Gray Lake

Vancouver Island Backroad Mapbook - Map 39 G6
Atlas of Canada Link: Gray Lake
Latitude and Longitude: 50° 3' 25" N - 125° 35' 49" W

Trip Date: August 21st, 2009



There are 4 vehicles already occupying sites when we arrive late Friday night after spending the day working our way up island, stopping to buy groceries and tea at the Courtney Tea Centre - one of the best tea retailers on the Island by the way. The Gray Lake Recreation Site has 6 sites, so we have our choice of two. We quickly set up camp and then head out for a paddle, just as the mist starts to rise off the lake around 8:00 pm.
We paddle north, away from the sandy beach and James heads off into the growing dark. I set up my camera on the tripod and start taking pictures. The aperture is wide open and the shutter speed down to 1.3. I can hardly see anything through the view finder.
After a few minutes the auto focus on my camera stops working, too little light. I set it to manual and keep shooting.
Finally, as the last light ebbs from the sky I get a nice shot of the mist after waiting for the canoe to come to a complete stop and I hold my breath while the shutter yawns open for 3 long seconds.
Within minutes I find it hard to see anything and rummage in my bag for my headlight. Down the lake I see Jame's headlight wink on. There is a chill in the air now and I listen to the silence, the smell of cedar faint and mixed with something indistinct, a soft earthy smell, plant essential oils breaking down after so many long dry days. There is a fire ban, so there is no smoke, no cheery flickering lights along the lake, only the darkness of trees against the slightly less dark blue black sky.

In the morning, startling James with my suggestion to paddle before breakfast, I head for the shore, the canoe beaded with dew, my warm pollen sweater a reminder that late August nights can be cool.

After James has a bowl of cereal he joins me on the water and we paddle down the misty lake, taking it easy, enjoying the atmosphere and watching time pass. On the remote western shore, something large thrashes in the underbrush as we glide by, but we don't see what it is. We keep going to the end of the lake and head up the inflow.

We paddle up stream, water dripping from the bushes on shore, a silence amid the trees that seems to absorb our voices, we talk in low tones, pilgrims visiting a holy site.
After passing an open marshy area, we travel between high rounded black banks, grooved here and there with otter and beaver trails, the sharp tooth-edged stubs of willow and sweet gale where the beavers have harvested. The canoes drift to a stop where the creek turns into a rocky trail, the water to low to paddle further.
We head back, the day still gaining light. On the lake again a woman steps from a camper on shore and seeing us, waves. We wave back. A man steps from the trailer behind her and puts his arm around her waist. We glide on, the bows of our canoes peeling open the refection of the sky.
For more images from this paddle, please visit the photo album here: http://stillinthestream.jalbum.net/Gray%20Lake/index.html

100 Lakes Visited

Bear Lake

Yesterday I visited the 100th Lake in my exploration of lakes on Vancouver Island. Of those 100 lakes visited I paddled 54, some more than once (Trail Pond, Turtle Lake, Mohun Lake, Bear Lake, Somenos Marsh, and Westwood Lake).

The reasons for not paddling 46 of the 100 were varied. Some had no easy access, or the lakes did not look interesting, or I didn't have sufficient time to paddle the lake on the day I was there, or I ended up paddling somewhere better.

I have posted a list of both the lakes visited and the lakes paddled so far here: http://www.stillinthestream.com/files/lakesvisited.html

Of the lakes visited but not paddled, I plan to paddle 24, but only 10 are high on my list. I still have about 30 other lakes to investigate first. I expect to paddle another half dozen before 2009 comes to an end.

Of the 54 lakes paddled so far only a handful were less enjoyable than I expected before visiting them, and only three actually disappointed me (Cedar Lake, Hawthorn Lake, and Darkis Lake). Some others such as Dougan and Echo Lakes turned out to be prettier to look at from the highway than to paddle on (and both suffered from excessive traffic noise).

Afew turned out to be more rewarding than I expected. Anutz and nearby Atluck Lake both overwhelmed me with their interesting shorelines and scenery while Spirit and Grace lakes provided a sense of remoteness and peacefulness that was out of proportion to their setting. Subtle beauty and a satisfyingly untouched quality seem to be the reason for these shallow quiet lakes charm.

Grace Lake

Some urban lakes turned out to have surprisingly natural shorelines (Thetis Lake and Westwood Lake) while some wild lakes suffered from overuse as evidenced by severely trampled and eroded shorelines (Spectacle, Peak, and Twin Lake).

Peak Lake

I have learned how much water level can effect the feel of a lake. Somenos Lake dropped 4 or 5 feet over a few months changing the paddling experience significantly, and the exposed beaches of Buttle, Elsie, Darkis, and Klaklakama Lakes detract from otherwise promising locations.

Some of the jewels of the island felt vulnerable and fragile. Mohun and Amor lakes are world class paddling destinations yet active logging throughout the Sayward Forest threatens to reduce the recreational value significantly. Many areas are closed for logging and I will be returning after the fact to see what is left. This whole area should be protected for posterity now. While the logging that is going on is responsible, it's just too pretty an area to scar with clear cuts.

Mohun Lake

Other gems, like the swamps and lakes of the Stamp and Ash valleys are on private land and at the mercy of the giant forest companies who own them.

Moran Swamp

Pat Bell, minister of forest and range, said in response to recent questions about the status of large trees on Vancouver Island that sufficient old growth is already protected - the rest is free to be logged. This comment reinforces his January declaration that the old growth ecosystem is amply protected. Mr. Bell sees no reason to protect more forest from the saws. I do.

I witnessed in July of this year one logging truck on the Cowichan Highway (Hwy 18) with three massive tree trunks filling it's trailer. These are very large old-growth trees, and the loggers are obviously active in our woods getting every last one.

I need to learn more about the BC government system and discover if it is possible to bring the aesthetic quality of our wetlands and forest into focus before it is too late. How can such beauty be destroyed for the profit of so few when if they are protected they can benefit so many for so many years to come?

Surely money isn't the only abstract construct that can be extracted from these locations. Should poetry, tranquility, and the healing power of nature feature in my writing? A lake without a large clear cut beside it is significantly more attractive than a lake with a tiny ribbon of trees between it and the surrounding expanses of dead stumps, slash, and torn up soil. Will it help to paint this picture? Can my writing and photography have any effect?

Anutz Lake

Vancouver Island Backroad Mapbook - Map 36 D1
Atlas of Canada Link: Anutz Lake
Latitude and Longitude: 50^o 17' 59" N - 126^o 55' 0" W

Trip Date: June 21st, 2009



I arrive late Sunday afternoon, wind blowing straight at the beach, sun bleaching the view. An assortment of robins work the Thimble Berry and Pacific Ninebark bushes. No one is at the site but there are deep ATV ruts along the beach and in the middle of the field, a circle where an ATV went around and around. It feels a bit like a ghost town.

I decide to camp close behind the row of bushes that separate the beach from the campsites.
I cook dinner, read for awhile, then explore the beach to the west and discover a place where water has created a flow of limestone out from a small opening in the rock — a white tongue of stone. I climb up onto a 14 foot high rock outcropping and watch the waves, listen to the wind in the forest.
Red Paintbrush shocks from side to side in the wind. I scramble down onto some lower rocks worn by water, the waves making hollow gurgling sounds below my feet somewhere under the rock.
Then around the corner I find a sculpted stone with a hole right through the middle.
I explore the forest; find a trail that leads back to the campsites through a nice mature second growth woodland, stopping briefly to admire a patch of Pacific Lilly of the Valley.
Still no-one at the campsite when I break out of the forest into the open field. The 10,000 clusters of Pacific Ninebark blossoms bob at the margin of the meadow, Yellow Salmon Berriers, gone pink where eaten by some animal shine in the growing dark.
I photograph a Nootka Rose and examine the berries forming on a twinberry bush, the woundlike bracts somehow disquieting my mind when I look at them up close. I crane my neck to look at mares tails in the sky, listen to a bird call I don’t recognize, the sound like a child’s toy whistle, a single rising note, as if questioning, tentatively, the coming night.
I accept that the wind is not letting up tonight, return to my camp, try to read but the noseeums find me. I put on bug spray. A male grouse thumps his call, almost too low to hear, while the robins give up their evening melodies to a scattered ramble of chirps. Sky goes pink, then a few puffy clouds are left, orange around the edges.
Then the silence after climbing into my sleeping bag inside my tent. I fall asleep sometime after 10:30, wake after midnight chilled and pull on my sweater, the tips of the trees out the tent window are still against the dark grey sky. The night never gets completely dark in June. At 3:00 I wake and listen to the grouse call, It is the only sound in the darkness. At 6:00 I scramble out of the tent and walk to the beach. The sun is just lighting up the peaks of the Karmutzen Range (Nimpkish Lake was named Karutzen lake for awhile) and a mist is rising from the lake.
I hurry back, put my down vest over my wool sweater, then the PFD, pulling on my paddling boots and gortex pants. I take down my canoe, load up some food and other supplies and am on the water in a few minutes, paddling towards the western area where two creeks empty into a marshy estuary.
Fish that have been lolling at the surface break away from me in the early light and disappear amid the Lilly pads.
The current moves in swirls between the floating pads and I can see that a beaver has been at work attempting to bridge the entire estuary with a low dam. I find an opening and push through.
There turn out to be three inflows; all but one shrouded with sedges and rushes and the middle one has a curious feature. A log is wedged between the banks, forming a natural dam so that the water on the other side of the log is several feet higher than where I float in my canoe. There is a deep hollow sound of water like the sound of a bathtub filling as the water flows from beneath the log into a collection of smaller debri and I wonder how long this tiny cascade will exist. I listen to it for awhile before exploring some of the floating gardens growing on the ends of a half submerged logs. Yellow Monkey Flowers bob over the water along side Fire weed and gracefully curving sedges, each blade pointed with a shinning drop of dew.
I turn and paddle down the western shore towards the river that connects Anutz and Nimpkish Lake. Stickleback cruse in the shallow water along the river banks, a king fisher skims the surface going past fast, his flight arch taking him sharply up to light on a tree branch, scold me, then head off down river. The current picks up over the shallow bars of gravel, then deep clear pools green towards the stony bottom. Widgeon grass sways like the skirts of a Hawaiian dancer as I go around a corner and under an overhanging tree.
I pass two side channels which I know are oxbows from examining the area on Google Earth. Then the final long stretch and the narrowing just before Nimpkish Lake, where the old pilings are. I drift out into the lake on the current, paddle to shore and stroll the beach, eating a granola bar and drinking some water.

The sun crests over the mountain but only flashes briefly before disappearing behind clouds; there is a tiny riffle far out on Nimpkish Lake. I take off my down vest and drink some more water.
The paddle back upriver is slower, working only slightly harder against the current. Robins, always lots of robins, call in the salal and I turn in at the first oxbow to listen to them. There is a family of mergansers, the young fledglings lanky and shy, and as I drift towards them the hen takes flight, the ducklings disappear under the brown surface like skin divers. I turn around and head back, but some of the ducklings have surfaced behind me, lurking under the edges of Lilly Pads, and I startle them back underwater. Out on the river again I turn upstream and the hen angles in behind me to find her offspring.
I notice a beaver lodge I hadn’t seen on the way downstream. New branches are piled on one side, leaves wilting, the bone-white cuts concave and drying in the still air. As I turn the corner and make my way up the straight run to Anutz Lake a bald eagle circles above the tall pine trees that grow along the eastern shore. I suspect these trees are old; beyond the reach of loggers in the marshlands. As I stop to look at them the waves from my boat reach the shore and rebound back, so that I am rocked gently in their soundless echo.
Half way across Anutz the sun breaks out, I take a picture of the vista, with sunlight on different altitudes of land. In the middle of the lake I can not hear anything.
The green of the new sedges along the shore glows in the sun, a warmth that goes deep into the brain, gentle x-rays etching solitude in memory.

For More photos of this trip, see the gallery here: http://www.stillinthestream.com/files/AnutzLake/index.html