years earlier when Vancouver served as Cook’s midshipman, but bad weather hampered their mapmaking attempts. In spring 1792, Vancouver, in his new role as captain, resumed where they’d left off, painstakingly surveying every strait, sound, passage, channel, arm and inlet of B.C.’s 27,000-kilometre coastline. It took three long summers (wintering in Hawaii), using rowboats to maneuver where his vessels, the Discovery and Chatham, could not. Fueled by the hope of finding a western access to the Northwest Passage, each outlet became instead an impenetrable wall, rising up as formidably as a drawbridge to a castle. These castle walls with their steep drops from peak to ocean floor filled Vancouver with woeful isolation, and he named the area accordingly: Desolation Sound.

His discouragement was not shared by us as we welcomed the quiet campsites and open vistas during our week-long tour with Powell River Sea Kayak. Vancouver certainly knew how to navigate by sail and rowboat, but for him, it was an arduous job in his last health-harrowed years. For us, the area presented a jade jewel set in aquamarine.

We ballasted off from Okeover Inlet, bellies full from Laughing Oyster seafood topped up with Cedar Lodge B&B pancakes and plum sauce that morning. Vancouver’s hardships were not our own.

Facing Kinghorn and Station islands, we reminisced over Vancouver meeting the two Spanish vessels, Sutil and Mexicana, under the leadership of captains Galiano and Valdes. They proceeded to collaborate on and share coastal charts and supplies. Vancouver, wearing his diplomatic tricorn hat, was authorized to meet with Commissioner Bodega y Quadra in Nootka Sound to settle damage claims from the Nootka Convention, signed in 1790. Their friendly rivalry at claiming coastline was unmistakable in the geographic names chosen for here, with Spanish roots for the islands of Redonda, Cortes, Quadra and Hernando; and English along Capt. Vancouver’s water routes in the channel approaches (Pryce, Waddington and Lewis) and the inlets (Jervis and Bute) where they’d hoped to secure trade routes east.

We, too, developed a cooperative spirit while making the crossing to Martin Islands. At Hope Point, we were within striking distance for our own circumnavigation of Cortes Island. We hugged coastlines in protected eddies ready to benefit from wind and tide. Our guide, Bill Rickson’s mantra of “long, low, loose leverage” served us well. Long in the reach; push and pull. Low in the trajectory to go the distance. Loose in allowing the breath to torque-torso as we took in sea, sky and salty splashes.

We lingered on South Rendezvous Island amid Douglas fir, western red cedar and Canada’s only native broad-leafed evergreen, the arbutus. Ocean breezes dried off the dew and our drizzle-dampened gear while clearing skies heralded a predominantly fine-weather front. Piles of purple, leather and mottled sea stars, mother harbor seals training their mewling pups, a mink sighting and myriads of gulls, kingfishers and oystercatchers, all took their turns in the tide. Were we the future ones Capt. Vancouver hoped might realize this region’s magnificent beauty?

Wind and tide at our backs, we settled down and let the protective coastline fall away, flowing with it.

Low tide at Shark’s Spit, a natural extension of Marina Island, was where a five-meter tide carried the boats 500 meters to a lively herring gull serenade. My job was to float with them, pulling them gently up and over the shoal, steering clear of barnacles.

Part way around Marina, the framework of an ancient village with canoe berths and clam grounds became evident in the ‘rock’itecture. More recent marks of 1920s logging camps lay in the frayed and rusted cables still attached to large beams. We ate a Mexican black bean salad at the high tide mark, warming our backs against an age-old midden while reflecting upon the cultural contrasts which had transpired over the ages. The eagles soared above us and the ravens along the shore cawed and screeched it out amongst one another.

Looking west to ‘Quadra and Vancouver’s Island’ (as it was known until it was shortened to Vancouver Island) with its chain of snow-capped peaks, we looped past the reef where seals, loons and harlequin ducks played in the wind-churned surf. From Shark’s Spit, the Gorge’s Cortes Island petroglyphs put on a show. Red-orange stickmen waved their catch in the golden light.

A starlit night, we took the fly off the tent to view the Perseid meteor shower, visible from mid-July to mid-August for the last 2,000 years.

We awoke to a calm pastel shoreline; sandpipers and sanderlings on beach patrol. Buoyant with salinity and serenity, Desolation Sound merited our adulation.

A rose by any other name would sound, taste, smell, look and seem as sweet.

Joan Boxall is a North Vancouver-based freelance writer who has done kayak trips in BC and abroad.