Radio Wave
Pacific vastness
the ocean whispers, reading
her shorelines like Braille
As a sea kayak guide in the nineties, I used the marine weather forecast to unravel daily intricacies of wind and waves, and plot the way these variables could be woven into my plans. There were key indicators like wind speed that were easy to anticipate. And there were more subtle elements, like fog, which operate under the most whimsical of rubrics and were never predictable. Mostly, however, careful listening to the forecast, combined with knowledge of the day’s tides, could result in a workable plan. But the listening took long minutes with an ear to the VHF radio, alert for the precious words: Vancouver Island south. It is a testament to Murphy’s Law that distraction of some sort always interrupted the vigil at exactly the moment the forecast was being delivered. The information would then be swallowed back into an endless cycle of local announcements and lighthouse weather reports. It could take half an hour to receive sixty seconds of information. Missing the forecast was a common complaint among water people, always cause for a long, drawn-out sigh.
Important as it was, however, the forecast was a tool I often saved for guiding days, preferring not to rely too heavily on technology and instead to build my knowledge of local clouds and winds. Being self-reliant is an important feature of coastal living. But some aspects of nature cannot be predicted by squinting at the sky, or the changing colour of the sea. It wasn’t until October 5, 1994, while on a kayaking expedition with a friend and fellow kayak guide, that I learned how the forecast could save my life.
The trip was in Kyuquot Sound, about one hundred miles up the coast from Tofino. After camping at the terminus of a Vancouver Island logging road, my friend Cindi and I began at the Artlish River inlet and covered a distance of about twenty miles to Spring Island on the exposed west coast. Our plan was to explore the island for a day or two before continuing up the coast to Checleset Bay. It was late in the year, but deceptively summer-like. Other than the shortening October days and mornings heavy with the velvet fall of dew, the weather was warm and clear. At the very end of the long first day, we hauled the heavy boats up a steep shell beach just before darkness fell. We were on the outer coast of the island, protected from the full force of the ocean by a stockade of reefs and rocks. As an overnight stopping point it would suffice, but the next day we planned to move on.
After such a long first day, however, the next morning we were decidedly unambitious. The tent opened like a portal and we emerged into the land of Outer Shore, a land of endless motion, where—despite the windless satin sea-surface—rows of swell moved ceaselessly toward the island; where—despite the momentum of these swells, accrued over thousands of miles—the rocky barriers around us stood firm in their protective stance; where—as if not caring what lay ahead of them—the swells never once slowed in their approach. They collided with the rocks, transformed into a fine veil of breathable mist, glowed in the fragile morning light and eventually combined with the air in our lungs.
On that morning, there was silence, deep and seductive. Silence that included the many sounds of the ocean. Silence that spread into us and through us and restored us in ways that sleep could not. We moved from pause to pause, eyes locking onto the perfection of a shell, or the passage of a seabird. Our summer of work fell away, becoming a distant past, barely memorable from this new vantage point.
So it was with some reluctance that we began to prepare for the day ahead. The small, steep beach, at least twenty feet deep in mussel shells, was topped with a sharp ledge and made an awkward landing, especially with the heaviness of our boats provisioned with two weeks of supplies. If we were to stay and enjoy Spring Island to the full, we would have to move. Half a mile to the west lay a low neck of land dividing two calm bays, each one blessed with a protective corral of rocks. Depending on the wind direction, we could launch or land from either side of the tombolo, and take shelter from opposing winds. The pond-calm bays quickly opened out onto the deep ocean, but once our laden boats were launched this wouldn’t be an issue. Most importantly, the chart showed a trail that would allow us to explore the island on foot and stretch our ever-cramped kayaking legs. As the drops of dew evaporated from our tent fly, we lounged in the sun, savouring the moment of languor and discussing the day ahead. Eventually we began to make breakfast.
My travelling companion, Cindi, was a long-time friend and fellow guide with a penchant for baking. Together, she and I had explored many wild places, either by kayak or on foot. Our love for these adventures was a hub of connection, remote trips being the high points, charted like constellations, star to star. We travelled together with ease, neither of us too attached to our goals. Where I might have eaten cereal for breakfast, Cindi often preferred something she could create. On this morning, we divided the chores without much discussion. I made a small fire while she cracked eggs and stirred batter for pancakes. The fire slowly burned down to the coals needed for pancakes, and as we began eating them we turned on the handheld VHF radio to hear the forecast. The softness of the morning and the fact that we were only going to travel half a mile made the listening seem a waste of valuable batteries. But for some reason—if only our extreme isolation—we chose to listen anyway.
There are times in life when situations do not fit with one another; their overlay is awkward, no sharing of common ground. On that beach, on that morning, the words “pan-pan” emanating from the VHF were surely a mistake. Repeated three times, pan-pan is marine terminology for a state of urgency, a not-to-be-missed message. It often precedes the announcement of a hazard, a boat in distress or a mariner in jeopardy. From our place on the beach, it seemed impossible that any of those things could occur. It was with complete inability to digest the information that we took note of a tsunami warning, following a magnitude 7.7 earthquake in northern Hokkaido, Japan—the tsunami expected to reach BC’s coast at 15:30 hours.
In the surreal moment of the announcement, I pictured the endless rows of swell travelling across the Pacific from Japan. I imagined those swells increasing to many-storeyed heights and valley-deep troughs. I imagined them rolling right over Spring Island, this completely flat island that lacked even a single contour line. Small, cold stones slid down my throat to settle on top of the pancakes in my stomach. It was eleven o’clock. It could take us an hour to pack up. We would then have three hours left to paddle to safety if the tsunami arrived on time.
What if it arrived early? There didn’t seem to be an answer to that.
We decided to head to the village of Kyuquot, about five miles to the northeast. Surely Kyuquot would have a preplanned safe place for escaping tsunamis? The village was situated at the bottom of a steep hillside. At the very least we might find people there. That in itself would be comforting.
We packed up the boats in record time (much less than an hour) and launched from the steep shell beach. For a moment my boat balanced on the ledge, its heavily weighted bow jutting horizontally into air, stranded by the wave I’d hoped would float me. Helpless, I waited for the next wave and cringed as an audible crack came from the frame. This was no time for boat repairs. But the wave carried me away from the beach, my thrashing paddle strokes fuelled by the bizarre mix of pancakes and panic. It took a few hundred yards to relax and begin pacing myself for the journey ahead. We left the protective stockade of rocks and reefs, going back the way we had come the night before. I checked my cockpit for signs of water entering from a crack in the kayak’s frame. There was nothing. Yet.
As we paddled, Cindi and I pooled our knowledge of tsunamis. I’d learned about tsunamis in geology and to me they existed in the realm of theoretical events. Even though I knew a subduction zone ran along coastal British Columbia, I had no sense of tsunamis as a threat to my personal safety. My casual attitude had been bolstered by Frank Harper’s story “The Great Bogus Two-Inch Tsunami,” published in The Sound newspaper. The story was a series of interviews with Tofino residents, detailing the hilarity and lack of seriousness with which they greeted a tsunami that never arrived.
There are times when the world changes, little by little. And there are times when it changes suddenly, radically, unalterably. That’s how it’s been for me with tsunamis. When—much later in life—the devastating earthquake and tsunami laid waste to northern Japan in 2011, Earth’s catastrophic possibilities became inescapably real for me. That tsunami and the Boxing Day tsunami in the Indian Ocean were shocking for their combined death toll. But they also carried with them vivid, live-camera footage of the events—images which spread around the world at lightning speed, bringing horror and sadness to people everywhere. The news became a kind of Pandora’s box to me. I tried not to look at the footage, but eventually I couldn’t help myself. Afterward, I felt as if the images themselves had crawled into my brain, making their home in previously inactive regions. Perhaps it was worse because I live on a floathouse. It seemed so real, so possible. By then I also had a daughter, which increased the emotional understanding of loss. The notion of tsunamis became impossible to ignore. First, the tsunami sirens arrived, making it tricky to walk my local beach without being reminded that an earthquake might strike. Then, simple acts like beachcombing became tinged with poignancy: if these found objects could speak, what tales of grief and loss would they tell? What of the child to whom this toy belonged?
Still sculpted into my brain is the photograph taken by Pete Clarkson, a Parks Canada warden and marine debris artist, who visited Japan after the 2011 tsunami. The photo is of a mangled metal staircase, reaching out to the sky, connected to nothing. It was erected days before the tsunami, to evacuate school students to higher ground. Nothing remains of the school, so completely was it washed away. But on that fatal day, every child’s life was saved by that stairway. Would there be stairways such as this one for my own child? I wondered.
These experiences have changed my outlook so profoundly it has become impossible to imagine the state of innocence that preceded them. The carefree age of Not Thinking About Tsunamis is over for me. I cannot recreate it. But as I relive the paddle from Spring Island to Kyuquot, I can remember how I felt then, still untainted by familiarity with tsunamis, the wash of reactions: incomprehension, practical planning, the mental turmoil of imagined thoughts, the fear. In the pre-Internet age, those few words over the radio waves were all the knowledge we had.
The tsunami was due to arrive at 3:30 pm. If we paddled fast, we hoped to reach Kyuquot by 1:30. But the conditions were challenging. Was it the earthquake in Japan that made the sea-state so volatile and caused the swell to rise to such dramatic heights? Already pumped with adrenaline, we paddled hard and negotiated the swell as it peaked and crested over invisible rocks and rebounded from the land with a sloshing effect. We dodged white water and slid through gaps in surf breaks. Not until we reached the lee of Spring Island did the conditions ease. We continued heading northeast, propelled by the image of the tsunami’s passage across the ocean. Where was it now?
As we passed Aktis Island a man on shore began waving his arms in the traditional signal of distress. We wondered if he just wanted to tell us about the tsunami, or if he actually needed help, but a distress signal is a distress signal, so we took a detour and paddled over to see him. “There’s a tsunami should be here in a couple hours,” he informed us when we finally reached him. “You shouldn’t be on the water.” We agreed. When we told him our plan, he nodded. “Probably won’t amount to much anyways. Last one just made the tide run harder. Was like a river back here.” He gestured to the narrow passage we had just come through. “A few boats got sunk. That was about all.” The man’s speech was soft and drawling, lacking all urgency. He was poised to share a world of personal experiences and we could have stayed for hours, chatting about tsunamis past. But our preoccupation was with tsunamis future. We thanked the man and paddled away, wondering how much time the detour had added to our journey. Wondering if tsunamis arrive early.
A few minutes later a helicopter buzzed overhead, then circled back and crouched above us, casting its net of windborne chaos. The roar of wind and rotors combined to override a buzzing crackle of information being broadcast by some kind of loudspeaker. If the crew were telling us about the impending tsunami, their efforts were unintelligible. Sign language was impossible because our hands were glued to the paddles, busily negotiating the wind hazard created by the rotors. Eventually the helicopter moved on, its message lost in the vortex of wind and spray.
The good intentions of local people were expressed several more times as our journey was delayed by further helpful warnings from boaters. Increasingly, we kept our communications brief, pointing to Kyuquot and miming a rapid paddle stroke. We spoke less to one another, the rhythm of our arms building as the minutes passed. It was with great relief that we entered Kyuquot Harbour with forty-five minutes to spare.
Kyuquot is a community of First Nations people whose lives revolve so completely around the water that almost anyone would be likely to know where we should go, and—we hoped—what we should do with our kayaks. We had not anticipated the total absence of human life that greeted us. No children playing at the water’s edge, no adults packing up the last precious items of a home, not even a tail-wagging dog, oblivious to its uncertain future. We whooped and hallooed, spirits sinking as our voices echoed through the desert of empty houses. Even the general store on Walter’s Island was closed. Everyone had been evacuated. But to where? Bewildered, we stood on the government dock and used the payphone to call home. Taking the time to update our whereabouts seemed both frivolous and urgent, but it was while we were doing this that two people emerged from a large white seine boat, moored at the dock. Divining our situation, they invited us to ride out the tsunami with them at sea—kayaks and all. In the way of true seafaring people, they didn’t doubt the wisdom of this choice, and their authority brought the direction we needed. In tsunamis, large boats fare better in deep water, where the rebound effects and the steepness of waves are much diminished. This husband and wife duo was prepared for the tsunami in every way conceivable, from the on-board satellite TV to the full fuel and water tanks and the freshly baked muffins.
Just as we had earlier emerged through our tent door into the outer shore environment, here again we ducked under the doorsill, and stepped down the ladder into a cozy, burrow-like space where fear for future moments was left behind. We were seated on a plush couch and plied with tea and coffee. We learned about each other’s lives as we watched the latest tsunami updates on colour TV. The projected size of the wave seemed to shrink with every update. By the time 3:30 rolled around, we were leaning over the dock, examining the water for any hint of a wave. That was when the newscaster announced that the tsunami warning had been cancelled.
Much later, I learned that eleven people had died in that earthquake, some buried beneath a military hospital, others felled by debris as they attempted to flee their homes. The earthquake had been sudden, with no quiet rumblings to foreshadow it. Lives had changed rapidly that day and it was interesting to think that our own experience mirrored some small part of that—the change in plans, the adrenaline, the racing minds, the exhaustion. More lasting was a perception of the ocean’s ability to reflect and speak the language of Earth, that day’s suddenly turbulent sea-state a direct communication, if only I had been literate enough to read it.
The approach of evening ushered us back to Spring Island. Our fisher friends had urged us to stay at the dock, but we’d already been away too long, and valuable wilderness moments were being lost. The respite had given me time to examine the hull of my boat, where I found a visible crack. Surprisingly, to this day it has never leaked. Two hours of paddling later, we arrived at the beach we had been aiming for that morning. We’d travelled more than ten miles to get there, encountering taxing conditions and a realm of unforgettable experiences along the way. We set up camp in the quickening October dusk, longing for food and sleep. And as a way to round off the day, we turned on the handheld VHF radio, some small part of us still doubting our safety. At the words pan-pan, the cold stones resurfaced in my gut. Not again! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. We had finally set up camp. The boats were unpacked. Heading back to Kyuquot in the conditions we’d just negotiated seemed not only overwhelming, but also foolhardy considering the darkness and our fatigue. Cindi and I stared at each other in the lantern light, listening with dreadful anticipation. And then we heard the final words “is expected to reach our coast at 15:30 hours.”
I don’t know why Coast Guard Radio failed to report the cancellation of the tsunami that night. I wish they could have known the panic it threw us into. But while I begrudged them the error, I looked at our small handheld radio with newfound respect. Its airborne voice had transformed this remarkable day. The starry night sky competed for my attention, beckoning me to think only of the universe and its beauty, but the radio’s reminder drew me across the remarkable whispering ocean to the coast of Japan and the people whose lives—like mine—were held in balance by only the merest threads.