In late August, our company Talaysay Tours sub-contracted our services to Rising Sun Kayaking and we had the opportunity to guide a seven-day kayak tour in Clayoquot Sound.
Accompanying me as a guide was my younger cousin Erika Vader. We are related because our great grandmother’s, Molly ?an and Ellen were sisters. I never met my great-grandmother or my great-grand aunt, but I have been told many tales about their strong character’s and the phenomenal experiences both women had lived as shíshálh women, born in the mid-late 1800’s.
Molly ?an was the oldest and she had several sisters, including ?iychanet (Janet) and ?ullen (Ellen). These women were known to be very strong and resourceful, and when I work with Erika, I cannot help but compare her to her great grandmother who was known to accomplish a great deal. Erika is a get the job done, extremely hardworking, fun and very gifted guide and cultural interpreter and I truly enjoy working with her.
On our kayak tour I looked forward to each morning waking up before our guests to have my ocean bath. It results in an instant wake up and it simultaneously relaxes my sore, not as young guiding muscles. I highly recommend it — it is pure medicine.
On the first night we had camped on Chantelle Beach and I was tired from having very little sleep the night before. In my semi-sleep I saw fast shadows around my tent. Or so I thought. As a guide from the south coast, I am trained to look for the larger, more burly slow shadows — bear shadows. These swift and graceful shadows were not bears, so I convinced myself that I was imagining it and I went fast asleep only to wake up the next morning to see wolf tracks all around my tent and throughout the beach. This wolf family would visit us every evening during our sleep. We were on their beach and I really respected that.
One early morning Erika and I were up making fresh coffee and Spanish omelettes for our clients and she had calmly shared to me that, “here we are in the Clayoquot Sound in whale country,” and that she had a dream the night before that, “there were killer whales (stalashen) right in our waterfront,” a.k.a. ch’átlích. Low and behold, we did have a pod of transient killer whales in our Sechelt tsain-ko (open water). Erika’s dream foretold it.
In tourism, we get to meet people throughout North America and the world and we share an outdoor cultural experience. We live thanks to what is provided to us by the land and water. I work with both friends and family members, both younger and older cousins, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles. I personally know our fellow tour operators and we share equipment and guides and refer clients when we are full. Most of us know each other’s kids.
I must share that I am aware that I lived a blessed life.
