Booth Bay Bald Eagles

It was one of those to-die-for summer days, when there's not a breath of wind, or a cloud in the sky. We packed the picnic hamper, and headed off the Maple Bay dock for the day. Our intended destination was Vesuvius Landing on Salt Spring Island, one of our favourite lunch-stops in that area.

As we cruised through the north end of Sansum Narrows, my husband remarked that we had never gone in to Booth Bay, a large indent in Salt Spring's northwestern shore that is lined with houses. We decided on a detour, and ended up dropping the hook in about 50 feet of water a little way out from a fish farm operation on the shore there. We were checking the tide books to see if we could safely go dinghy exploring in Booth Inlet, when we heard the unmistakable screech of a bald eagle overhead.

Looking up, we saw not one, but easily half a dozen of these magnificent creatures overhead - several adults, and a few young ones. It didn't take long to figure out that the young ones had only recently learned to fly, and what we saw unfolding above us was like a beautifully choreographed dance, staged, it seemed, just for our benefit. Rocking gently in a swell in Booth Bay, we sat mesmerized ... up they soared, up, up, and dropping down, gently and then quickly ... onto to the beach, up onto a tree branch, out over the water, they danced, sometimes two or three in perfect unison, sometimes an individual renegade swooping out of nowhere to join the rest of the family before resting back on a rock along the shore.

Gone were the plans to picnic at Vesuvius, gone were the cares and worries of our every-day mundane little lives. There was just the gentle swell in the bay, and the dance of the eagles overhead. So entranced were we that we suddenly realized that we seemed to be getting further and further from the shoreline, and were instantly snapped back to reality when we heard the anchor chain rattling!

Unbeknownst to us, the swell in Booth Bay that lovely day had loosened our tentative anchor, and we were free-floating across the water by the time we came to our senses. Ah, well, time to pull up and move on to Vesuvius anyway - with yet another wonderful summer cruising memory 'in the bank.'