NOT CUT OUT

PORT HARDY TO SHAWNIGAN LAKE, BC

I ARRIVE IN PORT HARDY AT 12:30 A.M., BEDRAGGLED and spent after the fifteen-hour voyage down the Inside Passage. The night is more soulless than any I’ve ever seen. My mother had arranged for some friends of hers to put me up in Port Hardy. Unfortunately, they live nearly ten kilometres from the terminal, and while I have their address, I don’t have a local map. After debating the options, I break down and do what my mother had suggested: I call a cab. Surely this is what any sane person would do in these circumstances? Still, I’m not proud to rely on someone else for transportation. Huddled in the back seat of the taxi, my bike ignominiously slung into the trunk, I peer through the rain-streaked window just in time to see a peloton of cyclists from the ferry rolling smartly past on their way to the campground. I shrink in the seat: Mommy’s girl.

The folks I stay with in Port Hardy are kind though, a semiretired couple who watch the evening game shows and eat pork chops and mashed potatoes for dinner. I spend an extra day recuperating. The following morning I set out early, pedalling hard.

From Port Hardy, the Island Highway unravels like a skein of yarn ahead of me, dividing ranks of conifers so thick their numbers seem incalculable. I leave the port city’s pebbled bays as the road pulls away from the coast, climbing inland, the wash of surf fading behind boughs of Douglas fir and hemlock. Aside from a brief glimpse at Port McNeill, I won’t see the ocean again for two hundred kilometres. Not until the Island Highway touches down in Campbell River.

Over the next two weeks I’ll carve a five hundred kilometre line from tip to tail of Vancouver Island. I expect the mountainous, isolated road from Port Hardy to Campbell River—the stretch I’m currently pedalling—to be the most challenging.

“Nothing but trees,” Jeremy had said.

From Campbell River I’ll take the ferry to visit family on Quadra Island before continuing south along the eastern shore of Vancouver Island into Courtenay, Nanaimo, and Duncan, then reel inland through the Cowichan Valley toward Shawnigan Lake. There, I’ll collect my sister from the Ecovillage and we’ll pedal off together for Victoria to board the ferry bound for Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula, jumping-off point for the American portion of my adventure.

But that’s down the road. Now, there are only trees. Branches and trunks that blur into a monotonous slurry of green and brown. Two hours out of Port Hardy and already I don’t know where I am: somewhere in the seventy-kilometre stretch of second- or third-growth forest between Port McNeill and Woss. Just before Port McNeill, I’d encountered my first bear, grazing on the side of the highway. I spot another now, proud and regal-looking, perched king-of-the-hill atop the huckleberry bank shouldering the highway. Needles of fur glisten under sunlight. I stop pedalling and glide, watching the bear watch me pass. I glance down at my bear spray. How many of this creature’s relatives will I run into during my weeks on Vancouver Island?

I exhale as the bear shrinks in my side-view mirror. It is preternaturally quiet. Aside from the brief thunder of passing logging rigs, the only sound comes from my bicycle chain, a steady clink that echoes like some mechanical insect along the highway. Encroaching trees weigh me down with a weariness that I hadn’t anticipated—the Island Highway points to the only way out.

So I pedal. One leg, then the other. Always to the rhythm of the road.

AROUND SIX IN THE EVENING I pull into a recreation site. I’d been planning to continue on to Woss, a town of which I know nothing aside from a name, but I’m unsure how much farther it will be. I call it a day. A gravel road leads to a pair of well-maintained outhouses and a handful of sites with picnic tables and firepits. There are no other campers. Beneath the canopy, the forest feels subdued, the outlines of sword ferns and huckleberry bushes soft-hued, like old photographs in the creeping dusk. The two bears I spotted on the highway had both been eating huckleberries, I remember, and so I select a site away from the bushes.

I cook ramen noodles fortified with broccoli, eating in companionable silence with the woods. The creek’s soft chime is the only sound after I turn off my stove. As the smattering of late sunlight fades, I bask in fullness, eyes adjusting to seeping shadows. My body relaxes, muscles releasing tension in preparation for bed. It would be nice to talk with someone, as I did with Jeremy when we camped together. I try to send a text to my parents, but it doesn’t go through. Before leaving Terrace, I’d promised to send a message every day. Of course, I’d protested at first—I’m twenty-four, not fourteen—but my mother wouldn’t let up.

“It’s not safe to be cycling alone,” she said, for what felt like the hundredth time.

“I’ll be careful,” I promised. “I have bear spray.”

“Bears are the least of my concerns. You could wind up in a ditch and no one would find you.”

“That’s unlikely.”

“I worry,” she said. “The least you can do is let us know you’re alive.”

I head down to the creek to wash out my pot before losing the light entirely, my mother’s fears now playing on my mind. I know she’ll be anxious that I didn’t text. I feel guilty, but reassure myself that her concern is no longer my problem. She’s always been cautious, the kind of person who steers a wide path from the merest hint of danger. Despite her influence, I learned early on that hers wasn’t the life for me. One of my first memories of moving into the Surrey house where I grew up is of climbing a pine tree in the backyard, my grandmother urging me upward.

“Keep going, you’re almost there!” she had said. Her voice, how it crackled with enthusiasm, comes back to me now. Grandma Hackinen was always the fearless one. The one who rode her bicycle on the road, never the sidewalk, and hiked to Mount Everest’s Base Camp at 5,364 metres.

I climbed higher into the tree, using the rubber soles of my sneakers for traction and leveraging my weight upwards. A few more branches and I reached the lookout. My heart soared: I could see my entire yard, our green-trim house, and the rectangular swimming pools of the neighbours. I could even see my mother thinning green-tufted beets in the garden.

“Hi, Ma!” I shouted, reaching one arm out in a wave.

But as she turned, my other hand slipped, a chunk of bark ricocheting free.

“Meaghan, what are you doing?” she shrieked. “Get down!”

She rushed over, abandoning her trowel. Seized by her terror, I pressed my body into the trunk. Why had I dared to climb so high? If I fell, would I die? My fingers were shaking, my skin suddenly cold. I could topple at any second.

Then, rising from the ground below me, I heard my grandmother’s voice.

“You can do it,” she said. “Don’t panic. Grip that branch, the one to your left. Good. You’re safe. Just come down, slowly. No rush.”

I did as she advised me. Took a breath, monkey-armed my way down, the steady passage of branches through palms allowing me to regain a sense of control. By now the fear had passed. I felt silly. Already, I heard my mother scolding my grandmother for letting me climb so high. When my feet hit the ground, my mother was there, ready to catch me if I fell those last few feet. Instead she wrapped me up in a hug.

My grandmother watched from where she’d been standing. “I knew you could do it.”

And that’s how it came to be: my grandmother pressing me into situations that left me rattled, my mother there to soothe me. At first, I needed my mother’s arms to fall into, but soon the balance shifted. I grew less afraid, more frustrated with her coddling. It wasn’t long before I began to test the boundaries without my grandmother’s encouragement, bounding off higher ramps on my snowboard and holding my breath underwater as I front-crawled laps of the swimming pool. I wanted to be fearless, like my grandmother. But despite my best efforts, I still felt the choke of fear. Even if I tried not to show it in front of my mother.

I attempt to channel some of my grandmother’s fortitude as I set up for camp tonight, but it’s no use. Now that it’s night, the shadows are full of bears. If only Jeremy were here to distract me. Instead, I climb into my tent and lay my bear spray beside the bunched up sweater I’ve taken to using as a pillow. Lose track of how long it takes to fall asleep.

I’M NOT SURE WHAT TIME IT IS when I hear a crash in the bushes. Suddenly, I’m awake, caught in an alert, frenzied state. I don’t need to open my outer vestibule to know how dark it is, the peaceful picnic table where I cooked my dinner consumed by oil-slick night. My ears prick with every snag and footstep. It’s probably just a deer.

But what if it’s not? I consider flashing my headlamp outside to check, but can’t call my limbs to action. I lie awake listening. Whatever is making the noise—I’m more and more convinced that it’s a bear now—is stomping a horseshoe around my tent. My heart rate quickens, hammering with an intensity that rocks my chest.

In one quick motion I heave myself upright and shake loose the sleeping bag. I can’t wait around to become someone’s dinner. I slither into pants and a jacket and shove my knife, bear spray, and cellphone inside my pockets. I crouch, tensed like a sprinter, fingers poised over the zip to my tent. If the bear comes any nearer I’ll free myself from the tent, grab my bicycle, and pedal off to hail a vehicle on the highway.

But there is hardly traffic in the daytime, let alone at this hour, whatever time it is. I could be riding until morning.

I kneel on the air mattress, bear spray still in hand. I’ll wait it out. Thankfully, the noise retreats back into the woods. For the first time in a long time, I wish my mother were here.

THE RUMBLE OF A LOGGING TRUCK beckons me back to the road. I feel as if I barely managed fifteen minutes of sleep, my legs sluggish and unresponsive, muscles protesting every pedal stroke. The highway trundles past the same old trees. From one hilltop I catch a rare glimpse of a clear-cut on a not-too-distant mountainside, a frayed edge left standing along the ridge. I’ve flown over Vancouver Island and witnessed the scale of the logging industry’s destruction from up high, a patchwork of razed woods and optimistically green new growth. From my current vantage point, however, I can merely guess what the forest looks like farther in. Only the logging trucks topped high with raw timber indicate the extent of the damage, the quick scent of bark in their passing my singular contact with deep woods as they’re carted off to the mill.

Before Woss I pass another two black bears. I step inside the all-in-one gas station/convenience store/diner for a late breakfast. The server is a saturnine woman wearing a grease-splotched apron, and I bombard her with questions about the local area, excited just to have someone to talk to. She barely raises her head to answer, scribbles my order on a notepad and retreats to the kitchen.

Back on the highway, I am revisited by my mother’s preoccupation with the danger of cycling solo. My thoughts fill with things that could go wrong, from being crushed under the steel belly of a logging truck to being mauled by a wild animal. And that’s not even counting the harm that could be inflicted by another person. My mind reels back to recent headlines about Tammy-Lynn Cordone, a woman who’d been stabbed to death earlier in the year, while camping in Lighthouse Park, West Vancouver. But I try not to dwell on it—that’s something my mother would do.

When I was a kid, my father was the one who had introduced us to Vancouver Island, so it’s funny that I find myself thinking about my mother so much. Every summer we’d pack up the tent and homemade boogie boards and head out for the island. My mother always said she had to work, but even then I guessed that she simply didn’t want to come. Maybe she needed a vacation of her own, the house to herself for a few days.

One year the three of us arrived home, marshmallow goop in our hair and reeking of campfire smoke, to find that my mother had painted the living room and kitchen. Aside from replacing the worn sheets that protected the sofa cushions from being scratched by dogs’ nails, my parents hadn’t redecorated or bought new furniture for the house the entire time we’d lived there, so my sister and I were shocked. To further our surprise, our mother didn’t stick with the sick-peach and mute-white colour scheme we were used to. Instead, she had opted for papaya orange, dandelion yellow, and raspberry red.

“I’ve always wanted to live in a house with bright colours,” she explained.

I wondered why I hadn’t known this; I think it came as a surprise to my father as well. Maybe none of us knew her very well. My mother had made it her priority to memorize every nuance and detail about our behaviour, but what could I really say for certain about her?

BY MID-AFTERNOON THE SKY HAS CLOUDED OVER, the woods suddenly more ominous. If my mother were with me, she might sing out the names of the trees: Pseudotsuga menziesii, Tsuga heterophylla. But I’m on my own out here, and I still don’t know where I’ll stay tonight. The server in Woss had mentioned a rest area down the road, but without Jeremy, I doubt that I’ll feel comfortable there. Too many comings and goings, people wandering into the bushes to pee.

A few kilometres before the junction to Sayward I begin to see houses. Even the most sun-faded paint seems cheerful compared to the trees. I pedal faster. Sayward itself is down a hill, five kilometres from the highway. A sign for an RV park appears just before the turnoff, and I pull over to think it through: give up or go on. If I choose the RV park, I’ll be taking the easy way out, but if I go on, I’ll be sending myself back out into those woods with the bears. A local guy on a rust-framed mountain bike rolls to a stop beside me, and I ask him about camping.

“There’s a rec site, just south on the highway,” he tells me. “Elk Creek. Nice place.”

I think back to the previous night’s deserted campground. “Will anyone else be there?” I ask. While I don’t want to find myself squished between RVs, I have zero desire to be the only camper again.

“Oh sure,” he says. “It was all full on the weekend.”

I decide to head for it, stopping first to refill my water bottles behind the gas station and to buy a couple of Snickers bars for dessert. Elk Creek: the name sounds enchanting. Far better than Bear River or Cougar Creek.

Unfortunately, Elk Creek turns out to be just like the last rec site. Outhouses, picnic tables, and a creek. No campers. Not even a smattering of broken beer bottles to hint that other people have actually been here. I consider returning to Sayward and pedalling down to that RV park, but my feet won’t move, and technically, nothing is wrong with where I am. I push aside my fear and rig up my tent, all the while praying some amicable family from Duncan will arrive for a mid-week fishing getaway. I lose hope once it grows dark and tuck in for the night.

A snap in the woods just outside my tent wakes me. Definitely not a bear, I realize with relief. Perhaps a raccoon, something smaller. I’m not sure what time it is, but I reshape my sweater-pillow and am preparing to go back to sleep when I remember the chocolate bars. The Snickers. My skin turns to ice. They are still in my pannier, not in the food bag dangling from a branch a few picnic tables away but stuck in with my clothes near the base of my sleeping bag.

Never keep food in your tent.

I’d seen it posted on park info boards a hundred times. But chocolate bars are sealed tight in foil for freshness, I reason. Surely a bear’s power of scent isn’t that sophisticated. Then I remember our old dog, Sam—a goofy-looking black lab with a punishingly small brain—stealing miniature chocolate bars from Halloween candy hidden under my bed. Lucky he didn’t get sick.

There’s no way I’ll sleep until these Snickers are gone. I follow the only reasonable course of action and devour them, gulping water to erase the scent from my tongue. Under pre-tour circumstances, I’d feel sick (or at the very least guilty) after devouring two full-sized chocolate bars, but now that my body exists in a state of perpetual hunger, I can eat just about anything, at any time.

Even with the chocolate gone, I can’t relax and fall asleep. Every crackle puts me once again on edge. For a second, I’m certain that I hear voices, but when I press my ear to my vestibule, they’re gone. I’m not a real cyclist, I realize in dismay. I’m still the pretender I was when I first showed up to Ladies Bike Club.

IT’S NOT UNTIL I ARRIVE ON QUADRA ISLAND that I finally sleep. The island moves at an easy pace, has a Shire-like quality of hills and trees and unobtrusive houses set back from the meandering road. I stay with my cousin Katie who lives in a trailer that, in another life, had been a chainsaw repair shop. Now, it resides in a meadow where her landlord boards horses. Katie’s fiancé, Zach, is away on a ten-day stint at a logging camp up the coast, so it’s just the two of us in her cozy meadow home.

Katie offers every kind of comfort, from bath soap to clean socks, doting like a mother even though she’s a year my junior. She must feel my weariness, sleep deprivation scrawled across my face as conspicuous as the chain rings on my calves. I spend five days with my cousin, not doing much. While she is at work, I find myself marvelling at the contents of her refrigerator, mystified by the selections of condiments and snacks. I leave the trailer to collect apples from the withered orchard down by the shore. The horses come around at breakfast and dinner, eager for a treat. Katie feeds them apples through the kitchen window, their sloped foreheads bobbing through the open pane and nudging the fridge.

Katie’s father, my uncle, drops by in the afternoons, and we discuss family, how my parents are doing. Already, I’m beginning to dread my return to the road. I know that being alone will be even more challenging after these days of comfort and company, so I contact some people through an organization called Couchsurfing to see if I can sort out a few nights of indoor accommodation.

Couchsurfing is an international community of hosts who open their homes to strangers—like myself—who request permission to crash on their sofas (or guest rooms, if I am so lucky). From Katie’s desktop, I send a handful of emails to folks along my route to Shawingan Lake and wait for a response.

I SPEND MY FINAL NIGHT ON QUADRA ISLAND at Brent’s place. Brent, now the island school bus driver, had been my father’s companion for his cycle adventure down the Pacific Coast and subsequent travels in Latin America. He lives with his teenage daughter Fiona in a teal-trimmed trailer set back on an acre of land, a motorbike and a pair of ocean kayaks residing in a neighbouring shed that boasts more square footage than his living quarters. I hope to glean information about the road ahead. However, Brent is more intent on inspecting my bicycle.

“Oh, you know, that was a long time ago. Say, are these 700 tires?” He kneels down to give the front wheel a spin to see if it’s true.

“Uh, I don’t know.”

“What kind of lube do you use: wax or oil-based?”

I rummage through my equipment to find the bottle. “This kind,” I say.

He inspects the bottle, then looks from my pedals to my sneakers. “Why aren’t you using clip-in pedals? They’d make life a whole lot easier.”

“Too expensive,” I say. Clip-ins, pedals that literally clip into your bike cleats, increase efficiency by cashing in on the hamstring muscle used in the upswing, uniting rider and bicycle into a single entity. There’s also the possibility of half-cages that hook over the toe of your shoe to hold your foot on the pedal. These I could afford, but won’t buy. My mother broke an ankle when her foot caught in a toe cage, nearly ten years ago. As much as I dismiss her fears, I can’t shake the idea that there’s something dangerous and unnatural about locking yourself into a bike.

Brent spends another ten minutes going over Blue Steel with me. I learn that I haven’t been oiling the chain adequately and my gears could be shifting better. I’m ashamed: I know everything about riding her, but I’m clueless in terms of maintenance. I’ve been lucky that I haven’t had to deal with anything more substantial than a couple of flats. Without saying it outright, Brent makes sure I realize that I’ll have to do a better job taking care of Blue Steel if I expect her to make it to Cabo.

BEFORE LEAVING QUADRA ISLAND I’ve secured couchsurfing hosts in Courtenay, Parksville, and Duncan. The process turns out to be easier than I’d thought: a quick exchange of emails where my host provides an address, and I let them know what day to expect me. No more camping in the bush for me—at least not until I’m reunited with my sister. I also manage to replace my flimsy tent with an almost-new MEC Tarn 2 tent that Katie sells to me for a cool fifty dollars. She explains that she and Zach are buying a new tent anyways: The Tarn 2 simply wasn’t spacious enough for their nighttime activities.

I set out on the morning ferry aiming to be in Courtenay by dinnertime. The air is cool and breezy on the upper deck, salted with seaweed and thick with the scent of aging rubber from the wharf. In a sheltered corner I take a look at my map. From Campbell River the Island Highway splits, the Old Island Highway branching along the coast and the newer expressway paving a course inland. I opt for the Old Highway, which Brent promised would provide better views.

Once off the ferry, I take some time adjusting to traffic after the solitude of the near-deserted highway north of Campbell River. I pedal alongside Johnstone Strait, siting barges and clean white yachts between low, cloud-like islands on the horizon. Up ahead, I spot what I first assume to be a motorcycle pulled over on the side of the road, but as I approach, I realize that it’s a cyclist packing an absurd amount of gear—both front and rear panniers, back rack stacked with two twenty-litre dry bags, a spare wheel, hiking boots, and a tarp. I ease to a stop and see a man, about thirty and bearded, chowing down on a monster burrito.

“Where are you heading?” I ask.

“I’m on my way down the coast to San Francisco,” he says, answering in a thick Québécois accent. His name is Pierre.

I mention that I’m also headed south. After he finishes the burrito, we ride together for a while, chatting about bike stuff. I worry that I’ve offended him when I ask why he’s carrying so much gear.

“I’ve come all the way from Montreal,” he says. “I need all this.”

I’m not sure I follow his logic. “But wasn’t it a lot of work to pack that through the Rockies?” I ask. “And isn’t it hard on your bike?”

“You get stronger,” he assures me.

But I’m not sure I buy it. I recall the struggle of those first days before I trimmed down my non-essentials. When we take a break an hour later at Saratoga Beach, Pierre struggles to manoeuvre along the fifty-metre trail, nearly toppling the bike on himself while trying to lean it against a post.

We settle on a bench overlooking low-tide sand flats, Coast Mountains bluing into the distance across the Strait of Georgia. Pierre lights up a joint.

“You want some?” he asks.

I haven’t smoked weed in months, but I have a toke. When the smoke hits my lungs I cough, joking about being an asthmatic child (actually true) and hand it back to him.

“So you don’t have any problems, travelling alone as a woman?” Pierre asks.

“Not so far,” I tell him. Only my irrational, sleep-squelching fear of bears, but I’m working on that.

“That’s interesting,” he says, smirking. He takes another puff of his joint and looks at me. “Because, you know, you’re very attractive.”

“Um, thanks.”

“Where are you staying tonight?”

I mention my couchsurfing host, Donna, in Courtenay.

“Why don’t you camp with me instead?” Pierre says, eyes red now from the weed. “We could find a nice beach somewhere and have some fun.”

“Fun?” I’m confused. Suddenly, I feel higher than I should from a single puff of a joint.

Pierre leans in, locking his gaze with mine. Then he places his free hand less than an inch from my thigh, leaving no doubt as to what he means by fun. I cough twice and stand to grab a water bottle from my bike. This guy is a creep, I realize. Time to get out of here. When I tell Pierre that I’m heading off, he makes an effort to follow, but Blue Steel and I are swift and light. We leave Pierre in our wake.

I ARRIVE IN COURTENAY TO DISCOVER, that Donna, my friendly middle-aged host, lives in a house with floor-to-ceiling windows right on the water’s edge. After a quick tour, she hands me a peanut butter sandwich and calls me out to the deck. I notice a wire coop housing half a dozen chickens. Maggie, a copper-coloured retriever, slinks between Donna’s bare legs.

“I’m going out of town tomorrow and thought perhaps you could housesit for me,” she says, as if we hadn’t only met ten minutes ago. “There’s not much to take care of, though I did just give Maggie’s pups away, so she’ll be a little needy. Also, you’ve got to feed the hens twice a day.”

In addition to Maggie and the hens there are two cats and some fish. I’ve never been responsible for so many animals before, but I agree. I pedalled through the north half of Vancouver Island with good speed, so I have time to burn before I meet my sister on the last day of September. Besides, Donna doesn’t seem to have a backup plan. It astounds me that she’d feel so at ease with a stranger in her home. When I ask for the keys, Donna doesn’t even recall where she stashed them.

“I rarely lock the doors,” she says. “Maggie’s a good guard dog. Just don’t leave her out with the chickens.”

I SPEND FOUR NIGHTS TAKING CARE OF THE FARM, as I’ve come to call it, sleeping in Donna’s bed and helping myself to snacks from the cupboards. When I speak with my mother, I try and gauge if she is hurt that I’ve chosen to housesit for a stranger rather than stop by my own home, especially since it’s only a short jaunt down the island and a ninety-minute ferry ride away.

“What are you even doing there?” she asks.

I tell her about hikes with Maggie in Seal Bay Nature Park and my wanderings around the book stores and coffee shops of Courtenay. And the afternoon I accidently left the chicken coop open and had to wait until the hens roosted in nearby trees at nightfall to catch them.

“That sounds interesting,” she says, though I can hear a chirp in her voice that tells me she’s not entirely convinced.

“There’s even a firepit,” I say, not mentioning that since there isn’t anyone to invite over, I have yet to light a fire.

“So we won’t see you passing through?” she asks.

“I want my trip to be continuous,” I say. Bilbo didn’t return to the Shire on his way to the Lonely Mountain, and I’m afraid that stopping by Surrey—home—will take away from the adventure of being on my own, however lonesome it can be.

ON MY LAST NIGHT HOUSESITTING, an older couple arrives, a pair of couchsurfers who had stayed with Donna a week earlier and happened to be passing through Courtenay again. They’re outdoor enthusiasts in their late sixties visiting from Richmond, Virginia. Donna had mentioned they might show up, but after a day or so, I’d entirely forgotten.

“We’ll just cook dinner and get out of your hair,” says the wife, Joan. “Ed and I want to get rolling at the crack of dawn anyways.”

But I’m tired of being alone. “Why don’t we have a fire?” I say. “You can eat out there.”

So we walk across the drive to the pebbled beach. The flame isn’t much, but it takes hours to burn out. We compare experiences on Vancouver Island while Maggie makes panting rounds among the three of us, soaking up our affections.

“Is it scary staying here alone?” asks Joan. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep without all the lights on.”

I look back at the lamp-lit window of Donna’s bedroom and think of her comfortable bed, the cats curled up for company.

“No,” I tell Joan. “I like it here.”

For the first time since I arrived on Vancouver Island, I actually feel brave. Then I recall Pierre—Montreal Creep, as I’ve renamed him—and my stomach turns. At first, I wondered if I’d misinterpreted the event: Perhaps he wasn’t hitting on me. Maybe he meant “fun” as in good wholesome fun, building sand castles and frolicking in the tidal pools. But the way he looked at me, the way he talked about my body, told me differently. Prior to Montreal Creep I’d believed that every cyclist I would meet would be trustworthy and decent, though I’m not sure why I would think that. I suppose it was an assumption based on the fact that Jeremy, the only other cyclist I’d met so far, was such an awesome guy. Now, I know better. I know to keep my guard up.

Joan and Ed rumble out the drive before Donna returns. Maggie greets her with tail-wagging enthusiasm, the cats and chickens indifferent. Donna hands me sixty dollars before I pedal away, but I can’t accept it. After a back and forth we agree on twenty and a jar of homemade blackberry jam.

While I’d enjoyed my stay on the farm, my experiences in Parksville and Duncan are closer to how I’d imagined my couchsurfing encounters to be like. In Parksville I spend two nights with a woman who has a backyard nursery, and in Duncan I stay with the kind of amicable family I’d hoped for at Elk Creek. Danny is a teacher and Jessica a counsellor; they have a seventeen-year-old daughter, Miki—dark hair streaked pink and a badge proclaiming “Gay is Okay” pinned to the shoulder of her T-shirt—and live in a hillside cul-de-sac neighbourhood a few kilometres east of town. Dinner is ready when I roll down the driveway. The night before, the three of them had gone to see Leonard Cohen, and one of his albums plays on repeat from the moment I step in until the moment I depart.

I CAN’T GET OVER HOW WILLING PEOPLE ARE to accept me into their homes. Would I do the same? I hope so. During dinner with Danny, Jessica, and Miki I ask if they’ve ever had a bad experience with a couchsurfer.

“Never,” says Jessica. “Not in the two years we’ve been hosting.”

“We stay in touch with some more than others,” admits Danny. “We’ve actually gone on holiday to stay with couchsurfers who we hosted.”

“That’s how we could afford Europe,” adds Jessica.

I wonder if Miki will be couchsurfing, in Europe or elsewhere, after she graduates from high school next spring.

I leave Danny and Jessica’s place buoyed up with good feelings, excited about meeting my sister later that day in Shawnigan Lake. I’ve been on Quadra and Vancouver Island for a couple of weeks now, and though I’ve managed to get by on my own, I look forward to having a companion. I only hope my sister and I can get along as well as Jeremy and I did, and that none of the contention that plagued our childhood flares up again. I won’t know what to do if we regress into our quarrelsome adolescent selves. Going home is not an option.

PRIOR TO SETTING TRACKS FOR THE ECOVILLAGE, I detour to see the totem poles in downtown Duncan. All is going well until I steer Blue Steel into a massive pothole. Suddenly, the back tire goes wonky, spinning unevenly in a way I know means trouble. I wheel her toward a shaded park to assess the damage: a broken spoke on the rear wheel.

Although I’ve been carting around a repair guide, I possess neither the tools nor the knowhow to tackle a broken spoke. Brent’s gentle admonishments about being more invested in my bicycle nip at me once again. I walk off in search of a bike shop, already dreading how much this is going to cost. Maybe I should have accepted that sixty dollars from Donna after all. After ten minutes, I stumble upon an alleyway building with a mash-up of bike parts outside. The sign reads Bike Works Craft Shop in purple hand-painted letters. I roll Blue Steel inside and realize Bike Works is better than a bike shop: It’s a bike outreach centre where people can do their own repairs.

Inside, a few elementary-aged kids rattle through a jumble of handlebars in a corner. It must be Saturday. Wheels and handlebars hang overhead, tools meticulously organized on one wall. For a moment I watch the scene unfold: the greasy-handed kids determinedly rooting out the right part, a woman patching a tire under the instruction of a teenage girl (Does she work here? A volunteer?), and a slender man in a worn apron a shade darker than his greying hair helping a boy thread a brake cable.

“Can I help you?” asks the teenage girl with glasses. Her frizzy brown hair sticks to a pink knit sweater.

“I need to repair a broken spoke,” I say, wondering how much this kid actually knows about bikes.

“Sure,” she grins. “Find a spot and we’ll get you started.”

I settle into an out-of-the-way corner and remove the gear from my bike, unhinge the front wheel, and deflate the tube.

Then I get stuck.

The girl has disappeared. I dig out my repair manual, only to realize how over my head I am. I thought I could walk right in here and fix my bike—ha! The reality is that I have no idea what the tools I need—tension metre, spoke wrench, chain whip—even look like. When the girl finally appears, I panic.

“This isn’t something I’ve done before,” I say. My throat wells up. I hear my voice turn shaky. “I think I’d better bring it to a professional.”

The girl crouches beside me. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ve never fixed a broken spoke either.”

I almost laugh at the ridiculousness of our situation, but remind myself that despite her age and self-admitted inexperience, this girl still knows more about bike maintenance than I do.

“We’ll do it together,” she reassures me.

“Okay,” I say, catching her optimism. “Let’s give it a shot.”

We fumble our way from step to step. I ask my teenage instructor, Shandra, about her involvement with the shop. It turns out she’s a high-school student interested in bikes, volunteering as part of a work-exchange program to earn a bicycle—or more accurately, the opportunity to build a bicycle here at the shop. In less than a month, not only will Shandra have a custom-built bicycle, but she’ll be able to maintain and repair it. I admire her willingness to plunge headfirst into the project of replacing my spokes, the conviction that if we simply follow the sequence and use the right tools, we’ll eventually succeed.

The man in the apron turns out to be the coordinator of this outreach program, and drops by to provide direction a couple times when we find ourselves stuck. For the most part we do all right on our own, though it does take significantly longer than I’d expected. After I put my wheel back on and test out the tire, I pick up a couple of replacement spokes so that I’ll be prepared if this happens again. In addition, I exchange my cheap plastic pedals for a more durable set, pleased that I can do this small task without assistance.

If I had an extra week or two, I’d stick around Bike Works and learn a few things about the sacred art of bike repair. But right now, my sister is expecting me, and so I wish Shandra luck in building her bike and push off.

I HAVEN’T SEEN ALISHA SINCE HER GRADUATION IN MAY, but when I ride up to the Ecovillage she is easy to pick out, the cheery-eyed blonde in a wraparound skirt chopping garden veggies under a sign that reads Kitchen magicians only, thanks!

“You made it!” she squeals. Her hands look as though they belong to someone much older, palms creased with earth. “I want to show you the garden.”

The Ecovillage is nearly the same as I remember it, albeit quieter, without the bustle of activity around the Youth Convergence from my last visit. Marigold and nasturtiums punctuate rows of salad greens and fragrant mint in the garden; nearby, sunflower faces hang like showerheads from their stalks. In the greenhouse, tomato vines sling shiny red fruit. As we tour the recently terraced slope of amaranth, potatoes, and pumpkins, I wonder about our mother’s garden this year. While she doesn’t keep up the flowerbeds as she did when we were young, she still plants the vegetable patch. I imagine the kitchen windowsills lined with ripening tomatoes arranged from pale green to juicy red, plucked from the vine in early September before they begin to fuzz mould. She doesn’t like going into the greenhouse this late in the year anyways—too many spiders.

After a visit to the pigpen, we wander over to lend a hand to a crew of Villagers disassembling a yurt. Alisha and I move alongside the others, help fold the thick white canvas and cart poles off into storage under radiant five p.m. sunlight. When we’re done, our work party ambles back through the yellowed meadow for supper. Someone leads a call and response song, and I exhale, breathing easy, contented to be part of this community again, if only for a night.

The following morning, Alisha and I ride out for Victoria. Everyone from the Village is there for our send-off, tucking bits of lavender into Alisha’s panniers and coming around for hugs. Alisha hasn’t been away for more than a weekend all summer, and I wonder if she finds this scary—abandoning a known, safe place for a road of uncertainty—or if she welcomes the change. Even in my short time here, I can see how she’s bonded with the land, found happiness living in simplicity with these people. One of the other cooks, Maritza, a tall, dark-haired woman with arresting bottle-green eyes, hands Alisha a recipe on a yellowed index card. Alisha grins, tucking the slip into her journal.

“I can’t believe we’re finally doing this,” she says as we pedal out along the gravel drive.

I recognize the same giddy grin and nervous excitement in Alisha’s voice from my own experience of leaving Terrace one month ago. It’s the first of October now, the autumn breeze crisp against my fingertips.

We hook a left when we reach the main road to rocket down the hill into Mill Bay. Again, I can sense her enthusiasm, the lump-in-your-throat thrill of absolute freedom. For a moment I share it—that urge to scream and laugh in sheer, unrestrained delight—but more so, I feel relief that I’ve made it this far. I wonder if Alisha wasn’t joining me, would I continue south on my own? I’d like to say yes, but those difficult nights north of Campbell River flash back to me: darkness, fear. Even with the sense of community I’ve discovered in couchsurfing and at the bike outreach centre in Duncan, I’m not sure I have it in me to spend the next two-and-a-half months alone. When we reach a flat stretch I glance back again at Alisha, her grin now subdued as the weight of her panniers begins to take its toll. I say a silent thanks for having a companion once more.