A late-summer breeze impels me toward the federal wharf in Tofino just as surely as it whisks spindrift from the swells of surf that break on nearby Long Beach in Pacific Rim National Park. My weekend destination is Ahous Beach on Vargas Island, five kilometres north of Tofino. All but deserted since the Ahousat First Nations moved northeast from Vargas's outer coast to Flores Island's sheltered inner shoreline a century and a half ago, it is still home to a wind that plays and whispers through the salal and Sitka spruce and across the shell middens in grassy clearings where their villages once stood. (Vargas boasts one of the largest collections of Native heritage sites in Clayoquot Sound.)

By prior arrangement, Neil Buckle meets me at the First Street dock in Tofino and ferries me and my backpack to Vargas in his trusty aluminum skiff. It's a 30-minute ride across Templar Channel and around Wickaninnish Island to the Vargas Island Inn that he and his wife, Marilyn, have operated since the 1970s on property that his grandparents homesteaded in 1910. A haven for kayakers, the inn also marks the start of an old telegraph trail--constructed after the establishment of a lifesaving station in Tofino in 1913--that leads three kilometres west across the island to Ahous Beach.

As much as I'd like to paddle my way around the island to Ahous, my respect for the power of the exposed open ocean exceeds my kayaking skills. My backpack may weigh 20 kilos, but carrying that burden for what amounts to little more than a one-hour hike is a small price to pay for peace of mind. (As I'm not counting on finding fresh water, I'm carrying enough to last several days.)

Buffeted by storms that often drop as much as 15 centimetres of rain per day, much of low-lying Vargas Island (about half of which is a provincial park) is a blend of soggy peat bog and crescent-shaped sand berms. Fortunately, a corduroy of cedar planks and shore pine poles covers much of the trail. It provides a raised surface across which I pick my way past pink western bog laurel blossoms and strawberry-hued hummocks of peat moss. A peregrine falcon circles lazily above while a banana slug the size of a Popsicle hugs the ground below.

The going turns slightly sketchy for the final kilometre. A large sign warns that the trail is officially closed; I decide that this is a mere formality to protect BC Parks from liability in case of an accident. As it stands, it seems to me, anyone of a reasonable age and fitness level, with waterproof footwear and a modicum of balancing skills, should do just fine.

I strain to detect sounds of surf as I push through an almost impenetrable barrier of salal shrubs interwoven with juvenile western red cedar. With a final effort to force my backpack through the trail's dim channel, I suddenly pop out onto sunlit Ahous Beach. Small wonder that here on the notorious "graveyard of the Pacific" shipwrecked sailors needed such a trail, even a rough one, if they ever hoped to find their way through the thicket in search of help.

At first glance, Ahous Beach seems impossibly large. The upturned corners of its crescent shape are shrouded in mist. Aside from a pod of kayakers barely visible at one end, today the beach is mine alone. I shrug off my pack, wriggle out of my hiking boots, and barefoot it toward the distant ocean whose rise and fall has etched an intricately woven pattern of curved lines in the sand. Absent-mindedly, my feet trace these outlines, which quickly induces a heady sense of intoxication. I half-credit this to the overload my central nervous system is experiencing at having to absorb so much sensory input in such a short span of time. A sudden splash of chilly seawater across my chest clears my mind. I manage to wade up to my waist before turning tail after a swell steamrolls me into the briny surf. (After dark, the breakers glow like northern lights with bioluminescence.)

What I need to find now is the sheltered side of a driftwood log where I can dry off and stake out a place to pitch my tent. Although I'd prefer to sleep under the stars, I recall that early-morning dew settles as heavily as rain. There are no bears on the island, but I still plan to hang a food rope and prepare my meals a safe distance from my tent so as not to attract the attention of a small pack of grey wolves that call Vargas home, mutely attested to by prints I'd spotted beside the trail during my cross-island hike.

In the lee of the on-shore breeze, I make note of everything I hope to accomplish during my stay, such as scan for grey whales, whose northern migration route leads between the beach and nearby Blunden Island. I'm just as keen to explore the myriad of life forms revealed in intertidal pools midway along the beach, where hermit crabs scuttle among purple stars (also hued in yellows and browns) and giant green anemones at the base of islets that become landlocked at low tide. More than anything else, I want to find several rocky clefts choked with bleached blue mussel shells cast up above the tide line in natural middens, a vivid memory from a previous visit. Only then will I turn my attention to gathering some fresh mollusks for dinner. Countless numbers colonize the wave-lashed headlands, testimony to the old saw that when the tide is out, the table is, indeed, spread.

ACCESS: Clayoquot Connections ([250] 726-8789) provides water-taxi service between Tofino and Vargas Island. The Vargas Island Inn ([250] 725-3309) has a variety of accommodations, from campsites to individual cabins. B.C. Parks (wlapwww.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/) is a good source of information on Vargas, as is the Tofino Information Centre ([250] 725-3414, www.tofinobc.org/, March to October) and the Pacific Rim Tourism Association (1-866-725-7529, www.pacificrimtourism.ca/).