LEAVING SOMETIMES
There’s a little passage between the rocks and Keats Island, just before you come to Home Island, or Salmon Rock as many people call it. At times, our canoes can’t paddle through this gap due to low tide. At high tide however, we can paddle through easily. And when we can we usually slow our pace simply because this pretty little grotto of rock and forest seems such a special place.
So special is this passage in fact, that our Gibsons Paddle Club has had a brass plaque made and it’s affixed to one of the rock faces. It’s a plaque to commemorate those of our paddling family who have passed. When that unfortunate, but inevitable event happens, we wait until the right tides allow it, and we gather as a fleet in our very own, and very special little “chapel on the water”.
I’ve paddled through that little passage hundreds of times over the past 20 years, and I’ve always known there’d be a painting there for me one day. It was a July sunset in 2020 that I found the painting as we paddled through the passage on our way home from a glorious evening excursion. As soon as I saw the arbutus tree lit up by the setting sun, I knew I’d found my painting. We stopped the canoe, I took some photographs and paddled on.
Our Paddle Club has a habit of inventing names for some of the destinations we paddle to out of Gibsons Harbour. Not found on any official chart, the names tend to be meaningful to only us. Names like “Suzanne’s Bay” or “Remember When” are just a couple of examples. In this case, we’ve given our little passage a name based on the fact that we can’t always negotiate it. It’s only sometimes that conditions let us in. Thus, the name of our special route is “Sometimes Passage”.
Now, I hope my title makes sense. Now you can see that I found the image for my painting as I was “LEAVING SOMETIMES”.
