from Mountain Life – Coast Mountains - Summer 2024

Mission: Coastal Cleanup

A 14-day, 400-kilometre solo paddle from Prince Rupert to Bella Bella

photo & words :: Frank Wolf

As soon as I saw “Wheels” drift into the marina parking lot on a junker bike, I knew my solo kayak journey through the outer islands of BC’s North Coast was not gonna start smoothly. He was perhaps 25 years old, shirtless with tattered jeans, and sporting the bug-eyed demeanour of a speed freak. Oddly, he had a dirty life jacket clipped to his left arm. Not wearing it, just attached and flapping—though perhaps this style is quite normal in the world of unhinged coastal tweakers. Who knows? I’d seen a few other rough-looking souls hanging around the shuttered buildings in the quickly declining downtown of Prince Rupert—end-of-the-road people living in an end-of-the-road city.

The first day of any expedition is always a psychological slog. You’ve planned and plotted for months, accumulated gear and support from sponsors, booked flights and carved out time in your schedule. Then, on the precipice of the start, umpteen more things pop up preventing you from that first paddle stroke. As usual, I found myself stuck in a quagmire of tasks and—not helping—I was also a wee bit blurry from a late night at the local brewery. The last thing I needed was this random guy added to the mix.

Riding toward me in a weaving but intent manner, he stopped a few feet short of my pile of gear then immediately launched into a twitchy, stream-ofconsciousness diatribe.

“I’m Wheels. Who are you? Where are you going? What are you doing? I’m from the future, you know. I own this marina in the future—you’re lucky I let you use it.” He swept his hand over what he claimed was his domain, or at least would be.

Wheels babbled on. And on. He offered me meth. He offered me his life jacket. He offered me a wife. I told him to leave me alone. He wouldn’t. We almost came to blows. He finally left.

The jarring interaction reaffirmed my desire to be alone for a while. I needed the tonic of solo travel, to step away from humanity and merge into a wondrous, dripping, verdant, temperate rainforest paradise.

An hour later, I finally glided away in my overloaded kayak. I’d freed myself from the trappings of that dingy coastal town, broken the fiddly inertia of preparation and was finally moving. The compounded arduousness of the hangover, my crank’d out buddy and the packing ordeal all evaporated as I set off. Now I just had to paddle, camp and eat—a simplicity that instantly put me at peace.

“I’m Wheels. Who are you? Where are you going? What are you doing? I’m from the future, you know. I own this marina in the future you’re lucky I let you use it.”

A week in, sitting by my beach fire on Campania Island, I listened to the gentle lap of waves as the sun’s caramel glow melted into the horizon. Ancient cedars loomed behind me, several with strips of bark surgically removed in previous centuries by the indigenous Tsimshian to make clothes, baskets and numerous other useful implements. The spirit of these people lives on, part of a synergy that connects everything here—be it the kelp, the trees, the moss or the whales.

The Tsimshian have a word, laxmoon, that means “of the sea.” Living day-to-day, quietly on my own, I gained an intimate understanding of this term. Through the course of my trip, I became a member of a coastal community, where all varieties of life are symbiotically bonded to the ocean. I was alone, but never lonely.

Have you ever had a moment? By “moment” I mean a distinct, seminal experience that crystallizes an entire journey. That moment happened for me as I battled into a gale down the east side of Banks Island. My head was down as waves driven by a southwester washed constantly over me. In the midst of this turmoil, a movement caught my eye.

A lone, lank wolf, its fur matted from the deluge, trotted along the shoreline. It moved purposefully until it caught my gaze and paused. I stopped paddling and let the breeze blow me back in line with the creature. We stared at each other for a moment—a moment that seemed like a year. The wolf turned away first, then continued north. I watched for another beat, then carried on south through the gale.

Inexplicably, I thought of Wheels from the marina—but in a different light. A societal outcast with a tenuous future, he now seemed much like this wolf and I. Each of us was on our own mission—for better or worse—and unencumbered by anyone or anything. Nothing to do but move forward through space and time. Free in every sense of the word.