Pike Island: The Search

 

The original, instigating reason for my epic journey to Pike Island was because not that long ago my wife and I went for a walk there. And we saw a lot of deer.

A       lot     of          deer.

I thought I would like to take some pictures of all those deer.

Once, when I was still friends with Gregg, roughly a quarter of a century ago, we went to the northern end of Vancouver Island. There we took a sea kayak out onto the Johnstone Strait, one of the most famous places in the world for Orcas, Killer Whales. We went to see the Killer Whales.

They did not come to see us.

Though it was a credibly wild place we still ran into the occasional biologist, explorer, and wanderer, each of them talking of the strange mystery of why the Killer Whales had not yet come. There were rumors of:

The tragic death of an Orca Baby delaying the pod.

Something something something ocean currents.

And

This is normal, they'll be here in 15 minutes.

But we did not see a single Killer Whale.

I was reflecting upon this history as I walked alone down the center of Pike Island, where a week earlier we had seen dozens upon dozens of deer. And where now I had seen precisely... none.

I saw trees, and I loved to see them:

I saw open fields of dead grasses:

I saw the strange skeletons of last years plants and their burst seedpods:

And I saw the woods. Ever the woods in the low hard light.

I peered into them eagerly...

But no, nothing.

And so I walked on, deeper into Pike Island, wondering at my fortune, and I looked again...