THREE NIGHTS TO REMEMBER

The first wasn’t a night, really—more a twilight, then early morning. Cockle Bay, “Sugway” the Kitasoo people call it: Good seaweed place. Son Eric, daughter-in-law Brenda and I were out on a kelp patch, harvesting a plentitude of rockfish and lingcod. Elizabeth and daughter-in-law Cheryl were on a lovely clamshell beach island gathering berries and greens. Son Bruce was aboard playing his flute.

Cockle Bay 2004

Just coming dark and the wolf chorus began. Almost a call and response pattern: one wolf quite close at hand answered by a pack farther away. Eerie, mournful, exquisitely beautiful. The next day a young Helsuik man described to Elizabeth where the den site was. “I know that cave,” Elizabeth said; “It’s on the way to my favourite berry patch.”

wolf tracks on the outer coast, Connell Islands

The next morning I was hauling the dingy, getting ready to raise the anchor. Elizabeth was ghosting along the shore in her kayak when she put up a pair of sandhill cranes. Their wonderful tremolo cry echoed across the bay. Landing on the rocky beach by the boat, they proceeded to nonchalantly go about their morning business, emitting their typical feeding chuckle from time to time.

Cranes have only recently returned to the Coast. The elders say that, though they figure in Heltsuik mythology, they had never seen one until ten years or so ago. A pair of biologists studying nesting sites explained that it was the restoration of wetlands on their south of the border wintering grounds, and a ban on hunting, that account for their revival.

Wolf call and crane cry: two of the more rare yet most exquisite voices of the Coast.

wolf tracks on the beach in Cockle Bay

Sandhill crane tracks

The next night we arrived in our anchorage just at dark. It wasn’t where we had planned to be. A delay at Bella Bella and a lovely though not particularly strong combination of wind and current through Llama Pass had put us behind schedule.

About three in the morning we awoke to a bumping noise against the hull. I hadn’t been entirely happy with the set of the anchor so got up to look. We were surrounded by bio-luminescent salmon, darting this way and that like rockets going off in a Du Maurier fireworks display. When they broke the surface star-shells exploded, lighting up the cove with an eerie brilliance.

The third night was at Safety Cove. We had sailed from our bio-luminescent salmon anchorage the length of Fitzhugh Sound, catching a lovely coho en route for Bruce’s birthday. Now we were waiting for weather to cross the open water of Queen Charlotte Sound.

We had anchored quite far out as Eric wanted to try for halibut. Three Alaskan trollers, their slender poles lowered for stability, were anchored inside. Putting the sails away and cleaning up the deck, we noticed the sides of the anchorage dimpled with shoaling herring. The heavy breathing of sea lions alerted us to two groups of Californias, slimmer and more graceful then Stellars, working the edge of the shoals. They’re curious creatures. Out they would come to look us over, then in again to cause great consternation among the herring.

Stellar sea lion looks us over

Then came utter majesty. In past us, weaving through the trollers in a ponderous do-si-do to lunge through the shoals of herring: a magnificent humpback whale. Out past us again, into a shoal on the other side, herring exploding in every direction.

All evening long the sea lions and whale worked the herring. At dusk, however, a slimmer, smaller white-tailed humpback swam by. Our last glimpse was of white-tail and black-tail disappearing below the surface, side by side. To a handsome young male humpback, there is obviously one thing more enticing than shoaling fish! Eric called it “A Romance of Two Tails.”

The next day we had the calmest crossing of Queen Charlotte Sound ever.

Goodbye!