Westworld Alberta
Issue link: http://westworldmagazine.ama.ab.ca/i/309330
s u m m e r 2 0 1 4 | w e s t w o r l d A l b e r t A 23 History haunts windswept Tumbo Island, nestled alongside Saturna and the broad sweep of the Georgia Strait. Following a pleas- ant morning cruise around East Point and Boiling Reef, we hop into the skiff and go ashore. Now we're following our naturalist Hamersley Chambers as she weaves through an orchard of quince trees gone feral. Old buildings in various states of decay contain the forgotten dreams of settlers who home- steaded here long before Tumbo became part of the national park reserve. Human ambi- tions have been stilled, but nature flourishes. A pine tree grows through the rotten hull of an old wooden dinghy grounded years ago, and a riotous hedge of rosemary obscures an entire wall of a disintegrating shack. As a flock of mallards takes flight from a nearby marsh, Hamersley Chambers pauses to fill her pocket with rosemary and scrape pitch oozing from a fir tree. " Tr y it. This is a great cold remedy," she says. Reluctantly I take a dab on my tongue and it fills my mouth with the menthol taste simi- lar to eucalyptus. I spend the remainder of our hike on Tumbo trying to scrape the tacky pitch from my teeth. Only much later in the day, after we have motored north along Saturna, past a reeking sea lion haulout circled by gulls and cormorants on the Belle Chain Islets, and have dropped anchor in protected James Bay on Prevost Island, am I able to replace the menthol taste with the sharp tannin of red wine. We're hunkered once again in the Maple Leaf 's galley. Outside, the outline of forest on Prevost Island, another piece of the Gulf Islands national park puzzle, is absorbed into oblivion by a black, moonless night sky. e boat rocks gently as we talk about the ghosts of Tumbo; Hamersley Chambers says places like that remind her of a song by folkie Kate Wolf, the lyrics an imaginary conversation between a lilac bush and an apple tree on an abandoned homestead. She sings a few bars. Why not add beautiful singer to her resumé, which already includes PhD candidate, Univer- sity of Victoria lecturer, Metchosin seed farmer and folk healer able to convince a writer like me to ingest sap? After dinner, Shea is back in the wheelhouse pondering options for tomorrow. Twenty-knot winds are forecast for Trincomali Channel, which means we'll raise the sails on the Maple Leaf. Beyond the wildlife encounters, fine dining, cultural explorations and camarade- rie born of sharing close quar ters with strangers, travelling under wind power is the p14-25GulfSchooner.indd 23 14-04-29 9:14 AM