sometimes you’re shit out of luck

an edible narrative

It’s all fun and games until you’re stranded on a rock in the sea with persistent diarrhea from god knows what, slowly missing your carefully planned tidal window, desperately trying to stay hydrated so a bad shituation doesn’t become worse.

CW: potty jokes, medical things, an existential crisis

There are probably worse places to be sick than our rock specifically; our rock had access to fresh water, and a nice view. And the orca pod— that was cool. But being sick in the wilderness is harder than being sick at home.

the view from our rock:

There’s no toilet for one, no couch. You’re dirty, with no real way to get clean. You’re out in the cold or the heat, the rain or the wind. There’s also no cell service— if you need to call for help, it’s an SOS call on the Garmin InReach, followed by a Coast Guard rescue, followed by the hospital. We  were not there (yet).

So, delirious on a rock in the sea struggling to keep in water, running a light fever, at some point I developed lower abdominal cramps beginning in the center of my lower abdomen, then moving to the right, and we had to sit down and decide how serious is too serious.

After five days, when I started to feel a little better, we found a middle ground— we weren’t making an SOS call. The SOS is a last resort, for emergencies, and we just weren’t there yet.

(translation: over my rotting corpse do we call the Coast Guard for diarrhea.)

on day one of the never-ending illness, an orca pod came right by our campsite. that was pretty cool.

But I was well enough to paddle at least a little, and it was 8 miles to aptly named Refuge Cove, a small settlement with cell service and pay phones. From there, we were able to find a ride into Lund, and from Lund, a water taxi to Powell River. From there, a walk to the emergency room to try and figure out if I had giardia, or appendicitis, or just really bad food poisoning or what.

The good news: It took about two days and two separate ER visits to determine that I did not in fact have appendicitis, just a UTI (probably caused by diarrhea in the wilderness then wearing wetsuit pants for 12 hours trying to pick our way back to Powell River) and some run of the mill ovarian cysts.

The bad news: the diarrhea delay has set us back about two weeks (time since shitting sickness started, time traveling to ER, and currently time recovering), and a good chunk of change for the water taxis required for a slow med-evac and the extra time in town to recovering. We’ve also had two other unexpected medical delays, making us 3/3 and really channeling that Friday the 13th launch day energy.

It’s been shitty, literally.

Because of the amount of concern showed by the doctors, we’re hesitant to venture much further north, where medical help will be days and a Coast Guard rescue away rather than something we could paddle out from unless dire.

Taken with the delays and additional expenses of the past week, we’re recalibrating. Instead of continuing north to Port Hardy, we’re going to head up to Desolation Sound (again) and spend a few weeks exploring the inlets & fjords, before turning and paddling more or less back the way we came to Bellingham.

This cuts ferry costs, and keeps us within hospital range for the remainder of the trip. While it’s a total bummer to not be heading the rest of the way north, there is so much to explore and see in the Salish Sea/ Discovery Islands area that we would completely miss if we pushed straight north along the path of least resistance. We’re extremely lucky to have the opportunity to do a trip like this at all, and while the delays and crap weather and surprise hospital visits have sucked, we’re still here and okay, and making the most of it.

A seal

This first month has already been such a huge learning experience. Even if we had to pack up and leave today, we’d leave with so much — we’ve learned about tidal currents, and become better paddlers, and about planning expeditions as a whole, and a lot about communication and leadership, and group decision making. I’ve thought more about fault and blame than I ever have before— how easy it can be to find fault in others, and how hard it can be to find it in yourself. How when you do tend to take blame and your own mistakes seriously, it can be hard to find a middle ground. It’s either all of the blame or none of it with me, and that isn’t a fair to myself or the people around me.

But we aren’t packing up and leaving, just listening to the circumstances, and rolling with the punches (of which there have been many).

For me at least, it was never really about “paddling to Alaska”, though I’d still like to one day. It’s about paddling, and being outside, and exploring while I’m younger and still can.

Alaska will be still be there, and next time I’ll just be that much more prepared.

Camp and food inventory:

I spent a lot of time, feverish and miserable on our rock in the sea, then in pain and exhausted and wet on the dock in Lund, then in the ER extremely worried that though I had appendicitis (because the doctor seemed pretty convinced that I did), and through all that I couldn’t stop wondering how I could make a story of this—

how can I use this experience, turn it into something, because isn’t that the whole point? Live life to tell a story for someone else? So someone else can take a bite of your pretty life, chew it up and taste it then go back to theirs?

Even laying dehydrated on a rock in the sea, miserable and scared, I can’t turn off the urge to mold my life in to an edible narrative.

(if you’ve lived a story meant to be eaten, what is left for you besides crumbs?)

I’m thinking of an essay (linked below) & quote by Rayne Fisher-Quann: “we consume so much now that perhaps we don’t know what it is to exist as something unsellable.”

standing on the shoulders of complex female characters

wild roses along the coast

If I don’t see myself through an Instagram filter, I see me through a funny story I can tell at a bar one day. If I don’t see an experience as an essay, I see it as another anecdote I can add to the list of things that prove to other people I’m an interesting person.

As if stories and social media and the pressure to be coherent and palatable and explainable has made it so I can’t conceptualize a version of my life lived for me, not for the people I’ll tell the story.