March to Barcs: Savary Island

An international crossing, two ferries, a water taxi, the back of a pickup, and a young guy named Jesse who unloaded our week’s worth of clothes and comestibles for ten brought us to a house on Savary Island, a sand spit on the Sun Coast across from Vancouver Island.

Five miles long and almost none across, the only cars on the island had been barged in; the only electricity was gas-powered and much of the water pumped in similar ways. There was one store, a couple candy houses, one bar. And the store was like this: I only bought two grapefruits because I didn’t want to take half the supply; one pint of 2% depleted the shelf for a couple of days. I didn’t quite realize until a third of the way into our week how much I’d handed over when I gave my keys to Dave’s Parking back in Lund—the keys to the van, the house, the job. But for a whole week, there was no opening those doors.

Our good friend Rachel had arranged this trip. The trip part was a bit of a pain in the ass, frankly, and I’m embarrassed about how much we spent on ferry crossings and the rustic semi-walled house where we were advised to bathe as little as possible and burn the toilet paper, but once we were there, we were so free. There was beach in every direction, and the tide would roll out for most of each day, leaving long stretches of soft sand and water warmed in the shallow rolling surf.

Rachel and Isabelle’s six year old boy, Tommy, needed watching, and also their little dog (eagles were everywhere; and another of Rachel’s dog had a near miss in the past), but mostly kids carted themselves back and forth to the beach or played games in the house, or took the hike to the Sugar Shack down the Sunset Trail on the edge of the beach.

On the last night, Rachel’s high school friend Amei invited us over to someone’s house for some folk music. Amelia, always up for something, brought her viola. Sophie knew there’d be fiddling and wanted no part of it. But when Sophie recognized the music, she got up on the deck with the guitars and other fiddles and stayed up there until we left. Besides the long walks and runs and climbing rocks with the kids, playing sand croquet, reading Dashiell Hammett out loud with Stephanie, every day discovering new strands of beach, swimming in the early evenings and waiting for the sun to set right before bed, the music gave us something new and rich to experience, and I’ll remember it.

Before we went to play music, we had a poetry contest. Rachel’s a poet, and so she and Stephanie judged. Everyone who wrote a poem and didn’t judge won something—Sophie’s poem was Most Memorable, and in fact, I do remember that she quantified the experience in her poem a 6 out of 10; Amelia won best all-around; and Maisie’s won for best imagery.

Here’s Maisie’s poem:

Savary Island

looks just

a mustache—

A curvy shape

one a face

of water—

Sea foam

covering the face

like a thick layer

of shaving cream.

“Oh no! Ouch!”