Farewell Crofton, Hello Parksville!

In 2016 when I tore the meniscus in my left knee, and 2017 when I took a bad fall on the ice and wrecked my right shoulder (leaving me unable to drive for quite a while, and permanently unable to do some of the home/yard maintenance stuff I'd always done for myself), I realized the pitfalls of living in a small village (population 1200) that has very few shops - two convenience stores, one thrift store, a couple of cafes and pubs.  No drug store, no hardware, no department store, no place to get any significant variety of groceries. No medical services.  Yes, there is a small city about twenty minutes away (population 5,000 for the city itself, and another 28,000 in the surrounding municipal area), but the bus service to get there is tedious and infrequent, taxis from there are expensive and seldom available, and there is no handi-dart service (a bus/taxi sort of system for seniors and others with disabilities) for Crofton.  And it is rather too far to walk.

"It's a long way to see the doctor...."

I don't want to be 'that senior' whose very small and geographically distant family has to make the difficult decision to move me to another living situation.  So I began the search for another home, one where there is no outside maintenance required (a condo or strata), in a place where there are more shops and services - preferably within walking distance of the ocean. I so love.

After an extensive search made more difficult by the ridiculous 'no pet' or 'one small pet' (often under 10 lbs!) policy that many seniors' condos/strata have, I finally just took the plunge, put my house on the market, sold it in 48 hours, and - much to my relief - found an appropriate place an hour and a bit north, in Parksville.  More about our new home in another post. (I have not been taking photos on our many walks as Maggie needs all my attention to keep her safe and calm amid traffic, beeping crosswalks, unfamiliar people and dogs, etc.   - that's no time to be staring through the lens of a camera.  As many of you know, there are few things I feel more strongly about than keeping dogs safe in new surroundings - or keeping dogs safe, period.) 

Maggie: "This is my beach now!"
(Photo taken a few months ago, before we moved)

But before shifting the blog to daily life in Parksville and our exploration of the parks and beaches around our new home, I wanted to thank the great people in Crofton who welcomed me nearly ten years ago, greeted me on my morning walks with my various old dogs, foster dogs, multiple dogs, scared dogs, visiting dogs.  My current anxiety-prone senior dog, Maggie, will miss her canine friends and their peoples, who respected her boundaries and took the necessary time to earn her trust.

Crofton has much going for it, not the least of which is its beauty - beauty in nature, in the sea, in the sunrises and sunsets, in the people.  Over the years, I've taken literally thousands of photos of this community and its surrounds.  Here, then, as my farewell tribute to Crofton, are just a few of my favourites:

From the moment  I arose,  no matter the season or the weather, the beauty of the sun rising over the bay filled me with awe:

Throughout the day, the birds and animals, the parks and shoreline, even the industry at the mill and log sort, provided me with slices of joy, peace, an assurance that there was still magic and beauty to be found in a world so oft gone crazy:

Eagle, Anna's humming bird, oystercatchers, Northern flicker.

Bear in fall and deer in winter

Heron soaring to the sky

Raven wishing us good luck

Crofton Lake, Sea Walk in fall, Eves Park, Lilies on Crofton Lake

Boat by a foggy pier
(taken when Spinnaker Steps went all the way to the water)

Boats in the harbour,
reflections in the water

Barges, tugs, and cargo ships

Fishing boat with colourful floats

The people - oh the people - young and old, laboring in fields or selling goods in front yards and pop up stalls, playing with their dogs, or going for a paddle around the bay or a walk on the beach - seldom did I meet one who did not treat me kindly, smile and say good morning, or stop for a chat.  I came to your town nearly ten years ago having only a slight acquaintance with a couple of people, and I am leaving behind many friends.  Thank you, Crofton.

Tatlo Farms when it was just beginning

Friends on Crofton waterfront

George peddling his figs near the ferry terminal

The dog-human connection
on a misty morning

Heading out into the bay

I have loved learning the history of this town - from the elders, from the information in our little museum, from columns in newspapers (and, before that, the town newsletter),  from story boards in parks, from locals who stopped to chat.  For five years, together with Liz Maxwell Forbes, I shared some of these stories in a column in the Chemainus Courier, and each column brought more stories to my attention, from more people who enriched my life so greatly.

Crofton Museum 

And at the end of each day, I felt comforted in the knowledge that  my move to Crofton, away from family and friends and all that was familiar, had been a good move, the right move,  a wonderful chapter of my life.  I can only hope that my new community will be as welcoming and as comforting and as full of good people who will soon become good friends, in this next chapter.

Thank you, Crofton,  You have been good to me.

We all sleep under the same moon,
We all rise to the same sun.
We are never any further away than a warm heart and a pleasant thought.

South along the Shoreline

For several days near the end of July,  the weather was very warm for here (30 degrees celsius), so Maggie and I restricted our walks to early morning. Fortunately, we were also having a stretch of super low tides that were conveniently at their lowest in the mornings. Rather than walk the pavement (with fence-fighting dogs) and the sea walk (with dozens of summer campers, kids, and dogs at the RV park along its edge) with my nervous dog, we hopped in the car, drove to Crofton Beach Park at the far end of the seawalk, and strolled south along the shoreline from there.  It is only during very low tide that we can go far in that direction without risk of getting cut off and having to scramble up very steep and sometimes unstable embankments or rickety steps to people's private back yards.

The beach around Crofton is not particularly appealing to many.  While the views are beautiful and the sunrises magnificent, the actual beach alongside the seawalk is black slag from the old mining operations, and with the exception of a very small sandy beach at Crofton Beach Park, the rest is mucky, swampy, and often covered with eel grass.  That doesn't stop Maggie and me.

C'mon, friends, walk with me!

We stick close to the embankment at first, where rocks, dirt,  and dry sand  give some semblance of firm footing.  Once we are around that first bend, magic begins - marine life and wildlife and bird life, as well as oases of lovely firm grey sand, often covered with shells and sand dollars .

Lookit all these shells!

And sand! Miles and Miles of sand!
Well, maybe a kilometer .... or half. 

The experience is never the same two days in a row. Each day we spot something different, something beautiful and/or interesting that we haven't noticed before. Even close to the bank, in that first section of our walk, there are always 'thin slices of joy' to be found: 

A lovely dried up maple leaf has fallen on the beach.

A log broke free from one of the booms, dragging its chain up on the shore.

Look at the beautiful designs in these pieces of driftwood! 

A tiny cove, under a canopy of leaves, boasts fine light sand and a smooth log to sit on.

A red jelly fish lies on mucky wet sand, waiting for the incoming tide to return.

And the more we look, the more we see - like the wonderful design the riffling flow of the tide makes as a backdrop to the geese along the shore:

Or the narrow metal track that we failed to notice until about the fifth or sixth time we walked this shore:

Whatd'ya think this is, mom? 
Did a tiny train come here?

As we move along the beach, we get different perspectives of the mill and the log sort on the far side of the town.  It is actually quite some distance away in these shots, but the 30x zoom brings it, and all its activities, in close:

When the tide is this far out, there is a place where, if one slogs across the muck for perhaps a couple of hundred feet, a lovely firm sandbar emerges that eases travel nearly all the way to the foot of Osborne Bay Park and the beach activities of a local church camp. It was several years ago that my friend Liz introduced me to this phenomenon, and one day last week she again accompanied Maggie and me on our sandbar walk:

Liz and her dog Blaze enjoy a cooling paddle in the water, eelgrass notwithstanding.

That sandbar leads to many more discoveries of  Lewis' Moon Snails and their egg casts that look like old tires, of cooling water to paddle through, of dozens of multi-coloured sand dollars in the shallows as well as various crabs and shellfish.  Sometimes fountains of water suddenly shoot up one's leg from the geoduck  (pronounced gooeyduck) clams below the sand.

Lewis' Moon Snail - this one is about the size of fist,
but I've seen some two or three times that size on this beach. 

Egg Cast from Lewis' Moon Snail

Cluster of empty mussel shells

Early morning sun shines through an open clam shell

Many sand dollars (and a crab) just under the surface of the water

A gull takes flight with a breakfast of  seafood

Early in the morning, when no other humans and their dogs are awake, we often seen wildlife.  One day it was a doe and two tiny fawn - complete with white spots - who emerged from the trees and headed down to the water, eating, I suspect, the damp salty eelgrass that grows there.  Often I see otters or seals playing and feeding in the water.  Another day I saw a little raccoon who hid in the overhanging branches studiously washing something in the water trickling down the embankment. The photo was fuzzy as I was quickly walking further away, keeping Maggie occupied so she would not see the 'funny looking cat'.

There are usually heron wading along the shore, then standing like a statue as they wait for an opportunity to catch a small fish drifting by. One day there was a pair of herons, who performed a wonderful dance - but I'll save those photos for another post.

A solitary heron

Then there were the eagles - both young and mature - watching for fish, crabs, and sea stars to eat - or, in one case, to steal from a seagull and fly away quickly to a higher perch to consume it.

Young eagle perched on barnacle-covered rock

Mature eagle on a piling

Another mature eagle, eating the crab he stole from a seagull

That perch has a history of its own  - and that shall also be another post.  And since the photos are all prepped, and the narrative drafted, that means you'll get at least another two posts this week! But I digress......

Even in hot weather, large maples, arbutus, and evergreens provide secret spaces where one can sit on a washed up log and dream - or photograph a dog.

Here's a nice shady place to sit, mom! 

Liz's dog Blaze explores the sand

Blech! I gots sand on mah tongue! 

Portrait shot of Blaze,
looking angelic! 

Thanks for joining us fer a walk on the beach!
See ya again soon! 

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*A few tips for those wanting to check out this section of beach*

• Check the tide tables before you go.   Head out an hour or two before the lowest tide, and plan to head back no later than an hour after the tide has turned. There is one public staircase - a metal one - that will get you off the beach if you get stuck mid way;  all the wooden staircases are private, and some are gated and locked.
• Wear shoes that can get mucky!
• Please respect the wildlife - don't let your dogs or kids chase the birds or animals, or handle the sea creatures.  This includes sand dollars. 
• Take water - for the humans and dogs - and maybe a snack or a picnic lunch. 
• Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints.