9 minute read
SYMBIOSIS
A kayak circumnavigation of Vancouver Island to find connection with the sea, the mountains, and each other
A pause to explore a remote beach in Kyuquot
Amber exits Raft Cove through the surf.
Dawn breaks over Burdwood Bay, the sun creeping over a towering Sitka forest as we shuttle our gear to the water’s edge. Dave Berrisford, Amber Blenkiron and I watch the surf roll in as we pack our kayaks, eager to get going after being held back for two nights by a gale.
Our journey began 22 days ago from Whytecliff Park in West Vancouver with the goal of paddling 1,360 kilometres around the entirety of Vancouver Island. On that first day, it took just a few paddle strokes to pull us from the mainland and slip us away from the isolating constraints of civilization. We were seeking a different, very simple experience—one that embodies hishuk’ish tsawalk, a Nuu-chah-nulth phrase that means “everything is one; we are all connected.”
Out on the big saltchuck, our life would boil down to essential elements: three people, the ocean, and the mountains—all inextricably linked via the ancient pulse of the Pacific.
Back at Burdwood, we sit on the beach in our kayaks, timing our exit between the closing sets. Amber gets out just fine, gliding over the peaking waves just before they break, but Dave gets nailed by a curler that blows his hat clear off his head. Shooting photos from shore, I slosh over into the surf zone to retrieve his cap before it becomes yet another piece of detritus drifting endlessly in the sea. At our lunch stop on a beach by Kains Point a few days earlier, we’d played an impromptu game of soccer with a KBA (Korean Basketball Association) ball that had floated across from Asia. I see no need to send Dave’s Kokatat cap back across the pond as a trade—it wouldn’t be fair to our overburdened sea. Plus, Dave loves that hat.
Leaving the relative shelter of Nootka Sound, our goal for the day is to make it the 45 kilometres around Hesquiat Peninsula, a remote promontory jutting from the centre of the Island’s outer west coast. With swell forecasted to be three metres with moderate winds, the shallow waters along the peninsula are choked with boomers (random, isolated breaking waves over submerged rock outcrops). We stay well out from Estevan Point as we swing into the great wide open and head south.
Amber runs into trouble first. We’d been paddling without incident along the north shore to the outermost stretch of the Hesquiat at Escalante Point. From there, we decided to sneak inside what looked like a protected line sheltered by a barrier of reef.
Dave and I are slightly ahead and waiting for Amber in the lee of a bus-sized rock. We let a cycle of boomers pass through the gap in front of us before sprinting across to the next sheltered zone. Amber follows, but without stopping to time out her crossing. In the middle of the opening, a beastly wave rears up and breaks, flipping her into a kelp bed that heaves up and down with the breath of the sea.
At first, Dave and I are oblivious, assuming she is right behind as we dash into the protected channel. A distant shout of surprise cuts through that illusion and I turn to see Amber capsized and trying to climb into her kayak in the boomer zone.
“Is she okay?” Dave hasn’t turned to look, still focused on the water ahead.
“Nope…she got flipped!”
He spins quickly, waits for another set to roll by then darts across to her. I remain in the relative safety of the lee, keeping lookout. Dave helps Amber back into her boat and tows her in beside me. As she begins pumping water out of her kayak, we realize our
position is still exposed to the big sets rolling in every five minutes or so. Powering our way to an islet 500 metres away, we pull up onto its sandy shores. With the brunt of the swell deflected, Amber empties the rest of the water from her cockpit as Dave and I stroll across the island to see what lies ahead.
The name hesquiat is derived from the language of the local Indigenous Nuu-chah-nulth people, meaning ‘to tear with the teeth’. Though it refers to a technique for stripping herring spawn from eel grass, the name fits today’s conditions perfectly as exploding lines of white foam tear along the reefs of the peninsula as far as the eye can see.
“We’re going to have to stay way the hell outside,” I state.
“Yup…it’s going to be a long day.”
After Amber finishes draining her kayak, we paddle straight out. Even as we reach what should be a safe distance, the swell amplifies again, forcing us ever outward. Bungalow-sized swells rise up so steeply, I’m certain they will break on us at any moment. With my bow teetering over a huge, watery peak, I hold tight, slap down, and zip away on the backside. I hear the thunderclap of the monster wave breaking behind me and glance back to see that the other two are okay and, thankfully, safely outside. I’m antsy to get around this exposed peninsula and into the south side lee as quickly as possible.
I paddle on and on, focused on the open sea for the rogue sets that seem to materialize out of nowhere. Suddenly, a warm fishy spray hits my nostrils, a mist of blowhole breath from a pilot whale that submerges in the trough of the swell just as I slide in. This is the connection to the sea we came looking for on this trip, but it’s harder to enjoy it with three-metre rollers rising into ten-metre black-backed behemoths as they crash over nearby Perey reefs with the sound and power of a falling building.
Eventually, I snap out of my trance and turn my kayak sideways to look back for Amber and Dave. There’s no one in sight. Are they hidden in the deep troughs of the swell? Did something happen? The distant Vancouver Island ranges taunt me with the promise of shelter from the liquid mountains rising and falling all around my kayak.
“Where did they go?” I feel exposed and alone. “Where the f**k are they?”
I don’t know the answer, so I wait. My only companions are groups of storm petrel—small birds floating and occasionally fluttering happily around me, exceedingly content in the turbulent waters. They are pelagic, spending all of their time out in the open ocean except when they go inland to breed. The wild sea is their home, yet they’re still dependent on the sanctuary of the shores for their survival. I envy their ease and comfort in the waves, but even they occasionally require the sanctuary of the land.
Still no sign of Amber and Dave.
I sit in the seesaw swell for another ten minutes, cursing my partners, cursing myself. I try to shake these negative thoughts and think rationally. Dave is the most expert kayaker I know, and Amber has handled herself admirably in all sorts of tumultuous conditions over the past weeks. They’re fine…and there’s nowhere for them to go but along my line. Anywhere on the inside and they’d be pulverized…I hope they didn’t go inside.
Then I see the flash of a carbon paddle on the rolling horizon, and then another as they slowly bob toward me.
“We thought we’d lost you,” Dave says with a hint of dismay.
Amber rafts up with Dave, a smile on her face. No matter the conditions or how far she gets behind, she always maintains an unconquerable spirit. Earlier in the trip I’d become frustrated with her pace at times—I’m used to just flowing along in my own groove: not fast, but steady—and the day-to-day grind had affected Amber’s speed. Her hands had also fallen apart, blistered all around due to a combination of exposure and wear. But every morning, she diligently taped them up and paddled all day without complaint. I’d come to realize that I’m nowhere near as tough as her, and that I should follow her lead when it comes to attitude.
My natural tendency is to separate myself, to isolate rather than be a member of a unit. On a journey like this, a team has to be symbiotic to be successful. It’s a lesson I’ve been too long in learning,
LEFT Dave 'The Bear' Berrisford eyes up one of his kin on the Sunshine Coast. MIDDLE Dave and Frank lounge at lunch on accidental chairs formed by these recently harvested driftwood Sitka spruce. RIGHT The three amigos: Amber, Dave and Frank raft up for a brief respite on day 27.
stubbornly clinging to the myth of independent strength. Here, finally, all of that dissolves into the ether of the Hesquiat.
The ocean around us morphs seamlessly into the temperate rainforests that carpet the mountains. Land and water are interdependent, even though they seem like two distinct worlds. It’s the same with us—we are part of, not apart from, the ecosystem here. Distinct yet intertwined…stronger together than alone.
For the rest of the day we stay together, keeping an eye on each other as we creep around the peninsula and the final steamer-strewn reef at Matlahaw Point. I’m relaxed and happy to be working together to get around the seemingly endless outcrop of land.
The deeper we move into the lee of the point, the more the seas calm, and soon we’re cruising over shallow, glassy waters past sea otters lolling casually on their backs. We pull into a broad, half-moon sand beach and make a kitchen area in the driftwood, setting up our tents in the snug shelter of the rainforest backdrop.
Not far from camp, we find the intact skeletal remains of a sea lion washed up from the ocean and picked clean by terrestrial scavengers like the lank, matted wolf we see trotting down our shoreline that misty evening. Death and life are connected here in the perpetual cycle between land and sea. All things come to an end, and this expedition with my two friends would soon be over.
That night around the fire, we savour the vastness of the ocean on one side and the dense forest on the other. We celebrate our 38day journey together out there in that fleeting dream—the wildness of it all— the energy and power that flows unimpeded through the mountains, the ocean, and every living being that calls the West Coast home.
ABOVE (L to R) Sea Lions at the mouth of Jervis Inlet. A chair washed ashore in Clayoquot Sound. Life (and death) on the edge of the continent. BELOW A serene evening on Bear Beach, Juan de Fuca trail.
