Discovery Islands

On a spring adventure, 5 days in the Discovery Islands and environs, on the Aurora Explorer, a freight boat with 6 small cabins for passengers. We slept last night at Hemmings Bay on East Thurlow Island after a wonderful dinner of strawberry, feta, and spinach salad, followed by ling cod over quinoa risotto and greens, with chocolate mousse drizzled in caramel sauce with flaked sea salt for dessert. B.C. wines. This morning we woke and sailed into the day with breakfast of fresh cinnamon buns, fruit, yoghourt, and (for those who still had room) eggs, sausage, potatoes, fresh bread…We were able to walk at Blind Channel and then we went up Phillips Arm to look at bears on the grassy shore. More adventures this afternoon and tomorrow, we will pick up freight –a truck carrying a tank of Chinook salmon smolts from a hatchery on Sonora Island and we will take them up to the very head of Bute Inlet where they will be released into the Southgate River, which is where they’ll imprint on their own transformation from smolts to fry. This freight boat is carrying diesel fuel, equipment for logging camps, coils of cable, a fridge full of amazing food (and Kelsey, from Malcolm Island, who makes these meals), 10 other passengers who share their stories as we watch the shore for bears, the water for whales, and the sky for rain. Which hasn’t fallen yet. (Fingers crossed.) One or two boats have passed us in the channels. I keep pinching myself that this is happening. That we slept in our bunks and woke in the night to big jellyfish drawn to the lights of the boat. That we had smoked and candied salmon for lunch, with every other imaginable form of charcuterie, cheeses, pickle-y things, and that this will continue until Sunday afternoon. Pinch me again.