Summer of 1997 in B.C.

22 April, 1998 I went to Hanson Island, British Columbia to research whales but what happened there was much more than that for me. I made a kind of peace with myself while sitting atop the cliff staring at the water and also some decisions about my life, decisions that have still not been set into words but are no less decisions for that fact. In some ways they're even more important than those decisions that I make consciously because I don't have any way to twist the words into the form that I want them to take, or to hide them because they're so much more intrinsic.

This was one of my favourite places to take photographs from, as is made evident by the overwhelming number of photos taken from this exact spot. :)

Looking at this photo brings back the wonder I felt on West Cracroft Island, the island this photo was taken from. I wish wholeheartedly that I could remember all of the moments like this where the sun spilling across the water took my breath away but there are simply too many of them. I am glad only to have captured some of these moments permanently so that even when the memory fades my emotions can be recalled at a moment's notice.

I loved to awaken to fog outside of my tent, to watch it literally rolling over and past us. I was lucky the morning I took this to watch it slide by only on the OTHER side of the Strait; for me, this was as close to heaven as I'm likely ever to get.

What can I say about this other than that I'm reading? I'm sure you needed that pointed out, too. :)

This photo, I might add, is NOT an astounding photo - no showers, dust, and lots of time in the sun and away from mirrors doesn't do much for a person. :)

Actually, I guess there is more to say. See the duct tape on the bottom of my shoes? Having no money, my mother sent me the first pair of decent-looking tennis shoes she could rummage up at Goodwill. They were some high-quality shoes, too, as you can tell by the way they're taped together. (I had to do that after three days of wearing them. :) I got a lot of respect for those shoes. A common kayaker exclamation was, "Whoa, you're hardcore!"

The man who took this photo was a nut, but in a good way. He was a nut in the way that cracks people up even while they wonder if it's such a good idea to be spending weeks on an island with him. He was down the island from me, a little over an hour down on foot, but others camped with him. I have a picture I might scan later, one of him sitting cross-legged behind a newspaper covered with small bones. In his hands he's holding a skull. I think I'll remember that for a long time; how he explained that he knew the skull was a bear skull based on its structure and size.

This was the view from my tent in its first location, before I had to move it out of the wind during a windstorm. Surprisingly enough, the sound of the generator running next to the tent lulled me to sleep my first few nights there; I was disappointed when its roar subsided after each hour of uptime was over. It made me feel that much closer to home, I guess - what could bring me closer to home than grating, constant noise? ;)

This is a picture of Gigi, my wonderful Austrian goose-raising and -researching friend. I was to her right but cut my half of the picture off to avoid scaring anyone away from my page. You only THINK I'm kidding!

Gigi will be back at Orcalab this summer but, sadly enough, I've decided that I won't. It will be sad to know that I could have seen her again, but by not going I think I'm reserving a special place for it in my heart and my memories. I don't imagine I'll ever do anything like it again.

Memories don't always have to be sad. Even though they're past, never to be experienced again, the things that we remember helped to shape us.

I've always loved clouds and even though I know that they're patches of moisture and nothing more, I'll always see them as magical other-world things, the way I did when I was a child. The light was so incredible, the way that it shifted in the spaces between the clouds, that I couldn't help but take this photograph (from the back of Paul and Helena's boat).

Gee... I guess it's sun across the water. That must be why I so eloquently named this picture 'acrossagua.'

If I scanned all of my photos, an inordinate amount would be of this very island as it was right across from the lab. Most, though not all, were taken on my favourite shift (which was, coincidentally, the one that most people hated), the 3AM to 7AM shift. I loved to watch the sun cast rainbows through the clouds, to shift the colour of my perception of the water.

JOURNAL ENTRIES, WHALE NOTES AND LETTERS SOON TO COME