One minute you’re paddling for dear life, and the next you find yourself relaxed in a secluded nirvana, your mind bathed in endorphins.
evidence of their millenia-long inhabitation of a shoreline now pa- trolled only by black bear and whale. Even though they weren’t physically visible to us on the outer
part of the archipelago, we could feel the spirit of the original people flow strongly through every rock, tree and living being on Haida Gwaii, which means, literally, “Haida Homeland.” On day 18, we crossed paths with a “super pod” of over a hun-
dred transient orca, their man-sized dorsal fins dropping and ris- ing on all sides of us. Like an ancient tribal greeting party, they came out from a bay in front of the abandoned village of Tian, where archaic totems carved with clamshells and stone still stand. We bobbed breathlessly amid the procession, staring in wild awe as the creatures disappeared ephemerally into the navy horizon. The conditions outside Puffin Cove were good for paddling the
next day but we decided to linger. With most of the difficulty be- hind us, we wanted to savour the remaining time we had in that magical land. Lingcod and rockfish practically begged us to throw our lines out, there was endless reading to be done, and we so- berly realised we were only a couple of weeks from the end of our journey. I contemplated what a month of paddling had taught me, how
emotions on the outer coast swing between extremes that lead to the purest form of euphoria. One minute you’re paddling for dear life, and the next you find yourself relaxed in a secluded nirvana, your mind bathed in endorphins. That afternoon, Todd grinned as he served me up a fillet on the
beach, fried over fire in one of Betty Carey’s old pans. Keith slow- ly chewed the white, flaky flesh, gazing quietly out at the breadth of the North Pacific.
µ
The team at the end of their journey, day 46 Adventure Kayak || 41
TODD MACFIE
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