The Hills are Alive May 18-19, 2012

The Over the Hill Hikers welcomed two visitors to Island hiking ... Lawrence and Miranda Hill, now how appropriate is that! Larry is the author of many novels, the best known, is the Book of Negroes and Miranda's first book of short stories, Sleeping Funny, is due out this Fall. Miranda is also spearheading www.projectbookmarkcanada.ca  check it out! The idea is to locate text from fiction or poetry within the story in the exact place in the landscape.

The weather was good, so we chose to head out to the west coast's Rennell Sound to hike into Bonanza Beach ... no recognizable tsunami debris, just a few small pillows of snow coming over the "hill". We all had the "thrill" of seeing a loaded logging truck heading right at us ... the drivers were wonderful, holding us in spots and radioing ahead enabling us to survive the trip.

Sandwisches on the beach, chilly breeze, in-coming tide, many deer, one big bear, alas no glass balls [although I'm not sure the Hills really understood the potential thrill of finding one]

Hike Two ... because we had authors, it seemed a logical plan to head out to the Golden Spruce, now well known through John Vaillant's award winning non-fiction, The Golden Spruce. Luckily the weather continued dry, but still a cool breeze ... so after visiting Skidegate's Kaay we headed to Port Clements and out the Justkatla road to the Golden Spruce Trail where we were all enchanted by the amazing trees along the Yakoun.; big trees, big stumps, fantastic tree roots, holding up trees on tip toes! Even some ladies' slippers.

After the Golden Spruce Trail we headed to Tlell and the Andrew's Place hike through those amazing mossy spires, up the steps and out across the dunes to the beach.

Unexpectedly we also did a stump tour ... who knew there was one!

With a possibility of 7 Port/Tlell area hikes we settled for 2 about as varied as you can get ... another full day and the Hills have the northern Graham Island still to enjoy.