Once More, With Feeling

I miss you already

The half-life of suffering is short. Spirited away from the hardships of trail and cocooned in the exoskeleton of Big Blue, the memory of it remained sharp for only days before the pre-nostalgic haze of unreality set in. These past few weeks have been busy ones for us. First, the perfect detour - rising up slowly to avoid decompression sickness, we surfaced from trail in a small northern town in BC, and I spent a few days re-united with my dear friend Jasper. They, currently, are living in a tiny renovated pumphouse on a farm community along with their mother; a perfectly decorated oasis of sisal rugs and succulents. We ate the long-awaited four dozens of donuts. We ate everything in sight, and window-shopped, and caught up on deliciously irrelevant Montreal gossip. Constantine set their barbecue on fire (but only a little bit). We ate marginally burnt steaks and salad, and drank beer in a paradise of sunshine and comfort. We did not get even a little bit wet.

Second stage now - the astronauts are in the capsule and braced for re-entry, the most attenuated layer of troposhere flashing bright streaks across the hull. Ready the heat shields and prepare for splashdown. We drove down the old Highway 1, following the Fraser River’s mighty flow past towns named things like Boston Bar and Hell’s Gate. Our own personal gold rush goes in reverse - we headed southbound, beyond Hope, with no Lucky Strike or Gold Bar or Bonanza stops between. The lights of semi-trucks blazed in the rearview as we careened 100km/hr down the highway - four days walk per hour, a whole month’s distance gone in a day. We slept at Spanish Banks, and watched the sunset fill the sky over the shipping lane, tankers at rest swaying gently as the tide rolled in. We got a breakfast of pastries-to-go in Kitsilano, the act which completes my Vancouver-trip ritual. It’s my tradition to eat a breakfast sandwich and a chocolate croissant before embarking on any warehouse-store marathon in the city, and fresh town clothes (they’re just clothes now, Magpie) had us feeling auspicious. Mixed up like my metaphors by the hustle of the cavernous grocery store, we spent over $500 on food and left with two brimming carts full of sugar, wine, and vegetables. The checkout clerk thought we were having a party. I fantasized about the joy of renting a rug cleaner, and felt old.

Home now. The voyagers return from the depths of the sea, or from space. Either way, atmospheric pressure exerts its normal grip, and we are helpless to resist. We switch apartments with the tenants, and they are overjoyed to be in a space large enough for their family - the birth of their first child is imminent, and we trade spaces just in time. Two days after they’re set up in the giant part of the house, our brand new neighbour arrives, complete with perfect tiny fingernails. The basement apartment is tiny perfection too. A space just large enough for two feels neutrally buoyant, and after a day of rest, I’m floating in the familiar sea of freshly painted walls and minor repairs. My parents announce their intention to visit, and they do. Drywall is patched, light fixtures re-wired correctly. We buy new gloves, and the van gets and oil change. Constantine launches his company, and I spend hours taking product photos and tweaking size charts, the inertia of my functional laptop and internet literacy solidifying into the role of social media manager. The capitalist hashtagging ceases to feel disingenuous. I do believe our things are worth buying, and so they are worth putting effort in to sell. We watch our GDT videos and edit them. I find music under creative commons licenses and we jam out to the canned jingles of Youtube’s royalty-free library before opting for a less humourous soundtrack. Would we do the GDT again? Two weeks ago, I would have said never, but now we almost regret not doing a yo-yo. “In better conditions, that would be amazing.” “Except for the Jackpine Swamp.” “Well, we could take the high alternate in better conditions.” “In better conditions, we could do it.” Maybe in another year. I suspect we have more hiking plans than years available to do them - at this point, our speculative “maybe in another year” plans fill a decade.

But what about this year’s plan? Constantine thinks the PCT is feasible, but I take it off the table. In no universe am I willingly walking into the mouth of the pandemic. The probability of illness aside, he would never be able to cross the border a second time. So what now? His googling reveals a little-known thru-hike-to-be on Vancouver Island, the Vancouver Island Spine Trail. Only one person has done it in its entirety. It’s not yet completed, but there are hand-made GPS tracks. It sounds amazing. It sounds perfect. It sounds like exactly what we need. It sounds like we won’t have to roadwalk very much at all, and every piece of this trail is on open provincial park or Crown Land. So we buy a new tent to stand in for his shredded Big Agnes while it’s replaced on warranty, and I have a minor panic attack about it because Change is Scary, and I sit writing this article on my bed at the last minute while my boyfriend and my parents eat waffles. We are driving to the ferry in an hour. I haven’t done any of my overdue writing on the GDT, and I don’t know when I’ll do it. I have to clear the fridge of perishables, and resupply at the grocery outlet in Richmond, and visit with my aunties before shuttling the van with my parents’ truck to our terminus on Cape Scott, before catching a ride back to Victoria to start hiking again. I have to actually take a look at these maps before I start walking across them. The weather looks beautiful. I can’t wait.

I’ll get to the GDT eventually, I promise you. In the meantime, I bring you the VIST.

-Magpie