Three Minutes in Clayoquot
Paddler Magazine, Nov/Dec 2005
© Chris Ryan
Kayaking for a week in a rugged corner of British Columbia, I managed to escape traffic, technology, and industry – almost. For all but three minutes of those seven days, my world was nothing but ocean and sky, forests and sand, water and light.
Most writers would rave about this wilderness, and quietly omit those three minutes. But if I do – if, by the end of this story, you haven’t read the words colossal and combustion and felt their impact – you should get a refund. A gritty fossil reveals more than a polished gem.
My partners and I were paddling Clayoquot Sound, a swath of island-speckled ocean off the exposed west coast of Vancouver island. Kayakers could hardly envision better waters. The surrounding land nurtures temperate rainforests and groves of 1500-year-old spruce and cedar that tower 350 feet into the sky. The intersection of earth and sea is sometimes marked by shear cliffs plummeting into idyllic fjords; other times by gentle slopes guarding coves perfect for landing.
Unfortunately, kayakers and wilderness enthusiasts aren’t the only ones who appreciate the region’s riches. Logging companies have also staked a claim, leading to a controversy that burned hottest in the mid-1990’s. But as I paddled the sound with a close friend and a guide, none of us could see the growing clearcuts.
At first, we experienced Clayoquot like a concertgoer experiences Mozart. I felt awe, solitude, and renewal, but from a writer’s detached perspective. As the days floated by, , I began to feel a part of the place rather than a visitor. The sensation is akin to throwing your paddle ashore on a river and letting the current take you where it will. At that point, everything shifts. Acting pre-empts analysis, and doing yields to simply being.
Resting our paddles and gazing across miles of water to shores yet unvisited, it seemed natural to consider these forests and waters as it, as the extent of the world. I hadn’t forgotten the cities and conflicts and cultures beyond the horizon, but in my mind they had receded to a fuzzy periphery, like the lands at the edges of old maps, unlabeled and easily ignored.
That’s when the outside world burst back onto the scene. Raw materials, world trade, internal combustion, shipping lanes, toilet paper, junk mail, board-feet, sustainability, low prices, ecological health, worldviews, -isms, media, PR, . . .
A small, gray shape hung on the horizon. It looked like a nondescript cargo ship – the first sign of human activity we had seen in a week, but otherwise unremarkable. Yet when we realized its distance, its true size flashed into mind: colossal.
The deck was large enough to field a football game, and could have if it weren’t covered with tiny sticks which – through binoculars – morphed into massive logs piled several stories high. Despite their size and number, the ancient trees were dwarfed by the vessel that carried them, and the ship itself resembled a bathtub toy against the mountainous slopes behind.
The sight played with my sense of time and space. The coastal landscape could have appeared in a sepia-toned photograph from the early 20th century, while the ship that moved through it could have been drawn by an eccentric futurist from the late 19th.
If this industrial behemoth were a city block away we would have paddled for our lives, but at ten miles we simply floated and watched as it parted huge volumes of ocean.
The writer and outdoorsman in me bristled, but looking past my selfish desire for unspoiled nature, I recognized the ship as more than an eyesore; it was a keyhole to a deeper understanding of the place. Its construction, cargo, and purpose hinted at economic pressures, environmental values, consumer demands, labor dilemmas, human dramas – in short, the nature of Clayoquot and the ties that bind it to the world beyond the ridgelines.
Three minutes after it appeared, the ship passed behind an island, slipped through a passage for the deep Pacific and was gone. A gentle breeze pushed ripples against our kayaks and we drifted slowly sideways.
Before coming to Clayoquot I had read of the reckless clear-cutting of its ancient woods. But it took the sight of a small forest heading to Asia on the deck of a super-sized cargo ship to make it feel real, to make it feel as if it’s happening just over the ridgeline.
Because, of course, it is.
