All these years later, Jean’s blond hair is only a little darker. She has maintained her lean, athletic build years after marriage and her daughter’s birth, and frequently competes in running events and long distance bicycle tours such as the annual STP (Seattle-to-Portland). For some reason, perhaps her fairer skin, she has wrinkled more than I have, and sometimes shows her irritation when asked, “who’s older?” She figures they should be able to tell by looking.
As for me, my hair is an uninspiring brown, except for the patch of gray over my right ear. I’m a little heavier than Jean, but still active in the outdoor life. My hands begin to show evidence of the liver spots that decorate our mother’s hands. At five-foot-eight, I’m about an inch shorter than Jean. We have both maintained decent muscle tone, although Jean is more disciplined about it. We both have brown eyes, and have passed this dominant eye-color gene along to our daughters.
My sister and I grew up in the foothills of Washington’s Cascade Mountains, an hour east of Puget Sound, the huge saltwater hand of the Pacific Ocean that covers the Anacortes Suture Zone, a geologist’s name for this region where tectonic plates converge. As the submerged slabs grind together, they generate tremors, altering the shape of Northwest geology in the process. Such tectonic upthrusts built the Cascades, home to hanging glaciers, heather meadows, and scoop-shaped blue lakes. Below the snow bowls of the region’s volcanoes, sulfurous steam rises through vents visible to climbers. I saw the steam rising from vents at the summit of Kulshan (Mount Baker) on a climb in August 1988. At 10,000 feet, profound thoughts don’t easily come. (Think of an LP record played at too slow a speed: that is how one’s mind sounds, at altitude.) I remember being grateful that was not the day Kulshan chose to erupt.
Such a passionate landscape . . . I have wondered over the years, feeling the workings of our mother’s temper, and later the contests of will between Jean and me, whether the spores of conflict can pass, not through DNA, but through repeated contacts with crashing saltwater shorelines, quake-fissured snow bowls, and evergreen boughs whipped by wild winds. The poet Gary Snyder has written that to know oneself, one must know the plants, the landscape, and the ecosystem of place. If this is true, then to know the Pacific Northwest landscape implies the converse: knowing the passion that lies within me.
Poems rooted to place, thousands of cedar trees inhabit the Cascade Mountains. Across Georgia Strait, the cedars continue on Vancouver Island, an arm severed from the continental body by tectonic shearing. Cedar, material base of aboriginal culture, gives bark for baskets, hats, and boxes formed by steaming and shaping the wood over open fires. Cedar makes logs for houses, canoes, crest poles, and chips for smoking salmon. Falling over these fragrant Thuja plicata forests, the maritime rain, shape-changer: rain as soft misty blanket; rain as gentle cleansing drops; rain as punishing icy pellets.
Under conditions both scary and pleasing, the Pacific Rim landscape has been a perpetual source of inspiration and adventure for Jean and me. We could spend the rest of our days exploring the coast and islands, and I am sure we would die knowing only how little we know. As part of the continuing quest, my sister and I decided one year to paddle kayaks to a wilderness hot spring on the west coast of Canada’s Vancouver Island.
* * *
August has always been our biggest “trip month,” because both our birthdays fall within it, only three days apart. We drive to the Tsawassen ferry landing in mid-August. The carnival atmosphere of the dockside arts and crafts marketplace invigorates our wait for the boat. A man with a mandolin has set up an amplifier; he plays live tunes and sells CDs of his performances. Earrings, shell jewelry and pictures abound. I’m about to ask the price of some two-part wooden chairs that look like they might fit into the kayak when a loudspeaker blares us back to the truck.
Once aboard, we buy lattes from a vending machine. The caffeine helps speed us on our way, bound for the island’s west coast and Clayoquot Sound. After an uneventful crossing and drive to Tofino, we achieve our launch site. The sky hangs leaden while we rearrange gear for the launch. The launch is one of my favorite moments, overflowing with anticipation of sights unseen and experiences unlived. I look over at Jean, who has settled into her cockpit and is fitting her spray skirt to the coaming. I know she feels the anticipation too.
A couple of hours later, the patter of gray drops pelts my white plastic deck. I look a hundred yards to the west where Jean’s orange Scupper cuts smoothly through the granite-colored flat, pocked with the splats of striking drops sending out concentric rings. We’ve been paddling after a late start, the cloud cover promises no break, and I’m hungry. I scan the beaches for potential campsites. A deep backstroke turns the bow toward the beach on Vargas Island, and I point my paddle toward shore to let Jean know I’m going in. She turns in too.
The margin between beach and forest is narrow. The surface groove of a horizontal decomposing log provides a handy cache for beer cans. On the drive up, we had stopped in a tiny grocery store and discovered canned espresso with pull-tabs. We stash those in the log too, and half an hour later the boats are unpacked and tied well above the high water mark in accordance with our First Law of Survival: when carrying your kayak above the tide line, there’s no such thing as too high.
The first argument erupts over where to pitch the tent.
“If you put it there, the tide will wash right in the door,” I protest, as Jean spreads the tent over a sandy spot that looks too low.
“I’ve checked the tide table,” she says. “This spot should be fine.”
It seems to me that the First Law should apply to tents as well as boats, but I don’t say anything. I grind my teeth and hope she is right.
Next morning, I feel mixed relief and annoyance at seeing the high tide mark six inches from our tent door.
“Arms like tree trunks,” we used to say on the river, when I worked as a raft guide for a white water outfitter. On our second day out, Jean and I gaze out from our cockpits at the behemoth cedar trunks defining the shoreline of Hayden Passage. The constant strain in our upper arms reminds us that the muscles are getting bigger, pushing these boats stuffed with several hundred pounds of gear through contrary currents. Still, to compare these puny human appendages to cedar trunks is to insult the trees. My biceps burn, turning my arms to manipulate the yak into wind which has pushed consistently against us all day. Towering over us a hundred feet, the shore-hugging cedars flare their fringed tips in the stiff breeze.
Campsite prospects look bleak: the east side of Flores Island rises abruptly from the sea, without the beaches’ relieving grace. As dusk approaches, we tuck behind a hundred-foot high sea stack for relief from the wind. “There’s a rock shelf to hold the boats,” I yell crosswind to Jean. Seeing nothing better, we land on top of a huge smooth boulder at the base of the stone wall. Jean scrambles up through straggly vegetation to the shelf. I pull stuff bags out of the boats and hand them up. She stashes them as high on the cliff as she can reach, and when the boats are empty, we use a push-pull technique to lodge the boats onto the rock shelf, lashing their bowlines to cedar trunks. We climb, sometimes hand over hand, to a flat area on top of the stack, and pitch the tent among huckleberry bushes, wild roses and scrub.
The difficulty of this bivouac justifies breaking out the booze, and after a few snorts of Sambuca, we take turns reading our journal entries to each other. Jean decides she wants to write haiku, and reads me one. As soon as the last word falls, I say, “That’s eighteen syllables.” She looks startled. I feel like a shit, counting the syllables, for God’s sake. Hastily I remark on the beauty of the imagery, but it’s too late, and we tumble into the silent chasm between our separate journal universes. Fragrant green fingers at the tops of cedars wave back in the direction we struggled up a few hours ago. Eagles fishing in the channel play in the downdrafts, effortlessly adjusting wing configurations to exploit wind changes. I watch them jealously, wishing I could inhabit a nonhuman body, a shape-changing body, one that could use to advantage every wind current, every wave, every puff of steam that comes.
* * *
Small whitecaps rise against the morning. We argue about what route to take. I want to stay on the near side of the wide channel, and cross it after getting a look around the next bend shown on the chart. Jean wants to cross over now.
“You don’t always know the best way to go,” she says.
On land, especially highways, she is right. Freeways and exits make little sense to me and I often fail to find the most efficient driving route. Jean is an excellent driver, and has a genius for snaking her way effortlessly through the most chaotic asphalt spider web.
On water, however, I am more efficient. I remember the day the two of us checked out a canoe from the recreation center on Lake Whatcom. We were far from shore when heavy winds kicked up. I was in the stern and dug my paddle in perpendicularly to use as a rudder every few strokes. Of course, this made the bow paddler’s job more strenuous.
“You’re ruddering too much,” she yelled back over her shoulder, although we were on a straight course for the boat house.
“Fine,” I yelled back. “I won’t do it anymore.” I pulled my paddle up and began taking normal strokes. The canoe spun in loopy circles.
In the next few years, that out-of-control canoe proved prophetic as a symbol of our deteriorating adventures. Where once we had followed our older brothers joyfully on their wilderness forays, and later created our own, our trips now played themselves out like melodramas backed by painted scenery. We don’t understand what is happening, although we’ve tried to talk about it. We’re old enough to be past competing with each other, and we are both successful in our own styles, with no need to prove the upper hand to each other. Stubbornly we persist, planning another trip each summer, hoping the next one will weave our sistership into a more harmonious balance.
As Jean and I round the headland at Hot Springs Cove on our third day out, we spy naked bodies draped among the rocks above us. “This must be the place,” Jean says, and we smile at each other across the water. At the high cove end we see a small information board shielded by an A-frame roof, the government dock and two prefab outhouses. One rusting water pump yields a sulfurous but potable dribble. On the far side of the cove, a ramped dock rises. A boater from Vancouver tells us it is the boatel run by the Hesquat tribe; the rate is $100.00 per night. There are a few free campsites available in the park, but most visitors either sleep aboard their boats or return to Tofino the same day aboard chartered boats or helicopters. The appeal of sleeping in tent and bags has waned since we were younger, but keeping the trip low budget is a priority. We paddle along shore, on mutual alert for a free campsite.
* * *
About a year before, we had spent an entire day searching for a hot spring above the Sauk River in the North Cascades. The map said it was there; our guidebook said it was there; the trailhead sign named it. Carved into the sign were comments of the thermal faithful, polarized by the issue of whether the spring existed. “Perfect temperature,” proclaimed one carving, while next to it someone had etched, “No spring, no joke.” The intrigue added urgency to our mission, and we set out enthusiastically through woods thick with nettles and devil’s club, the path indistinct in most places and vanished in others. We reached the edge of Suiattle Creek, torrential with April’s glacier melt. The only feasible crossing was over a downed cedar log, rotting, slimy with algae and river spray, ferns and fungi sprouting along its length. Unhesitating, Jean dropped to all fours and traversed the log bridge on hands and knees, the ice-white creek churning fifteen feet below her. As I crawled across after her, infant cedars tickled my belly. I felt green slime working into my palms, and imagined I could smell sulfur from the far side of the creek.
All afternoon we traversed that shoreline. Up and down the hillside we climbed, thinking that the spring might start underground partway up the hill. An occasional faint whiff of sulfur tantalized; kept us searching longer than reasonable people would have. Too tired to engage in all-out battle, a few feeble arguments slid back and forth as to whether we should search higher or lower.
Our egos never fully recovered from our failure to locate that spring, and it recurs in conversations now and then. “Let’s hike up the Suiattle next summer,” Jean will say.
“Yeah, I’ll bet we can find it next trip,” I answer.
* * *
In addition to its undeveloped state, what makes Maquinna rare is the thermal spring at the tip of Openit Peninsula, reached via a two-kilometer stroll through virgin rain forest. The route is built of cedar shakes nailed to side rails. On many of the shakes, visiting sailors have carved the names of their craft, so the route serves as a wooden historical record of those who have visited. Jean and I read the carved names as we step: Malaguena, Sea Dreamer, Harmonica . . . giant ferns, dogwood, and orange fungi surround cedar and fir. Namaste, China Doll, Partners in Romance . . . gray squirrels and camp robbers chatter; bald eagles hang glide. Blue Sky, Blue Fjord, Blue Tango . . . what is it about the color blue that inspires so many boat names? Blue sky and blue sea might explain it in a tropical climate, but here most days the Pacific is indisputably gray and even on brilliant days, she appears more green than blue. I step on the Strathcona slab as Jean strides across Grimalkin; we round a bend and look out to the open Pacific spread under a split-shot sky, where sea water bashes cliff bases into white froth.
As the last plank appears, steam rises from a jumbled rock heap on our right. A muddy trail crosses a wooden bridge over the creek, which exits the earth a hundred feet upstream of the cliff edge, where the stream diverges into two waterfalls. The streams splash onto driftwood logs set at the base so that bathers can sit in the hot showers. From here, the water steams toward the ocean at a downhill angle of less than ten degrees. At low tide, there are four distinct pools separated by boulders, hotter to cooler as the cliff edge nears. At high tide, the spring is all one pool, and the higher the tide, the cooler the pool.
Jean and I grin, mute as we take in the cleanliness of the setting. White sand on the pool bottom scritches our bare feet as we step over rocks slick with green and purple kelp. We settle in up to our chins and meet the other soakers: a pharmacist from California and her medical-student daughter; a woman from Chile and her German husband who have survived love at first sight on a South American beach. The stone nearest the cliff is occupied by a truculent biologist from Sitka, spouting environmental harangues and apparently immune to the effects worked on the rest of us by the mineral baths. Last to arrive at the pool is Von, who lives with his dog aboard a battered green thirty-foot schooner, the “VON DO IT,” his rusting bicycle lashed to the starboard bow rail.
As we all soak, hot water lapping at our shoulders and cold salty waves crashing through rock crevices on our right, I think about the floating store proposed for this cove. Where there’s a store, there will be trash: beer bottles, candy wrappers, cigarette butts. That floating trash will make its way into this pool, below the swaying nests of eagles who soar over the cedar forest, where steam rises over the fragile Pacific ledge. Changes in the shapes of human environments are inevitable, it seems, so maybe the point is to search out the few remaining clean ones and enjoy them before it’s too late. This passive conclusion irritates me, and I sink my trunk down deep so that the waterline laps just below my nostrils. Across the pool, I see the big pink toe of Jean’s left foot rise above the waterline, wrinkled, reshaped.
* * *
Pink plastic fingers caused one of our most famous fights. Before the year we both got new Schwinns for our birthdays, we had to share one old bike cast off by our older brothers. One overcast morning, we both wanted to ride, and agreed to take turns. Jean went first, riding long lazy loops around the neighborhood. She was gone a long time. Too long. I positioned myself on the front porch, on guard for her next pass.
“It’s my turn,” I hollered as she pedaled into view. She ignored me. I had time to think up a good threat while waiting for the next lap. We had received Tiny Tears dolls for Christmas.
“You bring that bike back right now–or I’m going to cut the fingers off your doll.”
No answer. She sailed by, nose pointing straight ahead, long mane of blond hair flying out behind, a Viking battle flag unfurled.
I stalked into the house, grabbed Mom’s sewing scissors and Jean’s doll, and performed a hasty ten-digit amputation. Then I ran out to the street and held the doll aloft. Circling closer, she shrieked, slammed on the brakes, threw the bike onto the lawn and leaped for her doll.
Before taking my turn on the bike, I should have hidden my own doll.
* * *
As the weekend approaches at Hot Springs Cove, the number of incoming craft increases hourly: sailboats, tour boats, Zodiacs, even helicopters. All motorized, we note, feeling virtuous because we are the only ones to arrive via muscle power. As the crowds build, we decide to paddle out on Saturday morning’s early tide. Verbally we blame the growing throng; silently we feel fatigued from arguing, and know we’ve been together long enough.
At the peninsular headland we feel swells pulling us toward the open Pacific. We pull our paddles up, resting them across our cockpits and riding the swells. This is how a cedar log moves, I imagine, after it breaks out from its boom. How long would it take to cross the ocean if we just stopped paddling and let the currents pull us? Down the oceanic path of least resistance . . .
We turn northeast, heading for Shelter Inlet and the inside return route. The wind has been rising all day, even stronger than on our approach. Several hours later, arms heavy and stomachs gurgling, we look for a lunch spot.
“That beach looks good,” Jean says, pointing her paddle at a boggy landing left over from a logging operation.
“I bet there will be a hundred thousand mosquitoes waiting to pounce,” I protest, and the argument is on. Ignoring my objection, she paddles for the bog. I follow sullenly, rooting around under my deck to find a bag with some food in it, so I can eat in my boat.
Our post-lunch return to Tofino is fast, pushing for more mileage than comfort dictates. Whitecaps carve the bay’s surface as we round the last bluff between Tofino and us. We can see the public dock; to reach it we’ll be maneuvering in a six-knot wind blowing perpendicular to the desired line. I exhale hard, blowing out the bad air, mentally preparing for the struggle of crossing. Jean tacks as though she’s handling a small sailboat, and through my fatigue I smile. Jean hits the beach first. She unloads her stuff, and then stretches out on a grassy patch with her head on a stuffed sleeping bag. I am carrying our trip gear: stove, cook pots and tent. After I’ve landed and she does not get up to help me, I feel my blood seeping to the surface, pitch to bark. I glare at the places where her eyes would be, if I could see them through the dark glasses.
“You could give me a hand here,” I yell.
“My stuff’s already in the trunk.”
Within thirty seconds we are screaming across the parking lot about who is more of a control freak. I just want this to be over; to commence the long drive that I know will be made mostly in silence. I call out once more.
“Is it possible that we’re both over controlling?”
Silence. Then: “Well, maybe, but you are more.”
While she was growing up, Dad’s nickname for Jean was “Last Word Artist.”
I slam wet gear into the trunk, feeling like I always do, that stinging sensation as though smacked across the face by a backwards-whipping branch in the woods. Why can’t we place what is strong and true between us in a higher position than the need to have the last word? I wish we could return to that childhood innocence, framed in its place like our little faces in the vintage storybook photo. But, as any grownup will tell me, I can’t go home again.
We share so much, Jean and I: our love of wild places, our pleasure in physical exertion, and our environmental attitudes. But it is not enough. We can’t go home again, and we’ll probably never find that phantom hot spring on the Sauk. We will make plans for it, though, because to stop planning would be to admit defeat. Through all the reaching for each other’s love and admiration, all the resistance to following the other’s decision even when it’s right, round and round all the futile circles of our interwebbed lives, we persevere.
I’ve tried to blame genetics, and landscape. I’ve tried to blame anything I can think of for the lack of harmony between my sister and me. Sisters are supposed to love each other, dammit, unreservedly. She makes me crazy and I don’t know how to fix it. I’ll keep trying, though, against all reason and certainly against any expectation of success. So will Jean.
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