“it’s more of a labyrinth”

On Monday, we’re leaving here for Vancouver Island, spending a night in Comox, and continuing on the next day to a little north of Campbell River where we’ll board a freight boat on Tuesday for an adventure. If you look at this map, you’ll see a number of inlets on the mainland side of the strait and we’ll explore a few of those. Here’s the description of our leg of the journey (the company offers two possible routes, aboard a 135 foot landing craft which carries heavy equipment and other freight to logging camps, remote villages, and other destinations):

She works her way up Discovery Passage into the maze of islands and mainland inlets, with possible stops in Loughborough Inlet, Cordero Channel, Phillips Arm, Stuart Island and Sonora Island. The Aurora Explorer then proceeds up spectacularly scenic Bute Inlet with stops along the way, possibly reaching the head of the inlet, where the Homathko and Southgate Rivers both empty into opposite sides of Waddington Harbour. The upper reaches of the inlet provide a vista of steep granite bluffs, numerous hanging valleys, cascading waterfalls, glimpses of the Homathko Icefield near Mt. Grenville (3109 m) and other glaciers in the surrounding mountain ranges.

I’ve wanted to see these inlets and rivers for years. And there’s no time like the present. No time like this one that is every other moment, because it’s also the container holding the past. The other day I was putting my swimming towels in the basket I use for taking stuff to the pool and I found myself marvelling at its construction (it’s one of those beauties from Ghana, bought for me by my older son and husband in Cache Creek in 2008, so of course when I carry it, I am carrying the dry air, the lunch we had at the Bonaparte Winery when it was just north of town, and the walk we took through Walhachin, pausing to look at an old concrete in a lot I thought about buying, a view of the Thompson River below). I thought of the baskets of Cueva de los Murciélagos in Granada, 9,500 years old, and as shapely and beautiful as anything I’ve ever seen. (You can see a photograph of them here.) Everything happens, and happens again, although the icefields are shrinking and the rivers drying up.

We will sleep in a small cabin (equipped, we are promised, with a flashlight and binoculars), lulled by water. The food will be excellent. I’m bringing books, a journal, and several warm sweaters. Some poetry. I’m remembering Tomas Tranströmer (from “Answers to Letters”, in: “The Great Enigma”, translated from the Swedish by Robin Fulton) :

Time is not a straight line, it’s more of a labyrinth, and if you press close to the wall at the right place you can hear the hurrying steps and the voices, you can hear yourself walking past on the other side.