Hiking with Manfred the Magician

A bridge across the Capilano River. Photo by David Lansing.

Manfred Scholermann is famished. So am I. We have been hiking all morning in the temperate rain forests of Capilano River Park, following the reverse course of doomed coho and Chinook salmon making their way from the Burrard Inlet to the Capilano River Hatchery, and now we are headed for lunch, in our sweat-soaked shirts and muddy boots, to a stylish café in West Vancouver. The restaurant is filled with well-heeled businessmen and elegantly dressed women.

I would like to take off my damp, dirty baseball cap—I really would—but the constant drip of water from the towering cedars and firs of the Capilano rain forest, which is just twenty minutes from downtown Vancouver, has plastered my thin hair to my scalp like wallpaper. Better to leave the hat on, I think. Besides, Manfred is a former chef, a wine connoisseur, and an excellent raconteur and doesn’t seem the least concerned to be sitting in this tony restaurant with muddy legs protruding from soaked khaki shorts, so why should I.

On our rather strenuous hike, Manfred waxed poetically about the sea, the river, the forest, and all creatures large and small that lived in this forest fairyland. He picked wild salmonberries from the bushes and munched on the young green sprouts of hemlock branches as warm moisture, dew, condensation—whatever you want to call it (it wasn’t exactly raining, though it felt like it)—fell like spit from the tree canopy towering hundreds of feet overhead. It seemed as if every sentence out of Manfred’s mouth contained the word rain or river or sea or water. Though I was soaked through and through, it made me thirsty. It also made me crave salty, fleshy things from the ocean. So much so that I pondered lurching into the fast-flowing Capilano and stalking a salmon like one of the forest’s bears currently hibernating (I hope).

It was at this point, I suppose, while standing on a slick boulder on the banks of the river, that I reached into my pocket for a dry tissue to blow my nose and, forgetting that I’d stuffed some bills in there as well, watched as four twenties, held together with a paper clip, dropped into the swirling water and quickly disappeared downstream.

I cursed. Manfred consoled me by offering to buy lunch. Which is why we are now at this warm little café drinking Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc and slurping down salty fanny bay oysters as quickly as our waitress can bring them. And so the afternoon goes along pleasantly enough, with me and Manfred sloshing down Cloudy Bay like pirates and wolfing down oysters like sea otters. Manfred is telling me a humorous story about his days as a chef at the Banff Springs Chateau when I interrupt him with a howl. I have just bitten into something extremely hard in the middle of my fanny bay. I spit it out of my mouth and hold it in the palm of my hand: a perfect little pearl. A gift from the sea.

“That’s very good luck,” Manfred says.

I wipe the pearl with my napkin and slip it into my pants pocket. We finish our lunch. And as we are running down the sidewalk, the rain having picked up while we lunched, I spot a hundred-dollar Canadian note floating in the gutter. Almost an exact conversion of the four twenties I’d lost this morning.

“I think this city is good for you,” Manfred says, slapping me on the back as I climb into his car.

I think he may be right.