Compass, Shmompass

I have a compass. I paid full price for it, so it has all of the requisite 360 degrees marked on it. It has the spinning red-to-white arrow, east and west declinations that I can adjust in keeping with my present line of longitude in the world, if I should need to be that specific, and it all comes on a fine, wound, lanyard so that I can wear it around my neck. 

But, I don’t wear it around my neck.

Last I checked, it was under a bag of almonds in the catch-all thingy between the two front seats in the van. That was before I headed out on a solo drive to Granite Bay, here on Quadra Island. 

There are few roads on Quadra, and knowing this, I felt confident about nailing my destination. What a fool. Frankly, I’m not sure that the compass would have helped me had I been wearing it around my neck enroute, because the thing with compasses is, that you have to actually look at them. The compass doesn’t care about you, at least not with anything like the relentless verve of the voice of the back-seat-driving, matronly scolding, pain-in-the-ass entity who lives in the navigating app on my phone. Accurate as she can be, in her harping howl, she is not a player here because there is limited, to no internet access here on the island. 

Did I mention that there really aren’t enough roads here to get lost on? 

Cue, me.  

Granite Bay Road is, for the most part, on a 320 degree bearing. Surge Narrow Road, which is the road I ended up on, is on a 20 degree bearing. For those of you having difficulty picturing this, consider the outline of an ice cream cone. Yes, the roads are that divergent. Between the two roads, Granite Bay, and Surge Narrow, was Village Bay Road, running almost directly east-west for a long time, like the flat bottom on the cone.  I should have twigged to the fact that something was up, but there were trees and turns and mountains; one beautiful view after another, and my jaw perpetually dropped.  I imagine my compass sat, capably pointing the way, under the almonds, chortling to itself about my non-Marco-Polo-ness. I kept going.

Well, I can’t remember if it was the road-narrowing, or the gravel that happened first. Yes, gravel, HAPPENS. Gravel is a living thing, and for the first time in ages, I was grateful to have grown up driving a light-as-hell half-ton Ford 150 pickup truck on roads often thickly layered with the aggregate to the point where any low flying airplane might have confused it with oatmeal.  I was used to the rear of the vehicle fishtailing and knew how to bring it back to centre. We also had hills, but not like this. Alongside the roads of my childhood farm, there were steep ditches, but not complete drop offs at the edges, or forests likely lousy with bears, or dragons. 

So, driving on oatmeal, under threat of bears, AND, I’ve got Ontario license plates on my Honda van, so the pressure to NOT be an asshole is enormous. 

At one point, deep into this voyage, I began laughing like an idiot and considered turning around. Then I told myself, Come on, pansy! You’re just a single woman driving on a dangerous road through terrain that you are SO not familiar with. Why turn around?  I kept going; my compass likely spinning in its’ bezel–its’ own judgmental version of an eye-roll.

Instead of arriving at Granite Bay, I found myself at Hoskyn Channel Landing. Fine. Sigh. And, of course. There was nothing in the parking lot that wasn’t a four-wheel drive, and even these had big stones set as chocks behind their wheels. There was a ramp there, for launching boats, that was so steep, I figured that the cement had to have been bribed to stay put on the incline. Or was that a Decline. Some kind of cline; mighty, no matter how you look at it.

The payoff? Hoskyn’s Channel was beautiful. I stood on the end of the dock and looked around, wrapped in the duvet of quiet held close by the mountains. Five thousand kilometers from my door, I find myself in, for all of its’ hilarity, beauty so powerful that, yes, it’s hard not to weep just a little. For all of the gravel and stress, I am honoured, and terribly lucky to have witnessed the all-of-that. Yes, my getting lost has become a thing that I expect. It has never let me down yet. Of course there will be more, much to the chagrin of my compass.