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On December 29, 1998 Theresa, John, Adele, and I were late for the movie. To our dismay the strike was still on and since we wouldn’t cross the picket lines we headed to Ferris’ Oyster Bar. True to her character Theresa wanted to stay a while and support the people on the picket line. Though she soon caught up and within the hour we’d all decided to spend New Years together kayaking to the West Coast.
New Year’s Eve found us paddling down Nitnat Lake then hiking along a West Coast Trail strewn with windfall. Shortly before dark we reached the beach near Clo-oose where the four of us, and Nootka the dog, shared New Years. The full moon lit the beach and we watched as the foam caused by surf in a surge channel began to creep upward with the tide. Nearby on the beach the body of a sea lion had washed up on the beach. That night we marked the end of the year as that moment when the surf and the foam reached up to the sea lion on the beach. It made perfect sense as a measure of time that night, and it agreed remarkably with Theresa’s moon dial and John’s watch.
The next day was amazingly sunny and warm, and our friend Theresa was the first one into the ocean for a swim. She rated it as cool but refreshing and soon we were all swimming in the crashing surf. Soon after it was onto a new idea as Theresa wanted to bury the sea lion so she could later collect the skeleton. After scaling her enthusiasm down to the skull we donned hockey gloves found in the flotsam and set to our task. It wasn’t easy but we did manage to bury the skull. Then using a complex set of paces and a rope tied to a tree we precisely marked the spot for next year’s retrieval.
That beach became a special place in those two very wonderful days that we shared there, and we will always think of Theresa as part of that place.
Steve McAdam and John Freeman