Media and Blogs
It's amazing to share our story with the world and to share in our adventures with so many wonderful folks. Enjoy some of our published features, tips and personal experiences.
'Pushing Through Your Comfort Zone'
By Silke Hockemeyer
I wanted to share a story about one specific experience, and there are truly so many of these life changing moments on trip, so it’s hard to choose just one. This story is about a conversation I had on trip around being vulnerable, getting out of our comfort zones and freeing ourselves from some of our fears.
I had a lovely human on one of my trips who was very afraid of the ocean and wanted to stand up to this fear. He dug deep and said he wanted to join a four-day guided trip in the Broken Group Islands. I asked him what his specific fear was, and he said, “I may fall into the ocean.”
This fear came from him not knowing if he could get back into the kayak, and the fact that the ocean is such an unknown place to him. The ocean is dark and he felt that the great number of living species who call the ocean home could bring harm to him if he fell in. The perceived risk was peril in the sea. I gently shared with him that we have life jackets, that he could swim or tread water, and that together we could get him back into his kayak if needed.
Choosing to push the bounds of our comfort is not something that offers immediate ease; rather, it often comes from a desire to expand our worlds or even create more expansive comfort thereby. We are seeking to evolve in these moments. Sometimes this can evoke fear, anxiety, tension and perceived or actual risk. When this feeling comes up for people in nature, I often like to encourage exploration of what this really feels like for them. What part of their body does it lie in? Is this feeling a common one? Next, are we in actual risk, or is this more of a perceived risk? What’s the worst possible outcome in that moment and what actual harm is possible? Amazingly, the actual risk is usually far less than the perceived. ..........
'Pride Outside: The Hard Won Space That Queer People Occupy In Nature
By Ash Kelly
The outdoors hasn’t always been a welcoming space for the queer community, but it is an important part of many people’s lives. We hear from people during Pride month about what it’s like to take up space in the outdoors.
Finding solace in nature
Jackson Wai Chung Tse grew up in a conservative, religious family, knowing they and the church would not accept a non-binary queer person as one of their own. With those connections eventually severed, Tse, who uses the pronoun ‘they,’ says they found solace in nature. “I felt like I wanted to connect with something spiritually. I found that religion was a way to access something spiritual in myself and I found that again in the outdoors,” they said. But the outdoors has not always been as safe and welcoming as it is today, and many in the queer community say the outdoor community has more work to do before it’s truly inclusive.
Her trips are all about creating a safe space for queer people to connect in nature, which she says more people are looking for as we mark Pride month. “Specifically around Pride, something that’s interesting is people within the community that want to do something that isn’t just partying and celebrating but want to build community … getting into nature has just been huge I think,” adding the numbers have increased within the last two years. ............
Pride Month outside
Silke Hockemeyer with Wild Root Journeys takes groups of queer people outdoors, mostly to kayak. She’s been guiding for 15 years. “Often, minority groups have felt harassment at a greater level. I know that even for myself being a solo woman hiking I’ve sometimes felt uneasy. I think it’s just a natural response we have from lived experiences that make us feel uneasy,” she says.
'Paddling Through This Archipelago Reveals The Region’s Rich History And Ecosystems'
By Andrew Fleming
Paddling through choppy water off the west coast of Vancouver Island, I don’t hear the powerboat approach until she was almost upon us. “Hey, do you guys want some fish?” the skipper says. One of four fiftysomething women aboard the small runabout, she explains they’ve caught more seafood than they can eat. Shortly into a four-day sea kayaking excursion with Wild Root Journeys, our group of mostly novice paddlers still has plenty of food stashed in our hatches, but it’s hard to turn down freshly caught salmon and prawns. “Don’t let them be too generous,” owner Silke Hockemeyer shouts over the wind as lead guide Agnes Seaweed Wisden heads off to secure the bounty to her bow. This is good advice when visiting the territorial home of the Tseshaht First Nation, where the gift-giving tradition of potlatching – meaning "to give away" in Chinook jargon – remains alive.
Sharing wealth and navigating the seas surrounding the Broken Group Islands is one of the longest unbroken traditions in Canada. This archipelago of nearly 100 scattered isles and rocky outcrops inside Barkley Sound looks like untouched hinterland, but archeologists say the region has been inhabited for more than 5,000 years and was once one of the continent’s most densely populated spots north of Mexico before colonization. The 106-square-kilometre area received protected status in 1970 and is now one of three separate regions of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve along with the neighbouring surfers’ paradise of Long Beach and well-trodden West Coast Trail.
The combination of rich cultural history and natural beauty is what first attracted Hockemeyer, a lithe woman in her mid-30s who has spent the past decade guiding commercial sea kayaking trips up and down the B.C. coast and last year launched her own ecotourism company here. “This feels like home,” Hockemeyer says. “This is my calling, taking people out into the wilderness and helping them come out of their shells. There’s nowhere I’d rather be.” ..........
'Let’s Take The World By Storm, Let’s Take Action.'
By Silke Hockemeyer
I remember being a kid, in the back seat during a family holiday in what felt like the Summer, somewhere in the Interior of BC. I remember seeing logging trucks tear past and saying to my family, why are we cutting down all the trees? I was so upset and knew then as most kids do that it was wrong. My father told me not to worry. As another logging truck drove past, holding the evolutionary weight of thousands of years, he stated that there were enough trees to go around. To me, the math just didn’t add up. He chuckled at my simply not understanding the world. It wasn’t funny to me then and it’s even less amusing now. My heart has never stopped aching. The common answer to my environmental heart from many was that this is what progress looked like and that cars couldn’t be driven without gas and trees needed to be cut. I hated that answer. It shut down any allowance to dream for better and find solutions.
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I have been told by my parents, childhood teachers, and old friends that I was a very sensitive kid. I always felt intuitive to my being and to nature and I wanted to be a voice for our environment. When my best friend of elementary school saw me 15 years later, and I told her I was a sea kayak guide, her response was, that she always thought I would become a veterinarian because I loved animals so much. I really do.
With time we learn that better is possible, change can be made, and that without so many people thumbing us down including ourselves, that we could have played a bigger part, leading up to this point. When we finally do realize that we have a voice and that we do have power, we may already be sworn to a world of family and financial responsibility so deep that even though we may want to make a difference, we find we have other priorities to tend to. Our window narrows again, with this choice in mindset.