Before departing from the land of hockey and poutine, we took a day trip to Gabriola, a small and stunningly beautiful island that sits between Vancouver Island and the mainland.

Gabriola is known for its natural beauty and for being a wellspring of creative culture, due in large part to an influx of draft dodgers during the 60’s and 70’s. The island even features a small museum with an entire exhibit devoted to the history of hippie communes on Gabriola. (Ironically, these counterculture transplants were probably seeking the freedom to live a meaningful and nature-based life not unlike that of the native Snunéymux, who were all but eradicated from Gabriola by European diseases in the 1500’s.)

We spent most of our time on a gorgeous cerulean beach fringed with ghostly mountains in the distance, clambering from one tidepool to the next to spy on all manner of crusty and crawly things.

Each square foot of this beach held its own miniature universe, crowded with crabs, anemones, barnacles, abandoned shells, seaweed, and, yes, the occasional brilliant starfish. It was easy to spend several minutes hunched over a particular tidepool in silent reverie, witnessing its zoological microdramas — but when you finally came back to yourself and looked around you, the scenery struck you speechless all over again.

As if the breathtaking beaches aren’t enough, Gabriola, like Vancouver Island, is also home to a particularly lovely tree called the arbutus — or, by doting locals, “arbeauties.” Their dusty red trunks have a sort of wistful slant, like someone twisting to look out a window as they lose themselves to a daydream.

My favorite tree, however — which my aunt Holly pointed out to us several times, with a characteristic reverence for noteworthy strangeness — is the Monkey Puzzle Tree. It’s called this presumably because even a monkey couldn’t figure out how to climb its jagged, cactus-like branches.

Holly insisted on taking a picture of me, Sean, and my brother Van in front of this tree. I think she captured the towering weirdness that is the Monkey Puzzle Tree, and also maybe just a bit of that profound silliness that sometimes happens when you hang around people who have known you since you were in diapers.

Speaking of people who know me all too well, our next major destination is Madison, Wisconsin, where we’ll be staying with some good friends of mine for a month or so while we replenish our trip budget. Do I even remember how to eat cheese curds? Does Sean understand what a high of 40 degrees in October actually means? We’ll find out.