My dad kept telling me how stunning (my adjective, not his) Smith Inlet was when the sun shined and how you can’t imagine wanting to be any place else when it was like that. On Wednesday I finally understood what he’d been talking about. I awoke due to this bright light shining in my eye through the wheelhouse windows. It took me a few minutes to realize it was sunshine! I rapidly packed up my gear and headed outside to enjoy it.
With blue sky and the sun shining down into the bay where camp used to be, I could picture what it must have been like to live there back in the day. It was easy to image the kids hoping in their rowboats to go explore the little island or playing with their pet seal or learning to swim by having a rope tied around them and being tossed without ceremony into the chuck.
While the boy cousins were making breakfast, I sat on the upper deck basking in the sun and alternately watching the fishermen below and reading my book. This was when Uncle Jeff decided jumping in sounded like a good idea. With his glasses. Half-way down he realized he’d forgotten to take his glasses off and had to dive in after them. He found them, but they were all bent out of shape. Luckily we’ve acquired an eye guy in the family and Calvin was able to make them mostly useable again.
Once one person had jumped in, a trend was started. Dad and Jason both went in and before I knew it all the little cousins were lined up on the back of the boat waiting their turns to hop in. They were bribed with a warm shower afterwards, and all but one ended up going in. Little kid blood is thicker I think, since I was still wearing 4 shirts at the time and was the perfect temperature. No way was I going in there.
About the time swimming was over and breakfast was being cleaned up, Greg and I discovered part of a lemon pie left over from the evening before. Obviously we took care of that. Nothing like pie for breakfast to know you’re on vacation.
So far on this trip, the only people we’d run into were people we expected to see. Other GMGers or old fishing buddies that were out and stopped to say hi and show us where to catch the big halibut. So you can imagine our surprise when a motor boat pulled around the corner and stopped to say hi. Two crusty, backwoods Canucks who were working as shake blockers a few inlets away (ironically in another previous GMG camp location) stopped to talk on their way to pick up their prawn traps. On their way back by, they gave us all the prawns from their traps! Huge score if you eat things that come from the sea. These things were huge and ugly and tentaclely. The shake blockers left with some lemon pie in exchange, despite their request for beer.
Eventually it started to sprinkle and we motored away from camp. On our way to see where the men used to go to work every day, a short boat ride away, we saw a baby whale. Then we headed for Olive Point, which is used primarily as a graveyard. Olive Point is a midden and one of the few places where it is easy to dig, hence it being turned into a graveyard. There are likely lots of unmarked graves, but there were also some old Goertzen’s who have been buried there. Chief George and his wife Lucy, of the Tukush, were also buried here. As far as graveyards go, this one was pretty spectacular. There was an amazing view from all angles and it was interesting to see the different generations of markers. This is also where the McGills (the M in GMG) had chosen to rest.
After Olive Point we headed to the Big Beach in Smith Inlet. When my dad and aunties were kids, their mom would bring them here to camp for a week at a time. Grandpa would drop them off one Sabbath and come back on the next to get them. What a brave women! Going camping alone with four kids on a deserted beach? Deserted with the exception of bears and wolves of course, both of which prints were noticeable in the sand. After hearing stories of Grandma Hazel on this trip, I’m fairly certain that a good amount of my fearlessness or courage came from her.
Speaking of bears . . . Whenever we were traveling throughout the inlet, a close eye was kept on the water to see what animals and marine life we could see. I noticed something bobbing in the water and at first thought it was a seal, only he never went under. By this point someone else had noticed this oddity in the water and the skipper informed us it was just a log. Turns out he was wrong. It was a grizzly bear swimming across the inlet! I actually jumped out of a window to get on the bow to watch him better. I’ve never seen a grizzly in person or a bear swimming. The combination was pretty amazing. We followed him to shore, from a respectable distance of course, and man could that bear swim. He’d already made it about half way across when we found him and then he practically sprinted once we began tailing him. To be fair, I get freaked out too when someone/thing is following me, even from a long way back. It was pretty amazing to watch him run out of the water, up the bank and into the woods. Talk about an incredible wildlife viewing opportunity. I’m betting there aren’t a lot of people who get to see that in their lifetime.
The big beach had beautiful sand, crazy amounts of driftwood and creeks for the kids to play in and keep them entertained for hours. Dinner that night was the giant ling cod that Uncle Don had caught on a hand line, cooked over the coals from the fire. I had another Loma Linda Stinky (vegetarian hot dog). The little girl cousins also decided that this would be a good time to build their own fire. Some adults were concerned at first, until my parents told them that we had always had a kid fire growing up. I had completely forgotten about that until they mentioned it. Big cousin Rob somehow got roped into helping the girls with their fire. He’s a sucker for their giant blue eyes and can’t say no to them, regardless of if they’re asking for help with a fire or if he’ll please bake them some cookies.
Since it had started to sprinkle a bit, I was quite happy with my decision to forego the leaky tent and sleep on the boat once again. There is so much daylight up there, we ended up going to bed late all the time, not realizing that it didn’t get dark until about 11. I snuggled into my sleeping bag with the boat rocking me to sleep like I was in a baby cradle.
No comments:
Post a Comment