Riding to Ganges, the main town on the island, I collect blackberries and fill my pannier with apples.

Apples are dropping from the trees everywhere on Salt Springs.

Jane has sketched a little map in my black book and I match the landmarks she has featured with a more detailed map from the information office in Ganges. Their cabin, it turns out, is on the far side of the island.

I am struggling up the last of the incredibly steep hills, wondering what I am going to do if Jane and Eric are not home, when I hear a voice behind me: “I don’t believe it!” Jane jogs, seemingly effortlessly, up the hill. I am exceeding glad of the excuse to get off the bike and push.

We walk together up the rest of the hill and turn off the road to a path leading to a tiny cabin sheltered amongst trees. Jane and Eric have only just returned from their own bike trip a few days ago. We share bicycle stories and photos and catch up on news – they are good friends of Sheila. Eric makes popcorn and cooks dinner and I then sleep on the sofa.

In the morning, I go for a walk with Jane. She is an excellent guide, pointing out items of interest, on every scale: mountains, islands, knots in trees, tree bark, mossy banks, clumps of grass, birds – nothing escapes notice. Vultures fly overhead and we lie on our backs on a bed of thick green moss pretending to be dead. The birds are not fooled.

Jane leading the way.

Oak tree at the top of the hill, looking out over the Gulf Islands.

Douglas fir cones.

A spider's web.

Moss, like an animal's pelt.

A tree that seems related to a eucalypt, to me.

Red bark.

A protuberance.

Turkey vulture overhead.

In the afternoon, we go for a swim in a small lake near the house and pick buckets of blackberries. The berries are amazingly prolific this year.

Prolific berries.

A damselfly by the lake. It was so motionless we thought it might be dead until it suddenly took flight.

Jane, picking blackberries.

It rains all night. I enjoy the sound of the raindrops on the roof from my warm bed on the couch and I am not inspired to leave, as planned, in the morning when the torrent has not yet ceased. I decide to devote the day to writing an article instead. While I write Jane makes jam with the frozen blackberries left over from last year. In the afternoon we visit the local cheese maker and sample all their wares – soft goat cheese and a range of lucious olives.

Leaving Sheila’s house on a wet Sunday morning to catch the 10AM ferry, I turn back onto the Main Rd and head in the wrong direction. Ignoring every last visual clue, which clearly informs me that I am going somewhere I have never been before, I continue riding in the pouring rain and it is only when I arrive at Pluto that I acknowledge that I am far from the centre of the known solar system.

The street signs on Lasqueti are idiosyncratic but, nonetheless, informative.

On a pleasant day I might have stayed to explore Squitty Bay but, as the rain is relentless, I retrace my path to the other end of the island and arrive at the ferry terminal twenty minutes late for the 10 o’clock ferry and two and a half hours early for the 1 o’clock ferry.

A cafe next to the terminal looks inviting but the doors are firmly closed. I sit on the steps, soaking wet and cold, until 11AM when the establishment opens and make my way to a table in the corner where a heater sits under the table. I arrange myself strategically to make the most of the hot air and address myself to drying out.

I board the ferry fortified by excellent pancakes and soon arrive in French Creek where I discover that I am without a clear plan. I hit the road as rain cascades down again.

Late in the day I find myself on the south-side of Nanaimo soaking wet and miserable. In a car park where I am futilely looking for a public telephone to ring a Nanaimo contact that I haven’t forewarned of my arrival, I ask a women for if she knows where I might find one. She enquires where I am staying and on hearing that I don’t really know she doesn’t hesitate, even for a moment, before inviting me home to her house for dinner and a bed.

Chris and I talk late into the evening. People constantly tell me that I am brave for merely getting on my bike. When I hear Chris’ story I realise that I know nothing of bravery. She raised two boys in very difficult circumstances, tragically lost her youngest son in an accident seven years ago, when he was thirteen years old, and still manages to find time and energy to help a total stranger in need. I leave in the morning in awe of Chris’ strength of spirit and tenacity, her ability and will to survive.

Chris in Nanaimo.

I have had trouble, as I always do, with the public phone when trying to ring Sheila for directions and to let her know that I am impending. The beast had swallowed large quantities of quarters without result, as the ferry threatened to leave the wharf with my bicycle already loaded. A man organising his bundles of groceries on the boat lends me his mobile phone when he learns of my predicament.

Sheila gives me a long set of directions – clear enough – but I am without pen and paper to hand and so I recite them aloud, as she speaks, in order to remember them. The man and his girlfriend are paying attention and give their opinion when I get off the phone. They find a map somewhere on the ferry which they mark with some vague clues as to my presumed destination, potential camp sites and their address and present it to me with an invitation to visit them.

Getting off the ferry I am greeted by name by Sue, Sheila’s neighbour, who offers to take my bags, corrects the errors of the map and quickly produces a hand-drawn supplement. I set off through the forest on a good packed unmade road towards the south of the island.

Turning, finally, off the road onto a narrow track with a sign forbidding motor vehicles, but welcoming walkers, I come across a woman wielding an axe next to a pile of split logs and a wheel barrow.  Sheila greets me with the statement, “You travel light!” In my enthusiasm to arrive, I have sailed straight past Sue’s truck parked at the end of the track with my panniers still sitting in the tray. I backtrack and return laden and then we make our way to the house.

Sheila.

If I had to describe my dream house it would come very close to matching Sheila’s. It is a small wooden shingle structure sitting on the water’s edge. The decking, which extends over sea-water at high tide, is probably equal in area to the inside space. To the right of the back door, steps lead down to the sea, a bath tub is set into rocks to one side with a space underneath to light a fire to heat the bath-water. To the left of the house are boats, two kayaks and a slightly decrepit row boat and a series of small sheds – one for the wood pile, one for boat stuff and one closed.

Sheila's house.

Dishwashing view.

We lunch from Sheila’s garden; fresh lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and peppers, supplemented by crackers and cheese. Sheila then returns to the garden while I nap, first on the deck in the sun and then in the loft bed at my disposal.

Later in the afternoon, I go out in a kayak and paddle along the rugged shoreline, exploring hidden bays and coves for an hour or two. Clouds above like fish scales, lichen on the rocky cliffs making patterns like the stylised wave forms in oriental paintings.

In the middle of the night, thunder rolls and lightening cracks and Sheila gets up to move things inside off the decking but the morning dawns bright and clear.

I spend the day lazing around the house and in the afternoon we visit the garden and then tour the neighbourhood. Sheila’s daughter-in-law and grandson live close by and Sue and Peter, also. Sue and Peter are harvesting potatoes in their garden. Sue finds a perfect snake skin on the ground, abandoned as thoughtlessly as a piece of clothing of last year’s fashion.

We return to the house to cook pasta with pesto made from fresh basil and fennel stewed in olive oil. We discuss books, family, life.

Sheila harvesting fennel.

In the morning the tide is out and I dig for clams on the exposed mud flats. The bay is home to a small commercial operation and so we use their gear to do our poaching. Sheila shows me how it is done; a small rake drags the clams unresisting from the mud. The creatures do not move at all so the amount skill and effort involved is small – especially compared to that required to collect pipis, clam’s ocean-going antipodean cousins with which I have previous experience and provide a far greater challenge, burrowing through sand with surprising speed and determination. Once they are in the bucket, however, the two are pretty similar.

Mudflats at lowtide.

Gathering shells for dinner.

Oysters are also plentiful and I gather a few even though mud oysters don’t have the same glamour as rock oysters. A bucket of seafood quickly gathered, I return to the house. We sprinkle oatmeal into the water with the idea that it will speed the clams’ digestion and encourage them to expel all grit before dinner. Unfortunately Sheila is going out in the evening so I can’t share them with her. In the meantime, she entertains me by reading aloud from Between Pacific Tides, a book on marine biology, a treatise on the sex life of oysters.

I spend a lazy afternoon in the garden collecting vegetables and herbs for dinner – tomatoes, a pepper, a few carrots, parsley, thyme – and picking blackberries.

Gathering vegetables and berries.

When I return to the house the tide is in and I take the kayak out again, paddling in the opposite direction this time, past a series of small islands. A seal is playing in the distance and I paddle towards it but as I approach it disappears below the surface. I continue parallel to the shore line until a huff behind me alerts me to a seal, perhaps the same one, swimming in my wake – grey head bobbing in the water as it gazes after me. We regard each other curiously until the seal tires of it and sinks below the surface again.

I continue to the point in the gathering twilight. I can’t see the sun behind the clouds but I know it is descending as the surface of the water is darkening rapidly – smooth ripples making intricate patterns in grey, brown and fawn. I head back to the house and as I enter the bay, another seal is there to greet me, peering earnestly at me for a long moment and then submerging. I stop and float, bobbing gently in the twilight water trying to see the seal under the surface but it has disappeared without a trace.

After an evening swim, I steam the clams in a tomato sauce and eat them with freshly harvested potatoes.

Clams for dinner.

It is the season of plenty on the island: harvest time – fruit and vegetables ripe and abundant, flowers still blooming in the gardens. The sun shines enough to provide power.

Sheila's garden.

Beefsteak tomatoes.

Onions.

Squash.

Pinto beans.

Pinto, black and orca beans.

Abundance in the greenhouse.

From mid-September through October things are not as easy for Sheila, the solar panels are starved of light and there is not yet enough water to spin the water wheel – and I guess when the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants are all gone the garden seems less bountiful, too. Sheila’s larder is full of preserves and pickles but I imagine the winter can seem long.

Sheila’s house has no locks. She has lived on Lasqueti for thirty-five years. At first her house floated on the water – tethered here and there, in the places where she was able to – before she dragged it up onto the shore and fixed it to the ground, slowly adding a room on here and there.

Neighbourhood messages.

I sit and watch the water.

Imagine thirty-five years of watching the tide rising and falling, watching the changing sky and the succession of the seasons, knowing the names of the trees and which birds will visit, day after day.

I wonder if I will ever be so part of anything. To watch a child grow, a grandchild grow, the garden grow.

CLAMS STEAMED IN TOMATO SAUCE

Ingredients:

• tomatoes
• olive oil
• garlic
• onion
• parsley
• oregano
• freshly ground black pepper
• salt

Chop garlic and onions and saute until transparent in olive oil. Add chopped tomatoes, herbs, salt and pepper and cook down for a while. When the tomato sauce is ready add the cleaned clams. Close the pot with a tight fitting lid. Steam until the clams open, tossing or stirring from time to time. Serve with rice, pasta or bread.

I am barely outside Campbell River, a sizeable town, and the possibility of having my little nest discovered are quite high. Not putting up my tent will reduce them. I wanted to get further down the coast today but what with one thing and another I didn’t get out of Cambell River until 6pm.

Sun setting.

Still, the sandy point, covered in wild grasses, where I am lying exposed to the elements is a beautiful place. Lying on my back I can see tussocks of grass curving above my head and a lone tree silhouetted against the night sky. I can hear the crickets chirruping, the waves lapping at the shore and the wind in the grass and the trees. The constant background swoosh of cars on the road, a hundred metres away, reminds me of my proximity to human settlement.

Dawn.

As I lie listening to the wind, waves, crickets, cars I am quite calm, the gathering clouds and the possibility of being woken by an early morning dog-walker not unduly disturbing. I wonder if I might be crazy – should I feel so safe and at home lying alone in an unknown beach park in an unknown town on the other side of the world from what is, nominally, my country? It seems I simply don’t care where I sleep; or maybe, more accurately, that my criteria for a good place to sleep is radically different to that of most people’s. The fact that this place is beautiful comforts me and outweighs all its other shortcomings.

I wake at dawn, undiscovered and un-rained on, although my sleeping bag is wet with dew, and watch the sky fill with light. The mountains across the water are cardboard cut-outs, perfectly flat in various shades of pale grey – a subtle arrangement against a backdrop of clouds in even paler shades of grey. Light – apricot, peach and amber – glows through rents in the cloud banks. Gulls fly overhead with their wild ocean cries and the water laps endlessly on the shore. A string of geese fly low above the water, honking, their heads bobbing up and down gently to the rhythm of their wing-beats looking exactly like those wooden toy birds with a string that sets them flapping.

The ferry arrives late and I set up the tent in the dark in a grassy area near the ferry terminal – a noisy, exposed place. Cars rumble by off the ferry for almost an hour and at five in the morning they start queuing up again for the journey back to Prince Rupert.

In the morning, I spent some time in Port Hardy on the internet and then head for Port McNeil, a small town not far down the highway, where the ferry goes to Sointula – the main settlement on a sleepy island of shingled houses. On my way to camp on the far side of the island I stop at a marina to collect some water and a woman doing her laundry at the laundromat sends me to where her boat is moored to collect a huge piece of salmon from her husband. Dinner is sorted!

I decide to camp at Bere Point and as I am riding the gravel road towards the point a police car passes me and pulls up fifty metres ahead. One of the policemen walks purposefully towards me and I wonder if they are looking for a deranged cyclist and have mistaken me for their suspect. However, he merely asks me, as he approaches, if I would like a lift to the point. I refuse as politely as I can and after some jokes about handcuffs and arrest they continue on their way.

Policemen trying to be helpful.

The pebbly beach at Bere Point is covered with logs, scattered like discarded match-sticks up along the tide line. I cook the salmon and then set up my tent. I go for a walk on the beach when it is almost dark. Two men sit on the beach in the fading light next to a small fire drinking beer – their Saturday night entertainment. We sit and talk awhile.

Eating doesn't get any better than this.

Sunset on the beach.

Logging driftwood.

In the morning I set off for Alert Bay – the major town on a neighbouring island. The island has a large First Nation community and a cultural centre has pride of place at the left-hand end of the harbour, the tribal crest painted on the wall facing the sea, a totem watching over the building. To the right and slightly behind the cultural centre sits a red brick Edwardian building – the abandoned residential school.

Totems and the residential school.

The history of this community is full of pain. In the late 19th centaury the Canadian government outlawed potlatches – a central ceremonial rite of the native people, occasions of celebration and redistribution of wealth and resources within the community. The colonial administration was hostile to this expression of different cultural values and tried to forcibly stamp it out. The tribes of the area continued to hold potlatches in secret but when their activities where discovered they were charged and tried as criminals for various ‘crimes’ including giving speeches, dancing, carrying and receiving gifts and sentenced to imprisonment. In order to avoid incarceration they were given the option to surrender all their sacred object and ceremonial regalia. The confiscated objects were sold to collectors or sent to various museums.

The community was devastated by their loss and not all of them managed to avoid imprisonment despite giving up their sacred objects. However, showing remarkable resilience, members of the community never gave up petitioning to have the ceremonial objects returned to them and finally in 1970s they were successful in having the majority of them repatriated. The returned masks and other regalia were welcomed back into the community like dearly loved and long missed family members. They form the core of the cultural centre museum collection.

I spend a few hours in the museum watching a film that tells this story and examining the masks which are displayed in a large open room. The curators decided that these masks had spent too much time already locked away in glass cabinets.

Burial ground at Alert Bay.

Burial ground at Alert Bay.

Eventually I leave the dim museum and return to the afternoon sunshine. The island is small and covered in berries – I can scarcely make any headway at all, my fingers blue from blackberry juice. I head to the back of the island to an abandoned campground to set up camp, my tent facing the sea with the fly open to view the water.

Beach camp.

I cook on the beach and light a driftwood fire, sitting in the dark staring alternately at the flames and the starry night sky. Satellites flare briefly as their rotation brings reflective surfaces into the sun’s rays. I try to remember what I know of the constellations of the northern sky. A whale signs and splashes offshore in the dark water.

In the morning, I explore more of the island, stopping off at the Ecological Park to walk the boardwalk across a large bog.

Boardwalk over the bog.

Skeletal spruce.

Bog.

I arrive back on Vancouver Island at around 1pm and feel the need to get some miles under my wheels. I set off fast into the warm sunny afternoon. I find myself climbing through hills, the forest largely decimated by logging. The occasional log truck thunders by. The traffic on a Sunday afternoon is quite heavy and seems largely unsympathetic to a laden bike tourist climbing hills on a highway without a shoulder. A truck passes by close enough to practically graze my arm.

I pull into a picnic area late in the evening and cook a hurried meal of noodles and then set up my tent in the dark at the end of a trail leading to a river.

Penny goes off to do some tasks while I unpack and sort out all my stuff. She returns and we go into town for a shopping trip to replenish my food stock and get some supplies for dinner, which is more superb red salmon. I need to repair one of my panniers which has holes in it – the work of a crow at Meziadin Lake. Ian assists with advice and materials for the job and finally I go to sleep in a big, warm, soft bed. Wonderful.

I was planning on leaving the following morning but the ferry to Port Hardy leaves at 7 o’clock and I would have to be at the dock by 6 o’clock. I can’t drag myself away from these kind people so fast and so I decide to stay until the next ferry on Thursday.

On a walk in the forest, Penny teaches me the names of some trees: the vegetation has changed significantly over the last section of my trip and is now almost totally unfamiliar to me. Further north it was quite similar to the Czech forest – at least I recognised spruce, larch and birch.

Penny proves knowledgeable and I am introduced now to hemlock, lodge-pole pine, Douglas fir, red cedar, yellow cedar. The berries, too, have further diversified and I learn to recognise red huckleberries, salalberries and bog cranberries. We discuss various other plants but the rest of the information doesn’t stick.

Tangled roots of a cedar (I think).

Blue huckleberries.

Red huckleberries.

Salalberries.

On Wednesday, Penny and I go on a short sea-kayak expedition. I have been in a kayak before, I know, but I can’t remember when – it was so long ago that all the details of the experience are gone completely. Still, it seems to come relatively naturally to me and soon we are paddling out a channel from Port Edward towards a small island near the mouth of the Skeena River.

Circling the island, we see a family of river otters catching large crabs and small fish.  An otter swims underwater close to my kayak. On the far side of the island, we land on a beach to have something to eat and enjoy the sunshine after a week of wet weather. Prince Rupert is the rainiest town in Canada, apparently, and people here really appreciate the sun when it shines.

Penny preparing the boats.

Kayaks are a good way to travel because you get off the road. Food for thought.

Me on the water.

In the morning, I narrowly avert missing the ferry.  Penny wakes me at 5.12, the alarm clock having failed somehow in its duty to wake me at 5.00. I had prepared and packed my things the night before so I manage to get onto my bike and cycle, in the pitch dark, across town to the ferry terminal in time to embark.