The Secret Lake the Faller Showed Me

Logged Area Surrounding Black Lake

I have known a few fallers.  As a boy, a timber faller, his dented orange hard hat and red checked jacket, talked to my father at the truck window about the way the earth thumps when the big trunks land. They were big trunks in those days. I watched the man step off the road, over logs, up the bank. His friendly wave before picking up his saw.  The tattered ends of his jeans lifting and dropping on his high shafted boots as he stepped over debris and slash. Dad started the truck, and we headed on to the fishing hole.  I turned in my seat to watch one of the trees at the edge of the cut fall down hill. The springiness of it as it landed.

A faller, his nostrils full of wood dust and the smell of chain oil, feels the power of internal combustion attached to a flying chain of blades, the challenge and exhilaration of dropping large pillars of carbon, tons of wood - the neck stretching openness in the canopy for the blue sky  to step around in fractals between the remaining treetops.

Plug for the gender mold. The archetypal-larger-than-life-macho-logger.  Steel toed boots, the heavy fabric of faller chaps stained with oil, the saw jamming fabric shirt brown with sweat and dirt, the constant current of danger like an eel in a river, the constant numbness in the arms from vibration, the finger tips buzzing.


After the saw is snuffed into silence, after the foam removed from ears, after the sky begins sucking away as much heat as the sun brings in, now low to the horizon - then he stops and ponders the beauty of the place, the funny way the cut opens the forest like an ancient story opens a deepness in the soul. The sweet smell of cut logs mixed with the minty crackle of gum. Good to end a day alive, and then go for a beer with the others in the warm loud span of laughter and forgetting.

A Fire Warden I met on a dusty logging road this summer on the hottest day of the year showed me a lake I could paddle on. His lake. One of his secret spots. He found it years ago when he was a faller. We sat in our vehicles, window to window talking about the changes in the forests - small contractors, more fatalities, a changing way of life. Companies from China securing fibre rights, converting mills to specialty products. And then, he said, he was married to a woman who was Chinese.

The walk to the lake was worth it, he told me, because he had saved a swath of old growth trees. The hillsides around the lake were covered in uniform carpet of new growth as I looked around after easing the canoe into the water from my shoulder.

The same familiar shortness of young trees. But along the edge of the water on one half of the lake a fringe of large trees. The faller's gift. He had asked the timber boss if they could be saved. The saws were already wining their way down the hill overlooking the lake, the trucks hauling away the big cellulose tubes. The boss said no, then a few days later, called back, "OK," he said, "The rest won't be cut." Sort of a miracle.

I paddled and admired the stand of old growth. At the south end of the lake, I tied the boat and walked in the shallow water.

The air was hazy with smoke from distant forest fires. The wind had been blowing earlier but had dropped. The shade of the massive trees seemed to provide an oasis from the heat and smoke.  The pattern of wave splash along the rocks.

They are rugged. They curse and spit and compete and joke. The rough company of men.  The guys who gave me a ride when I locked my keys in my Tracker a few years ago looked at me reluctantly from their Silverado LT 4X4. Working hard not to call me an idiot to my face. In the woods, regardless of how stupid someone is, you help him out.

Almost all the lakes I wish were protected, I accessed from the edge of a logging road. The patchwork quilt of cuts visible from space, and me disappearing like the speckles on a trout's back after you let it go.

on the hillside
a logger steps from log to log
hot saw swinging

Blackwater Lake

Vancouver Island Backroad Mapbook 4th edition - Map 39 G3
Atlas of Canada Link:Blackwater Lake
Latitude and Longitude: 50° 11' 2" N 125° 35' 9" W
Decimal Degrees: 50.184° N 125.586° W
UTM Coordinates: 10U 315386 5562301
Topographic Map Sheet Number: 092K04

Trip Date: July 1st, 2010

Blackwater Lake is a long narrow, somewhat winding, lake with a range of shoreline features including reed and sedge filled bays, rocky points, and an interesting estuary at the south end of the lake where the water from Amor lake flows in via a short creek.

Paul and I  arrived mid-morning after camping for two nights on Mohun Lake. The steep path down to the water was somewhat off-putting but we decided it would be worth it. The little beach where you put the canoes in  was sandy and clean with a view to the southerly stretch of the lake.

We paddled south, the wind for the most part at our backs, and Paul was dive-bombed by a defensive gull who apparently thought he was getting too close to her nest. We stayed to the western shore and when Paul pointed out that I was paddling past a beaver lodge I looked at the lodge and into the water and saw large plumes of mud stirred up below my canoe. We did not, however, ever see the beaver, so I'm not sure where she surfaced.



Along the shoreline of the wide curve of the southern estuary we noticed that small cones had collected in hollows in the silt along with what at first looked like deer droppings. Upon further observation I believe they were actually pieces of the peat-like material that formed a mat higher up on the beach. The pieces of compacted soil had been rounded by wave action and jostling with the cones and together they had uncovered the colourful sand below. Fresh water clams were secured in several of the indentations.

We tentatively ventured onto the delta of the estuary at the end of the lake and gingerly walked around taking photos. The ground was muddy and appeared to have recently been underwater.

 I took multiple shots of the inflow to stitch together later with Photoshop.

The drop in water left some lillies to flower without boyancy.

We paddled back along the eastern shore and eventually spotted two fluffy balls of feathers that turned out to be ambulatory gull chicks with black spots all over their heads. The call of the mother was unlike most gull's I had heard, and the distinctive colouration of the chick's heads made me confident I would be able to identify them at home. It has not proved easy. The chicks were near a cliff face, hinting that they may have been Glaucous-Winged gulls. The raptor-like call also suggested this. In memory the parent's seemed mostly white and smaller with greater wing to body capacity that Herring or California gulls, leading me to wonder if they might have been Bonaparte's Gull, but I think I would have noticed the black head.

Passing the put-in we ventured down stream towards Farewell Lake. On the way we investigated an abandoned canoe.

Abandoned canoe
water line higher
on the inside

The outflow wound around a bit, then presented us with a large log jam. Paul got out to look beyond the jam, but there was another one only a few hundred yards downstream. We decided to head back upstream.

It had threatened rain for most of our paddle, and the wind had been strong at times, but as we made our way back towards the put-in, blue sky took the place of the clouds. Climbing back up to our vehicle we shed sweaters and shirts.

I was able to take some shots for a high dynamic range photos which captured well the quality of this beautiful Sayward Forest lake.

Gray Lake

Vancouver Island Backroad Mapbook - Map 39 G6
Atlas of Canada Link: Gray Lake
Latitude and Longitude: 50° 3' 25" N - 125° 35' 49" W

Trip Date: August 21st, 2009



There are 4 vehicles already occupying sites when we arrive late Friday night after spending the day working our way up island, stopping to buy groceries and tea at the Courtney Tea Centre - one of the best tea retailers on the Island by the way. The Gray Lake Recreation Site has 6 sites, so we have our choice of two. We quickly set up camp and then head out for a paddle, just as the mist starts to rise off the lake around 8:00 pm.
We paddle north, away from the sandy beach and James heads off into the growing dark. I set up my camera on the tripod and start taking pictures. The aperture is wide open and the shutter speed down to 1.3. I can hardly see anything through the view finder.
After a few minutes the auto focus on my camera stops working, too little light. I set it to manual and keep shooting.
Finally, as the last light ebbs from the sky I get a nice shot of the mist after waiting for the canoe to come to a complete stop and I hold my breath while the shutter yawns open for 3 long seconds.
Within minutes I find it hard to see anything and rummage in my bag for my headlight. Down the lake I see Jame's headlight wink on. There is a chill in the air now and I listen to the silence, the smell of cedar faint and mixed with something indistinct, a soft earthy smell, plant essential oils breaking down after so many long dry days. There is a fire ban, so there is no smoke, no cheery flickering lights along the lake, only the darkness of trees against the slightly less dark blue black sky.

In the morning, startling James with my suggestion to paddle before breakfast, I head for the shore, the canoe beaded with dew, my warm pollen sweater a reminder that late August nights can be cool.

After James has a bowl of cereal he joins me on the water and we paddle down the misty lake, taking it easy, enjoying the atmosphere and watching time pass. On the remote western shore, something large thrashes in the underbrush as we glide by, but we don't see what it is. We keep going to the end of the lake and head up the inflow.

We paddle up stream, water dripping from the bushes on shore, a silence amid the trees that seems to absorb our voices, we talk in low tones, pilgrims visiting a holy site.
After passing an open marshy area, we travel between high rounded black banks, grooved here and there with otter and beaver trails, the sharp tooth-edged stubs of willow and sweet gale where the beavers have harvested. The canoes drift to a stop where the creek turns into a rocky trail, the water to low to paddle further.
We head back, the day still gaining light. On the lake again a woman steps from a camper on shore and seeing us, waves. We wave back. A man steps from the trailer behind her and puts his arm around her waist. We glide on, the bows of our canoes peeling open the refection of the sky.
For more images from this paddle, please visit the photo album here: http://stillinthestream.jalbum.net/Gray%20Lake/index.html

What

In September of 2007 I purchased a new canoe from Placid Boatworks.

The large fibreglass and wood canoe I inherited from my father, and still own, would not be sufficient for what I wanted.

I needed to be able to carry a canoe, by myself, to and from a variety of small bodies of water; some with minimal or no easy put ins.

After much research I decided that the Spitfire (pictured above) was the best canoe for the task. Light (22 lbs), strong (graphite and Kevlar construction), and maneuverable it is also a beauty to behold.

Here are a few of the reasons I chose the Spitfire:

• Placid Boatworks' quality is well known and their response to my inquiries and requests were prompt. They delivered my boat clear across the country with a minimum of hassle and confusion.


• No other canoe company that I researched produces a canoe this light with a gel coat and two tone hull - white bottom to hide scratches, tinted transparent clear coat sides for good looks and abrasion resistance.


• The canoe is virtually maintenance-free; the seat and gunwales are carbon composites as well as the hull.


• The design is attractive, the seat is comfortable, and the performance on the water consistent.


• Local retailers and large canoe manufacturers proved to be unwilling or unable to help me find the boat I needed. Retailers were more interested in selling me a kayak and those that did try to help confessed that their suppliers would not be able to get me a boat for months. Placid Boatworks delivered my canoe in under a month.

I plan to purchase a second canoe so that family and friends can accompany me on some trips, and this boat I hope to purchase locally. At the moment I am waiting to try the Wenonah Wilderness canoe which is new for 2008. I also hope to travel to the mainland to try out several of Clipper’s boats.

I am also considering small tandum canoes as an option for my second boat.

My vehicle is a 1999 Geo Tracker outfitted with a Thule rack. This little fuel efficient, no frills, 4x4 has taken me on many miles of back roads and over some truly impressive washouts. What a shame that there is no small 4x4 like this being sold in North America today. How can we satisfactorily enjoy the wilderness with carbon spewing monster SUV’s?

This shot is taken on the road to Lacy Lake.