Matilpi: the sands of time

Sometimes history doesn’t come from school books. Not when you can pick up thousands of years in your hands and let it slowly sift through your fingers.

That’s the way it feels sitting in the middle of a ancient midden, glowing white in the sun, while digging your fingers into the sand and shells crushed to snowflakes by time. You can’t help but imagine the people who harvested shellfish here, footsteps from their village, and the million stories of day to day life now lost.

In the Broughtons, it sometimes seems there are middens everywhere you look. One of the most magical is at Matilpi, an anchorage sheltered by the Indian Islands off the Havannah Channel.
Here is the site of an ancient settlement of the Kwakwaka’wakw people, where their village thrived until a century ago when the residents moved away to join other bands. The buildings are gone, the radioactive glow in the moonlight of the midden the only trace of the countless generations who lived here.

The anchorage is well protected from prevailing winds by the two Indian Islands. We opted to stern tie to the eastern shore of the northern island which has easy access to bring a line ashore regardless of the state of tide. It’s also possible to run a stern line up the shell beach.
Vessels can swing on anchor in the lee of the northern island, though there is only room for two boats to swing on limited scope.

We went ashore to the inviting shell beach on the mainland. There are trails into the woods that quickly disappear in the underbrush. One of us bravely took a very quick swim off the beach, and didn’t complain much about the water temperature until this very moment.
Our idyllic peace was chipped when another boat came into the bay and anchored in the channel. Then another boat ghosted past the northern channel before turning north toward Call Inlet and Chatham Channel. Perhaps the anchorage looked busy, but there was lots of room if they wanted to stern tie to the island or the beach.

If the anchorage is full or a strong northwest wind is forecast, secure anchorage can be found at Burial Bay carved into the opposite shoreline across Havannah Channel. Excellent protection, but the atmosphere there, anchored off private land and docks, is a far cry from Matilpi.