Walt Whitman writes on ferries:

MY PASSION FOR FERRIES

Living in Brooklyn or New York city from this time forward, my life, then, and still more the following years, was curiously identified with Fulton ferry, already becoming the greatest of its sort in the world for general importance, volume, variety, rapidity, and picturesqueness. Almost daily, later, ('50 to '60,) I cross'd on the boats, often up in the pilot-houses where I could get a full sweep, absorbing shows, accompaniments, surroundings. What oceanic currents, eddies, underneath -- the great tides of humanity also, with ever-shifting movements. Indeed, I have always had a passion for ferries; to me they afford inimitable, streaming, never-failing, living poems. The river and bay scenery, all about New York island, any time of a fine day -- the hurrying, splashing sea-tides -- the changing panorama of steamers, all sizes, often a string of big ones outward bound to distant ports -- the myriads of white-sail'd schooners, sloops, skiffs, and the marvelously beautiful yachts -- the majestic sound boats as they rounded the Battery and came along towards 5, afternoon, eastward bound -- the prospect off towards Staten island, or down the Narrows, or the other way up the Hudson -- what refreshment of spirit such sights and experiences gave me years ago (and many a time since.)

When people move here, there are a few little tests they have to pass in their first year before they decide to stick out life on the island. The first is the winter, the long dark wet and windy nights when the Pineapple Express sweeps up the Gulf of Georgia from the southeast or when the bitter Squamish winds lash the north side of the island, bringing the cracking brace of Arctic air off the Pemberton ice fields at the head of the Sound.



Survive that and then you have to make it through the sicknesses that circulate around the island in the winter and spring. Everyone seems to spend their first year being sick, and in the process achieving a natural immunity from the island's own crucible of disease. Flus, colds and coughs all plague the populace in the cold months, and it doubles the effort required to stick it out.



In the second year, full of antibodies, the sickness is more tolerable and instead you have to confront the final test, the one that lasts forever: the ferries.



I am convinced that one must develop a love, not unlike the one that Whitman speaks of, for the ferry to take it every day and stay sane. And that is perhaps the hardest test of all, for the Ferry Corporation often throws up challenges to keep you devoted. Schedule changes, impromptu equipment refits, threats of price hikes and the odd unexpected overload all bubble up to keep you asking whether living here is worth the hassle.



And the truth of the matter is I am happy I don't have to do it every day. If I had to commute on a daily basis, it would make me very tired and jade my view of the trip. But as it is, I am more than happy to rise at 5:30 in the morning to cue for the 6:35 ferry and ride with friends through some of the most spectacular scenery on earth. Every day is a different picture, in sun and rain, wind and fog, sleet or still warm air. The shades of green, grey and blue that I have laid eyes on over the past two years are myriad.



And like Whitman it is this endless variety of movement and light that continues to draw my attention. It matches well with my poetics, to find form in the whimsy of the moment, to find a voice in the sound that fills my ears, to see with eyes filled by shades of colour. It feeds diversity in my thinking and dreams, the currents going one way and then another, like a river that runs in two directions at once, like thoughts that bounce between speech and silence.



The love of ferries, and deeper, the love of the constantly changing view and sense of place, arises out of the living poem that is Howe Sound, inspiring like a storm cloud or an agate.

The Queen of Capilano rescues the Queen of Surrey



Adventure and excitement in Howe Sound yesterday as the Queen of Surrey caught fire. Our own little ferry, the Queen of Capilano towed her to safety as she foundered off Hood Point.



Funny that as all this was happening I was writing a short piece about how much I enjoy the ferries. But read the story about this event and then come back in a couple of days for my ironically timed musings.

My daughter's sixth birthday today, and things are very much as they were six years ago, atmospherically.



It has been warm and calm here the last couple of days. Sun beating down on the beach tempted Aine and Finn to venture in waist deep at Tunstall Bay yesterday for the first official swim of the year. They reported near hypothermic temperatures, but still: they notched May 11 as opening day in the great Bowen SkinnyDip Quest 2003.



My parents have been visiting over the past week from Ontario. They are staying down the road at the Rosebank B&B, home of 1998 Bowen citizen of the year Angie McCullogh. The guest cottage there is about 120 years old, and Angela is an amazing woman. She is pure indominatable spirit, being the driving force behind many efforts to improve care for humans and animals, including CAWES (Coast Animal Welfare and Education Society) and a food bank set up in the foyer of the United Church.

Gunnel



Down in the Cove where the ferry comes in, is a beach at the end of a picnic field. It's still pretty wild, despite having a marina dropped into Snug Cove, and turning over rocks has its rewards.



Today we stood in the run off from the underground springs that feed the life in the little rock pools. Usual crabs (purple and green shore crabs), limpets, mussels, barnacles and springtails. But today we saw our first gunnels.



Gunnels are little fish that look like eels (that's what we thought they were at first). When they are small they can be found in tiny pools of water under rocks at low tide. They’re hard to catch, a little slippery and when you see one move there is no guarantee that you will ever see it again. They are masters of hiding in clear water in small pools.

High above Sechelt Inlet



Business today took me up the coast a little ways to Powell River, to do some work with the Tla'Amon First Nation. Powell River is about 100 miles north of here, on the mainland, opposite Texada Island.



To get there I first jumped on a ferry from Snug Cove to Horseshoe Bay and made an immdiate connection to the ferry to Langdale. This ferry cuts through the Collingwood Channel, which wraps around the north end of Bowen Island, and ends up on the other side of Howe Sound. Once there, my partner Chris Robertson picked me up and we drove to Sechelt.



Sechelt lies up the Sunshine Coast a little ways and is a town nestled between a long inlet and the Gulf of Georgia. At the head of the inlet, which lies only 500 meters from the sea, is terminus for Pacific Wings Airlines, a float plane charter service. We chartered a Beaver (whimsically registered as C-FOCQ) out of Sechelt Inlet in perfect weather and, never flying above the mountain tops, we dipped and doodled through wide glacial valleys, long lakes and fijords for 45 minutes to Powell River.



The weather was perfect. Not a cloud in the sky and no wind to speak of. The mountains around here are really something else, huge jagged chunks of rock rising straight up 6000 feet from the surface of the ocean, topped at their highest peaks with snow, scarred in the lower slopes by logging. I find myself utterly failing to conjure up words to describe flying among them.

May has flown in with warm spring weather, hot sunlight, and temperate breezes.



The birds are getting hooked up, bitterns are calling in the marshes on Killarney Lake, the geese and heading north and the loons are rafting up in large flocks off Cowan Point. The forests are full of the sounds of warblers and thrushes and the salmonberry patches are alive with hummingbirds.



Even though the winter wasn't hard, there is a feeling on the island that is akin to a big group sigh of relief.



Last night we ate our first supper of the year on the beach at Tunstall Bay, huddled around a fire which was lit more for the comfort than the heat, and we watched the sun fall into a bank of cloud over Mount Washington. Loons and seals and herons moved back and forth in front of us, and we could sense the feeling of swimming in the ocean, something that won't be far off now. Spring is still fresh in the smell of perfume from the cottonwoods and the hyacinths, and we're soaking up every minute of it.

Just spent the weekend on Saltspring Island, which is a very different place from Bowen, but which shares many similarities, not the least of which are my favourite Gulf Island markers: twisty potholed roads that are named after the places they take you.



Not for me are the straight, numbered and well ordered blacktop streets of Vancouver. Nah. Give me potholes and frost heaves and sealed surfaces and the pleasure of coming to a freshly graded dirt road after a mile or two of pitted washboard. And instead of grid numbers and the names of dead royalty, give me destinations like Bowen Bay Road, Fulford-Ganges Road, Sutil Point Road, Mount Gardiner Road, Hood Point Road and Smuggler's Cove Lane.



How sensible and evocative and eminently practical is that?