Freedom Cove

We stayed in the town of Tofino looking out on the view that had captured my heart the first time I ever saw it and for every visit since - across Clayoquot Sound to Meares Island and the other smaller islands,  with the Vancouver Island mountain peaks behind. Watching the boat traffic in the Sound, going to and fro, weaving through the islands till lost sight of around the bend and behind. It makes me want to go across, go further, see what lies behind up the inlets and coves further up Clayoquot Sound and beyond.

The view from my pillow in the loft of the condo in Tofino - dawn - the sport fishermen are just leaving

So, we hired a boat with Captain Mike Little of Browning Passage Boat Charters to go take a look at what lay beyond.

It was 3:00 in the afternoon when we climbed aboard, heading around the back of Meares Island and beyond to a place called, by its residents, Freedom Cove. The boat would take a minimum of 3 people, maximum 12. Howard, Number 2 Son Mike and I make 3. It's just slightly passed high tourist season this day in early September, and we find we have the boat to ourselves.

We travel across the harbor towards the native village that has been there continuously for 5000 years. At least. Then around the west side of Meares Island where we pass a complex of old buildings. This used to be a residential school for native children. Even the sound of those words these days sends a chill but Captain Mike who was born here talks of friends of his who were there and who themselves speak of the education they got as worthwhile, as well as some usefulness of learning the ways of the "white guy", which was the point of the schools. Lots of points of view I guess.

We continue past a view of a looming Cat Mountain, a wall of green forest, where some company is proposing building a copper mine. Friends of Clayoquot appear to be all over that one, I was asked to sign something, or send a postcard or whatever, when I stopped at their booth at the Saturday market. Apparently it would mean defacing the mountain. According to our Captain Mike, a retired Coast Guard captain, he can't see how they'd get the copper out of there, through the relatively shallow entrances to Clayoquot Sound from the Pacific. Apparently something similar was proposed many years ago and not proceeded with for this same reason.

 Then past more small islands, past several large fish farms, till we reached the entrance to a small bay, turned the corner into its smoother waters and came upon a quite amazing sight. The floating gardens of Freedom Cove.

You won't find the name "Freedom Cove" on any local chart, but that is what it is called by its residents,  Catherine King and Wayne Adams, who approached us as we stepped off the boat to their dock. They welcomed us with hands full of containers of cherry tomatoes, gifts for us.  Here we are at their float home, with its huge connecting floating gardens, greenhouses, studios, guest houses, dance platforms, candle studio, carving studios...This is their home of 20 years, and their ever changing art installation.

An aerial view...

Catherine takes us on a tour - she is a dancer, a poet and a sculptor, and above all a gardener. She explains that they have live a subsistence lifestyle out on their float home, an hour's boat ride from the town of Tofino. All the building materials for their floating garden and its multiple greenhouses and other structures are from salvaged materials, some from the neighboring fish farms. They grow all their vegetables and fruits, everything in containers as the whole structure floats in the bay, tethered in multiple locations to the cliffs along the shore. They are not alongside the shore, they can't step off the dock to go for a walk, they are surrounded by water. Fresh water for themselves and for the gardens comes from a waterfall on land a distance away, gravity fed to their complex. The whole structure looks like a series of lagoons, you walk along deckways and across bridges to get from one greenhouse (there are about 6) or studio to another.

One of their greenhouses is dedicated to growing strawberries. They have every other berry as well as apple, pear, fig and other trees growing in huge pots. They grow every kind of vegetable you can imagine, and then some.

We were with them for about an hour and a half, looking at their structures, their art projects, their home, their plants, garden art, candles they pour from molds made from their carvings from bone and other materials. I could barely follow half of what she was saying, as I looked at her pots and plants and how her irrigation system was set up and all that.

I told Wayne about my desire to see what lay beyond my view from the town of Tofino. He said that he had felt the same way in the years he lived there and then look what happened - he ended up living out beyond these past 20 years.

What a great visit, to an artistic couple whose art is also about how they live their lives in this place of isolation and breathtaking beauty. A chance to get to know, if briefly, some of the people who have made this far place home for so many years. They are not the only artists who live on float homes in the wilderness around here, but they may have the most extensive structure and certainly the most flamboyant.

Meanwhile, later that day, back in Tofino's waterfront...