These are the nerds we came to see.

We find Lucas at the park’s staff residence, flipping veggie burgers for dinner. He tells us of his conversion to birding. He was a nature lover all his life. Whether it was hiking up a mountain with his buddies to track down a particular type of snake, or taking the path less travelled in search of a rare plant.

Working in Pelee, it wasn’t long before his attention turned skyward. He resisted at first. “I once swore I’d never be a birder,” he said. “I became a closet birder.” Before long, he caved totally. Now he wears his binocu- lars with pride and wishes more people were birders.

Lucas believes that bird-watchers care more about the environment than non-bird-watchers. They are more respectful of nature. Not all of them—not the listers who treat bird sightings like hockey cards or stamp collections—but the real birders, the ones who understand birds because they notice everything, who go out in hik- ing boots and kayaks and lose themselves in the natural world. The soul birders.

It’s all just an excuse to be outside, getting close to nature. That’s all that birding is about. “Like surfing,” Lucas shrugs. “It’s the same thing.”

When Lucas recounts his lifelong love of nature, I compare his passion to my own. When people asked me as a kid what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said “naturalist.” I only grabbed this term because I knew that I wanted to live and work outside in wild places. The only people I met who did that were the provincial park natu- ralists I met on family camping trips.

Dalmatia has names for all of its winds, of which the notori- ous bora is the most powerful. Named for Bureaus, the God of the North Winds, the bora comes from the north and inland, blowing down with gale or storm force through gaps in the Dinaric Alps, the half-desert limestone mountains that form the steep rim of the Adriatic bathtub. The bora can last for days and ruin any plans you have of paddling windward. But the bora occurs rarely in the summer months. The southerly wind, the jugo or scirocco, is also weak during this hot, humid time of year. In summer, the welcome, cooling breeze of the northwesterly maestral prevails. 

Campfires have a significant impact because there is very little topsoil on the scenic rocky coastlines of popular paddling areas such as Ontario’s Georgian Bay Islands. What little soil there is comes primarily from the decomposing wood of fallen trees, branches and leaves. The removal of deadwood for fires removes the nutrients available for plants.

Fires have also left scars on the rocks of many beautiful campsites. When I was a graduate student in archaeology, I learned that the signs of fire—be they carbon deposits on rocks, layers of ash in the soil or rock heat fractures—are among the longest-lasting markers on a campsite, remaining visible for thousands of years.

Sand will also hold a fire trail for future campers to find. Sand will melt or scar, and on popular beaches the sand is full of unburnt and partially burnt wood. Unless the fire is below the high-tide line, turning the sand under only hides the fire pit until someone tries to build a sandcastle there.

Fires also emit a lot of particulate matter. The air pollution from campfires mimics the smog of city air that so many of us are trying to escape when we head out on a kayak tour.

The risk of forest fires is almost too obvious to mention, but still a very important reason to forego the evening blaze. I recall paddling along a wilderness shoreline and smelling smoke—not directly from a camper’s fire, but pouring from the ground 50 metres away from an old fire pit. The fire had travelled through the tree roots below the fire pit. The firefighters who eventually subdued this blaze said such root fires were all too common.

Combine the potential impacts of fire with the increase in the number of people camping in an ever-shrinking wilderness and the results are obvious. In many parts of the world, fires have been banned due to limited wood supplies and heavy recre- ational use. In Canada, we are fortunate to be self-regulated with the exception of fire bans during extremely dry weather. To continue enjoying this freedom we must minimize or eliminate our fire use.

Doing without fires is simple. For cooking, camp stoves are easy to use, reasonably inexpensive and far easier to control than a campfire. Plus, your pots stay nice and shiny.

Once you get used to camping without fire, you’ll wonder why you ever bothered to spend hours of your precious vacation collecting deadwood. You’ll use that time for swimming or just relaxing. You’ll see the stars much more clearly and enjoy north- ern lights, sunsets and the serene change from dusk to dark. And when looking back at a campsite you’ve left, you’ll feel good to see no evidence, not even a fire ring or scar on the rock, to mark your stay. The next camper can enjoy the pleasure of feeling like they’ve discovered the place for the first time.

But if you must…

• Use an existing fire pit if available.
• Build beach fires in sand or gravel below the high-water mark.
• Better yet, use a fire pan that you carry with you—essentially a piece of sheet metal with the edges turned up to contain the ashes. Place the pan over a bed of sand about 5 cm thick on top of solid rock, or perch it on top of smaller rocks.
• Always keep your fires as small as possible—20 cm across for cooking.
• Use small pieces of wood and use only dead, fallen wood.
• Burn your fire completely so you have minimal ash and charcoal left over. 

Jonathon Reynolds is co-author of Kayaking Georgian Bay and The Soft Paddling Guide. He and partner Heather Smith own and operate Nomadic Adventures. 

So I planned a seven-day kayak trip. Beginning in Gold River, a remote West Coast logging town deep in Vancouver Island’s Nootka Sound, I would make my way to the exposed outer coast, paddle south around the noto- rious headland of Estevan Point to Hesquiat Harbour and visit the famed garden at Boat Basin. Then I would zigzag my way further south through the forested islands of Clayoquot Sound to the resort town of Tofino. On the way would be plenty of solitude to give me a taste of Cougar Annie’s life on the edge.

At the docks in Gold River, I loaded my gear aboard the Uchuck III, a former World War II minesweeper that now runs goods and people out to the coast’s remote lodges, homes and camps. With my kayak on board, the Uchuck motored west through the channels leading to Vancouver Island’s outer coast. The forested mountain- sides opened up to reveal snowcapped peaks behind them, fishermen fighting salmon and the odd curious

gaze of a sea lion or seal. Nearing the Pacific, the boat began to roll on a light swell. The Nootka Lighthouse appeared, marking the southern tip of Nootka Island and the entrance to the mouth of the sound. The Uchuck docked nearby at the historic coastal village of Friendly Cove. Today the settlement contains little more than a church, a graveyard, a single house, derelict foundations and a fallen totem pole. It is the landing site of Captain James Cook, the first European to set foot in B.C., and once an important summer residence for the local Mowachaht people. That was back when there were thousands of First Nations spread along the coast in pros- perous communities, and the way it was in 1915 when a woman named Ada Annie Rae-Arthur arrived on the coast with her husband Willie for a clean start and a new life.

The drug problems of today’s Vancouver were problems 90 years ago, and Willie was addicted to the city’s opium dens. The community of Boat Basin, a full day’s travel from Tofino, was remote enough to be free from temptation. Like few others, Annie stayed long enough to witness the decline of the Mowachaht. Until 1986, long after her neighbours had dwindled to none and she had gone blind, Annie stayed at her garden, not leaving for years at a time. She spent 70 years out here; I would spend seven days.

Icrossed the channel from Friendly Cove to the southern edge of Nootka Sound with the waves splashing at my side, glad to be alone on the ocean. I felt like a coastal explorer, with empty beaches, wave-washed cliffs, crashing surf and dense forest on one side, and open ocean, the odd sea otter, seals and sea birds on the other. I made camp at one of the many white sand beaches. Wolf, deer, and bear tracks dimpled the sand in lines that disap- peared into piles of bull kelp. I expected to see hand-sized cat-tracks too, here on Annie’s turf.

The highways of southern N.W.T. traverse vast dis- tances between the minute enclaves of iconoclasts that comprise the culture of the North. In this otherwise tedious landscape of tortured spruce trees and mosquitoes, ancient glacial action has created a huge escarpment over which pretty much all the region’s water tumbles. Government engineers bulldozed Highway 1 along the escarpment’s periphery. Tourism marketers named it the Waterfall Route. The road provides easy access to six waterfalls: Louise Falls at 15 metres, Alexandra Falls at 33 metres, the twin falls of Escarpment Creek at eight metres and 12 metres, Lady Evelyn Falls at 15 metres, and McNally Creek. Only Lady Evelyn Falls had ever been run.