Party Wave Photo: Scott Willoughby

It isn't so much that my mind wanders. Mostly, it paddles. The runoff in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado is in full tilt at the moment. But even as the winter squalls outside my door doused the slopes in the promise of a powder daze, a shift occurred. More of a cycle really, as the measure in my head began reading less in inches and once more in cubic feet per second, the only practical physics I know. Sometime in late March, my vision ceased to focus on the snow, but the snowmelt. Keep falling, I think, I'll take a nap and dream of the delicious runoff to follow. Don't get me wrong. I love to ski, but I live to paddle. There's no comparison.

Going back a year, I recall a kayak season that began last March on Idaho's South Fork of the Payette River, two days after watching my Ida-host violate his rib cage on a beefy boulder while snowboarding Bogus Basin. April held the requisite training runs down the Shoshone stretch of the Colorado River near Glenwood Springs before nearly a month of May in the Grand Canyon and a return to Colorado's runoff "peak."

Drought conditions had left the land rife with more wildfires than water to douse them, less even for whitewater paddling. After a trying month of Colorado creek-boating, I packed the SUV for a summer in Montana, with stops in Wyoming and Idaho along the way. Three trips to British Columbia, a week on the Salmon River, two more passes through Jackson Hole, another couple runs through Colorado's Gore Canyon on my way back home and a five-day late-October self-support trip in Utah's Cataract Canyon and my world was all but complete.

The realization that I had built my life around a plastic toy wasn't so sudden as the ensuing poverty was severe. But I like to think I gained some perspective, the piece de resistance coming from "shootin' the 'chuck." Variously known by Canadian gringos as the "Skook" and the "'chuck," the Skookumchuck Narrows is a tidal rapid on Canada's Sunshine Coast that might best be described as the Old Faithful of whitewater. Nearly every day, the Pacific tide rolls through the narrow choke at the north end of the Sechelt Inlet and forms a series of standing waves surfable for up to three hours at a spell.

Skookumchuck itself is a Chinook Indian name meaning "strong water" or "rapid torrent," and with up to 200 billion gallons of sea water sluicing through the constricted channel at rates up to 14 knots, the ensuing 10-foot waves and roiling, cavernous whirlpools easily explain the moniker. It's considered one of the greatest natural phenomena in British Columbia.

After years of hearsay, the decision to visit this legendary paddling destination was made as I split from my party at the base of Hell's Canyon in southeast Washington. "Man, I'm still 500 miles away," I thought as I looked at the map. "But... I'm only 500 miles away."

I gassed up and pointed north, rolling into the marina launch site at sunset the next day knowing no one and very little else. I'm staring blankly at a sign when Joe pulls up in a white van, spots the tags on my SUV and asks if I've seen anyone.

"Nope."

"You from Colorado?"

"Yup."

"I'm from New Mexico, but I'm living in Vancouver at the moment."

"Cool."

"In an hour, the foam pile atop the wave is nearly 5 feet and quite kind..."

Joe invites me to share his campsite and help celebrate "Hot Rod" Tainio's birthday. Rod is 45, though by the looks of his weathered face he could easily pass for 60. He's a B.C. native and lighthouse caretaker on a nearby island he shares with two other people. He laments the loss of foghorns up the coast of the Georgia Straight, all of which are being removed to appease "yuppies in the GPS era." Apparently, no one fishes the straight much these days, so Rod doesn't even bother cleaning the windows of the lighthouse anymore. Still, someone ought to live there, just in case.

He wakes up every morning to "Van-kook" radio, listening to city traffic reports in awe. News of gridlock and pedestrians and bicyclists killed in collisions make it OK for him to live alone on an island just more than 40 acres total and lacking as much as a golf cart. He can paddle his 20-year-old squirt boat to the mainland in 40 minutes for a pack of smokes, and like a man deprived of sight, has developed a sense of hearing keen enough to detect a dog's bark across the channel or distinguish a motorcycle's roar at night.

He's been living at the lighthouse for more than five years now, paddling the 'chuck more than 300 days, including a few he's had it all to himself.

"It's a privilege, but kind of spooky, eh?" he says. Especially when there's a foot of snow on the ground.

"That's when you bring a fire log and maybe some white gas, eh. Keep your toes from freezin' off."