Haida Gwaii, 🇨🇦 - Marci Malloy

Marci Malloy is a single, full time working mom who lives by her gut which has taken her on many adventures in her life as an activist, teacher, and mom. 

How to describe the indescribable? That's how it feels to sit down and try to capture the raw, wild landscape that is Haida Gwaii in British Columbia, Canada, in mere words, but I will try.

Today is the second anniversary of our cross-country move to Haida Gwaii from Southern Ontario. There are a million smaller writings to delve into the multi-layered story of us and our relocation to paradise, but those are for another day.

We have only explored a fraction of this land of endless beaches and massive skies. Still, we already have some favorites of the few we've visited thus far.

North Beach is found on the northern tip of Haida Gwaii, and it leads to Rose Spit. One wild and windy night in June 2022, we camped on Rose Spit - thrust into what felt like the middle of the Pacific Ocean and very nearly is - with a huge bonfire and wilderness under our noses.

It was epic in the truest and proper sense of the word. The wind whipped at us all night and blew our fire bigger and bigger. The long spit offered little shelter from the gales.

The beach is known for its beachcombing since it captures the lost flotsam from passing ships, Japan, and other distant shores and stores it on its shores and tidal zones for visitors to discover. We try to make regular visits to spend our day walking North Beach and hope each time to find the infamous glass balls historically used as net floats and since treasured by residents of Haida Gwaii and visitors alike. 

In the spring, the wild strawberries grow on Rose Spit, and they are worth the risk of losing your vehicle to the tides if you get stuck trying to reach these tiny explosions of sweetness. It happens. We've been lucky so far.

The beaches on Haida Gwaii are thankfully free of the battles between private vs. public and associated access; they are accessible at any point along the shoreline, barring some areas having too rugged terrain to reach them. The parking pull-offs that dot the entire stretch of highway from Daajing Giids in the south to Yakoun Provincial Park mid-island are plentiful and usually provide solitary access to beaches. 

One of our favorite stops is Jungle Beach, about a ten-minute drive north of Skidegate. It has a beautiful, long, luxurious stretch of sandy beach at low tide that feels unreal. The only problem with the beaches here is that we never have enough time to spend on them.

I was born on the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated - April 4, 1968. I've often dreamed our spirits touched that day - his on the way out, mine on the way in - since I feel a fire in my belly for any kind of injustice and have since I was a very small child. 

It burns hot, and, in later years, learning about how the Haida people came together to reclaim Moresby Island and put a stop to the extensive old-growth forest logging that was occurring in their territory was an act that was beyond hopeful and powerful for my activist spirit. 

Gwaii Haanas, which means Islands of Beauty, was created due to their hard work, sacrifices, courage, and advocacy to protect what little old-growth forest still existed in their territory; this captured my imagination from the moment I heard about this magical land - Haida Gwaii and, specifically, Gwaii Haanas. 

Last year, we were fortunate to visit Gwaii Haanas with my daughter Em's school, the Living and Learning School. All schools should be so wonderful, but that's another story. On our trip, we went to G̱andll K'in Gwaay.yaay (Hotspring Island) and Hlk'yah GawGa (Windy Bay). We camped in Hlk'yah GawGa under the canopy of the old-growth forest with the thick, mossy forest floor beneath our sleeping bags - it was truly like being held in the cradle of Mother Earth. 

Divine in the truest sense of the word. I often feel a deep peacefulness here that I can only compare to the feeling of being on the coast of British Columbia, working on a small ship for two summers. This land got inside of me, deep connections beyond comprehension.

As a young child running through the wild, overgrown fields surrounding our home and then the Carolinian forests on the shores of Lake Erie, I recognized the sensation of connection to our universal mother. Mother Earth.

We have yet to hike Ḵuu Jad TlldaG̱aaw (Sea Otter Woman known locally as Sleeping Beauty) trail, but it is on our must-explore list this summer. I have done my due diligence in fact-finding about the level of difficulty this trail entails since it is 729 meters hiking up, and in my conversations, what I've discovered is the descent is more treacherous than the ascent due to the steep incline (decline) and sometimes quite muddy conditions.

So, suffice it to say, I am psyching myself up to make this eventual climb. For now, we greet Sleeping Beauty and her unmistakable profile every time we drive into Daajing Giids for supplies.

My adventurous spirit, intangible connection to Mother Earth, 50+ giving zero care about other people's expectations of me, and concern for my daughter's future on a planet we are abusing, which will ultimately lead to our own demise all are the (main) things that propelled me to the edge of the world. 

Come visit one day! We’ll go for a ramble!

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