The Curve of Time

by M. Wylie Blanchet

  In June of that far-off summer of 1792, Vancouver left his ship, the Discovery, and the armed tender, Chatham, at anchor down in Birch Bay—just south of what is now the international boundary. Then, with Archibald Menzies, the botanist of the expedition, and perhaps four others in the little yawl, and Mr. Puget in charge of the launch, Vancouver set off to examine the coast to the north.

  After exploring part of Burrard Inlet, on which the present city of Vancouver is built, they sailed up Howe Sound, just a little north of Burrard Inlet. Captain Vancouver clearly did not like our high mountains. The low fertile shores they had seen farther down the coast near Birch Bay, he says, “here no longer existed. Their place was now occupied by the base of a tremendous snowy barrier, thin wooded and rising abruptly from the sea to the clouds; from whose frigid summit the dissolving snow in foaming torrents rushed down the sides and chasms of its rugged surface, exhibiting altogether a sublime but gloomy spectacle which animated nature seemed to have deserted. Not a bird nor a living creature was to be seen, and the roaring of the falling cataracts in every direction precluded their being heard had any been in the neighbourhood.”

  Again—“At noon I considered that we had advanced some miles within the western boundaries of the snowy barrier, as some of its rugged mountains were now behind and to the south of us. This filled my mind with the pleasing hopes of finding our way to its eastern side.” Then they proceeded up to the head of the inlet—“Where all our expectations vanished, in finding it to terminate in a round basin, encompassed on every side by the dreary country already described.”

  They sailed up the coast for about sixty miles, taking observations and soundings. Eventually, they entered Jervis Inlet. Starting off at four a.m. as usual—“The width of the channel still continuing, again flattered us with discovering a breach in the eastern range of snowy mountains, notwithstanding the disappointment we had met with in Howe Sound; and although since our arrival in the Gulf of Georgia, it had proved an impenetrable barrier to that inland navigation of which we had heard so much, and had sought with such sanguine hopes and ardent exertions hitherto in vain to discover.”

  Later—“By the progress we had this morning made, which comprehended about six leagues, we seemed to have penetrated considerably into this formidable obstacle, and as the more lofty mountains were now behind us and no very distant ones were seen beyond the valleys caused by the depressed parts of the snowy barrier in the northern quarters, we had great reason to believe we had passed this impediment to our wishes, and I was induced to hope we should find this inlet winding beyond the mountains.”

  After dinner they proceed...”Until about five in the evening, when all our hopes vanished, by finding it terminate, as others had, in swampy low land.”

  Vancouver’s whole outlook on these beautiful inlets was coloured by this desire to find a seaway to the other side of the mountains. Some of the party must have been impressed with the beauty and grandeur. Menzies, the botanist, is more enthusiastic. In his diary he notes, “Immense cascades dashing down chasms against projecting rocks and cliffs with a furious wildness that beggars all description.”

  Even he doesn’t say that the cascades start away up at four or five thousand feet. That mountains six and seven thousand feet high flank either side of the inlet beyond Marlborough Heights, and show great snowfields in the upper valleys.

  Coming back from the head of the inlet that evening, Vancouver and his party, who had noticed the entrance to Princess Louisa on the way up and decided it was a creek, found the tide running swiftly out of it. The water was salt and the entrance shallow. They gave up the idea of spending the night there and rowed until eleven o’clock past high cliffs to find shelter behind Patrick Point.

  The youngsters were delighted that Vancouver had missed Princess Louisa Inlet—very scornful that he had thought the entrance shallow.

  “He didn’t even try the right entrance, he was on the ledge,” said Peter.

  “Well, he couldn’t have got in anyway, with the tide running out,” said Jan, defending him.

  He certainly couldn’t have got in. Even we, who knew the way, were tied up to a log, eating our supper while the pent-up waters of Louisa poured themselves out through the narrow entrance in a ten-knot race.

  It was also understandable that they should have mistaken it for a creek. From the outside where we waited, you can see nothing of the inlet beyond. Two steep four-thousand-foot mountains, one on each side of the entrance, completely obscure the inlet and the mountains beyond. The entrance is a little tricky to get through at low tide unless you know it, but there is plenty of water. From water level, the points on one side and the coves on the other fold into each other, hiding the narrow passage. It is not until you are rushed through the gap on a rising tide that the full surprise of the existence and beauty of this little hidden inlet suddenly bursts on you. It is always an effort to control the boat as you hold her on the high ridge of the straight run of water down the middle. Then, as you race past the last points, the ridge shatters into a turmoil of a dozen different currents and confusions. Your boat dashes towards the rocky cliff beyond the shallow cove on your right; and the cliff, equally delighted, or so it seems, rushes towards your boat. You wrestle with the wheel of your straining boat, and finally manage to drag the two apart...and you are out of danger in a backwater.

  The inlet is about five miles long, a third of a mile wide, and the mountains that flank it on either side are over a mile high. From inside the entrance you can see right down to the far end where it takes the short L-turn to the left. At that distance you can see over the crest to where all the upper snowfields lie exposed, with their black peaks breaking through the snow. The scar of a landslide that runs diagonally for four thousand feet is plainly visible. At certain times of the day the whole inlet seems choked with mountains, and there is no apparent line between where the cliffs enter the sea and where the reflections begin.

  Three miles farther down the inlet, the high snowfields become obscured—the mountains are closing in. You turn the comer of the great precipice that slightly overhangs—which they say the Indians used to scale with rocks tied to their backs: the one who reached the top first was the bravest of the brave, and was made the chief....

  Then suddenly, dramatically, in a couple of boat-lengths, the whole abrupt end of the inlet comes into sight—heavily wooded, green, but rising steeply. Your eye is caught first by a long white scar, up about two thousand feet, that slashes across...and disappears into the dark-green background. Again, another splash of white, but farther down. Now you can see that it has movement. It is moving down and down, in steep rapids. Disappearing...reappearing...and then in one magnificent leap plunging off the cliff and into the sea a hundred feet below. As your boat draws in closer, the roar and the mist come out to meet you.

  We always tied up at Trapper’s Rock—well over to the left of the falls, but not too close to the mile-high, perfectly vertical cliff. It is a huge piece about twelve by twelve with a slight incline.

  “Did this fall off that cliff too?” somebody asked, as they took the bow-line and jumped off the boat onto Trapper’s Rock. I was busy trying to drape a stem anchor over a great sloping rock that lay just under water, ten feet astern, and avoided answering. Dark night was coming on rapidly and the cliffs were closing in. Night was a foolish time to answer unanswerable questions. I was glad we couldn’t hear the waterfall too loudly at Trapper’s Rock. That waterfall can laugh and talk, sing and lull you to sleep. But it can also moan and sob, fill you with awful apprehensions of you don’t know what—all depending on your mood....My crew soon settled down to sleep. On the other side of the falls I could see a light through the trees. The Man from California, who had started building a large log-cabin last year, must be there—in residence. I didn’t want to think about him, for he would spoil much of our freedom in Louisa....Then I started feeling the pressure of the mile-high cliff, worrying about the two huge rocks we were moored between,
and all the other monstrous rocks that filled the narrow strip behind us. As you stepped off Trapper’s Rock onto the shore, you stepped into a sort of cave formed by an enormous slanting rock that spread out over your head. A little stream of ice-cold spring water ran on one side, and dropped pool by pool among the maiden-hair ferns down to the stony shore. A circle of blackened stones marked our cooking fires of other summers. The back and top of this prehistoric cave were covered with moss and ferns and small huckleberry bushes. All the slope behind was filled with enormous rocks. They were not boulders, worn and rounded by the old glacier. They had sharp angles and straight-cut facets; in size, anywhere from ten by ten to twenty by twenty—hard, smooth granite, sometimes piled two or three deep—towering above us.

  They were undoubtedly pieces that had fallen off the cliff, the cliff that shut off the world and pressed against me. The first night’s question always was—was Trapper’s Rock one of the first to break and fall, or was it one of the last, which fell and bounced over the others to where it now lay? In back of the rock, the masses are piled one on top of the other. There are deep crevices between them that you could fall into—no one knows how many feet. It would take rope-work to get on top of some of them. None of us is allowed to go in there alone.

  The stars had filled up the long crack of sky above me. Brighter stars than you see anywhere else...bright...so bright....

  Somewhere in that uneasy night I dreamt that I was watching a small black animal on a snowfield, some distance away. I don’t remember why I was so curious about it, but in my dreams it seemed most important for me to know what it was. Then I decided, and knew most certainly, that it was a black fox playing and sliding on the edge of the snowfield. Then moving closer to it, as you sometimes do in a dream’s mysterious way, I saw that it wasn’t a fox at all, but a small black pony. I remember that it looked more like a pony that a child had drawn—low-slung and with a blocky head—sliding on a most unlikely snowfield.

  In the wonderful bright morning the cliffs were all sitting down again—well back. All the fears and tensions had gone. We had a swim in the lovely warm water. The sun wouldn’t come over the mountain edge before ten, but a pot of hot porridge, toast and coffee kept everybody warm. I made the children laugh about my dream of a black fox that turned into an ugly black pony. Everyone decided that it must have been the man in black down in Vancouver Bay that turned into a bear. I couldn’t think why it hadn’t occurred to me before. It’s just as well to have dreams like that in the Past.

  Over on the other side of the falls we could see a big float held out from the shore by two long poles—new since last year. Somewhere in behind lay the log cabin and the intruder. His coming last year had changed many things. We used to be able to stay in the inlet a couple of weeks without seeing another boat. Last summer, when the cabin was being built by skilled axe-men, there were always a few boats there—coming and going with supplies. And the men who were building the cabin were there all the time. We had only just met the Man from California, and we had stayed for only two days.

  On the other side of the inlet, on the right-hand cliff beyond the falls, which is not as perpendicular and is sparsely wooded with small pines, there is a great long scar. You can see where it started as a rock-slide four thousand feet up. It had carried trees, scrub and loose stones in front of it—gradually getting wider as it scraped the rock clean. In rainy weather a torrent races down tumbling noisily from pool to pool. But in summertime only a thin stream slides over the smooth granite, collecting in an endless series of deep and shallow pools. Heated by the sun on the rock, the water is lukewarm. We used to climb up perhaps half a mile, and then slide down the slippery granite from pool to pool like so many otters. We found it too hard on the seats of our bathing suits, and had got into the habit of parking them at the bottom. Now, with the coming of the log cabin, we had to post a guard or else tie our bathing suits round our necks.

  Boat scrubbed and tidied, sleeping bags out in the sun—everybody had their jobs. Then we collected our clothes for washing, piled into the dinghy and rowed across to the landslide. There was a green canoe turned over on the wharf; no sign of the owner. He probably didn’t even know that anyone was in the inlet, for you can’t hear a boat’s engine on account of the falls.

  The three lowest pools of the landslide were called Big Wash, Big Rinse, and Little Rinse. All snow-water, all lukewarm—so washing was easy. And we carry only one set of clothes, pyjamas, and bathing suits—so there is practically nothing to wash anyway. We scrubbed our clothes—we washed our hair—we washed ourselves. That, interspersed with sliding, took some time. Then, all clean and shining bright, we gathered up our things. The three girls said that they would swim on ahead. Peter wanted to go too, but he swims with only his nose above water, and it is hard to see if he is there or not. So I said that he could help John and me gather huckleberries first.

  When we followed later in the dinghy, Peter with his snorkel up, swimming beside us, there were the three girls sitting on the wharf, talking to the Man from California. He said he hadn’t had anyone to talk to for a month—except old Casper down at the entrance, and he always brought back a flea when he went to visit him. He asked us to come over and have supper with him that night and see the new log cabin. The children held their breath...waiting for me to say—yes.

  After lunch, needing to stretch our legs, we started off to scramble up through the mighty chaos that lay behind Trapper’s Rock. Peter carried a coil of light rope for rescue work, and John his bow-and-arrow, ready for you can never tell what. We had to be pulled and pushed up some of the biggest barriers. Devil’s club made impenetrable blocks around which we had to detour. Then suddenly we found ourselves on a well-defined trail that skirted all the biggest rocks and always seemed to find the best way.

  “Who do you suppose this nice person was?” asked John.

  “Trapper, I should think,” I said, very thankful for it.

  Then it ended in a big hole between two great rocks that overhung our way. The youngsters were intrigued with the thought of a real cave and wanted to explore it. But there was a very strong smell coming from it.

  “Just like foxes,” someone said. “No, like mink,” said somebody else.

  Certainly it was something, and we decided to skip it. We had to go partly through the entrance to get past...for some reason I could feel the hair standing up along my spine.

  The trail led beyond as well. The huckleberries were ripe and the cave forgotten. Then we could hear the roar of the river ahead, so we left the trail and cut down towards the sea. We soon wished we hadn’t, for the going was heavy and we were very vulnerable in bathing suits. Finally we broke through to the shore close to the falls; and there being no other way, we had to swim and wade back to our rock. I waded, with John sitting on my shoulders, up to my neck at times. The sun was off the rock, but the cliffs hold the heat so long that we didn’t miss it. Later, each of us dressed up in his one set of clothes, we rowed leisurely across to the float, probably as glad to have someone to talk to as the Man from California.

  The cabin was lovely. The whole thing, inside and out, was made of peeled cedar-logs—fifteen and twenty inches in diameter. There was one big room, about forty by twenty feet, with a great granite fireplace. A stairway led up to a balcony off which there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. A kitchen and another bedroom and bathroom led off the living-room. Doors, bookcases, everything was made of the peeled cedar-logs—even the chesterfield in front of the fireplace, and the big trestle table. A bookcase full of books....A lot of thought and good taste, and superb axe-manship, had gone into the construction.

  After supper, sitting in front of a blazing log fire, the children were telling him of our climb back into the beyond.

  “And there was a cave, and it smelt of foxes,” Peter burst out.

  “Dead foxes,” added John.

  I asked if there were any foxes around here.

  “What on earth made you think of fox
es?” the man asked. “There are no foxes in country like this.”

  Then he asked questions as to just how far back we had been, and just where. Then he told us—a she-bear and her cub had been around all spring. One of the loggers who were building the cabin had followed her trail, and it crossed the river on a log some distance above the falls. He had found the den in the cave. Although he had a gun with him, he had not shot the mother on account of the cub.

  Then, of course, the children had to tell about my dream of the fox that had turned out to be a black pony...shaped much more like a bear than a pony, I now realized. It all more or less fitted in. But what about the man down at Vancouver Bay who had turned out to be a bear? Maeterlinck was beginning to spoil our summer—if the dreams were going to work both ways we would soon be afraid to get off the boat.

  The Man from California, who hardly knew us, was full of the perils of the surrounding terrain. We were perfectly willing to say we wouldn’t go near the bear’s den again—we knew as well as he did that bears with cubs are dangerous. But we forbore to tell him that we were going to climb up four thousand feet the next day to get some black huckleberries we knew of at the edge of the tree-line. After all, he was the intruder—probably attracted the bears. Black bears like hanging around the edge of civilization. And this man and his log-cabin made the first thin wedge of civilization that had been driven into our favourite inlet.

  Judging by the enormous stumps, at one time there had been a stand of huge cedars in the narrow steep valley. Just behind the new log cabin there is an old skid-road—small logs laid crossways to make a road to skid the big logs down to the sea, with a donkey-engine and cables. The skid-road goes up to about six hundred feet—back the way the old glacier had retreated. Cedar grows quickly, and in this moist valley, with heat and rotting ferns, the growth would be rapid.