Excerpt from the “The Last Island – a Naturalist’s Sojourn on Triangle Island”

 

Introduction

 “In order to go on it is necessary to go back.”
.......Lawrence Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet

  

August 15, 1996

      I am falling upward – the ground dropping away so fast my stomach clenches. Suddenly it is as if no time has passed – I am twenty-three, not thirty-nine. Once again I have been seduced by a romantic notion of adventure, and, once again the moment of departure has filled me with disbelief – for some reason I have planned to fly off the edge of the world.

    As we leave the long sand beach of Cape Scott behind, I imagine how we must look to the hikers who have set a yellow tent there – a helicopter growing smaller and smaller until it is a tiny speck, an insect which has lost its bearing and is flying inexplicably out to sea.

    I lean on the cold glass of the window, to see the Scott Islands scattered below us, the first low and heavily wooded, like fragments of Vancouver Island, unmoored and set adrift, the furthest rugged and treeless. Finally we seem to leave land behind.

    “Flying out here, over nothing but water makes me nervous” I confess to the pilot.

    “Me too” he says, adjusting his headset and giving me a quick sideways glance and an incomprehensible smile.

     The thrum of the blades makes conversation impossible. Their blur is mesmerizing. I’m gripped by a deep skepticism. How can they keep us aloft until we get there? Surely we are not meant to do this.

   As if to reassure me, the pilot points. “There she is.” 

   Over forty kilometres out, a dark shape hunches against the sky: Triangle Island, the last island.

   As we get closer it resolves like a Polaroid: immense cliffs rise straight up from the sea. At their feet huge waves explode into white spray.

      For a moment I’m stunned that this place is real. Over the years it has become imaginary – its remoteness transforming memory to dream. But it has been here all the time. While I was absorbed in sixteen years of my own life, the rituals of the island’s seasons, the private lives of its creatures, were still unfolding.

    Birds fly up from golden slopes in a dark swarm as we pass over the first ridge. Far below me is the long curve of a bay. Three tiny figures stand in front of a cabin waving madly. The helicopter slows and drops, nimble as a dragonfly. A moment later we touch down and I step once more onto Triangle Island.

    A woman runs towards us smiling. Her hair is light brown, a nest of tangled dread-locks with bright cotton strands, beads and shells woven into it. She thrusts out her hand.

    “Hi, I’m Laura.”

     A compact man  striding energetically behind her introduces himself as Richard. His curly hair is pulled back into a ponytail; his luxuriant beard is dusted with crumbs of Granola he’s eating by the handful. He wears threadbare pants with wide tears at the knees and the backside; his shoes are bound with duct tape. I feel too tidy, my clothes too clean and pressed, like a Victorian missionary meeting a jungle tribe.

    They look past me, at the boxes of groceries the pilot is heaving out of the helicopter, grab them eagerly and hurry back to the cabin. I shoulder my pack and duffel bags and follow them along the narrow terrace between cliffs and beach. I note the familiar signs explaining that Triangle Island is a seabird colony and restricted and am reminded why I am here – for the same reason I first came here – to study Tufted Puffins. With a shock I read a new sign: “Anne Vallée Ecological Reserve.” A memory of the face of that lost friend, as I watched her waving from this shore, sweeps over me.

     I shake myself and carry on to the cabin. To my relief it is not the decrepit structure I knew but a new aluminum frame covered with wallboard and siding. It faces the sea and is surrounded by cow parsley, stinging nettle, ferns, salmonberry, and stalks of figwort thick with bumblebees intently prying red flowers open.

    A woman in her early twenties, like the other biologists here, emerges from the doorway. Her dark hair is loose around her shoulders.

   “Welcome to Triangle Island” she says, “I’m Hannah”.  Her eyes light up when she sees the food.

 “We ran out of fresh stuff two weeks ago,”  she says as if apologizing for dispensing with any more polite conversation.  Darting towards Laura, she snatches a box from her, and begins rummaging through it, triumphantly holding up ripe tomatoes, basil, loaves of  bread.

    I step inside the cabin. It smells like curry and wet socks.  I let my eyes adjust to the dimness, and look around.  The main room has a table, a gas range and oven, a sink, and shelves stacked with food.  Hanging over a wood stove in the corner is a canopy of drying racks festooned with rain gear.  On the wall closest to the sea is a window and a counter for working.  The walls are crammed with shelves of reference books.  I cross the narrow floor in three strides. The cabin seems impossibly small for all of us, yet I know that when the storms roll off the Pacific, finally finding some land to punish, we’ll gratefully hurry to its warmth.

    As I dump my gear on a musty bunk in a tiny bedroom, a sheaf of stapled papers drop out of my pack – the Triangle Island Users Manual, which I received from the Canadian Wildlife Service as part of my information package.  It falls open on a page headed “Working on Triangle Island.”  “You must be in good physical condition”, I read, “to scramble up steep slopes and walk along rocky and slippery beaches.  You must be able to live and work, in a cramped isolated setting, with others whose world-views differ from your own.  You must be able to work odd hours.”

   At the bottom of the page it cautions, “walk slowly and carefully and do not jump or make uncontrolled moves, particularly when crossing driftwood piles or algae covered rocks....watch sea conditions carefully when crossing wave washed areas such as the "Gap” and be aware of the possibility of sudden unexpected "rogue" waves…cliff edges on Triangle Island are usually concealed from view by grasses or other vegetation and thus pose an extreme hazard.”

      I peer through the tiny window at Triangle’s cliffs – serene, indifferent. I return to the kitchen to find the others singing to a reggae C.D., laughing and talking over their day while the cabin fills with pungent steam curling off the stove top. They are a family of sorts, brought together by the demands of the work and the place.

     Over dinner they ask about Anne. 

Part I

April 28, 1980

    The pilot was eager to get back before the storm broke.  He helped unload our gear as quickly as he could: tanks of propane, mist nets, plywood to construct blinds, tools, food.  Then he climbed back into his seat.  The engine whined into a roar, the long blades circling slowly at first, then quickening, the tempest of their wake whipping our hair around our faces.  Hot exhaust flattened the grass.  The helicopter rose and disappeared.

    We stood for a moment in silence, looking around.  I had never seen such a desolate place. Waves lashed snags of black rock; the land rose in steep folds, brown and treeless.  At the summit, far above us, dark clouds hung like torn flags.

    Anne turned to the supplies, and began carrying them to a tiny trailer.  I chose a box marked “reference books”.  Shrubs tore at the skin of my hands as I pushed through the overgrown path.  The trailer, white with mustard yellow trim, was stained with nail rust. Strips of aluminum siding curled back as if someone had tried to pry them off. The door was wet and swollen and we had to dig our shoulders into it before it gave way.  A musty odour rushed out. Inside, two windows facing the sea cast pale, wintry squares of light onto the gloom. Rough shelves framed the windows. At the far end of the room was an old airtight stove with a collapsed pipe.  Beside it was a cupboard with a latched door, gnawed on the corners.  The only furniture was a plywood table and a bench of driftwood planks nailed to log ends.

      I leaned over the table to the window.  The ledge was littered with dead flies.  Lined up carefully were a delicate, sun-bleached bird skull, the white tail feather of a Bald Eagle and a turquoise egg etched with dark marks, like hieroglyphics.  Rubbing a clear circle in the salt rime on the glass I peered through to the deserted beach beyond, brushed mouse droppings off the table, and set down my box of books.  A few steps away was the bedroom, just big enough for two bunk beds huddled against opposite walls.  I pressed my hand into a damp foam mattress sticky with salt.  A feeling that had begun in my stomach crept upwards, catching in my throat.  What was I doing in this place for four months?

      A month ago, on that warm spring day when Anne interviewed me for the job, it had seemed like a great adventure - studying puffins on a remote island off the northwest tip of Vancouver Island.  Confidently I assured her that I was strong, could work hard and was not worried about being isolated. When she called me the next day I was elated.

   I took a deep breath. Pushing my rising panic down, I silently reviewed all the things that had to be done before nightfall.

    Clouds descended from the summit as we scurried back and forth with gear.  The wind tore sheets of rain from the sky, wrapped them around us.  By the time all the boxes were under cover we were drenched.

   Anne pulled the pieces of a new airtight stove out of a box, then sat on the grimy linoleum floor with a screwdriver in one hand and a paper covered in small print and diagrams in the other.  A francophone, she struggled over the English instructions, but she did not ask for my help.

    As she concentrated, I found a hammer, stepped outside and climbed an old barrel onto the roof to pry off the wood covering the chimney hole. When we hauled the old stove out, the top crumbled into red powder.  By the time we stood the new one in its place, darkness was pooling in the corners. Anne lit a candle on the windowsill, crumpled up the instruction sheet, and stuffed it in the firebox adding a few pieces of dry wood from a stack under the table.  With the drafts wide open, the little stove chugged like a locomotive and quickly became red hot.  The steam from our wet clothes hanging above condensed on the black windows. Rain beat hard on the tin roof.  We sat in our tiny circle of light, surrounded by a sea of darkness.

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