“I’m stranded here,” my mother said when I called her one evening last week.
An eye infection in her good eye has left mom totally blind, in a sea of darkness in her room at Birchview Home.
It made me think of Pesuta. She’s been stranded for ninety years, since 1928, the year mom was born.
One of our best experiences this year was on the OceanLight II in the remote Gwaii Haanas (the southern part of what used to be called the Queen Charlotte Islands).
Onboard was a crew of three: Captain Tom; first mate Jennifer; and cook Luise.
And four jubilado couples: Stewart, the eldest, and Denise; George (a storyteller with a killer sense of humour) and Veda with her broken left arm; Jean-Paul (a Frenchman whose first question every morning was “When is fishing?”) and Judy (Jean-Paul’s translator and George’s cousin); and the two of us.
“I’ve found Jean-Paul’s diary,” announced George one night when nightfall curtained the July sky.
Gather round the galley and listen to George read the “fake” diary we’re calling Fish Tales.
In the Haida language, Gwaii (they prefer Gwaay) means islands, Haanas means beautiful and K’yang.ga is the word for a jellyfish with tentacles.
Gwaii Haanas is the short version for Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve covering the islands and waters and Haida villages in the southern area of Haida Gwaii, which was formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. From a kayak using his GoPro, Magellan photographed the Lion’s Mane jellyfish in Anna Inlet, the Moon jellies in Island Bay.