Howard warned his son that when you are young, all you get is a hangover. When you get to be our age, you have a near-death experience.

I sit here under the big table umbrella in The Garden sipping my Diet Root Beer, blissed out after a long walk on the beach earlier this morning. It’s quiet and peaceful and I’m in Post Son’s Visit rehab. Where we live we usually can’t hear any traffic – the only sounds are the wind in the trees on the adjacent lot to the back, the fountain, the hummingbird dive bombing past my head and… oh no, Navid, the gardener from next door, just fired up his lawn edger. Oh well, can’t rain on my parade, the garden is filling out rapidly, the bamboo is shimmering in the breeze, the poppies are blooming and the allium have flower heads a foot in diameter. I’m not making that up, I measured. The new little fig tree has a single fig ripening and the lavender buds are about to explode in purple madness causing the bees to go berserk. Flip flops and pedal pushers. Summer is here and the living is definitely easy.

Number 2 Son Mike kicked off the summer visitor season. The paints and brushes and canvasses and creative debris of the Bunkie Studio were cleaned up and put away and the space was converted into its alternate use as Bunkie GuestHouse. While he was here a couple of his friends from Victoria came up to stay for 2 nights and by all accounts a good time was had by all. They went off during the days, hiking to waterfalls and crawling through caves and such and evenings we got together for serious patio festivities. I’m here to tell you that it is not a good idea to, in any small way, even attempt to keep up with 20-somethings. By the time it’s my bedtime they are just getting going, and follow at your peril. I more or less remember being that age myself.

While Mike was here we heard a lot about the north where he is part of the team building a scientific research center in the high Arctic in a place called Cambridge Bay, and where he could be going for a few months this fall during the construction phase. I had no idea where any of the place names he talked about were, and couldn’t quite visualize the area and its connection to everything else so out came the globe and atlas. It struck me that this is a map it might be interesting to look at when you see the player countries lined up around this area of the globe. As the landscape changes with melting ice, as it has been, and extraction travels further and farther afield, and pipelines and tanker docks are again claimed to be a good idea, and players want a piece of the action – well, some day down the road it could get ugly. Just sayin’. I’ve seen our own Prime Minister, Stephen Harper actually chuckle with glee when he talks about the natural resources of the North and then there’s the “S” word. Sovereignty.

Mike has left after a busy week of socializing and laughing and staying up far too late. He joined us as we hosted our Second Annual (maybe) Summer Solstice in The Garden party.  The neighbors get together several times a year and its always fun.  The more I talk to them the more interesting I find them and I promise it’s not the wine. The next day we drove Mike to Victoria (a 2 hour drive), dropped him off with his friend and carried on our way to our overnight destination – a place we have wanted to go for a great many years – Sooke Harbour House.

The oceanside town of Sooke, on the other side of the island from where we live, is on the Strait of Juan de Fuca which widens to the Pacific. All ocean freighter traffic to and from Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria and elsewhere passes by this Strait which marks the border with the U.S. The view across the Strait from Sooke is of the Olympic Mountains of Washington State.

The restaurant at Sooke Harbour House has a long-held reputation for its fantastic food, sourced from its own extensive kitchen gardens, nearby dairy and meat and food from the sea at its doorstep. While it is only a 40 minute drive from Victoria on a winding road through rural farmland and forests, I have always felt that the thing to do would be to go for dinner and stay overnight at one of their 20 or so rooms. For obvious reasons. I was right.

This perfect little boutique oceanfront hotel, surrounded by gardens and stunning views, is probably one of the most romantic places there is, which means it is a popular place for weddings and I would suspect that there is one taking place every Saturday during the season. We were there on a Sunday and all was quiet. Each room has a theme – ours was Room 12 The Ichthyologist’s Study. Ichthyology is fish, and the entire beautiful space was decorated with fish. Cushions, rugs, paintings, sculptures, tiles – everything. As I entered the room and absorbed the decor, it made me laugh as it immediately reminded me of the house we stayed at in Portland last fall. In Portland, The Nest, as they called the house, was full of bird images, which also happens to be the subject of a satirical skit on the series Portlandia about the bird-loving tendency to decorate in that city.  It sounds bizarre but both places actually looked terrific and I thought of how much fun the brief to the interior decorator in this case would have been. “Go shopping, and think fish”.

Here’s the thing about Sooke Harbour House. It is also an art gallery. All of it. In addition to the guest rooms filled with art, every wall, every corridor, everywhere throughout the buildings display paintings, mostly by local artists and all for sale. Also sculpture, glass, pottery and garden art in every nook and cranny. Hundreds and hundreds of pieces. You can begin to see how with meal, wine, room plus a piece of original art to take home, this well could start to become the most expensive meal yet.

And what of the meal? I had signed up for the special 7 or 9 or whatever course tasting menu with wine pairing. We had no idea what was on the menu – plates just kept coming and coming, each course a new surprise. Plates with tiny, perfect courses, little bursts of flavor,  the freshest, sweetest food. With each course came a different BC wine. How does one have 7 different glasses of wine in a meal? Well, the server was a pouring genius. Sip sized wine to go with bite sized courses. It was all perfect.

The waiter was the best I’ve seen in a very long time. Completely professional, he knew his stuff and educated us about where and how the wine was made and why it was chosen. He was discrete, friendly without being talkative, excellent all around. Dinner at Sooke Harbour House was as good as they say it is, as good as I expected it to be and more. The stay there was relaxed and will be memorable I’m sure. A short but very sweet getaway from the stresses and strains (?uhn??) of my daily life.

Photos mine and from Sooke Harbour House website.

Later the following day, we stopped for lunch in Port Renfrew on our way home across the island. Port Renfrew is the end of the road, literally, the farthest it goes up the Pacific side of the island. It’s also where the West Coast Trail starts, the wild 75 km hard core hiking trail created all those years ago as a way for shipwrecked sailors to somehow make their way to safety, now recreation for adventurous types.  Entering the restaurant we found ourself back in the usual BC wait staff la la land. Usually female, often blond, always over-perky, “What can I get YOU GUYS?”, “Oh AWESOME choice, that’s my favorite”, “Can I grab YOU GUYS anything else?”, “Any plans for the rest of the day?”, “AWESOME”, “AWESOME”, “AWESOME”. Sigh.

It was our first time driving across the island from Port Renfrew to the island highway which takes us home. I had heard many comments about what an awful road it was, winding and unpaved, but recently, although of course still winding, it has been paved and it’s just fine. The tarmac that is. The road sign promised “Wildlife, next 49km”. Fat chance. All along those 49km, through hills and mountains and valleys wildlife habitat was gone, replaced by evidence of on-going clear-cut slopes. Miles and miles of stripped mountain sides and logging roads. It’s a shock to see although I’ve known it was there, back behind those mountains. Often when there is logging near roads, they leave a wide enough section of trees alongside the roads, so you can’t see it, at least not as well, as on the road from Victoria to Sooke, which carries a lot more visitor traffic. On this road across the island in much of it they didn’t bother with set backs. We passed about half a dozen logging trucks, filled with newly cut trees, as well as other assorted industry vehicles along the way leading me to remark, “I don’t think they paved this road for us”. Indeed not. Well, what can you say? It looks hideous, it feels bad but there’s too many people on this planet and too many of them want fancy red cedar pergolas.