The Curve of Time

   “Time did not exist; or if it did it did not matter, and perhaps it was not always sunny.” M. Wylie Blanchet starts her iconic memoir of sailing the British Columbia inlets in the 1920’s and 30’s with her five children. “Standing in the Present, on the highest point of the curve, you can look back and see the Past, or forward and see the future, all in the same instant.”

As we start in on the final few days of our summer leg, now following the curve of Vancouver Island more east than south, we feel that curve. We rounded Cape Beale this morning, made our eastward turn past Pacheca Point an hour later, saw Cape Flattery appear off our starboard bow, and can now see the Olympic Peninsula fully stretched out to starboard across the 12-mile Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Following this curve, I see the summer memories pass behind us – watching whales breach and sea otters play, swimming in chilly waters, struggling to get our sea legs, planning and navigating, scrambling over rocky shores, running from biting flies, fishing and crabbing, dealing with whiny toddlers awake past their bedtimes, exploring the remains of cabins and middens, running from waves, competing to find the best shells, bushwacking through rooty trails. There is a special feeling – an almost palpable presence of that curve of time – when you realize that this is what Blanchet and her kids did a century ago and what Native American kids have done here on these shores for thousands of years.

Simultaneously, you can’t help but imagine what the early explorers must have gone through- Vancouver, Drake, DeFuca, Fidalgo, and others – coming into these waters without charts or GPS, thinking that down every deep inlet was a route to an inland sea, wondering all the time where dangerous rocks and reefs were lurking below the surface.

As we have followed the curve of land and time around the island, our perspective began changing. A few days ago, we found ourselves looking squarely toward the future, which looms large in the Unknown up ahead. There are voyages into less familar waters to prepare for – the western coast of the U.S., and then Mexico after that. And in a very short time, it will become our Present.

It feels odd to be finishing this leg of the adventure – a journey that has certainly been a shakedown cruise, but also a huge adventure and a massive accomplishment in its own right. I’ll reflect later on many of the specific and practical things we’ve learned along this trip, but for now, I just want to express appreciation for the ability to do it, to be able to see and explore a coast that so few people get to see, to live a little off the land with its rich resources of berries and fish, to get used to a new lifestyle, and for a moment to slow our lives down enough to feel – sometimes fleetingly and sometimes deeply – that curve of time upon which we all travel. I feel joy in becoming a small part of of this island’s story and the anonymity of all those who have gone before and will yet go.