Uncharted

by Kim Brown Seely

  And I do believe I met my boys there somehow in that instant. Not their souls but some greater portion of themselves, boundlessly present. Their spirit. It’s like Einstein’s theory that the only real time is that of the observer, who carries his or her own time and space. Or the ancient intuition that all matter, all “reality,” is simply energy. On the boat that day I think the boys must’ve lent me some of their spirit because the hope and energy I felt then was as big as the sky. It was like a fiery blue space opening up inside you that makes you want to breathe in everything deep. I didn’t tell Jeff about this; I didn’t see how I could even begin to explain it, so all I said was, “Get the camera!”

  He rushed down to grab the good Canon, but by the time he returned the whales were gone.

  “Well, that was a game changer,” I said. “Humpbacks! Humpbacks right off the bow!”

  “That was insanely cool,” Jeff replied. “Did you read that guy’s story in Cruising World? The one about the humpback that breached and came down on the deck of his sailboat, crushing his mast?”

  “No,” I laughed. “But if those humpbacks had landed and taken me out? Well, it would be hard to think of a cooler way to go. Crushed by a humpback!” I grinned jauntily.

  “That would be a horrible death,” Skipper Jeff said, always the realist. “But I can see you’re back in the game.”

  Then, even though my phone showed no bars, a text chimed through: James, 2:25 p.m.

  “Just hung out with the Ultimate Lax Bro! Haha but ok call me when you get service, love you”

  “You did?? We just saw two HUGE humpbacks breach out of the water. Xo Mom” I typed and hit Send, thumbs flying.

  It sent!

  “Haha cool! Talk to you soon.”

  But of course we wouldn’t talk soon since our phones didn’t work, and they wouldn’t for a long time.

  But not talking felt okay.

  There was a northwest wind blowing 9.7 knots off the starboard beam, and a sky filled with scrolled white clouds, so Jeff and I got to it and raised the main.

  SKULL COVE

  When we reached the far side of the strait a few hours later and ghosted into a small protected anchorage, Heron was the only boat.

  But what might have felt spooky or lonely only a day before now felt electrifying.

  There had been something profound about seeing those humpbacks, the way the very air around them vibrated and tingled. And the sensation lasted, so that by the time we’d made our way through the cove’s narrow entrance, threading Heron carefully between thirty-foot-high walls of granite worn smooth by thousands of years of rising and falling tides, checked the cove’s depths, and lowered the anchor, we still had that feeling: it was the feeling of being spectacularly alive.

  We shut down the engine and simply stood, taking in our surroundings. The cove, named Skull Cove on our charts, was haunting, still, luminous, green. Everywhere you turned—along the sides of small rock islets that floated around us, around the edges of the cove itself—vertical fingers of sculpted sand-brown granite pushed straight up out of the water. The water, which was ink black, reflected the rock, and above that, branches of tall, ancient-looking hemlocks and gnarled red cedar reached out as if to grab more air, more light, their limbs draped with moss.

  A pair of loons yodeled loudly, winging their way overhead, their long gray necks pointed south.

  “Loons!” we both called out like a pair of giant toddlers with a new word, looking up.

  Then we just stood gazing west, where through a dip in the trees you could make out the northern tip of Vancouver Island thirty miles away and the sun sinking behind it.

  We had the view entirely to ourselves.

  But what felt even more striking was the intimacy of the setting, the feeling of being completely cut off from the outside world—anchored safely, just the two of us held by the forest, its arms encircling us. It was as if this place ringed with evergreens was a reward for having set out and crossed this much of the strait.

  * * *

  It was lovely and eerie and strange that next night of empty-nesting.

  It was like a second honeymoon, sort of.

  Jeff set some crab traps—we had high hopes for Dungeness here. We watched the sun vanish behind the trees, saw eagles and herons and ospreys splash down in the stillness, shared cocktails while some ridiculously unlikely music blared (more James Brown, I think), made dinner together, went to bed and—passed out.

  It’s hard to define the essence of any long-term relationship, what elements bind two different people together over decades of time. But one aspect, I think, was symbolized for me by that intimate cove. It felt womblike, as if we’d sailed not only into a safe harbor but a shell, and there was nothing beyond the two of us. It was as if we carried everything we needed on that boat, and emotionally too, carried our world within us. There is satisfaction in needing nothing beyond your own making.

  And so there you are, just the two of you, feeling you need nothing else, no one else. But then you look up and notice the trees. The whole world out there: whether it’s friends, or community, or religion, or art, or politics, or saving the planet, or watching baseball games, or concerts, or just spending time with people you care about—or showing up for all those things—you bring more to them because you are together. These external things, these interests outside the two of you are, I believe, essential to marriages.

  At least that’s how it was for us.

  Except when we awoke the next morning and peered up and out of the boat, the first thing we saw, literally, was trees.

  Hundreds and hundreds of trees. You could smell them: the bristling clumps of cedars, their tarry-resiny reek mingling with the fresh, cold scent of the sea. The mossy-shaggy dignity of the huge ancient hemlocks. The tall, proud Sitka spruces. Ferns that had grown so capaciously they’d swallowed entire tree stumps. The sheer jungle energy of all these plants and trees clinging stubbornly to the rocks was palpable. It was as if all this rain-drenched and sea-washed fecundity had its own life force.

  And then it hit us: since leaving Seattle we’d sailed past hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of trees. We’d passed shores fringed emerald green with trees, houses peeking coyly between them, as we’d made our way up through the San Juans and Canadian Gulf Islands. We’d passed entire hillsides blanketed green pounding our way up Johnstone Strait. And we’d poked around the edges of the Great Bear Rainforest in the Broughton Islands.

  But by crossing forty miles of Queen Charlotte Strait, we’d finally entered the Great Bear Rainforest itself—and this forest, with these trees, was unlike anything either of us had ever experienced. The impressive thing, the thing that was almost beyond words, was the sheer fertility of the surrounding forest. It was a rustling, pulsing, forest—but at the same time, a forest with an ancient-feeling presence: silent, dark, and deep. This was the kind of forest that could mystify you with its wildness.

  It was thrilling to be discovering this whole new world for the first time together, a world thick and spooky as dreams. We felt young and a bit reckless. Every bird that whipped past the stern made my heart beat faster. Peering out at the wild forest, picturing the cove where Heron floated surrounded by trees upon trees, I hoped this would be a good place to land, the first days of empty-nesting.

  HAKAI

  When we awoke that next morning, Heron was still the only boat in the cove. Jeff pulled on his storm pants and sped off in the dinghy to pull a crab pot he’d set the night before. I tuned in the VHF weather channel and started a pot of French press. The forecast was unsettling. “Marine forecast for Pacific waters issued by Environment Canada: gale force warning in effect, Hecate Strait…Queen Charlotte Sound, wind southwest ten to twenty knots, increasing to southwest fifteen to twenty-five Monday afternoon. Chance of showers tonight. Seas, one meter,” the now-familiar radio voice intoned.

  Gale warnings are issued when wind speeds of thirty-four to forty-seven knots, excluding gusts, are forecast.
Although we’d be well inside Hecate Strait transiting Queen Charlotte Sound, just hearing the words “gale force warning” made me sit up and lean in to the radio, my chest tightening, to make out exactly what the forecaster was saying, since we were new to this territory.

  Should we stay or should we go? This was a big day: we’d be rounding Cape Caution, so named because the mainland cape is exposed to swells off the open Pacific as they roll in north of Vancouver Island and the sea floor shallows up dramatically; that means you get significant waves and currents in any kind of a blow. Beyond that, Cape Caution stands as a sort of psychological dividing line for boaters. This was the fateful place where Captain George Vancouver narrowly escaped disaster twice when both his ships, the HMS Discovery and Chatham ran up on rocks in the fog. Winds whipping up to twenty-five knots would be rough here, but at least we’d come to know the weather patterns: mornings were typically gentler, with forecasted winds increasing by afternoon. In Skull Cove, in fact, all was temporarily calm. I climbed into the cockpit and gazed out at water so still and dark you couldn’t tell where it ended and the land began. It would be tempting to stay, to put off Cape Caution and the unknown open water, but I was also antsy to go.

  * * *

  Soon the stillness was broken by the whine of an outboard.

  “A good day! I’m feeling fresh crab for lunch, baby!” Jeff called out over the engine, circling back to the boat.

  I sighed and scrambled to the stern, then helped my husband heave the cumbersome wire crab trap, full of snapping claws, onto the boat.

  He’d hauled up a rock crab and four Dungeness—three males and a female. The males, big with bright red-orange shells and meaty claws were keepers. The smaller female we tossed back to breed. We hurriedly put on a pot of water to boil, then went through the dance that was now almost routine: started the engine, turned on the navigation system, pulled up the anchor, checked our depths, and slipped out of Skull Cove. It was now or never if we hoped to get a jump on the weather. As we left a heron squawked and flew past, flapping wings wide as tattered flags over the water, and an enormous eagle screeched from a tree; both were good auguries, we thought.

  No sooner had we nosed out of safe Skull Cove and set a northwesterly course of about 315 degrees, however, than we were surrounded by a thick blanket of fog. With visibility less than half a mile, we couldn’t see the coast (or rocks) to starboard, nor could we make out anything more than half a mile to port. And most ominous, a cloud dense as a snow bank was creeping in from the sea.

  “That must be the cold front,” I said, dismally. It began to rain.

  “The trick to staying warm is not to get cold,” my husband replied, disappearing for a minute, then climbing back into the open cockpit having morphed into Captain Jeff: red Musto storm coat, red foul-weather storm pants, heavy sailing gloves, and a blue wool cap.

  “Wow—that’s some look for August,” I said. But the truth was, he looked dashing. A good thing, I thought, because with all this fog moving in, there isn’t much else to look at.

  I, on the other hand, didn’t look so hot. Down below, donning my own foul-weather gear, I noticed that an hour or so of pitching over five-foot side swells had turned my complexion a waxy gray green. I scowled and rummaged for a wool cap to cover my fog-drenched hair. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a good look either—the cap only accentuated my angular face, which was turning greener the longer I stayed below. Oh well, it is what it is, I thought, pulling on thick wool socks and rubber boots.

  When I reemerged in my own bright red foul-weather overalls, zipped snug over a thick black fleece, Captain Jeff howled and teased, “Your ass looks like a bag of potatoes!”

  I smiled demurely and said, “Screw you, buddy!” Fact was, my foul-weather gear felt great. Just putting it on gave me a psychological boost: I wasn’t a mom as much as a mom transformed into an astronaut, an Arctic explorer, or one of those badass Alaskan crab fishermen on the boys’ favorite reality TV show, Deadliest Catch. I hip-bumped Captain Jeff off the wheel and noted our latitude: N 51° 10′ 57″. I knew that standing at the helm, staring out at the horizon and taking charge of the boat, was by far the best place to be if you feel queasy. The swells increased as a strong northwest wind kicked up. A deep chill settled in over the cockpit.

  I can do this, I can do this, I thought…

  I prayed I could.

  While Heron slogged through the side swell, we brewed up ginger tea to keep our stomachs settled, sipped it from stainless storm cups. Jeff scrolled through his iPod, blasting some of the best albums of all time to keep us awake: Nirvana’s Nevermind, Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones, Stop Making Sense by the Talking Heads, Paul Simon’s Graceland, Jeff Buckley’s Grace.

  The chill and fog finally began to lift as we approached Cape Caution. We could see now that there were birds everywhere. Pigeon guillemots, common murres, pink-footed shearwaters, storm petrels. They rose and fell in the air over the waves, settled on the water, and rode up and down the crests, diving for fish, then flying again. We motored past Egg Island, which sits in spectacular isolation at the entrance to Fitz Hugh Sound from Queen Charlotte Sound, its red-roofed lighthouse exposed to the full sweep of the Pacific. Then, finally, mercifully, we were around the cape and waltzing up Fitz Hugh Sound, a wide channel protected by the cliffs of Calvert Island. The swells subsided and the fog dissipated, revealing bright blue sky.

  The wind picked up, along with our spirits. We’d made it! We raised the main and sped along, harnessing a light breeze.

  * * *

  An unreal quality attended those first few days, just the two of us. The dawning awareness that this was a new stage of life. Each small thing—the weather clearing! Rounding Cape Caution!—seemed outsized. Before, so much of our relationship had been kid focused. Work focused. Days conceived—and lived—as to-do lists. And now this: something wacky and worthy, just us. It was heady, yes, but also daunting, this uncharted territory together.

  It turned out to be a dazzling, sunny afternoon. A few hours later we took down the sail and motored into Pruth Bay, a glacier-carved channel where scrappy windblown spruces clung to crevasses in steep rock walls. Around us, low cliffs, and salmon the size of fireplace logs leaping clear out of the water. “Toaster fish!” we exclaimed, watching the silly fish eject themselves into the air with startling enthusiasm.

  We set the anchor and took in our surroundings. A low tombolo separated Pruth Bay from the open Pacific, and on that stretch of land sat a large red-roofed lodge and a series of cabins; according to our sailing guides, the enterprise had once been a fishing lodge but was now the site of an unusual undertaking called the Hakai Institute. Impressive docks fronted the place; a small Nordic tug was the only other boat anchored in the harbor.

  I’d read in Cruising the Secret Coast: Unexplored Anchorages about a beautiful, deserted white-sand beach that sat on the opposite side of the lodge, facing the Pacific. But unlike sailors cruising the Caribbean or sailing the coast of Mexico, we wouldn’t be strolling many deserted white-sand beaches in the Great Bear Rainforest. The fact that one existed here at all was so miraculous it was the main thing that kept me going that long day, hunkered down at the helm in my storm gear. I couldn’t wait to take the dinghy over and walk on white sand.

  In five minutes we’d peeled off our foul-weather gear, lowered ourselves into the dinghy, and motored across to the lodge. Two speedy-looking red-trimmed aluminum research vessels were tied to the docks; the Hakai Express and the Hakai Spirit. We lashed our dinghy to one of the sturdy concrete docks and walked up the ramp to land, where a small sign welcomed visitors to follow a rainforest trail to the beach. It felt wonderful to stretch our legs after the seven-hour crossing that day. Along the way we passed well-kept gardens planted with shrub roses and lavender, the red-roofed lodge, and several cabins; we then crossed a log bridge leading into the forest. The trail wound through ferns and salal (a sturdy Pacific Northwest Coast e
vergreen shrub with dark green lustrous leaves) and silver snags of ancient spruce trunks here and there, and then back into trees again—madrone, cedar, Sitka spruce. Then the minty, cedary scent of the forest shifted, and you could smell the beach before you saw it: driftwood and salt air. In the distance, the rhythm and rumble of surf.

  Suddenly, we came out of the forest and there was the beach: a long, white-sand spit at low tide, glowing in late-afternoon light. It was so improbable, such a dramatic contrast, it was like stepping out of a dark tunnel and emerging on the other side of the earth in a different hemisphere—a warm, balmy, beachy hemisphere, Polynesia perhaps.

  “Ahhh!” We both exhaled, taking in the tumble of small waves lapping the spit, the hiss and sizzle as the leading edge of the tide melted into the beach, the sweep of soft sand curving away left and right; most intriguingly, beyond the surf there were wind-scoured rock islets sprouting handfuls of trees that looked as ancient and bent as old men. We pulled off our boots, rolled up our jeans, sank our toes in the sand.

  “This is outrageous,” Jeff said. “Awesome.”

  Clearly, we’d arrived at a stunning and sacred place.

  I twirled around, arms outstretched, then, when my husband turned and started walking left, I took off jogging to the right.

  “See ya!” I called over my shoulder. It felt fantastic to be off the boat, moving my arms and legs, bare feet sinking into the tide and brisk water. It also felt good to be more than two feet apart from each other, all that fresh, tangy air and empty space filling the widening gap between us. I ran all the way to the other end of the beach, breathing hard, huffing in big breaths of emphatic freshness, pure, cold oxygen filling my lungs. Then I turned and ambled back, making prints in the smooth sand. There were no other human prints, just the delicate scratchings of sea creatures and shorebirds. Tiny birds the size of my thumb scattered before me, running in herky-jerky streams, and flocks of sandpipers and gulls waded in the shore break. Strands of sea kelp and piles of ochre-brown bull kelp lay strewn about like ribbons. Where the sand met the forest, decades-old driftwood and bleached cedar formed a weathered bulkhead.