It’s not actually fall here yet in Ucluelet. It just feels like it. The chill in the air, even when the sun emerges, dim and distant, from the rolling fog banks, just feels like fall. The smell of the fog in the trees, the sweaters worn by people on the streets, even the sign up at the local bakery: “Pumpkin Pies! Order yours today!” And with the first real frontal system of the year hovering out below the western horizon, advertising its imminent apperance with southeasterlies and the occasional thunderclap, it takes more than one glance at the calendar to convince me it’s not even mid-August here on the West Coast yet.
Which is a shame, because fall brings to mind thoughts of a return to work, of a deluge of pumpkin-flavored espresso drinks in cozy Seattle coffee shops, of unlimited dockside power, and watching Seahawks games in sports bars. In short, it makes us think of home, and between those thoughts and the dreary weather, we’re searching for a window ahead of that oncoming front to shoot back up the Strait on the last of the strong northwesterlies to leave Barkley Sound behind for another year.
We don’t really want to be thinking about these things right now, because Barkley Sound, and in particular the Broken Group Islands in its center, a part of Canada’s Pacific Rim National Park, is a childhood fantasy of barely-awash rocks, forested islands with cunningly shaped bays concealing secret caves, and fascinating sea-creatures just waiting to be explored and conquered in a youthful frenzy. It’s all I can do to keep myself, right at this very instant, from paddling the dinghy ashore and claiming a rugged-looking rock and its four hardy-looking trees for Scott-land (the standard fantasy country which I ruled, firmly but justly, in my youthful imagination) and begin building an impregnable fort thereupon from driftwood and rocks.
It’s fortunate my parents never actually brought me here when I was a boy; they would never have found me again amid all these amazing hideouts.
Even the weather would have provided little deterrent to my younger self. The streamers of fog tangled in the trees and leaving a grey tint to land and sea alike only increases the air of magic and mystery surrounding this place. The occasional beam of sunlight stabbing down through renders solitary islands in golden-green, suddenly three-dimensional, beckoning me on: “Over here! Explore me next!”
Ucluelet, at the northern edge of all this wonder, has been dubbed (in that inimitable Canadian way of managing to give even geographic features nicknames that sound like they should belong to hockey players) “Ukee” by the locals. The village looks like a place that is waiting to happen (motto on the district website: “Life on the Edge”). A large, modern-looking community centre and library sits across the street from the beach; tiny, environmentally-friendly electric-powered Might-E trucks whisk district workers around the peninsula on their errands; vast tracts of platted subdivisions wind through the hills overlooking the ocean (or, rather, overlooking the fog where the ocean would be if you could see it), with fancy street number markers signifying lots which have not yet been cleared or built upon.
We stayed on the Japanese Dock, near the entrance to the small craft harbour. Although we had to forgo the pleasure of electricity or the shelter of the inner harbour, we found that the Japanese Dock isn’t waiting to happen; it’s happening now. Dinghies overturn, paramedics visit, colorful locals are hauled off to jail.
Just as we were getting ready to leave, another sailboat came in to land on the leeward side of the dock. I looked up and saw it pivoting out by the stern in the wind; something was amiss. I hopped off Rosie, ran over and took the stern line from the owner, who, as his boat was barndooring rapidly toward the hefty-looking stern of the wooden trawler behind him, calmly informed me that the bow line had come off and he was going to hop back aboard and “F– off for a bit,” which he proceeded to do in the nick of time. He then made a smooth 360 in the channel and re-fastened the bow line and came in again and executed a flawless landing.
He hopped off again and started to tell me the story of his difficult day, beginning with his anchor dragging overnight and his boat ending up tangled in a commercial crab float, then the bow line slipping off the cleat while his buddy was still holding the other end on the dock. I interupted him mid-sentence.
“Your stern line is about to do the same thing,” I said, pointing at the last little loop about to slide down the end of the cleat.
“F–ing h—!” he exclaimed and jumped back aboard.
Fall coming or no, it’s hard not to want to stay and see what happens next in Ucluelet.