All Hail the Church of Skatan

Serendipity is the Stuff of Life

The Church of Skatan Highland Hostel

“How does snow work?” 

My friends Richie and Sam look at me, eyebrows raised in disbelief, smirks creeping across their faces. 

“Umm, what do you mean,  ‘How does snow work’?” Richie counters. 

I’ve been in Revelstoke, British Columbia for 10 minutes and her tolerance of my bullshit is already waning. What I meant was like, real snow, giant mountain snow, what is it, does it freeze over, is it different from East Coast snow? I snowboarded a few times growing up but only on the icy hills of the East. Now here I was at the base of a mountain and I could not see the top of it. Where I am from the snow at the base is a direct indicator of how much snow is at the top, but there we were sitting in sunshine on my friends’ balcony looking out over a defrosting valley. How could there be no snow and ample sunshine here yet up in the clouds there were endless acres of snowy trails? I just laughed to myself and let the universe take the wheel, it's been driving pretty great so far. If it wasn't for that kitchen chat in Cape Breton so many moons ago, I wouldn't be here, on the opposite side of the country, underneath mountains I had only seen in the movies, adventuring with friends who would have been strangers if not for that Highland Hostel magic.

The kitchen had everything you could ever need. Pots, pans, forks, spoons, plates, ladles, two fridges, a couple of tables and a long counter. The corridor-like kitchen space was packed to the brim with everything a wayward traveler might need. On this particular evening it was crowded with people at work assembling dinner. I popped my head in to introduce myself to my fellow travelers. My body was barely through the door frame into the kitchen when my name came out of one of the guys sitting at the table closest to me, “Ryder?” I looked down at the kitchen table occupied by three guys and saw one of their faces staring up at me in confusion. My face was a mirror of confusion until he said “It's me, Peter! Meg's friend!” Holy shit, the last time I saw this fellow Rhode Islander was at a dive bar over Christmas in my hometown Bristol, Rhode Island, USA which just happens to be almost 1000 miles away from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. “Peter, what are you doing here?!”. Right then and there I should have known that magic was in the air, the stuff of life twirling around us. The Highland Hostel's powers were at work. 

It was the “spring” break (nothing spring-like was happening in Nova Scotia in February) of my third year at St. Francis Xavier University and my pals Ethan, Findlay, Peter (a different Peter, I know, confusing) and I had set our sights for Cape Breton Island’s most Northern point and my favorite hostel, The Church of Skatan Highland Hostel run by the most fantastic of hosts Bricin “Striker” and Patricia, and their two awesome kids. The very moment I entered the hostel’s warm wooden walls and vaulted ceilings I knew I was back home. I had had many adventures that previous summer staying with Bricin and Patrica but this was my first escape to their converted church in winter and my homies had never been. It's a place that has to be experienced to be understood: the heavy snow of winter, the beautiful leaves of fall, and the endless swimming holes and beaches of summer. It's the greatest hostel in the world full stop. It also just happens to be in one of my favorite corners of the entire planet, ripe with adventure and relaxation in equal measure. While sometimes places are merely the setting, the Highland Hostel is an active character. It creeks in the wind and expands to swallow as many travelers as it can. Bricin, Patricia, and their family become your family, they remember your stories and worries and joys. They make you laugh and tell you to make yourself at home and before you can even think about it you feel like you are home. I didn’t know what I needed until I laid in the hammock in the belltower, looking out over where the forest meets the ocean at the end of the road and then I realized there was nothing more I could possibly need. I could talk about my home away from home forever but for now let’s continue with this story…

The view from the belltower

Peter and I sat and went through our stories, trying to piece together how he and I had come to find ourselves at this hostel. His cousin's neighbor in Maine is a guy named Tom, Tom and Peter are best friends and Tom went to Dalhousie University. Tom invited Peter to join him and his friends up to Cape Breton for their spring break to have an adventure. Now the reason I had met Peter in a dive bar in Bristol, Rhode Island over Christmas is because one of my best friends and prom date from high school went to university with him in Maine and it just happens that he is also from Newport which is two towns over from my hometown. Sidenote: both of our dads are named Bart and we both drive Subarus. Long tangent to say this was a very weird and unexpected place to see Peter. 

As we figured out this mystery I was introduced to the others around the table, Tom was next to us, as well as a blonde guy named Sam with annoyingly good hair. If I had known then the series of events meeting Sam would set in motion I think I would have taken a moment to prepare myself. Before we get to that, I started talking to Tom and it turned out Tom knew one of my best friends from high school who went to the University of Vermont, a small coincidence but nothing to look down my nose at. When I got to talking to Sam, I should have known that the Highland Hostel was leaving the craziest coincidence for last. 

           

Sam is from Prince Edward Island, the smallest province in Canada where my great grandmother emigrated from to the States. My family has a tiny cottage “Up West” as they say on the Island and I had spent almost every summer of my life there. Sam is from Charlottetown which is on the other side of the Island from my cottage. We got to talking about memories of PEI and the funny summer jobs we each experienced.I had picked strawberries and helped with Red Cross swim camps, he had rented out paddle boards to tourists on a beach called Basin Head. 

Basin Head is “Up East” on the Island, you might as well bring your passport to visit it, that's how far it always felt from my cottage. I had only been there once in my life. It had been the summer before my freshman year of university and my sister, two of our family friends, and I had gone for the day. We spent it jumping into the ocean and the river that cuts the beach in half, we got ice cream from the little shack overlooking the beach and explored the clay caves lining the shore. A summer day that felt like it would never end. Sam told me that the company he worked for wasn't that popular so he spent most of his days reading next to the paddleboard stand. A distant memory came to me, covered in cobwebs and dusty clay sand. I brushed the memory off and asked him on a whim:  

“Did you happen to be reading Duma Key by Stephen King on the beach in the summer of 2019?” 

A pause. Complete bewilderment delaying his response. 

“Yes.. I… uh wow, yes I was.” 

No… fucking… way. I have made my fair share of small world connections but this took the cake and ate it whole. 

When I was leaving the beach in August of 2019, after the first and ONLY time I have EVER been to Basin Head, I passed by a guy in a beach chair outside of a paddleboard shop, he had sunglasses on and was reading Duma Key, a book I loved and had read one summer earlier. It's not a book you see in the wild all that often. So I yelled out (as I tend to do) 

“Hey! Duma Key, great book!” and kept walking. 

As I explained this he hesitantly said:

“Only one person that whole summer ever said anything to me about that book.” 

We had met however briefly in the summer of 2019 and now we were on the Northernmost tip of Nova Scotia, three years later, in the kitchen of a hostel that is as remote as one person can get. The rest of that night (and many other nights to come) was spent telling every person in the hostel the crazy serendipitous moment that we just had. For some more weird touchpoints I should note at the time Sam was president of Dal Outdoors, his university's outdoor club. I just happened to be the president of my university's outdoor club. We both drove Subarus. The universe has magic glitter all over it, you just had to shift through some mud, trash, and shit to find it. A moment like that has a ripple effect, butterfly wings beating, lives changing. Sam and I saw each other the following November, bumping into each other once again at the Highland Hostel, two minds caught on the same tracks. We kept in touch, two alien species wondering how the other was living such a parallel life. When I ended up on the West Coast after graduating Sam was already there and invited me down to visit him for a friend's Thanksgiving in Ucluelet, showing me where to surf and hike and sun and eat well. A few weeks later we went to a concert together in Victoria and then a few weeks after that a music festival in Cumberland. This past summer I ended up moving to Tofino, the neighboring town to his Uculuet. Friendship grew, fate ensuring that we were in each other's lives. 

That's how I found myself waking up on his couch in a crowded apartment in Revelstoke, British Columbia this March.  I was on my first “real” mountain, fresh powder up to my knees, a world far from anything I had known. New friends and old, all stemming from that night in Cape Breton, were gathered to snowboard and ski for the weekend. A dump of 20cms after a week of dumping snow had set us up for the best snowboarding of my life. My pals grinned at my casual amazement at things they were accustomed to, “Multiple Gondolas!” “Multiple Chairlifts!” “We have been on the same run for over 10 minutes!” They were patient as they took me through the trees, my shouts of glee deafened by the powder. Floating around trees heavy with snow, finding seemingly endless routes and passages. Each run and turn straining muscles I didn't know existed. After a few first tracks they decided I was ready for the bowls, the giant black diamond runs that looked impossibly steep at the top of the mountain. Venturing our way over to them via a combination of hiking, snowboarding and climbing through the deepest snow of my life we got to the top of a bowl and let it fly. The feeling of floating completely overcame me, fresh powder spraying around me, my face lighting up with every turn, every carve was a completely new experience, and there guiding the way was my pal Sam. 

Sam has been my gateway into the British Columbia outdoors world, the footsteps I followed into the mountains and oceans of the West. He introduced me to his pals who became mine, showed me adventures and worlds that the kid on the beach in the summer of 2019 did not know even existed. Just one East Coaster helping another one out. All of this life, all of this joy, all of this adventure, because of a chance meeting in a kitchen far far away.