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Zen Garden


I am not sure I believe in ghosts, but I have to believe in D'Arcy Island. I
continue to maintain I have never seen a ghost, but Jan and I left D'Arcy
Island in the summer of 2004 baffled by some very strange experiences ashore.

Most boaters today would assume that having an entire, private island in the
Gulf or San Juan archipelago would be idyllic. The erstwhile residents of
D'Arcy did not share the sentiment. Less than one hundred years ago, leprosy
was still a public health problem in British Columbia. There were only a few
cases of leprosy among Caucasians, and all were sent to a hospital in Tracadie,
New Brunswick, under the care of a full-time medical staff. A greater number of
lepers were Chinese, and between 1891 and 1926 these unfortunates were banished
to D'Arcy Island- to wither and fester until they died. The isolation was
surely as difficult a burden as the disease. The provincial government sent a
supply boat with food, blankets, opium and coffins every three months, but
beyond those infrequent visits the colony of creeping death had no contact with
the outside world. The lepers were left to care for one another. At one point
in the island history, a solitary leper was left here without benefit of any
human companionship.

There were other islands nearby. Islands with farms, homes, and people.
Victoria was only a few miles away, across Haro Strait, and there are tales of
lepers escaping D'Arcy on jury-rigged rafts. Some of the escapees made
landfall, only to be rounded up and returned to D'Arcy. Others are known to
have perished in the strait. The colony was relocated in the mid 1920's, to a
somewhat more isolated island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Regional cruising guidebooks mention D'Arcy Island Provincial Marine Park only
briefly, or overlook it entirely. Jan and I were curious to see what evidence,
if any, remained of the old colony. We hoped to develop some general ideas of
what life must have been like for the banished Chinese who met slow, agonizing
deaths within sight of suburban Victoria.

Getting ashore at D'Arcy was problematic. One of the cruising references we
customarily rely on, (Waggoner), encouraged us to believe there were two
mooring buoys at D'Arcy. If the buoys are indeed there, they are nowhere close
to the landing spot that Waggoner recommends, the small bay just south of the
lighthouse on the west side of the island. Waters between D'Arcy and Little
D'Arcy Island, ("Little" is privately owned and immediately east), are littered
with kelp and peppered with potentially hull-crunching rocks. We searched the
north, west, and south side of D'Arcy for the buoys, but not the east.

The wind on August 23 was out of the Southwest. Whitecaps were sporadically
appearing, inspiring an estimate of perhaps ten knots blowing directly into the
bay.
The bay has a number of large rocks near shore, requiring an unsettling choice
between setting out enough scope to hold against the wind and having so much
rode deployed that a shift in wind or current might swing the boat into peril.
None of our references included any suggestions or cautions for anchoring off
D'Arcy. We set out 35 feet of chain and 40 feet of rope in 15-feet of water
somewhere near 48.33.796 N and 123.16.947 W. We tossed a 15-pound Danforth off
the transom to control swing. After remaining aboard for perhaps twenty
minutes, we decided the hook was holding, swing was within an acceptable arc,
and it would be all right to go ashore. Had the wind been blowing 20 knots,
rather than 10, I doubt we would have attempted to anchor here.

The discovery that the mooring buoys were either poorly located or missing
entirely seemed to insinuate the D'Arcy Island "Welcome" mat had been rolled up
and stowed away. We were welcomed, however, by a swarm of yellow jackets. As
soon as we stepped out on deck, there were yellow jackets everywhere. The
insects appeared to be more curious than aggressive, (one flew into the boat
and immediately dropped to the sole, dead) and we saw no more of them after
launching the Zodiac and pulling for shore. Perhaps the tricky anchorage and
the yellow jackets are the first and second lines of defense at D'Arcy. During
our sojourn on D'Arcy, the defenses appeared to be working. No other boats
stopped at D'Arcy, and there is little evidence that many vessels ever do.

We rowed around a few obstacle rocks and beached the Zodiac. Aside from a faded
plastic ribbon girdling a tree, there was no indication at our landing site
that a human being had ever set foot on D'Arcy. One or two chunks of styrofoam
were tangled in drift, so one would assume they had washed up here rather than
left as litter. We picked our way along mossy rocks and through woodsy
thickets, generally following the western shoreline.

The island was motionless, and almost silent. A carpet of brown and yellow
madrona leaves, surprisingly thick for late summer, crackled and crunched
underfoot. The trees grew at crazy angles: many were twisted and bent as if in
agony, and several were saved from ultimate windfall by leaning against
stronger neighbors for support.
I thought of a line from the long version of Bob Dylan's Mr. Tambourine Man:
"the haunted, frightened trees."

Timber grew in unexpected locations. A clump of madrona emerged from the peak
of a barren rock pile. A conifer root spread like a network of arteries and
veins across the face of a granite boulder, seeking an unnatural grip on an
unlikely surface.

We scrambled down to the beach a time or two. We examined the automated light,
perched on a desolate outcropping to guide uncertain mariners and warn off the
unwary. Two sparkling white seagulls perched on a blocky looking orange and
dark gray rock near the lighthouse. The gulls, like the solar panel connected
to the automated beacon, were gratefully absorbing the energy radiated by our
nearest star.

On another short beach, we discovered a mysterious rock. Three parallel lines
encircled the rock, and each line was divided into precisely even, connected,
segments that looked exactly like a woven rope. On one side of the rock,
slanted lines connected the parallel marks. Had the rock served as a shoreside
mooring or a primitive anchor, hundreds or thousands of years ago? It would be
unlikely, and under what conditions would an ancient rope calcify or petrify to
become a portion of the rock itself? We ultimately concluded the markings on
the rock were a natural anomaly, but the "rope bound rock" would prove to be
among the least mysterious encounters on D'Arcy Island.

We located two rectangular cement foundations. Trees perhaps twenty or thirty
years of age grew where there had once been wooden structures. We assumed the
foundations indicated the locations of dormitories. The age of the trees would
offer some suggestion regarding the number of years the structures survived
after the colony was closed in 1926. Some of the rusting metal found next to
the foundation was of relatively recent vintage. (In the 1970's, we owned a
Hibachi grill that was probably identical to the corroded specimen abandoned
years ago by a camper or picnicker visiting the island). Other bits of metal,
such as a broken cast iron stove top, could be more easily presumed to have
originated in the Chinese period.

There was a weird, unsettled feeling surrounding the dormitory areas. I would
be uneasy spending a night ashore on D'Arcy.

We discovered a pool of water, high atop a rocky promontory. It had rained
vigorously only a few days before, but it seemed more than a little unusual
that the water was found at the top of the rock and did not seek a route to the
bottom. There appeared to be a greater quantity of water than could be
explained by drainage of the immediately surrounding surfaces, and some dark
mossy life forms in the pool were thriving as though accustomed to drinking
their fill. The still black water in the pool was reminiscent of a feature in a
Zen garden. Would a Chinese leper have climbed to this same spot? Could that
solitary outcast have meditated next to this calm, ebony pool while
contemplating the horizon beyond Haro Strait?

The faintest suggestion of a trail led us to an area on the NW shoulder of the
island. We found evidence of two structures in this area, both more prominent
than the dormitories. A set of large concrete steps fronted an empty
foundation, and several crumbling cement walls remain to note the location of a
building that could have been a dining hall or a storehouse. The cement
building had indoor plumbing, as evidenced by a drainpipe leading to a caved-in
septic hole about 50 yards away. Generations of vandals have carved names and
initials into the rotting cement of the large building. We found one set of
initials dated 1959, another message proclaiming that a high school class had
graduated in 2001, and scores of defacings dated between those two extremes.

Vines still living, and others apparently dead conspire with tree roots and
freezing winter rains to tear down this tragic building. Given time, nature
will erase the architectural evidence of racially inequitable and insensitive
treatment of the Chinese lepers on D'Arcy.

We followed a row of stones, arranged probably over 100 years ago to outline a
meadow, a garden, or an orchard near the two larger buildings. (A garden would
seem predictable, but we were perplexed at a choice of the NW, rather than SW
corner of the island if this had indeed been the colony's vegetable plot). The
general absence of larger trees in the area defined with the stone border
suggests that the area cleared at some time in the past.

Two very strange events occurred as we were hiking back to the boat. We were
somewhere between the crumbling cement ruins and the first of the dormitory
foundations when I commented to Jan, "You know what's strange? There aren't any
people on this island, and there isn't really much evidence that many people
ever come here. Everywhere else we have ever been that is this abandoned is
always teeming with wildlife. We haven't seen a living creature, except for the
yellow jackets and two seagulls on a rock. There aren't any deer, any rabbits,
any squirrels, or even any droppings anywhere. And you know what's weirdest of
all? We haven't even heard any birds since we came ashore. This place should be
loaded with birds."

"You're right!" said Jan. "I haven't heard even one bird here. That is
extremely strange."

Be careful what you ask for on D'Arcy. Cue the birds. A few seconds after Jan's
confirmation that we had heard no birdsong, we heard a faint "cheep cheep" from
the forest. The lone bird was joined by a second, and a third, and almost
immediately thereafter by a tabernacle choir of various birdcalls. We had
shifted from a condition of avian silence to a nearly ridiculous cacophony of
tweets, cheeps, trills, chirps and general "birdlam". We could hear birds
everywhere, surrounding us on all sides, but aside from the two seagulls we
never actually saw a bird on D'Arcy. A few moments later, the bird racket
subsided and the island was eerily silent again.

"That bothers me, maybe a lot," I said. "Why didn't we hear any birds until we
commented that the birds had been uncharacteristically quiet? It's like
something or somebody turned the birds on, just for us, and then turned them
off again."

"Oh, don't be silly," protested my extremely practical wife. "It's just that
the birds like to congregate in a certain portion of the island, and that must
be where we are now."

I was still debating whether to remind Jan that we had passed the exact same
spot on the inbound trek and heard nary a bird, when the second unusual
experience occurred.

I stopped to take a photo and Jan continued along the faint trail. She was
about forty yards ahead of me on our return leg when I came upon one of the
dormitory foundations and noticed a feature that I had not seen when we passed
the area the first time. The suggestion of a reasonably deep and uniform ditch
ran parallel to the short edge of the rectangular foundation. I thought to
myself, "It would have been handy if there had been a fresh water stream near
this building." At that very moment, Jan stopped and wheeled around in her
track and said, "Listen, I hear water running!"

It was my turn to play the practical skeptic. "No you don't," I assured her.
"That's the wind blowing through the trees."

"No, it isn't!" she said. "Listen, carefully."

The coincidence of my silent supposition that a ditch might once have directed
a stream and Jan's immediate declaration that she heard running water was
astonishing. As I listened, I too heard deeper notes of gurgling water playing
tenor below the soprano whispers of the wind through the branches.

"There's a ditch, here, Jan! I was just wondering whether water had ever run
through here when you heard the sound of water. We didn't hear the water
running when we went through here the first time, just like we didn't hear the
birds. That's pretty weird."

Neither of us dared suggest an explanation.

"I'm going to walk along this ditch and see what I can find," I said.

"I'm going to wait here," Jan declared, "but be careful, OK?"

I followed the ditch to a small field of bright green grasses. Even in late
August, the stalks were thriving, not withered and brown like most late summer
grasses would be. The sound of running water grew progressively louder as I
approached the little meadow. "There must be a lot of water here," I thought.
"Something has to be keeping the grass this green. Undoubtedly there is some
sort of spring here, and at one time it was channeled into the ditch alongside
the…"

The sound of running water ceased, as elusively and suddenly as it began. If
there is a spring among the bright green grasses, or any other source of
gurgling water, I was unable to locate it. The ground was firm, and no more
than slightly damp where ever I walked.

"What was up there," asked Jan as I returned to the path.

"Nothing, really," I assured her. "Just an area that looks like it might have a
spring in it. I'm sure that's where we heard the running water, although I
couldn't actually find it."

I think we were both reluctant to acknowledge that we could no longer hear the
stream.

We hiked directly back to the Zodiac and pulled for "Indulgence", mutually
convinced we had just encountered an experience at least as surreal as any we
could remember in our thirty-five years together.

I am not sure that I believe in ghosts, but I have to believe in D'Arcy Island.
On a day when anchoring is likely to be safe, or the mooring buoys might
mysteriously reappear, venture ashore there and walk very quietly through the
shameful shadows of injustices long past. Listen carefully for birdsong, and
running water. Visit the Zen Garden, high up among the rocks.