Teen Spirit

There’s a tendency amongst regular travellers to want to see the “real” part of wherever their wanderlust takes them.

“Jo! You travel! Where’s good in Paris?”

At this point Jo sighs and rolls her eyes.

“Well, I mean, I suppose you could visit the Eiffel Tower if it’s your first time. But if you want to see the real Paris…”

But when you’re 13 and are told you’re going to be staying on an island in the middle of nowhere for 5 days, you don’t tend to share Jo's enthusiasm for the real. In fact, I have to admit that I got a bit, well…teenage about the whole affair.

“I don’t WANT to sleep in bunk beds! I don’t LIKE kayaking! I just want to eat maple syrup!”

I may be exaggerating a little, but you get the idea.

But I went to Compton Island and I slept in a bunk bed. In a tiny wooden shack. With no running water, and a hole in the ground for a toilet. Our guide was a First Nations person, and after feasting on freshly caught fish, we’d sit around a fire and hear him tell stories and myths from a culture I knew nothing about. In the day, we’d go kayaking for hours on end or take the boat to another isle.

Of all the natural narratives I have ever seen unfold, most magnificent was the orcas. One day we kayaked with these vast and powerful creatures just a hundred feet or so away from us; it seems almost absurd to retell it now, like an out of body experience. There’s a part of me that cannot believe I wasn’t terrified, but another much larger part of me that remembers how peaceful it felt. There is a calm to orcas, an elegance that juxtaposes sharply with their great physical mass.

I can’t claim that my teenage self changed her ways from that moment on, that I never zoned out in front of the TV for longer than is healthy. But like a great book or a perfect song, the orcas and the island opened up a facet of myself that I never knew existed. The part that wanted to know and see and learn and never forget what it felt like, to be floating with the whales.