by Lynn Thomson
“‘The circles of our lives,’” I said, as Marnie hugged me. “Thank you.”
The crossing to Victoria was beautiful: misty and rain-soaked. Yeats stayed out on deck for the duration of the ferry ride, not dancing away as he did that time we went to Nanaimo, but standing solitary, looking out to sea. He saw his first pigeon guillemot, a black-and-white member of the puffin family. And he got to stand in the freezing-cold rain.
“Mom, it was the best thing ever!” he said to me later.
I, on the other hand, didn’t feel my usual joy to be on the ferry. In fact, I wondered if I was capable of feeling that joy at all anymore. After that moment at Fish Point on Pelee Island, that openness had been buried again under anxieties and practicalities, responsibilities and day-to-day life. I wanted to feel carefree, even for a moment. I asked the universe for some carefree.
I rented a car in Victoria and we decided to take the scenic route up to the university from our inn near the harbour. It was a sunny morning and we stopped at oceanside parks along the way to look for birds. Something smelled amazing, heady, as though a million flowers had opened all at once and spilled their scent over everything. We saw lots of birds, but no new species.
I was impressed with the campus at UVic. It was small compared to UBC’s, and maybe because of its size, it felt more comfortable to me. There were a lot of trees on campus — even, at one end, a forest — as well as lovely lawns covered in rabbits, something UVic is apparently famous for. But I was surprised we couldn’t see the mountains from the campus. Here we were, in one of the most scenic places in the world, with no surrounding scenery. Everywhere we went I looked for a glimpse of ocean or mountain. Maybe we weren’t taken to the right places, but I found this lack of view disappointing.
Yeats said, “It’s too far from everything.”
“There are loads of buses into town.” I gestured at the parking lot, full of city buses. “Or maybe that’s not what you mean. Is it too far from home?”
He nodded. “Maybe that’s what it is. It’s pretty far from home.”
We’d come a long way for a short tour of this university, but that’s how it was sometimes and I wasn’t sorry. We drove back downtown and met my friends Kate and Marc and some of their five children and went on a boat tour of Victoria Harbour. The sun was out, the breeze gentle and smelling of the sea. Back on shore, crowds gathered to watch magicians and acrobats on the quayside.
Kate said, “Are you sure you don’t want to move here?” Then she laughed, because she knew I was torn. “If Yeats comes to school here, we’ll take care of him, or at least have him for dinner every once in a while.”
Take care of him — those words again. I remembered how Marnie used to have me to dinner when I was at SFU and how I sometimes even spent the weekend. Her home was a haven for me, a place where I felt welcomed and loved, and I knew that if Yeats chose to move west, he’d find that kind of refuge with my old friends.
NOW THAT THE CAMPUS tours were done, we headed back to Tofino for some quiet time together in nature. This is where our birding would really begin, and we were looking forward to resuming our West Coast adventure. I had booked two tours with George: a morning walking tour and a day-long Paddle with the Eagles.
George picked us up at 7:30 on our first morning in Tofino, at Middle Beach Lodge, the same place we’d stayed the last time. He didn’t remember us. It had been two years, and I figured he saw a lot of people passing through, but how many long-haired teenaged boys named Yeats had he met? People usually remembered Yeats. It didn’t matter, though, and I knew that if I mentioned it, Yeats would rightly scowl.
We returned to the path along the shore where we’d walked with George before, and this time we saw masses of hummingbirds. At the cottage in Muskoka we often saw ruby-throated hummingbirds, though usually only one, sometimes two, at a time. But here there were dozens of them buzzing around. These were rufous hummingbirds. George told us he’d had an Anna’s hummingbird at his feeder lately, but there weren’t any here.
The rufous hummingbird is gorgeous but, as with all hummingbirds, it’s impossible to see its features unless it rests for a second on a branch. These were moving so quickly, beating their wings fifty to sixty times per second, that all their colours blurred together. Every so often, though, one would perch, and we would have a good look. The males have a throat of scarlet jewels overlaying a white breast, a brownish-red back and tail, and greenish wings. The female is similar but has fewer jewels at her throat.
We saw orange-crowned warblers for the first time, along with a host of other warblers and sparrows. The orange-crowned warbler is a dull grey-green. The male we saw had a fairly bright yellow chest, which was consistent with the sub-species we knew were found in BC, but we couldn’t see the tiny slash of dull orange on its crown. We took George’s word that it was there and ticked it off our list.
George brought us to a seashore lookout, where we saw common murres, Pacific and red-throated loons, rhinoceros auklets, and black and surf scoters. George took it all in stride, of course, this being his backyard, but for us all these seabirds were magnificent. Most of them were well past the range of our binoculars, so George set up his scope and we took turns looking at them while he talked.
The common murre is a black-and-white duck-like bird, a bit smaller than a mallard. It nests on cliffs and spends most of the winter at sea. Its eggs are so pointed at one end that, if set in motion, they will wobble around in a circle, a useful adaptation for eggs laid on rocky ledges.
The Pacific loon is the most abundant loon in North America. It spends its entire life at sea except for about three months of the year, when it breeds on land. Tofino is a bit far south for this bird, but there was no doubt about what we saw — grey head, black and white stripes on the side of the neck, checkerboard pattern on the wings. It was a beauty.
The red-throated loon is less out of its range in these parts and very distinctive, with its red throat and smaller size. Though this was the first time Yeats and I had seen one, it wasn’t the first time we’d thought we had. One late fall at the cottage, we were standing at the top of the hill, looking down on the lake. Yeats saw something he didn’t recognize and luckily (or typically, I guess) we had our binoculars. We were very excited to think we were looking at a red-throated loon on its migration down from Hudson’s Bay, but when we checked the guidebook, we realized it was a common loon in winter plumage.
The rhinoceros auklet is a stocky, puffin-like bird that also spends most of its life at sea. In breeding season, both adults have a vertical white “horn” where the bill joins the face, giving it its name. No one is sure what this horn is for — maybe just decoration? Loads of birds have decoration, after all. Maybe it’s not for anything. I became momentarily annoyed with my bird book for implying this horn needed a reason for being. I was happy to have a mystery here and there.
The scoters are both black, medium-sized ducks. The black scoter is all-black with an orange bill, while the surf scoter has a white patch on the back of its neck and a multi-coloured bill. They were hard to tell apart through the scope, so again, we took George’s word that we were seeing what he said we were seeing.
A couple in their early twenties climbed up to the lookout and joined us. They were wearing cut-off jeans and flip-flops. The woman was wearing a nearly see-through peasant-style top and lots of silver and turquoise jewellery. They both had long blond hair. Before I could stop myself, I’d pigeonholed them as surfing hippie wannabes. Well, I’d been there, too, except for the surfing, so I suppose I was kind of envious. I didn’t look like that anymore, though I wasn’t exactly corporate, either. I still had long hair (which used to be blonde) and I wore silver and turquoise, too. But I felt different. I wondered: even back when I dressed like a hippie, did I feel like one? Could I feel like one? Was I ever ready to drop out and turn on, or whatever it was? I don’t think so, and certainly the responsibilities of family and house took away any bit of hippie I might have had le
ft. I’d have to remember to ask Ben how he felt about this. He still looked the part of ageing hippie, with his long grey hair and his peace-sign button, but I wondered if he, too, felt like he’d moved on.
The young man looked peeved, like he’d rather be surfing or drinking coffee on the deck. The woman, though, was full of life. She said, “What do you see? Are there any loons or scoters?”
George’s eyebrows shot up and he said to me, “Do you mind if we let her look?”
“Of course not,” I said, smiling at the woman.
“Groovy, thanks,” she said. She actually said “groovy” — I wondered if she’d picked up the word from her parents or if it was making a comeback.
Yeats stood stony-faced throughout the entire episode and later, when I asked him if he wished he were a hippie in Tofino, he said, “No.” Then he gave me a look that said, Why are you asking? “I don’t belong here. And I’m not a surfer.”
I didn’t reply, but I looked at him with curiosity and wondered where he did belong. When I was a teenager I belonged with my family but wanted to get away from them, to explore other possibilities. Looking at Yeats, I wasn’t sure if he needed to get away at all.
“Where do you belong, Yeats?”
He shrugged and strode ahead of me. George brought up the rear with his scope and tripod, and I tried to remember how confusing life was as a teen.
THE NEXT DAY WE met George in a parking lot down the highway. He was taking us on a canoe trip to see the eagles. He had a large war canoe on a trailer hitched to his truck. Two very nice Australian women who were coming with us to look for eagles were sitting in the back seat. They were not birders, but they were staying at George’s B&B and had decided to take advantage of this expedition to see some of wild Canada.
Wild it was. We drove for ages down an unpaved road to Kennedy Lake, the largest inland lake on Vancouver Island. For the entire drive there was nothing to see but forest. George told us that most of it wasn’t virgin forest. It had been logged long ago and, if it wasn’t for the activism of people like him, it would be up for logging again. The fight against logging in various watersheds has gone on forever in BC. This particular fight had been successful for the conservationists — for now — but there was a feeling, accurate or not, that if they let down their guard, the logging companies would slip right in.
It was an earthshaking experience to be at the side of the road when a logging truck barrelled past. It was a big rig piled high with trees, some of them over twelve metres long. The truck made the earth rumble; it could surely knock over anything in its path. A second truck followed it. And then, more: one truck followed after another, and pretty soon I realized that I’d just watched half a forest rush by. It was overwhelming and confusing, because what was the solution to resource extraction? Some people would say, “What is this problem that needs a solution?” It was a matter of perspective.
The argument over clear-cutting forests becomes visceral, though, when you see the deforested land from the highway or feel those trucks rumble by. A friend of mine who lives in Victoria told me that most of the clear-cutting took place far from the highways of Vancouver Island. The casual observer, even the intrepid traveller, had no idea of the extent of the cutting. It was a political issue as much as an environmental one, to say nothing of aesthetics, and the logging companies tried to keep their work out of sight.
George talked to us about the clear-cutting, and about all the jobs he’d had, until nearly an hour later we were at a campground, ready to launch our canoe. He discovered that he’d brought along one too few life jackets for the group. We looked at one another. It was way too far a drive to go back.
One of the Australian women said, “Do you think I could wear one? I’m awfully afraid of water.”
“Of course,” George said. “And you’ll get one, too, since you’re a guest in our country.” He threw life jackets to both women. He said to Yeats, “You’ll sit in the bow, so you get a jacket. And I have to wear one since I’ll be steering.”
Yeats looked at me, since it was now obvious I’d be the one going without. His look was curious, like he was waiting for me to say something, but I was waiting for George.
George said to me, “Are you a strong swimmer?”
“I can swim. I’m not afraid of the water.” I looked at the Australians and said, “We spend our summers on a lake, in boats.” I didn’t say anything about the shipwreck and neither did Yeats. To be honest, it didn’t even cross my mind.
“Okay then,” George said. “You can sit in the centre of the canoe. You won’t be paddling, so you don’t need a life jacket anyway.” Hmm. He seemed happy with his logic, which seemed to support my theory that George thought I wasn’t really there. But life was short and I didn’t argue.
The canoe had a tiny engine on it, a 6 h.p., which took us from our little beach on Kennedy Lake around the corner to Kennedy River. The idea was to paddle down the river while we were looking for birds and to use the engine when we needed to get going. I sat up straight in the middle of the long canoe, feeling like a princess. It was nice not to wear a life jacket, even if it was against the law.
The river was mirror-still. We were gliding on glass and all the trees and bushes on either side were reflected perfectly in the water, upside down. It was as though everything had two matching parts. That dead tree over there had an exact replica, branch for branch, twig for twig, still as stone, in the water. From this distance, the riverscape didn’t look like scenery. It was more like being in some kind of weird funhouse where your brain can’t believe what your eyes are telling it. We marvelled out loud for a while but found we didn’t have enough words to describe the wonder of our surroundings and soon fell silent. We each drank it in alone, this incredible stillness.
We motored very slowly down the river for about twenty minutes. The steady vibrations from the engine and the hard metal seat, and probably a spiritual component I can’t name, combined to gently shake my spine and shake my spine until finally I felt a little clunk. That misalignment in my sacrum had finally been corrected. I felt the relief instantly and wanted to shout for joy, but that might have startled everyone, so I stayed quiet. In fact, it remained corrected for the next eight months, longer than anything any chiropractor had ever been able to do. I was overcome with gratitude — to this river, to this boat, even to George — all of it had facilitated this healing.
We saw a lot of bald eagles on this trip. We saw so many that eventually we became blasé. My friend Heather, who spends summers on De Courcy Island, said that for them, seeing bald eagles was like us seeing ravens at our cottage. No big deal. They saw them every day. Kind of pesky. But when I lifted my binoculars and saw five eagles at once, I was wonderstruck. Three circling overhead and two sitting on branches, imperious, unbeholden. We were in their habitat and they cared nothing for us, or maybe they hated us and our plastic bags and the noise we brought to their river.
We floated and gazed at the eagles and didn’t say too much. My mind drifted, let go a bit. I dipped my fingers into the freezing water. I looked around at the stunning scenery. Beautiful British Columbia. Out here on this river we could see hills on one side and, in the distance, the interior mountains of Vancouver Island. Most of the rest of the view was flat: river, reeds, a few trees, low clouds, more river around the bend.
On our way to the picnic spot, the halfway mark in the tour, we saw a few other bird species: song sparrow, common yellowthroat, spotted sandpiper, lesser scaup, mallard, rufous hummingbird. It wasn’t a long or impressive list, but the point of this trip was seeing the eagles, so our expectations weren’t high for spotting other birds. The Australian women were happy with everything they saw because it was all new to them and this made the rest of us happy, too.
We passed an abandoned First Nations fishing station and continued around a bend in the river to a little island. We tied the boat to an overhanging tree and scrambled out with our packed lunches. It was hot, but there wasn’t much sha
de on these rocks, so we pulled our hats down farther over our brows and ate. No one said very much, not even George, and after about twenty minutes we set out back the way we’d come.
On the way back, Yeats spotted a bird from the bow. He gave a yelp and reached for his binoculars with one hand and his guidebook with the other.
George instantly stopped paddling and said, “What is it? Where is it?”
“In there.” Yeats gestured into the foliage in front of us. “It’s hopping around, down low. It’s some kind of flycatcher.”
This really caught George’s attention. “Some kind of flycatcher,” he mumbled, before reciting the kinds it could be. We all sort of saw the bird. It was elusive. It was shy. It seemed to be playing coy with us, although it was probably just catching its lunch.
Yeats and George saw different things. Yeats was thumbing through his Sibley and George through his Peterson.
George said, “I think it’s a great crested. It’s got to be. Look at it.”
I tried to see it through the foliage, but it was obscured.
“No, it’s an ash-throated,” Yeats said. “It’s too pale for a great crested. I see those all the time in Ontario.”
“But I think the wing feathers have a bit of yellow on them. The ash-throated only has yellow on its belly.”
“I don’t see the yellow on the wings. Its bill is all black. The great crested has a brown bill.” They were looking from their books to the bird, while trying to steady the canoe against the shore as the unnamed flycatcher hopped along. The Australian women looked at me and we laughed silently.
“Whatever it is, it’s an accidental,” George said. “But I won’t be calling it in.”
“Why not?” Yeats asked, while trying to see the bird through his binoculars. “I’m sure it’s an ash-throated. It looks like nothing I’ve seen and I’ve never seen an ash-throated.”