Before I knew it we’d spent over three weeks on the island. I was learning the art of relaxation from Jack.
It was as though we had totally forgotten why we’d ever started this journey, now we were just carefree travellers. My time on this enchanted island had been a sensuous mix of swimming, sex, eating, walking and watching Jack perfect his bodysurfing skills while I soaked up the sunshine on the shore. I learned to forage. Sunsets, sunrises, moonrises, meteor showers. It was as though time had melted away along with my fears.
But it was finally time to go. I would miss this place. I still felt that somehow, no matter what happened and what came of my life, I would return to this island. I felt it strongly, and that feeling reassured me. But according to Jack there were still so many other places to see. I had grown used to his attitude of treating this journey like an adventure and an excuse to travel. In fact, I had almost started to feel the same way. However, despite all the blissful moments and experiences on the island, there still remained lodged somewhere deep within, a tiny, tiny part of me that held on to my fears. But those next few days in Whistler, I would break free entirely. I’d step out of the Silvia I knew and I’d become a different person.
We walked through alpine meadows and open forest. We smiled at and said hello to any passers-by. We saw many animals, including a herd of deer and marmots – we often heard the shrill whistles of these pudgy rodents as they warned other marmots in the area of any potential danger, apparently that’s how Whistler got its name. And on the second night I even awoke to watch a bear sniffing around for food remains outside our van.
All in all, we were as good as on vacation. One night, we set up camp by a large lake. While Jack prepared dinner, I took myself over to the shore and sat down. The moon was high and a couple of days off being full. It was casting a bright trail of light on the black surface of the lake. The air was still and there was barely a ripple on the water. Serenity filled the air. I got up and went to the water’s edge, bent down and dipped two fingers in. I splashed some water. Plip plop. The sound seemed loud amongst the vast silence. I looked back up at the moon. The moon and I; I wondered how many full moons had passed since the day I’d been born. I stood up and strolled along the edge of the lake, careful not to wet my shoes. That night the moonlight was so bright that it didn’t feel like night at all. All around me the earth was lit up, as though it was covered in a translucent sheet of silver.
Every now and then I stopped and turned to look at the moon’s long silky reflection in the water: a long and thick vertical line of white that ran from the lake’s horizon to my feet, widening the closer it got to me. No matter where I went the moon’s reflection always followed me, its line of light always ending at my feet. It was like a rope attached to my feet that ran to the horizon. If there had been a whole line of people standing along the length of that shore each one of us would have seen our very own line of light. But if instead, there’d been no one there to see, there would have been no trail of light at all. And though I couldn’t quite comprehend it, it struck me that this lake was both totally illuminated and in darkness all at once.
I was exhausted. We’d been walking for seven hours straight since the early morning and my feet were sore. The sun was beating down on us and I’d already almost finished my water supply. We reached a deep, clear, beautiful stream. We took a break. Before I could muster up the energy to take my shoes off, Jack was already testing the water with his feet.
‘How is it?’ I asked.
‘Refreshing,’ he said, ‘it’s lovely, not as cold as I expected.’
I joined him. He was right. The water was still and smooth, the current wasn’t particularly strong in this part, and it was right in the path of the sun. Jack stripped down to his boxers and then plunged all the way in.
‘Ahh,’ he sighed, after his head rose back to the surface, ‘amazing.’
The sun was shining straight onto his head, making the drops of water on his face and hair shine like diamonds. I stared as his movements emphasised the muscles on his arms and back. God he was beautiful.
‘You should come in,’ he said.
I hesitated but after a while I decided to join him. I walked in slowly and shivering, with my shoulders at my ears and my arms wrapped around my chest. And as I finally submerged my body I had a strange flashback. I was a little girl, long ago, in a place I didn’t know because my mother was always traveling to new places. We were sitting on the green overgrown banks of a river. We must have been very far away from the rest of the world because she went into the water completely naked. She took me in her arms and held me while I splashed about in the water. Then she pointed me downstream and told me to start doing strokes like a frog, whilst still holding me. Ribbit ribbit, she said. I remembered her voice and the way that she said it. I must have been only around four years old. I was tiny.
And with this sudden flashback I felt a weight start to press against my chest. It was a weight I hadn’t felt for days, weeks even. I wanted it to go away but it was there, growing, reminding me of everything, of why I was running away, why I was even here in this stream all the way up in Canada. I had to stop swimming. I left the water, wrapped my shirt around my shoulders and sat down on the rocks, resentful and angry. This pain, these memories, they were always ready to greet me.
‘What’s up?’ Jack asked.
And I told him. He left the water, dried himself off roughly, grabbed me by the hand and got me to my feet.
‘Come,’ he said.
I had no idea what he was doing and where he was leading me, but I followed him. We walked upstream.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘You’ll see.’
He pointed at some flowers I hadn’t seen before. He commented on the song of a bird I hadn’t noticed. I heard the breeze run through the trees, the low drone of summer insects in the grass, the call of birds near and far and the rocks slip and crunch beneath our feet. The smell of wildflowers flooded my nostrils and the blackness started to drift away.
We carried on walking upstream for another minute or so, when Jack suddenly climbed up some rock cliffs above the stream.
‘What the fuck are you doing Jack?’
But I followed him. He took me gently by the shoulders and turned my body around so I was facing downstream, out across the valley.
‘Looks pretty from up here, doesn’t it?’ he said.
It did. Of course it did. The view from this height emphasised the magnitude and beauty of the place even more.
‘So what were you saying about your mom?’ he said.
‘Is that why you brought me up here? To ask me about that?’
‘Well, I just thought it’d be easier to talk about stuff up here,’ he said.
I was silent. I closed my eyes and breathed the alpine air deeply into my lungs. I felt my skin tingle as drops of water evaporated from it under the sun. I sensed the sun’s bright light through my closed eyes and without turning to him I sighed and smiled.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
We stood there for a while, in silence, looking out from our viewing spot, with only the sound of each other’s breath between us, and the slow soothing flow of the stream a few metres below us.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
I nodded.
He put his arm around me, looked down at me and smiled. And although I no longer needed to, I felt reassured. But his caring smile quickly turned into a mischievous grin and, before I got a chance to ask him why, he jumped.
‘Oh my god!’ I looked down and when I saw his face emerging from the water and smiling up at me I didn’t know whether to laugh or to shout at him. ‘Fuck Jack, that fucking scared me. You idiot!’
‘That,’ he said, ‘that is why I took you up here! Do it!’
I stared down at him for a few more seconds.
‘Fuck!’ I said, ‘fuck it!!’
And although I’d never done anything like that before, without thought and without fear, I jumped. I fell those few metres through the air and hit the water like a bullet. I opened my eyes before rising and a wash of white bubbles danced around my face. I think even under the water, whilst holding my breath, I was grinning. I surfaced, breathed in and yelled with excitement. I felt invincible.
‘Amazing,’ I said.
Oak had followed us and was now barking at us from the lower bank. I motioned for her to join us but she didn’t even attempt to venture in by herself. I dove under as far as I could with my eyes open. Under the water, with that strange silence in which sounds are warped, it felt like a different world. I kept dipping in and out of that world, rising up and diving down, until I didn’t know which world I belonged to.
Later, when the stream had taken us back towards our clothes and our packs, I climbed out and coaxed Oak into the shallows, splashing her fur gently at first to ease her in. She was reluctant, but after a lot of coaxing she was doggy paddling around with us in the deeper parts, under our watchful and protective eyes.
I melted into the moment.
‘Jack,’ I said, ‘I want to go to Alaska.’
And so it was decided. I was determined to see more of this beautiful world, and not knowing what the future held no longer scared me. After that one decisive and fearless jump I’d made into the stream, I was now ready to dive further into the unknown.
All we had to do now was figure out how we would take Oak across the border. Because, we’d decided, she had to come with us. It turned out that hiding a small dog would be much harder than hiding a human. But we still had time to think things through.
*
On our last evening in Whistler as we passed by families, couples and lone travellers sitting at dinner tables I salivated as wafts of delicious food met my nose. I turned to him and said,
‘Let’s eat out tonight.’
He let out a laugh, but didn’t say anything. We’d been very careful with our money so far, not knowing how long it would need to last.
‘It’s our last day here,’ I said, ‘let’s just allow ourselves this one last treat, ok? Come on, we’ve had such an amazing time, right? It’s on me.’
He turned to look at a couple eating oysters by candlelight, and then at a family devouring three large pizzas between them.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘yes.’
It took us a while to decide on a restaurant, hovering from menu to menu. Despite our decision to splash out, we knew we couldn’t be too excessive. We settled on a lively but welcoming Italian joint that would allow Oak to come and sit under our table as long as she was well behaved. The place was bathed in the light of candles and oil lamps. I imagined the warm golden glow. The smell of fresh garlic, olive oil and baking dough made my mouth water. It was teeming with people but we managed to find a table for two tucked away in a quiet corner and we felt pretty cosy there. I guess it was our first proper date. I didn’t mention that to Jack and kept the thought to myself, but I couldn’t help but feel excited by it. I wondered what kind of questions I’d ask him if this really was our first date, the first time we were meeting each other properly, and if I was a normal person with nothing to hide. Impossible, I thought, if I was normal, we’d have never met. Fuck normal.
A waiter came to take our order and we decided on a bottle of red wine and a large goat’s cheese pizza to share. The thought of it made me drool. I excused myself and went to the bathroom. I didn’t have anything on me, no hairbrush, no make-up and no pretty clothes, just the same frumpy gear I had worn hiking that day, but I tried to arrange myself somewhat. I let down my hair and ran my fingers through it. I bit my lips to let the blood run to them and I pinched my cheeks so that they would get even more colour in them. I noticed for the first time what a healthy glow my skin had acquired from all the hiking in the fresh air and sunshine. I ran a wet finger along my eyelashes and my eyebrows and I rinsed out my mouth. I unbuttoned the first top buttons of my shirt to uncover my chest more. Then I thought that was far too obvious, and I buttoned them up again. I made myself laugh alone in that bathroom in front of the mirror. I stopped and just looked at myself. It had been a while since I’d really just properly stopped to look at myself in a mirror like this.
‘Oh Silvia, Silvia, Silvia… look at you… who knew all this would happen?’ I whispered, smiling at myself.
It was too much to comprehend. In the last several weeks since leaving San Diego, so much had changed, and here I was now, in an Italian restaurant in the middle of Whistler, British Columbia, an illegal entrant, smiling at myself in a bathroom mirror, while a few metres away, behind a wall, a beautiful man and our beautiful dog waited for me. I could have never predicted any of this. I loved this new story.
I looked deep into my eyes. Oh Silvia, Silvia, Silvia, who are you?
*
We sipped on the wine, relishing the taste, as we waited for the pizza to come. We reflected on the day, talked about Alaska, food, Oak, mountains and waterfalls. We toasted our glasses and somehow, we simultaneously managed to blurt out ‘to us’. My heart stopped for just a second and a tiny moment of fleeting awkwardness ensued, in which I think I blushed, but that soon passed as we tucked into our delicious meal. We didn’t talk about our past. We were consumed by the present.
*
That night I felt warm and glowing, and merry after the wine. We stopped off at a shop and bought a couple of five-litre bottles of mineral water for the journey that was ahead of us. The last few days of hiking and sunshine had left us craving more water than usual. When we turned a corner after leaving the shop I saw Jack pull out a small dark elegant box of Victoria chocolates from the sleeve of his jacket.
‘Would you like one?’ he said, opening the box and grinning over at me.
‘How did you—?’
‘Well, you know, in my experience there’s nothing quite like letting a delicious Victoria Deluxe truffle melt on your tongue… their luxury chocolates are divine,’ he grinned, putting on a posh accent, ‘but they do cost a fortune, and I think we’ve spent enough money as it is today, don’t you?’ I looked at him, my face of disbelief slowly subsiding into a smile. ‘Besides,’ he said, squinting to read the back of the box, ‘they’re made by Agra Kraft. Who on earth would want to give money to a corporation like that? With their track record.’ He turned to me once again. ‘Perhaps a hazelnut praline truffle,’ he continued, ‘…or a salted caramel?’ Finally I burst out laughing, grabbed a chocolate, and put it in my mouth. Butterscotch walnut. God, they really were good. It didn’t take us long to empty the contents of that stolen box of chocolates. And as we walked back to the van a few drops of rain fell from the sky and the air felt electric.
While we lay in the van that night, with our bellies full, a huge and powerful storm passed over us. Every now and then Oak would howl and we had to comfort her, until finally she fell asleep, curled up in the passenger footwell.
The sex that night was unforgettable… the sound of the rain, wind and thunder, the smell of the air and earth, the whole atmosphere of the storm made it feel otherworldly. We drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms, with Jack still inside me. During that last night in the Whistler area I awoke a few times and felt how the storm shook the van. The rain pelted down onto the metal and the sound was hypnotic. The rumbling thunder reached somewhere deep within me and resonated with my whole being. It spoke to my very core.