Vancouver Island, after Butchart Gardens
This is how a tree is supposed to die, with dignity.
Schoen Provincial park, in the northern heart of Vancouver Island, 30 minutes by painful gravel, rock, and dirt road off the highway from Victoria to Port Hardy, route 19. Once you get there: 11 tent sites -- free, and bring your own water or draw from the mountain lake. Soon I will be leaving in the night to catch my escape from Vancouver Island, the Port Hardy to Bella Coola ferry -- a 15-hour ride.
Schoen Lake. My stated goal (as told to anyone who asked) was to camp on Vancouver Island, if the beauty of Glacier Country, Montana, would allow the time to sprint for the ocean. Well, I tore myself away and did...
This place is the highlight of it. Two nights here. I am standing on a logjam replenished each spring by the tree-clearing snow melt. It is August and the ice looks shriveled, deceptively benign. In the winter this country kills the unwary and the unlucky.
The lake is kidney-shaped. My tent, out of the view, is to the left, right on shore, under hundreds-year-old firs. The logjam is there because the lake has an outlet -- a stream, then a river. It murmurs all the time and it is music to fall asleep to. Further away, perfect silence.
Unfortunately, all around Schoen Provincial Park is logged country. You really don't want to see it. Whole valleys are owned by conglomerates, proudly welcoming you and telling you what years were the harvest and reforestation years. It will break your heart. It looks totally wrong, irreparably.
Amusing myself while waiting for the ferry -- at 2am, and not very well! The astronomers in the audience can correct my time error for the above -- I can supply the exact location and date. Suffice to say -- the trees on yon ridge overlooking Port Hardy, at the northern tip of Vancouver Island, are cradling the setting moon... 200mm lens on top of a car and a bit of Photoshopping... That moon was slinkin' fast! I broke camp at Schoen Provincial Park at 10:10 pm, moonset there: taller mountains. Funny to get two moonsets in one night's wait...
That's Three Bears and Goldilocks, my pony, short for Gee-oldyantilocks -- brakes as well as car key. Half of my mind was mindful at all times not to lock my only key in the car! Why does my 12-year-old Volkswagen manage to solve this technical problem gracefully? Even my 1973 Audi did. Wake up GM. And, what's with burning a hole in my sleeping bag with that unprotected trunk light coming on cuz its on/off sensor became dislodged? Other than that, a lovely road car. And these loggers of Port Hardy -- you gotta admire their axe-some ways what with the fancy chopwork...
Finally! At 7:30am we leave Port Hardy (goodbye!) for Bella Coola, way up in the Central British Columbia Coast fjords. In a second the captain will have announced that the horn will sound and before my cortex would have processed what he said, I would be doubled over, instinctively -- a rock concert's worth delivered in one blare.
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Last modified date: 19 October 1997. Under a copyright, yes, but if you'd like to borrow something, ask me. -- Marek.