I’ve been to this place twice. The first time was during a family vacation in the 70s. I remembered it as cold, desolate, and stunningly beautiful. I remembered enormous driftwood - not just a piece of wood but the entire tree. I remembered abandoned lean-tos and other shelters made out of driftwood, by hippies, I reckoned.

And when I returned a little over 20 years later, it was exactly as I remember.

Long Beach, on Vancouver Island. 1994.

Opposite side of the island from my parents’ house, which was right on the beach. That was my mother’s deal. She loved the ocean. My stepfather was a prairie boy and hated both the ocean and all the trees. He preferred a flat and endless stretch of wheat fields.

My mother said that when she died she didn’t want any sort of a big fuss with a lot of people. She just wanted her immediate family to wade into the ocean she could see from her porch and quietly scatter her ashes there. So that’s what we did.

A day or two later I took a solo trip across the island.

Long Beach was a place I remembered visiting when I was about 12. I remembered it was cold, desolate, and really beautiful. I also remembered that hippies had built all sorts of shelters out of the driftwood.

It hadn’t changed much from my memories as a kid in the early 70s. It was still desolate, beautiful, and the only signs of humans were odd bits of hippie detritus.

Miles of beach, middle of August, and I was the only person there.