Table of Contents
Praise for CHASING CLAYOQUOT
A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book
A Thoreau for Clayoquot Pitt-Brooke wins the reader over with the integrity of his voice it is the depth of his compassion and unwillingness to default to simple conclusions that bears the narrative into the readers trust Like the best of Canadas naturalist authors, [he] possesses a lyric voice that rises distinctively from the Nearctic encounter with big landscapes, big water and big weather.
The Globe and Mail
Pitt-Brooke has penned a hymn to his surroundings. And, perhaps a prayer as well.
Toronto Star
Pitt-Brooke has written a paean toa wondrous place.
Canadian Geographic
Chasing Clayoquot is wilderness veneration in the tradition of Thoreau, but Pitt-Brooke rewards the reader with beguiling facts of nature and history In the most moving passages, beyond the edge of the human domain, Pitt-Brooke witnesses an alien world, out of my depth, unnerved and awed by what he calls the scary and powerful magic of nature. Chasing Clayoquot is education, inspiration and adventure in one of the worlds most dramatic environments.
Dragonfly magazine
Pitt-Brookes greatest talent is for teasing out the fascinating details of an ecosystem and then assembling them in a way that leaves you gobsmacked by the amazing interconnectedness of life.
Winnipeg Free Press
Poetic and heartfelt ... He makes the mosses, berries and organisms of decay as interesting as the whales and bears Pitt-Brooke finds not God but a sense of peace and meaning. And by telling us these stories he hopes to prompt our sense of wonder.
Victoria Times-Colonist
Pitt-Brooke is a most able guide, and Chasing Clayoquot is an admirable achievement hes created a book that not only sings the praises of our areas natural surroundings, but is also praiseworthy in itself as a polished and elegant piece of contemporary nonfiction One third outdoorsmans personal history, one third naturalist ethics text and one third Linnaean guidebook, Pitt-Brookes book is a wonderfully effective exploration of the natural processes of the sound Pitt-Brooke places himself in the tradition of A.Y. Jackson and the Group of Seven the revelling in and revealing of the Canadian landscape for the Canadian people. And what they did in the last century in oils, he has succeeded in doing now with words.
The Westerly News
Pitt-Brookes thoughtful observation, scientific knowledge and love for his subject infuse his luminous prose Chasing Clayoquot is a book to read and then read again. And to think about for a long time
Vernon Morning Star
With eloquence and a sense of joy, David Pitt-Brooke takes you there, in a way that will make you want to follow in his footsteps.
artist and naturalist Robert Bateman
To my parents Tena and Doug
Earths crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
AUTHORS NOTE TO THIS EDITION
When my publisher called to ask if I might like to write an updated introduction to this 2010 edition of Chasing Clayoquot, I had mixed feelings. When I originally wrote the book, it was very much with the idea of creating a text that would not date too quickly, something that would hold its value, that would, indeed, reflect something of the timelessness of its subject. No updating required. And I do think Ive succeeded in fair measure. Rereading the book six years after its original publication, I find that it has stood the test of time quite well. Im pleased.
Timelessness, after all, is really something of the essence of Clayoquot Sound, a key to its grace and significance. As Robert Kennedy, Jr., writes in his kindly introduction, with so much of nature being destroyed around us, we can take solace... in [Clayoquot Sounds] wholeness and timelessness.
I wrote this book also very much with the idea of doing my bit to help preserve that wholeness and timelessness. It seemed to me, then, that if we and I hasten to say that this little book is just a small part of a much larger effort, a huge labour of love by many thousands of people, artists, scientists, environmental activists, and a great many ordinary folk with a deep devotion to the wilderness beauty that is one of this countrys defining characteristics if we could only establish Clayoquot Sound in the publics mind and imagination as one of the worlds very special places, we might be able to push it further out of harms reach.
Those efforts to establish the value of this remarkable piece of countryside have worked pretty well. Clayoquot Sound has developed a world-wide reputation. The very name has come to epitomize the beauty of Canadas wild Pacific coast. Understandably, perhaps, as its reputation has grown, so the impression has spread that after the turmoil of the 1980s and 1990s, the endless protests and processes, Clayoquot Sound in all its beauty and diversity has at last been saved somehow.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
It comes as a shock to be reminded that even now, after all this time, all that effort, there are still forces at work that would willingly, even eagerly, sacrifice all this loveliness for profit. Progress in protection has been made, no question. But a quick scan through recent newsletters from the conservation organization Friends of Clayoquot Sound yields a list of urgent issues: an application for a run-of-river hydro power project in the remote Bulson Valley, exploratory drilling for a possible open-pit copper mine on Catface Mountain, many thousands of Atlantic salmon escaping, yet again, from one of Clayoquot Sounds now numerous open-net salmon farms, a rate of logging higher than at any time since 1996 and expected to escalate further with every likelihood that intact watersheds, spared since the mid-1990s, will soon come under threat yet again.
This, too, seems to be something timeless in the complicated mix of Clayoquot Sound (and in human nature). As long as there is profit to be made in destroying wild beautiful places, there will be forces working tirelessly, almost compulsively, in that direction. As Ive written elsewhere in this volume, protecting ones environment is like weeding the garden, the job will never, ever, be done, finished, complete. There are, unhappily, people in this world to whom wilderness beauty means nothing, to whom the only measure of success or value is the bottom line. Fortunately there are the other kind who have managed, so far, to keep the profit-driven from having it all their way.
And consequently, as Ive also written a little further on, Magic and wonderment are alive in the mountains and misty valleys. Distant, secret wonderful places are still there, waiting for us, even in this imperfect paradise. This book will take you to some of those places, through all the beauty and drama of the changing seasons, the many different faces of Clayoquot Sound. Heres wishing you a safe and joyful journey.
