bear spray and cougar caves

amy already wrote a good 'un about my visit. aimblee. AMelburTUBertee.  so this is not a comprehensive.  it is just what it is.

"laura, the wild look suits you.", mom was telling me a truth i didn't fully understand at the time.  i felt that i could be covered in warts and boils and mom would find something special about it and therefore her opinion didn't count.  but as i've grown and come to know myself more fully i've come to recognize myself in those words.  i've learned to embrace the beauty in my wilderness.  i think it's the wild girl that dances out of me and feels so free and at home in the wildernesses of tofino.  it's one of the places that makes my heart sing.

katie had a cold on my birthday and i brought it with me on the bus and to the sin city apartments.  i had the bedroom to myself because apparently amy and shawn always sleep in the living rum on the futon mattress.  on the mornings that amy worked shawn made us yummy smoothies for breakfast.  i had slow lazy mornings, working on photos and nursing my cold, having naps etc.

then i would get ready and walk the five minutes into downtown to meet amy for lunch.  her store is so full of treasures--beautiful, unique and artsy delights.  everywhere i looked i found things to love.  amy gave me a really cute owl necklace from her store and two owl paper weights for my birthday.  love.  


we walked over to breakers and i got the pig'n'fig and amy got the breaker burrito.  the pig in fig was so delish. it had appleand cheese and greens and pig and fig of course.  after depositing amy back at work and having another store lookilew, i went to tonquin beach.


tonquin beach is right my amy and shawn's apartment.  like a five minute walk.  it was a cloudy day prone to bouts of light light rain.  i prided myself in going out for an adventure despite the weather.  congratulated myself of it as i walked.  then i put my hood on.


as i walked the lush rain forest trail to the beach, an earlier conversation with amy and shawn played in my mind:
amy--bc has the highest percentage of cougars in canada and tonquin beach has the highest percentage of cougars in bc.
shawn--i'l loan you my bear spray in case you come across a bear and then you can just spray it in the face.


i didn't have bear spray.  i tried to make noise and not think about how i was the only one on the trail.  i was relieved to reach the beach.  amy suggested that i go when the tide was out and i had timed my visit for just that.  i took off my shoes and explored and took pics and lost myself in the moment, but i was careful not to venture too deep into any sharp and deep rocky crevices where cougars may have been nesting.  here's some pics:

i liked how white and stark those trees looked against the dark green forest.  kind of ghostly.

all of a sudden i heard a noise and i looked up and behind me and over the bluff came the hugest v of birds i have ever seen in my life.  amy and shawn said it was probably cackling geese.  a tofino birding article i read says " In fact, at the height of the spring migration, in late April, as many as 10,000 geese may be seen passing over the village in a single day."      i witnessed it man!  i've never seen so many migrating geese and i see huge snow geese flocks all the time.  i don't want to brag or anything but i see snow geese all.the.time.  don't hate me.

it started raining hard and i eventually left.  i went back to the apartments and curled up in the bed, chilled and damp, until amy hopped the fence and knocked on my window.  

we did stories and we watched movies.  amy and shawn introduced that anime avatar show to me.

on the second day amy had a chicken salad and i had the breaker burrito. totally hit the spot. we also indulged in a lemon macaroon square and a caramel pecan bar, which we ate waiting for our lunch.  after i did some tofino shopping and perused the roy henry vickers exhibit at the art gallery.  i bought amy a wale painting by rhv.  love.  we made home made tortillas and had the most delicious wraps known to man.  like i can not describe how delish they were.  no words.

by divine providence we had splendid sunny days on amy's day off.  i really enjoyed doing per bristow's voice lessons with amy.  my favourite thing about per was the way he would stop and say "wow." while sinking his head forward and down a bit.  amy and made many such utterences to each other after that.

bear watch!  what luck!!  we were so excited.  i side fishtailed amy's hair and she side bunned mine.  when we first got into our giant orange suits i was so hot.  we had to wait a while and i was getting concerned about melting.  i rolled up my pant legs a bit to let some air in.  amy and i confided in each other that we wanted the front seat.  so i took liberties and nabbed them for us.  as we started off on our way around the  back of huuuuuge meares island, i said to amy "i don't mind if we don't even see bears."  amy agreed.  we were just so happy to be out on the zodiac in the midst of such gorgeousness.

this pic was originally a sillohette but i lightened up amy's face so you could see her smile.  but it's not what one would call a  quality pic.  it just shows our happiness and the blue green world we were about to set out into.

square puff bum.

we saw 2 bears.  i included some helpful tips to help you locate the bears in the pics.  our 1st bear was eating grass because it probably just woke up and after gorging on salmon the bears eat sticks just before they go to sleep to stop up their systems.  in the spring they eat grass to get it going again.  also vancouver island black bears have developed some webbing between their toes.  that's what the guy said.

he got a little skittish at first and bounced across the beach.  apparently, word on the street is that bears are colour blind and can't see well.  but they can smell well and we were sending scent to him on the wind.

then he calmed down and ate more grass.  i'm just sayng 'he' but i'm doing that arbitrarily.  sorry if you're a she.

our guide told us that a good sign of bears on the beach is the presence of one or two crows.  this is because the bears turn over rocks that the crows can't and all sorts of good eats are available to a crow who knows. right after that i saw a crow and sure enough there was a bear.

we also saw sea lions that looked like logs.  our guide aparently goes scuba diving by here (dark island)

opitsit on meares.  i want to go to meares and see the 1400 year old tree.  the bus driver told me about it.

on the way back we froze.  i couldn`t feel my face.  but it was worth it.  amazing.  perfect.  we were so euphoric and tired and happy.  and eating sushi with a view of the water as the sun set capped off our perfect day.