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Tofino Nights

I believe that I may have discovered something of great importance. You’ll note that I have described it as potential, not actual: as with ascendance to sainthood, it must await that final seal of authenticity, its embracement by the She (or ‘They’ in this time of gender uncertainty)-who-must-be-obeyed -She who accords it final acceptance. That’s fine by me, of course, because it gives me more time to get the wording right.

I stumbled upon it by accident, actually. The sun was still hedging its bets on the horizon when I decided to go for a walk along the asphalt bike path that rims the highway into Tofino. Why not along the beach, I hear you wondering? I mean that’s what the West coast was designed for, eh? They had to have one in stock, or nobody would drive all the way across Vancouver Island just to visit a small fishing village in the rain. No, Tofino is to beach as Goldilocks is to bear.

And yet it’s not downtown, or anything -the ocean is, of course, or it wouldn’t be a fishing village, but you have to walk a bit to get to the closest sand, and Tofinistas are nothing, if not walkers. Well actually, it’s a young crowd, so they mostly bike, or drive pickup trucks, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

A walk seemed like the perfect way to kill some time until I could go out to eat again. It’s also a great excuse to get up instead of remaining supine. And given the post-hibernial grumblings of my stomach, I was pretty sure I would turn back before the sun disappeared anyway. The path was smooth and, for asphalt, fairly well marked. The edges were delineated with bright stripes, and in some places, there was even a line down the middle so, like cars, there was no excuse for bumping into anybody coming from the opposite direction. Except for the interminably endless sidewalk leading up to the Lion’s Gate Bridge through Stanley Park, I can’t remember seeing such attention to lanes before.

I figured the right hand trail rule would especially apply to anything with wheels, although I barely missed having to wear an electric wheelchair that was straddling the center line like an airplane travelling down a runway. I was checking my backpack for candy at the time, so perhaps I was a little distracted, but despite holding up a hand in amiable greeting, the occupant passed by close enough for her vortex to suck the Kleenex out of my side pocket. Given that I’d saved some unfinished gum in it, I realized I had to keep my wits about me or starve. I had to be prepared for the unexpected increasing dearth of ambient lighting. Unbeknownst to my gastrointestinal clock, November skies eschew formalities and are as likely to suddenly blacken and disappear as to linger and chat.

The blinding glare of passing headlights were beginning to throw confusing shadows on my personal asphalt, so I checked my watch and discovered, to the increasing dismay of my ever-anticipatory gut, that a retreat at that point would likely return me to the town before most people had even digested lunch -a meal I had already processed. My stomach does not hoard; it constantly labours to create more room in case anything else comes along. In short, there was nothing for it but to continue on my utterly purposeless journey while searching through my pack in case I had missed something edible.

I maintained a weather eye on the path, of course, and kept looking behind me in case that all-too-silent wheelchair snuck up behind me like the RCMP on a drug bust. It would be effectively camouflaged in the flickering shadows, and unlike the fishing vessels in the harbour, carried no warning lights.

Come to think of it, neither did the bikes. Like I said, Tofino is primarily young and even those not from-away, have learned nothing from their fisher parents about ships that pass in the night. They also are incurious about center lines and the societal conventions that restrict the lane in which they are expected to travel. Perhaps, like the white canes the sight-impaired tap from side to side to detect obstacles, the bikers feel the same urge to explore and test. This makes it tricky for unlighted pedestrians to choose the safest path.

I’ve always felt most comfortable facing what might hit me, so I can take evasive action; I don’t like to be surprised by rearguard stuff, where I can’t. But in the rapidly fading light, and the deceptive, constantly shifting shadows thrown at me by the lights of passing pickup trucks, it obviously made no difference which direction I was going. No matter the lane, each bike was a surprise that surfaced like a dorsal fin in troubled waters.

With no bells, no whistles, and no lights, bikes here are quiet virtual particles that relish their abilities to pop in and out of existence. It seems a matter of considerable pride to materialize suddenly beside the unsuspectant and then with barely a smile of acknowledgement, dissolve again into the cosmic black without a trace. I have to admit that I was annoyed the first few times, but the novelty wore off after a while and a kind of Sartrean indifference replaced the anger. A soldier in battle soon accepts the fact that, like it or not, somewhere there is an unlit bicycle with his name on it. It is a fact of night that he can only hope comes silently and strikes quickly when he least expects it.

My name, however, was on a dog. I don’t know where it came from, or for that matter, where it was hoping to go, but it was black and struck like an unlit pickup truck. It seemed to know me, and a soon as I hit the grass beside the asphalt, it tongued my face like I was covered with meat. All my thoughts of hunger, all my pseudo-bicycular apathy and all my loathing of the dark self-imposed pedestrial exile were instantly washed away in the joy of that unexpected meeting: a baptism of fur and doggy breath. It was a sudden epiphany on my road to Tofino: surprisingly, the least of us are loved. Even unsolicited. Even undeserved.

And then it was gone -back into the bushes from whence it came- but it was enough. We all need time on the grass, I think; we all need to know we matter, especially when we least expect it. Face time goes a long way to help us on our journey home -no matter how fraught the route, or charged with punishments the scroll…

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