NARRATIVE

narrative WORDS SUSAN BEIDERWIEDEN X ILLUSTRATION SIERRA LUNDY

OF DREAMS AND TRAVEL

amfield or bust” was our rallying cry and the destination “B for a mini-staycation last August. In a year of suspended hopes and upended dreams, we stretched the definition of home in Victoria on Vancouver Island to include the entire island, the 43rd largest of 322 listed islands in the world. With mounting deaths in the spring due to COVID-19 and travel reduced to trips to the grocery store or walks around the block, our world had shrunk. As the curve flattened by summer, the provincial health officer gave her cautious blessings to venture beyond our neighbourhood. Wanting to expand our horizons, we set sight on the tiny west coast village of Bamfield, population 179 (2016 census). Now, if planning to stay in an isolated location in a year already full of self-isolation seems strange, it fit the times. Our mini-staycation was intended to helped normalize an abnormal year—a year in which I had intended to travel and to write about traveling. To celebrate my 70th birthday, I had planned a solo walk in Northern Spain on the Camino de Santiago. Relinquishing dreams takes time, but knowing my losses are insignificant compared to many helped me accept altered plans. But my exploring nature chafed under the restraints. As spring approached and many were debating the future of the travel industry, I became restless. Pico lyre wrote reassuringly in The Globe and Mail that, “The desire to travel is as universal as the urge to eat or drink.” It helped knowing I wasn’t the only restless Canadian, despite my countless urban walks and hikes, and after completing the Vancouver Island portion of the Great Trail. Bamfield—with its two-lane, washboard, pot-holed gravel roads that narrow to a single-lane bridge, where 18-wheeler trucks hurtling toward you—tends to discourage the average tourist. Or at least, it discourages those without a pickup truck or four-wheel-drive vehicle. And with its lone hotel, two general stores, limited food options and water taxi as the only transportation between East and West Bamfield, it is not designed for mass tourism. It was perfect. Despite COVID-19 restrictions that kept the Marine Science Centre and the Marine and Lifesaving Station closed to visitors and prevented access to First Nations lands, including Pachena Bay and the terminus of the West Coast Trail, or the ability to visit the historic and actively manned Cape Beale Lighthouse, established in 1874 as BC’s first lighthouse, it was still idyllic. Strolling the wooden 0.8-kilometre boardwalk, maintained by the Department of Highways, in the late August weather can only be described as halcyon days of summer. On a flawless day we discovered some history of the village, spoke with a few people and walked in the sand on Brady’s Beach. We enjoyed happy hour sitting on a bench looking out at Barkley Sound as fishing boats and kayakers returned to the harbour. We seemed to be the only tourists that day but knew all fishing resorts and cabins around the area were filled, as were most Vancouver Island accommodations. I discovered this while trying to book a place to stay earlier in July after interprovincial travel restrictions had been lifted. It seemed half the population of Canada was discovering BC in 2020. Campgrounds, motels and fishing resorts were all booked, with some visitors even sleeping in their cars. That caused us to scrap plans for Cape Scott with stops in Telegraph Cove and

Sointula, as everything was already booked by the time I began planning. And casting our sights on a place more remote and off the beaten path allowed us to find a room in Bamfield.

Always curious about the world as a kid, I loved geography and projects involving travel. I loved learning about other countries, and how others lived—exploring lives that were different from mine, in my safe, traditional mid-western environment. Travelling, I hoped, would allow me to discover what lay beyond my neighbourhood.

As a 21-year-old, I was about to embark on my first trip, or as I called it, “The Grand Tour of the Continent.” Holding the ticket overhead and dancing for joy, I felt I was on the precipice of something bigger than just a trip. I couldn’t have told you exactly what “it” was back then, but I knew “it” was a precipice and exciting. I booked three weeks in Europe with a friend, planning to stay with her sister who would be our personal guide. Then, the two of us would leave Germany on our own and get lost in Europe. The day the ticket came in the mail, I heard a voice in my head saying, “you have arrived.”

Like many baby boomers growing up in the ‘50s, I knew adulthood came as a gift wrapped in expectations and tied up with social pressures. Once I had settled the issue of career, marriage and family still loomed. Unlike some friends, I had managed to delay that path by pursuing an education and working another year to save for my first trip, all the while attending countless weddings and baptisms.

Now, as a 70-year-old, I can see that I traded one adventure for another kind. When a surprise proposal and diamond ring came along with the promise of life in Canada, I ripped up the flimsy, four-page ticket and cancelled my flight. I remember a fleeting feeling of loss as I tossed the brochures in the waste can, as if something was slipping away. But “it” was beyond my ability to define or articulate then as I turned my attention and resources to plan a wedding and a new life. I recall telling myself, “Europe will always be there.”

After a journey of nearly 25 years together in Canada with three kids, two degrees, career changes, the loss of both sets of parents, and the death the family dog, my husband and I were finally able to embark for Europe.

Now, nearing the milestone of almost 50 years together as we remember past trips, I can say with confidence that Europe will be there. Maybe a different Europe as we will also be different after coming through these traumatic and trying times, but Europe will wait.

I wonder what my 21-year-old self would have experienced and learned in the Europe of the 1970s? Whatever “it” might have been, I now know that the 21-year-old who was poised on the brink of self-discovery embarked on a different type of adventure, one that outlasted a six-week whirlwind tour.

As for solo travel? I learned to navigate Europe on my own after taking my first long walk on the Camino de Santiago a few years ago and I am hooked. I eagerly anticipate walking from A Coruña on the Bay of Biscay to Muxía on the wild Atlantic next. When my self-proclaimed “non-walker” husband and I return to Europe, I’ll remain to complete my delayed birthday hike. Meanwhile? We wait.

Our rallying cry is “Sointula or bust!”

Do you have a good story to tell — and the ability to write it? Boulevard readers are invited to submit stories for consideration and publication in the Narrative section. Stories should be 800 to 1,200 words long and sent to managing editor Susan Lundy at lundys@shaw.ca. Please place the word “Narrative” in the subject line.

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