Day 5 Nuchatlitz/Nootka Island Sea Kayak Trip

Tuesday, May 22nd/07 21.44
Island 44, Nuchatlitz, west coast of Vancouver Island

I have a really good view from right here. I'm looking south over the Nuchatlitz to Louis Bay and Ferrer Point, where we're going tomorrow. To the right of that is the open Pacific. Everything's grey.

We had sun & haze & cloud today. We were sad to leave Catala so early. Another night would've been good to go camp on the northern sandy point, where there's a trail to a lake. But we wanted to get off the island & back into this area.

I cooked pancakes this morning & we left. A crossing & then stopped on Island 40, where there's a cool campsite on the point, with sand & Indian paintbrush & columbine.

We kept going b/c I was really set on exploring the actual ins & outs of the Nuchatlitz proper. I got kind of edgy b/c I really wanted to see it. We paddled to our campsite on 40 & ate lunch, unpacked, & took off again solo this time, to explore. I just wanted time to do that.

We were looking for water, too. I wanted to look at all the IR [Indian Reserve] areas. I didn't stop on any for quite a while, though. Finally I was looking for water up a little runoff thing that ended at a cliff. I followed it up, & then noticed a worn trail going up. As soon as I stepped onto it I could tell it was a human trail. Just inside up there were all these burial boxes! It startled me, & it was so cool. Four boxes or so, all green & old. Mostly broken. There was a skull right there in front of me on the rock, & some human bones, like arm or leg. And a full skeleton curled inside the one box. You could still see the cloth & stuff it was wrapped in. One box was pretty much preserved, unopened & unbroken. There were some old white people's stuff too, that they must have been buried with -- a pair of old old binoculars. And also a huge rock with black earth or something on top, looking exactly like a native person sitting w/a cape around them, & a mask, like Dzonoqua-- ooo like that with the mouth. A hummingbird was hanging out right at the trail entrance.

When I came back out, I could see Sarah across at the IR. I called to her. It was lucky she was right there so I could show her.

Then she left (she had found water), and I went to check out the IR. I walked in at the left & into the forest & there were all these graves, headstones. It was a more modern graveyard, but still with people born in the late 1800's. One really stuck out to me b/c it was just a weathered grey very simple wooden cross, with the woman's name on it. She was over a hundred, and died in 1998. It surprised me that even now there are people buried that simply. Who was her family? What was her story? There was a hummingbird at that graveyard, too.

So that was a lot of death for today. I don't want to think about it anymore, but it was really cool to find the burial boxes. I've only ever seen one from a distance before. You could see, too, how one box was a genuine bentwood box, bent, & with the spruce pegs & fluted inside.

I explored one more beach, on our island, got back in my kayak, ran into Sarah on land walking. Made camp, we had barbecued peanuts & beer & chocolate again on the beach, so lucky it's still not raining. I made dinner, set up my tent, & I'm off to bed.

We saw sea otters today too. We've seen deer as well. I hope we see wolves on Nootka Island. The winds & weather sound so good for the next few days.

I have to look up what hummingbirds mean to the people out here, & I have to see if the Esperanza mission is the same place we camped at on night two. God nat. Over to my campsite in the corner.