Small Boots, Big steps - Juan de Fuca Marine Trail Part I
Juan de Fuca Marine trail is the lesser-known trail on the lower West Coast of Vancouver Island. It is beautiful, snaking through the forest and beaches from China Beach to Botanical Beach. It has many advantages to it’s bigger brother the West Coast Trail; fewer hikers, no permits and it’s closer to Victoria. I have hiked it a couple of times in parts and it has always been a challenge, enjoyable but a challenge.
I have been waiting for the time to introduce hiking to my son Oskar and last fall we began the journey with a hike on the Juan De Fuca Marine Trail.
On this hike, my step-brother Sigurjon and his son Odin joined us. We decided to hike from Parkinson Creek to the Payzant Creek campsite and back the next day. A total of 6 km, a perfect distance for this virgin trip. The last thing I wanted to do was make the hike so hard that Oskar would never want to do it again.
Odinn makes his way down
Oskar was excited but also a little hesitant, will there be bears? Probably, but don’t worry. How long is it? 6 km that’s nothing! What about Cougars? Never seen one and regrettably and probably never will. What will we eat? Something yummy. Where will I do number two? At the outhouse or in the woods. How? No answer. All were valid questions that had sought my mind as well before my first hike on Vancouver Island.
Exploring the Coastal Shelf
As a right of passage I decided to give Oskar his first knife. Now there are knifes and there are knifes and for an eight-year-old boy there is a big difference between what is acceptable and what is not. So a small pocket foldable knife was out of the question. One of the main things about a real knife, according to an eight-year-old boy, is that it has to be carried in a holster, on the belt. Kind of like the gunslingers in the Wild West, carried their guns. So Oskar got a real knife with a fixed blade, in a holster and got to wear it on his belt. This made him very happy and he would have been content staying in the parking lot at Parkinson Creek, whittling away at a stick for 2 days.
There are some dark parts with thick over-growth
This part of the Juan de Fuca is pretty easy, but what is easy for grown men and women is not as easy for smaller hikers. Despite this fact, Oskar and his cousin Odin marched on, excited about the knifes and carrying stuff on their backs. They revered in things that most hikers hate, mud puddles were a strong favourite. Moping around looking at things like leaves, sticks and the mud puddles, slowed us down but seemed to make the hike more fun for the boys.
This is probably something we adults could try to learn from. Often hikes tend to be a constant march between point A to point B, covering distances the main thing, instead of appreciating the surroundings.
A mud puddle
At last we were at the campsite, and the first thing Oskar does is whip out his knife to whittle some wood. As me and Sigurjon prepared camp and made some dinner (hot dogs were the preferred choice by you know who!), Oskar and Odin cut twigs down to their core as if they’d been paid to. I wonder what would have happened if I would have put some potatoes in a pile in front of them, probably not much.
Oskar whittling away
As the day came to an end, we sat around the stove and munched away at dinner. Oskar and Odin were strangely quiet and I asked the boys if there was something wrong. We’re tired was the answer and that night was one of the few nights in Oskar’s life that he has asked to go to sleep. To be continued…
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