Ghost Ship

The future father-in-law of Dustin Hoffman's character in The Graduate (1967) advised him to get into plastics, as that was the future. Good advice it would seem. Today the earth and the oceans are littered with it.

What is this compulsion to walk around carrying a plastic bottle of water? The "drink more water" advice has run amok. I really have no recollection of seeing, in my pre-plastic water bottle childhood, the bodies of people dead from thirst strewn along the roadsides of my hometown.

When I lived in Asia, the problem of plastic garbage was extreme, exacerbated by lack of garbage collection facilities and for sure, lack of recycling. The oceans are full of it, the beaches are full of it to say nothing of the streets and fields. I will never ever forget the disturbing experience of snorkeling off the beach in southern Luzon in the Philippines, swimming through a sea of plastic (Hovering).

Hiking along the beach near Tofino the other week I came across this sight of beachcombed trash that had been picked up and piled, ready for collection. Taking a closer look I could see many plastic bottles, plastic bags, styrofoam - the usual - and quite a few shoes. Apparently about a dozen shoe-clad feet have turned up on our shores since 2007, prompting great speculation and mystery. I did NOT look to see if these shoes contained any feet.

There has been a lot of talk recently about expectations of debris from the Japanese tsunami washing up on our west coast shores within the next year or so. Last week an unmanned ship identified as a Japanese fishing vessel was spotted about 150 miles offshore from Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands). The Japanese government estimates that roughly 5 million tons of debris swept into the ocean, 70% of which sank. Over a million tons is still out there, along with all the other millions of tons of human trash dumped in the oceans every year.

Japanese ghost ship spotted off Haida Gwaii

I was out raking the lawn in the front garden the other day and stopped to talk to a passing neighbor. She looked at our huge red cedar and commented that this type of tree was "messy". She's the same neighbor who recently chopped down over 20 huge trees on their property next door (Hugging Trees), including a most beautiful giant I called the "Moonlight Tree", for the wonderful sight from our backyard of full moon rising behind it.

"So are humans", I replied.

Pacific Whale Festival

Last month we went on a road trip to the west coast to a beautiful fave rave of mine. Tofino and the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve and neighboring Ucluelet.Once upon a time, when I lived in Ontario, or later, when I lived in Asia, a trip to the far far western shores of Canada on Vancouver Island was a bit of an adventure, just getting there. Now, we get in the car and 2 hours later we're there. The road to Tofino, Highway 4, begins at our town. (What did I say recently about everything I could possibly want being "just down the road"?)

Our visit coincided with the Pacific Rim Whale Festival, a celebration of the migratory return of 20,000 grey whales traveling from Baja to Alaska. The towns of Tofino and Ucluelet get together to produce this event, a 10-day festival of guided nature walks, art shows, writers' events, culinary this and that, music, kids' stuff. This year was its 26th annual, so they've had lots of time to get it right. It is a great opportunity to attract tourists in this "off season", and coinciding with spring break for the kids, it was a happening place. Mildly. Compared with the crowds in July and August, it was peaceful.

We heard about it through a blog written by Dave Ingram, a Vancouver Island nature blog that I've been following and learning a lot about our local flora and fauna from, as well as pointing out where to go on local hikes. He had been asked to lead a photography walk on the beaches around Long Beach on the Saturday. We checked it out, made our reservations, and off we went.

We left Saturday morning on a usual kind of March day in Qualicum Beach, meaning every 30 minutes the weather changes. The trip from here to the west coast takes about 2 hours and travels up and down through the mountain ranges that run through the center of the island. In the summer this winding two-lane highway is filled with traffic, including a lot of RV's which, traveling slower than some of us would like to go, is a bit irritating. The trip in March meant we had the road to ourselves. Traveling through the mountains was amazing. The roads were clear but snow was piled by the side, in some places the fir tree branches were heavy with it, and the mountains themselves were covered. What a sight.

Vancouver Island Mountains on the road to the West Coast

You can see from this picture I took that by the time we were past Port Alberni and going through the mountains, the skies were clear. It was a glorious day. The views were amazing and I was grinning so much my face hurt. I got out of the car to take pictures, but how to capture this moment of brisk March air, silence of the highway (I think maybe 7 cars passed by in the time I was out there). and enormous snow mountains. Can't, but when I look at this photo, it brings it back for me - which is the point entirely.

I was anticipating a weekend of gray's, and rain from time to time. No no no no. It was blue sky all the way for the first weekend of the Pacific Rim Whale Festival.  The colors of the ocean were amazing as well. So many shades of blues including those deep deep turquoise shades that take your breath away. The smells, the sounds, the feelings of true bliss... some of my favorite photos from that first day:

South Beach waves

Towards low tide, 16:16, we headed down to Schooner Cove, through a 1 km trail. The entire Schooner Trail is a wooden boardwalk, up and down and through and through. Keeping humans up and out of the way, so they don't fuck up this wilderness as they do everything else they touch.

Schooner Trail

Low Tide at Schooner Cove

Fallen ancient nurse log, hundreds of years ago this tree on the right was a seedling, growing from this fallen giant

On our previous trips to the west coast of Vancouver Island over the years we have always stayed in the town of Tofino. This time, I thought we'd stay at Ucluelet, the town on the opposite end of the Pacific Rim Park Reserve to check it out. I'm glad we did. As much as I love Tofino, I'm feeling the love for Ucluelet as well.  It is located on a peninsula, on one side is the ocean, on the other is the calmer Ucluelet Inlet and about 3/4 of it is surrounded by trails, with more to come.

Broken Islands near Ucluelet - Photo Andy Korolis

Our Ucluelet Hotel - Black Rock Resort

Early one morning I was watching what looked like some kind of timber barge being pulled in front of the hotel through my binoculars when something else caught my attention. Through the lenses I followed the sight of whales blowing on the surface. It was at the far end of the range of my binoc's and the closest I got to the rumored 20,000 whales. During the days I walked and walked and walked along the peninsula trails, always with eyes peeled on the horizon. On Sunday we went to a human-watching event, the annual Chowder Chow Down. A dozen local restaurants offered their chowders for taste and vote. Some tourists there but it seemed to be mostly a local event - kids, grown-ups, elders, teens, all visiting, chatting and tasting, listening to local musicians on the stage of the hall in the community center.  By the time our tasting tickets were gone I was all chowdered-out and it turned out my vote went to the restaurant in the hotel we were staying in.

To top off two wonderful days, on the last night, as the clouds rolled in from the Pacific obscuring Jupiter and Venus who were in alignment and highly visible, along with Mars opposite, back in the suite with fireplace blazing, I watched Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown on TV,  which just happens to be one of my all time favorite movies. The icing on a visit that just kept getting better and better.

April Fools

To quote the great philosopher, Howard Brown...

March. In like a lion...out like an asshole.