Adventure 07: Crofton

This was definitely different. Bioluminescence, glowing plankton... anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

The beginning of the story goes like this:

I was at a Counselor Training Seminar at Camp Qwanoes. Yeah, you must think I'm out of my mind if I want to spend my summer in a cabin with 10 Junior High kids. Well, it's just for a week and I'm actually pretty excited about it. Qwanoes is a Christian adventure camp in Crofton, BC.

Lots of cool things happened this past weekend at Qwanoes, but I want to tell you about Saturday night. I guess it was time to sleep because it had been dark for a while and at this time of the year the sun is setting at around 10 pm. One of the head counselors told us about the glowing things in the water at night, so we (three of the guys) followed him down a path in the forest through a trail that led to the beach. 

"I hope there is no high tide," he said. 

No kidding.

All we had was one head lamp to make it through the dark, sensing our way in the chack-chack-chack of our shoes against the gravel. Down a steep slope we got to the beach--just a couple of meters of rocky ground from the end of the forest to the edge of the water. 

One only has to stir the ocean a little to see green glowing dots begin to dance around like stars in a space movie. I didn't have my camera with me (and a good thing because it wouldn't have survived), so this picture is from another site.

We started walking to where the dock is. Two of the guys walked directly on the water, but Matt and I stayed on dry ground, or should I say on obstacle ground? Yes, the tide was high. All the way. We balanced ourselves over fallen logs, ducked below low-hanging branches and climbed around boulders. Until Matt slipped. Until there was no more beach.

So I took my shoes off and into the water. I ended up losing a sock and damping my pants almost up to my waist. Each stride created a strip of flaky bioluminescence. We turned off the lamp to see them better. It was an awesome thing. 

I'm not a bare-feet kind of guy, so I felt every rock and layer of slime hurt my feet, while I balanced my shoes on one hand and my sweater in the other.

Here's a picture of the beach where we were walking:

The gorgeous night, the glowing plankton, and the good humor of my friends, made this a great adventure. We ended up wet and muddy, but we won't forget that night easily.