wct04 - day one

August 16, 2004

I’m too tired tonight to take pictures. Disappointment, the sunset is beautiful. We covered a lot of trail today, 13 kilometres to Camper Bay. Now everything below my hips feels heavy; the soles of my feet are compressed. Some of the hikers with whom we crossed Gordon River stopped for their first night at Thrasher Cove, five kilometres in to the trail.

The kilometre 62 signpost sits somewhere not-too-far ahead of us along the trail. When we get to it our day of hiking (tomorrow) on the trail will have just begun. I owe my progress to this point to Meaghan. It is her strength that helped me through some difficult moments of today’s hike. All the words she has been saying to me are finally sinking in.

Sadly, I feel better in the company of misery: Greg’s shoulders hurt, Derek simply sags and my hip is sore in two places. The morning will be telling.

Camper Bay is partly protected from the open water by a thin spit of sandstone. The spit might be more protective if it didn’t disappear with the tide. The surface of it is pocked and cracked, a maze of pits and crevices offering a bare knuckle existence.

Right now I can feel the tightness in my neck. I hope I don’t hurt tomorrow.


done.

Thanks Meaghan. I can’t talk anymore. I miss you. Goodnight. xo

'Ferry to West Coast Trail' was hand scrawled, along with an arrow pointing to the dock, on a large piece of white painted ply-wood. The sign was tacked to the wall of a building standing on the bank of Gordon River. It was all the assistance we would get heading to the trail. Parks Canada has a pre-hike briefing that is mandatory for hikers entering the West Coast Trail. I'm not sure what the briefings brief you for, but, no doubt rules are explained, a heads-up is given for things that will kill you if not treated with respect; for example, pointy toothed animals, surging tides, or breathing second-hand smoke. Possibly, there would be a lecture on what lengths a person has to go to to get assistance leaving the trail. Blisters don't cut it.

There was no briefing. Instead there was a locked building and little instruction. Though I can not remember, there were likely two notes stuck to the door of the building: one to tell hikers Parks Canada and its employees were in the middle of a strike, the other to tell hikers the union and the park were having a labour dispute. That was too bad. Derek, Greg and I saw other hikers on the trail do funny things, things they should not have been doing. There were plenty of people on the trail who could have learned a thing or two at the briefing, including, I'm sure, the three of us as well.


Derek ponders whatever Derek ponders as he crosses Gordon River. Seventy-five kilometres to go.

By the map we walked just shy of 13 kilometres. Not by the map, we probably walked closer to 14 km. What a horrible way to start the hike. Somehow we got onto a side trail that looped back almost to the beginning of the trail. Once on track we eventually encountered our first ladders and bridges, and came to ravines spanned by great logs with flattened edges. Soon we had climbed high above sea level where, standing at the edge, all the bigness of the coast was revealed.


Soon we were high above the level of the ocean, standing at the edge, and all the bigness of the coast was revealed.

We arrived at Camper Bay late in the afternoon, closing on evening. There were a lot of people there and the best spots were spoken for. We staked our tents lower down the beach, beyond the informal log boundary inside which most of the tents were pitched. We planted ours on a slant in loose pebbles. I didn't care. I just wanted the tent up, and to cook some food and veg by a fire. While contemplating that last bit, the fire, the one I really wanted to have, I looked about at the rest of the campground: Derek, Greg and I represented but one of a dozen tribes, each one or two tents in size, at the campground. Each tribe had a fire. A dozen fires smoldered and a dozen lazy wisps of grey smoke rose into the air. A scarce resource was burning at an alarming rate. We were camped at the periphery of a cultural model that was economically doomed to failure.

I ate and went to sleep.