Haida never get lost...

...only delayed. This was the best one-liner of the day :)

Yesterday started out as a cedar bark gathering adventure. Harvesting the bark is step one of making a traditional cedar hat so we wanted to learn how that was done.

It was a beautiful day, not too windy, not to cloudy, not at all rainy. We drove down a forest service road just outside of Port and stopped at the end to get into the bush where the cedar trees grew straight and tall. We walked along the spongy moss covered ground and stepped over downed trees and stumps looking for the perfect cedar tree.

We had to find a tree that was the right diameter, did not have too thick outer bark, not too many branches, no signs of bark twisting and had good inner bark. Quite the check list just to find a tree to take a strip.

We pulled 10 good sized bundles before we started to think about heading out to get lunch back at the trucks... which direction were the trucks again?? We followed the fallers tape, looked for the road clearing, scanned the trees for a nearby lake... all of which should get us closer to food and the trucks but no luck. After doing a big circle and getting back to where we started, we headed into a recent cut block to get a better view of our whereabouts. We spied a cabin...

with a driveway that led to a road... we passed a few other deserted cabins with treasures (we will go back and scavenge around one day)... and we kept following the road that had to take us somewhere...

By early afternoon the kids were now quite tired and hungry so M and I kept going in search of the truck. While walking down the road we saw bear tracks, albeit old ones but I was glad I brought along the axe in case of trouble. Another few kms down the road we found the fork that would take us back to our trucks... only 6 km away. Thankfully some other cedar bark gatherers were coming down the same way, gave us a lift back to the trucks and we went back to pick up B and the kids. They had prepared a lovely fire pit and we roasted our hot dogs for lunch which was more like dinner. So we were not late (planning to be back home by 4pm), just delayed.