🇩🇰 Originally published in Danish — automatically translated to English
Beautiful British Columbia lives up to its name. Both Vancouver and Mayne Island, the only two places we have visited, have been beautiful. That is what stands at the center. You can read about Vancouver and see pictures in the two previous blog posts. Here come the stories from Mayne Island.
One of my husband's colleagues, now a friend to all of us, lives in a tiny house on Mayne Island, off Vancouver, an hour or so by boat from the mainland. On the way out, the ferry stops at one island before Mayne and a couple after, before it turns back.
If you're lucky on the crossing, you can see whales. Both times, we saw just the back of a humpback whale, actually two. Either way, you are lucky to sail from Vancouver to the Islands, out in a small strait in the Pacific, where it is simply endlessly beautiful.
Mayne is one of the really small islands. 1,200 people live there year-round, and many more during the holidays and in summer. Never in my life have I seen so many homes built on travel trailers and RVs. Beautifully fitted with raised wooden roofs or decks, wooden structures around them, on top of them, all over. There aren't many building permits to be had, but there aren't any problems with these temporary structures either, at least not with the authorities. The island has three grocery stores, one of which is exactly what you dream of: vegetables from a local farm, all the good, expensive organic stuff you want to eat, and, naturally, a corner with natural body care, tie-dye clothes, dreamcatchers, and other iconic hippie artifacts.
A population of Bambis inhabits the island, which has no large predators. The Bambis, fallow deer, are an invasive species, introduced to the island by someone who kept them as farm animals for meat. Then they got loose and have figured out how to live on the island. It is wonderfully cozy, even if, from a nature perspective, it isn't quite ideal. There are points for spotting the one that is completely black, and for spotting the albino. They trip around safely, nibbling the grass, and all the residents have fenced in their gardens quite thoroughly if they want to grow a plant or two.
Because of this invasive species, the first sign you see when you drive off the ferry says: All Roads at Any Time, which is truly, totally right. All drives on the island are very short; fifteen minutes is really long — and one evening, when we drove just that far back from the lighthouse to the house we were borrowing, we saw 32 by the roadside. Indeed, all roads all the time.
We also saw a few Columbian black-tailed deer, though they are shyer. An owl sat for a whole hour on a post just across the street, then came back a few hours later to sit on a power line instead. The otter popped its head up once as we sat by the lighthouse, watching the evening light and the seals lounging along the shore. A couple of times, we saw sea lions in the binoculars, but no orcas, which we had otherwise set our hearts on. They are there, but you have to be lucky to see them. A rich birdlife, and big trees, especially maple, arbutus, and cedar, shape the picture, and the beauty never ends.
Our friend has a hammock in the garden and a couple of deck chairs, which we have enjoyed for stargazing and resting. Most days I took a wonderful nap under the chestnut tree with a big duvet, doing the meditative exercise of listening to nature and letting my thoughts slow as I fell asleep. That, too, is a truly fantastic nature experience. The silence, the very rare human sounds, rustling, wind, birds, insects.
What else was Mayne Island? A clear picture of what kind of house we would like to build ourselves when we one day get there again, wonderfully beautiful hikes, especially the last one, where we walked ten kilometers around the largest of the "parks," an old forest of great, great beauty. We walked until we were completely tired. We walked until it got dark. One of the very, very best things.
Mayne Island was also conversations about culture and nature, about being a new culture on someone else's land, about First Nations people, about being human. My husband's colleague, now a friend to all of us, has so many traits like mine that we burst out laughing many times. Small things like how a pillowcase should feel, and the phenomenon of bringing your own apron, even when traveling carry-on only, books we read, and the feeling of spoons, silence, freedom. Tamara gave me a book by Richard Wagamese, a First Nations author she loves very much, a book I am really looking forward to reading.
My now-grown daughter #2, Silke, excelled at baking wonderful cookies — yet another good reason to bring a food universe back to the blog — while my youngest son and I fought our way through the third week of our keto diet. One of the days we had a chocolate workshop, chocolate that can actually be made in a keto version — what a treat for those of us who had been eating coleslaw and tofu for fourteen days.
The picture is neither of cookies nor of coleslaw, but of Nessie, a tea infuser poking its head up out of the loveliest mug, which we were lucky enough to borrow along with the house.
After five days, we packed up everything and moved on. The ferry trip back to the mainland can be both the end and the beginning of this story. Endlessly beautiful at sunrise, featuring the humpback whales again, briefly, quite cold. With our noses pointed towards Las Vegas, it's okay to freeze a little.
Oh, yes: a small nomad miracle. My routine with my daily contact lenses is to run almost completely out, or completely out, before I remember to order new ones, and this time I ran into the problem that in both the US and most of Canada you need a doctor's prescription to buy glasses and contact lenses. So I had to find a supplier in British Columbia, where it is legal to sell contact lenses without a prescription (but not glasses), and ordered so last-minute that I was wearing my very last pair when the box arrived on the final day before we moved on.
Have I learned anything from it? Every SINGLE time, I think I have, that this time I'll remember. I wonder if I actually will next time?
And one more closing note: it was on Mayne Island that I started a pocket notebook again and experienced once more that my head simply needs to offload all sorts of things, and that the pocket notebook I started in Prague, which was meant to be exactly that, has turned into a Morning Pages routine that I love love love and call my Morning Miracle. So a little Japanese pocket notebook I bought in Vancouver, with simply the loveliest paper, is now my third little book to come out in the morning, and the only one that stays out all day. Good grief, it's so nice to get rid of the phone and find that quiet focus again. I can warmly recommend a pocket notebook and simply seeing whether it solves the problem every time you reach for your phone. Capture, clarify, organize, engage. Exactly.
From Mayne Island you can see the US. The snow-capped mountain on the horizon is in the US. Strangely close, even though you perhaps couldn't be further from the US I know, walking among Bambi and arbutus and freestyle off-grid living on a little island off Vancouver.
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