Last month, I took a five day kayaking trip to the Broken Islands in Barklay Sound, off the west coast of Vancouver Island. It was something I'd been talking about for at least six years, despite the fact that I have only spent one night of my adult life under canvas. Since then I've been editing photos and working on and off on a trip report that just kept getting longer and longer as I remembered things and looked up details. It was just about an ideal trip. The setting was beautiful, ideal for kayaking, our guides were capable, mellow and entertaining, the group just gelled, and after the rain and wind of the first day, the weather was as good as it gets in September on the west coast. And everywhere we turned, we saw a whale. Here's the full trip report, on a separate page over on my other blog: Broken Islands trip page.
And should anyone wonder: yes, my missing sock reappeared.
Man I'm glad I found this place. Great story and well told. You've got an interesting prose style. It's as though a rather fragmented and nearly schizophrenic internal dialog begins to unearth something sublime about the experience.
ReplyDeleteI think we've all been there on the first night on the exposed west coast when all of our senses - hearing, sight, smell, touch and taste (yes, unfortunately, taste) - are telling us at once: "oh god. so wet."
The almost preternatural description of the night paddle makes me want to just go there tomorrow and see it for myself. even your transition from panic of alienation and disembodied shapes in the night to being greeted by a warm fire on a familiar beach is wondeful. Gives me the willies.
Thanks for putting that together!
PS. In other topics, thanks also for destroying Andrew Keen's terrible appeal to authority. I enjoyed reading your take on it. been a bit of a slow night and I needed a good read.