Blog - Environment

Printed in the ESSA Journal, UVic Environmental Studies Sept. 2003

Giant ocean swells were rolling into Solander Island in unobstructed pulses from across the Pacific. The immense rollers were rising and falling against the island in a respiration of 50 foot sweeps, washing up and down against this treeless Gibraltar off the northern point of the Brooks Peninsula. October isn’t everyone’s choice of season to visit Vancouver Island’s ‘Cape Horn,’ but my friend Michael and I had chosen our weather window, and after 4 hours of hard kayaking from the Klaskish Inlet, we were now alongside of the island.

 

Impossibly, a large ‘wallow’ of about 50 enormous sealions had somehow galumphed their way up the cliffs through the surge, and were arranged along ledges high above the surf, basking in a flash of sun which pierced the banks of cloud and wafts of fog. Their contented grunting was barely audible above the surf, while the redolence of their aroma pierced easily through the spume. As we paddled around the south end of the ice-berg-shaped rock searching for Tufted Puffins, we encountered large standing waves, waves that remain in place by complicated combinations of tidal, wind and wave forces, and as the wind picked up, we turned our backs on the island and headed back to our camp.

The Brooks juts out from Vancouver Island into the stormy North Pacific waters like the fin of a Humpback whale. The thick primeval woods which blanket most of the peninsula quickly give way to spiky, stunted, wind-sculpted ‘krummholz’ forest. Further up, along the Senecio Ridge, all woody plants have been blasted right off the landscape by the ferocity of the Pacific storms. This was Captain Cook’s first sight of the island on his trip across the Pacific. Working his way carefully south down this wild, reef-strewn coast, it wasn’t until Nootka Sound before Cook was able to safely drop anchor. Had he turned north, his first landfall might have been in the mill-pond-calm Klaskish anchorage, where the village of a clan of the Kwakwakawkw First Nation persisted for thouands of years. Turning our backs on Solander, we leaned into the wind and advancing fog and headed back to Klaskish.

About half way back, on this wildest and remotest coast of Vancouver Island, alongside of Cook’s Lagoon, Michael decided to land and stretch his legs. Afterall, we had been in our kayaks for 8 hours, but on account of the heavy surf, and being wary of the thickening fog bank advancing towards the shore, I waved and pointed out that I would continue on to our camp, about one hour beyond. Michael waved back his acknowledgement and I carried on. The fog was blowing in fast, and soon I could barely make out the narrow reef-strewn passage into the calm waters of the anchorage. Looking back, I couldn’t even see the beach were I had left my friend. The surge was such, that large rocks would materialize in the troughs of the waves, which would otherwise have been well submerged. Once through the pass, I entered placid waters and glided to the beach of smooth pebbles, where large cedar canoes had once graced the shore.

My first priority was to get a fire going. As the fog got thicker, and the daylight began to wane, I began to worry for my friend. He’s an experienced kayaker and spending the night out on the beach was nothing to him, but being a stubborn type, I figured he’d try to make it back. As light dwindled to dusk and the fog got ever thicker, I worried about him. I went to the point and began calling out, but the sound of my voice just slid down the fog and went flat. The dark primeval forest began to close in around me, and the deep loneliness of the wild pervaded my being. It is at times like this, that humanity’s separation from the natural world from which we’re so inextricably linked becomes so apparent. We think of ourselves as civilized, yet we are so disconnected from nature. What a contrast from the skillful civilization which had previously lived on this beach, with a stability of symbiotic community which allowed their participation in this magnificent ecosystem for millenia. As I sat by the fire in total darkness, I heard the plash of Michael’s paddles as he pulled into the beach.

 

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