Giving myself grief for not researching Cape Scott Provincial Park before arriving here, as I learn from the hostel manager that to get there is to drive 50km from Port Hardy … along a very slow and winding logging road.
With a high possibility of regularly getting stuck behind elongated logging trucks.
And pissed off also that my guide book makes absolutely no mention of this, yet waxes lyrical about how awesome the Provincial Park is.
So instead I drive down the first ten clicks of the dirt track, and hike down a trail I didn’t intend to hike down.
Past isolated lakes and mountains of clouds.
No-one else around … my only company is the local wildlife – me and aimless herds of deer, frequently startling each other by randomly jumping out of trees and low-lying shrubbery.
When not being interrupted by directionless deer, the consolation of not making it to Cape Scott is mitigated by the dead calm surroundings of the local trails.
By midday, the blanket cloud lifts, and I find myself under blue skies, landed in quiet settlements, tranqil settings – Coal Harbour and Port Alice.
There’s virtually no-one here … the perfect place to stop the world, get off for half an hour and lose yourself in the serenity.
When I press play again, I’m heading down the fast flowing open roads to Port McNeill, for a run around the harbour and a pitstop at the bottle shop.
Then down the Jekyll & Hyde Road to a heart-stopping beach house on the coast, my overnight layover, overlooking Alert Bay from my second floor balcony.
Views of ships and ferries and fishing boats drifting past through the inner straits, the Coast Mountains of the mainland in the faraway distance, faintly visible.
This all provides a solid platform for sundowners, for a cold beer on a private rocky beach.
Horizontal wisps of cloud drift in and smother the landscape, before lifting off again as if they were never there.
The water lapping the shoreline, shushing all other nearby sounds of nature, without ceremony.
Perched on a rock, slurping on a tin, staring blankly into space, into the distance; wondering … does it get any better than this.
An Outside World 