Road Work

We slept in a parking lot across from a church in Lake Cowichan, British Columbia, and moved to a nearby park when it got close to service time. A 1988 Dodge B250 camper van isn’t exactly inconspicuous, and I didn’t want anyone knocking while I edited stories for Nunatsiaq News, the paper of record for Nunavut and Nunavik, in northern Quebec. I felt particularly greasy and bohemian that cloudy August morning. After I spit toothpaste into a sink that smelled faintly of the dal makhani I ate the night before, I typed away at a suburban picnic table in light blue Crocs, grey sweatpants, and a faux Patagonia fleece from Cusco, Peru.

In the van, my girlfriend received a notification from Parks Canada that lifted my spirits. A site in the Green Point Campground at the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, a hundred kilometres away near Tofino, had become available. Why, I could go for a little surf, I thought. I’d tried before, in Raglan, New Zealand. I had been...