In Cedar: A week on the West Coast

It’s that first glimpse of the clear blue water through the trees, rising up to the thick, lush forest behind, that gets me. We’re on a winding road toward Tofino, bends so tight that it’s a wonder that the heavy bus makes it around them. I’m one of only a handful of passengers: it’s shoulder season now, and one of the last buses of the year. But the sun is shining, heating my cheeks through the window up into the foggy treetops that are so characteristic of this area.

There is some kind of magic to this place, and I realise it quickly. The clean air coming off the Pacific Ocean fills my lungs as I step off the bus, shouldering a backpack on each arm, and that breath alone is enough to sink me into the roots of the place I am in now. Away from the city, away from the hectic summer of working and hosting friends and family and trying, in the midst of all of that, to sort through the increasingly tangled web of thoughts that has been taking over my brain for some months. 

My cabin is nestled in the cedar trees, dense foliage and thundering tree trunks from every window. I’ve barely had time to take it in, to set my bags down and gaze out of the skylight above the bed that looks up onto the canopy of leaves above, before there is a knock at my door. But it is only my neighbours, and the owners of the cabin, bringing me a bike to use, and a handful of greens fresh from the garden.

There is some kind of magic to this place.

A thick fog clings to the shoreline when I cross over to the sea later that afternoon. The sun is starting to dip toward the horizon, a mirage through the haze that clings to the gentle waves. The smell of the sea, that salt tang to the breeze, will always remind me of home, of the rough waves of the North Sea hitting the coastline in Scotland. The sound of the sea, its heaving inhale as the waves rise, and its breathless fall. I close my eyes and I could be there, the same warm sun cutting through the cool air, imagining the sounds of my parents walking nearby. 

Maybe this is what makes it feel like home so quickly, the sea my constant companion. Put me near open water and my soul comes into rest in a matter of moments, no matter where I am in the world.

It’s not usually like this when I travel, no matter how relaxed a holiday I set out to have. It usually takes days to settle the antsy feeling beneath my skin that comes off the back of the summer, especially in the past few years. It usually takes time to lose that feeling of, there is something I should be doing right now. There is someone that needs something and I haven’t done it for them.

But not here. Here, the ocean takes every lingering worry and stress from the summer and casts it out into the deep. 

Not here. You don’t need these here.

It’s warm, if not hot, and I can’t resist. I pull off my layers down to my underwear and dash into the ocean, the cold water rising up my calves and sending goosebumps over my skin. And with that, I am here, and the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Not right now.

It’s a gentle existence, out there in the cedar trees. My problems are simple, fundamental. They are learning to cook over a grill as the sun sets and the evening air sets in. They are finding paths to unexpected surprises in the forest, a short hike away. They are trying to remember how to ride a bike so I can get to town for groceries.

Turns out, I can’t – ride a bike, that is. At least, not at first, as evidenced by the tree I immediately careen into. It takes a few tries, but I make it to the outskirts of town, except for that sharp set up turns around the Dolphin Motel where the tree roots push up from under the path and I nearly go over again. 

But even that comes with time. The next time, I still walk around the Dolphin, but I make it a little further into town. The next time, a little further. By my last day in Tofino, I am riding happily over the tree roots and right into town itself, my relentless anxiety about hitting a pedestrian abated. I cycle up and down the highway with a stuffed backpack behind me and the wind coursing through my lungs, and I feel free – even in those last few days when my toe is almost definitely fractured and I can only limp around if I’m on foot.

I discover stories again. I read; long, lengthy chapters of a thick book, my mind in India with the tale even as the western Canada sun warms my toes. I write, on scraps of paper torn from a notebook in an assortment of restaurants along the Pacific Coast Highway, fragments of this and that, nothing quite connecting but everything that feels that it deserves a place on the page.

I gather new tales to share, spending a day on the sea with an eccentric skipper with whales floating nearby and the waves nearly sending us overboard. But that is a story for another day.

I think I leave a small piece of my heart in Tofino, as I have in so many places around the world. But rather than feel sad for it, to feel as though I am pulled into a thousand parts stretched across the vastness of the globe, I feel lucky. 

Lucky to have all these places that feel a little like home, even when I am so far from my own.