My wife has been working for the summer as a kayaking guide at Discovery Islands Lodge on Quadra Island. Kayaking is her love/obsession.
Kayaking takes her into the wilderness where she gets up close and personal with nature and a world without traffic jams and rat-racing and pollution.
When she's not showing visitors from Belgium, England, Dubai, New York or Vancouver around Surge Narrows marine park or the Octopus Islands, she's swimming in pristine lakes or hiking silent, magical trails where the air is fresh and every one of your senses comes alive.
I've spent most of my summer in a bunker in Burnaby.
Our TV newsroom is dark and utilitarian. My office window looks out over a rusting, disused satellite dish that is probably frying my brain and if I open the window I can hear the annoying, incessant sound of interminable Skytrains rumbling past.
This is why, most weekends, I head up to Quadra. Not just to spend time with my wife, but also to breathe a little. And clear my head.
The wilderness is on our doorstep. Which brings us to last weekend.
My wife had taken the day off and guided me and our friends Meryl and Gordon into the marine park, showing us sea stars and seals and sea urchins and how to make a bullhorn out of bull kelp. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. So far away from everything - and yet still so near.
The winds were blowing and the currents and tides were tricky. We had to paddle hard through some patches. We stopped on a remote beach for drinks and snacks, and luxuriated in the beauty of it all. Paradise has been good to us in B.C. for these past three glorious months.
This summer off Quadra, I've seen plenty of wildlife. My wife has seen orcas, humpbacks, fin whales, minke whales, white-sided dolphins, porpoises, baby seals, octopi and all kinds of cool stuff.
As we began heading back towards Quadra, I shouted to my wife, "OK, I'd like a pod of killer whales now."
About five minutes later I got my wish. About 200 or 300 metres in front of us, I saw a huge splash. I yelled out to the other three. "Look out there. What is it?"
And then, in a perfect line, a pod of orcas was leaping, lunging, breaching or porpoising (I'm never quite sure which description is correct) directly toward us.
At high speed.
We had two reactions: Exhilaration. And fear.
They kept coming hard at us, in unison, leaping out of the water in an explosion of spray every 30 metres or so.
My wife told us to keep calm. "They can see you. They know where you are." One of the whales was on a collision course for her kayak.
They dipped into the water 50 metres in front of us. And then, gloriously and dangerously, the entire pod leapt out of the water alongside our boats.
I felt I could almost touch the nearest orca. I heard it exhale. I saw an eye, a flash of black and white, the other killer whales in formation. And then they were gone, diving and splashing into the distance.
One whale did not come to the surface but headed toward my wife's boat. Even though it was travelling at high speed, it stayed under her kayak as the other pod members leaped above our heads.
Everything went still. From an explosion of sound and fury and water to pristine silence.
And then we started whooping and hollering. We had been part of a special moment.
Other kayakers at the lodge had witnessed wilderness wonders too. One group, on a trip to Bute Inlet, had watched grizzlies. A German man showed me footage he shot of a mother grizzly, almost emaciated, taking salmon to her demanding male cub.
My wife helped guide a group to the Octopus Islands this week and heading through a channel, they heard a thunderous sound behind them, almost like galloping horses. Suddenly, a group of about 40 white-sided dolphins raced around them, some under their boats, probably getting away from killer whales.
I'm back in my bunker in Burnaby now. I'm glad I get out there, in the real world, now and then - to the wilderness on our doorstep.
We should never, ever take it for granted. Or let anyone try to take it away.
