Desolation is defined as:
When Captain George Vancouver charted these waters in 1792 he found this area so remote and foreboding he called it Desolation Sound. Pity he didn’t come sailing in the summer…
With its endless coves and inlets Desolation Sound is a boater’s paradise,
And at this time of year it is anything but desolate!
Seems that everyone is looking for a place to be alone, a little ‘desolation’, a little down time.
Wordsworth had it right:
“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune…”
–William Wordsworth, first lines of his sonnet (1807)
So we thought we’d have another look at this paradise just beyond our doorstep (2 1/2 hrs. sail time away) and see if there was room for us to be alone here too!
We had company for supper the first night…
The water was some of the warmest ocean water we’ve found yet. Delightful swimming!
And we dinghied ashore for a hike to the top of this steep little landmass—
–through cool ferny rainforest where we met the jolly(?) green giant…
…right on up and over, to warm and dry arbutus/salal forest and a view of a lily-clad lake far below…
And of course there were flowers to take pictures of…
When we’d had enough of enjoying the desolation, we invited out some friends for company and steak dinner (which they so graciously provided!)
…and hosted a slumber party for all the tiny night creatures which wheedled their way through screens and under sheets and feasted on us all the night long! Note: There are worse things than mosquitoes; now we know. Did Captain Vancouver meet these formidable pests in his travels? And what did they do without “Off”?! Even a boater’s paradise is not without its little miseries…
But the beauty of the ‘desolation’ here far outweighed the inconvenience of sleeping with ‘bedbugs’ and I’m ever so grateful for the captain who made it all possible!
–
-LS