This is It!

This is what we were aiming for. This is the reason for packing away all the furniture, for moving onto the boat,  for spending weeks sailing up the coast.

The picture shows a very low tide on a perfect sunny day (locals tell us it is just about the first of the summer) up at the north end of Vancouver Island. The tide has just begun to flood back in, and the Captain has found a tidal pool. The brightly lit water at the center of the photo is in a low spot; the rocks around it mean that the incoming tide is held back a little. What you can't see in the photo is the waterfall formed by the rising tide returning to the low pool.

This is an exciting discovery because just around the corner from here is the now abandoned Indian village of Mamalilaculla. This tidal pool would have provided great foraging for the First Nations People, who surely gathered shell fish from these rocks. Maybe they used the pool as a fish trap, spearing the fish who swam in and then were caught when the tide fell.

Maybe it's an exaggeration to say that this is the only reason for what we are doing. But a day of kayaking on sunlit water does give the illusion that the world makes sense.