CNN Travel - Tofino: Canada’s bohemian backwater
By Lisa Kadane, for CNN.
Daybreak in Tofino, Canada, is measured in layers of fog. This time of year, the mist often rolls in, shrouding the dense cedar forests and wide, sandy beaches in gray gauze.
My daughter and I have wandered from the coziness of our room at Hotel Zed into the damp morning to follow a trail that leads through the silent forest to a bird sanctuary. I’m hoping to see a wolf fishing for breakfast on the mudflats of the Tofino Inlet at low tide or a bald eagle perched high in an alder tree.
“Find an eagle feather,” the hotel’s psychic had counseled me the day before on a Zoom call (because, Covid), when I told her I was hoping to recapture the bohemian energy of my youth while visiting a town synonymous with free spiritedness.
“It’s not just peace, love, hug a tree,” she said. “How do you want to experience Tofino? What will happen if you just let it rip?”
What, indeed? And so, with no wolves or eagle feathers in sight, we climb onto beach cruisers, point them toward Chesterman Beach, and pedal madly into the fog, wet sand splattering our clothes.
Over the next few days, we’ll surf, forage, stuff our faces with local seaweed and seafood and, yes, even hug an 800-year-old cedar tree.
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