Weekend at a Wild, Western Shore : On Canada’s Vancouver Island, two villages share a realm of booming sea and timber. Luckily, too, there are inns with fireplaces.

I’m surrounded by white-blue ocean and deep-green headlands. The only sound is the booming roar of the Pacific. Frothy waves, mighty with the power of the deep sea, crash the shoreline. A cluster of delicate sandpipers flies in formation a few feet away. I step over huge tubular chunks of seaweed, weird octopus hunks of slimy green kelp that I’ve never seen before, not on the Atlantic coast, not in the Caribbean.

This is in fact a place unlike any I’ve visited before. Isolated. Wild with nature. Wet and mossy. A place where clouds linger in the creases of mountains. Trees--sitka, hemlock, poplar--stand ramrod-straight, high as the sky, limbs dripping with ferny green stuff. Springs trickle down from high places and surprise you at every turn of the winding hilly highway. I feel alone, quiet, peaceful. I want to sell my home in Vancouver and move here.

Tofino and Ucluelet (Yoo-CLOO-let) are specks at the westernmost edge of British Columbia’s west coast, defiant little villages clinging like isolated barnacles to the west side of Vancouver Island. Surrounded by exquisite wilderness, they are not yet tainted by the excesses of the tourist trade. In fact, only recently have people been coming here to vacation.

With a permanent population of less than 3,000 between them, the towns themselves are tiny, hilly places characterized commercially by fish plants and co-op-type grocery stores. Each has a few modern-ugly government buildings and lacks a main-street nucleus.

They are about a 40-minute drive apart, along a desolate highway that between them accommodates Vancouver Island’s Pacific Rim National Park. Tofino and Ucluelet are actually two finger- shaped peninsulas jutting into the water, to the north in Tofino’s case, to the south with Ucluelet.

The Nu-Chal-Nulth people have lived here for thousands of years, but whites put down roots only two centuries ago. Named for Don de Vincent Tofino, a hydrographer mapping waterways with an 18th-Century Spanish expedition, Tofino has evolved as a fishing village. Ucluelet, a native word for “people with a safe harbor,” has been a base for fur trading, logging and fishing.

Tourism began taking off, especially in Tofino, in the 1970s, after the national park was established and the province replaced an old logging road from Port Alberni with a paved highway out to the coast. These days, between 600,000 and 700,000 tourists parade through the area each summer, a mixed blessing for the year-round Tofino types, as Mayor Frank Van Eynde observed over coffee one afternoon at a local restaurant.

Later, on a brief tour, he sighed as he showed me the recently constructed $350,000 homes that have been built around the six to eight exquisite bays surrounding Tofino--homes that only a few years ago would have sold for half that price. And about 150 new hotel/motel rooms are in the planning stage. Ucluelet doesn’t have the same level of tourism as Tofino, “probably because of the clear-cutting (logging) near there,” Van Eynde surmised.

I had journeyed to the area for a long weekend early this month with my husband Wilson Russell, who was born in Newfoundland, the province at Canada’s extreme opposite end. We both love oceans, and many of our Vancouver friends had long raved about Tofino being a sexy spot. We threw our suitcases into the trunk of our car, clocked off work for a few days and headed west, full of curiosity.

The journey was as beautiful as the destination. We ferried across to Vancouver Island, a large piece of land that buffers Vancouver--British Columbia’s largest city, located on the coast--from the wild Pacific. As you head west on Vancouver Island, the turf gets more remote and wild. On the way to Tofino, undeterred by a downpour, we stopped just east of Port Alberni at Cathedral Grove, an old-growth forest that the forest company MacMillan Bloedel has turned into a tourist attraction. Here, we saw the biggest, tallest, oldest trees that we’ve ever seen in our lives.

We had been warned that it rains a lot on this part of Vancouver Island, so we had packed rubber boots and made sure the hotel we chose--the Pacific Sands Beach Resort--had a fireplace. The resort, just south of Tofino, just north of the national park, turned out to be the best-known one in the area, and, while modest and rustic, it suited the surroundings and was exactly what the doctor ordered for a quiet, back-to-nature weekend respite.

The morning after we arrived, it finally stopped raining and Wilson and I darted out to the beach where we spent about two hours walking hand in hand, breathing deeply, gawking at birds and indulging in existential thoughts.

We walked along Cox Bay. Then we headed for Long Beach, a seven-mile sweep of sand that takes you to a place in your mind that’s about as far away from 20th-Century pressures as you can get. The ocean ambience is overwhelming, with the smell of salt sea, the massive booming of the surf, the long-legged, big-beaked bird life that scurries for food in the shoreline bounty. You can walk here for a long time without encountering anything but driftwood and a few soaring bald eagles. We were reminded that, even though we live in the city of Vancouver, we don’t really live by an ocean.

Being terra-firma types, we stayed on land. We saved a final morning to survey Ucluelet, but were washed out in our quest by yet another heavy downpour. We spent most of our fair-weather time cruising the beaches and exploring the town of Tofino.

But it’s the water around the towns that brings this area to life.

Many tourists come here to whale-watch. The Pacific gray whales pass by along the coast on their migratory route from Mexico to Alaska, and entrepreneurs in both towns have come up with packaged adventures, costing between $35 and $50 for a few hours at sea either in Zodiacs or larger, more stable vessels. The best time to see the whales is from March through April, although there are stragglers all summer long.

The waters around Tofino and Ucluelet provide fresh-from-the-sea food that you’ll find on every restaurant menu in the area.

Wilson and I had our best dinner at the Blue Heron, a restaurant at the Weigh West Resort, right on Tofino inlet. Big windows allowed us to contemplate Meares Island while we indulged in a Dungeness crabfest. The chowder here is a thick hearty melange of seafood and cream.

On our second evening, we dined at The Schooner, which not unexpectedly specializes in seafood. The Schooner’s atmosphere is dark and romantic but not as exciting as the Blue Heron, for lack of a real ocean view. Nonetheless, I had a delicious linguine dish peppered with bits of smoked salmon, and Wilson had his favorite, a steak.

One rainy afternoon we discovered The Loft, where we had a hearty, inexpensive lunch. The cozy eatery is decorated with the works of local artist Roy Henry Vickers. I had an enormous seafood club sandwich while my husband had another of his favorites, fish and chips. On the way back to our hotel room we bought huge rich muffins baked with fruit and cream cheese and a bountiful blueberry scone at The Common Loaf Bake Shop, a bakery/restaurant just off the main street, and warmed them up in our kitchenette for a great breakfast the next day.

All of Tofino’s restaurants are along the main drag, Campbell Street, or on adjacent side streets. Most of them mention seafood prominently, a reminder that this place is mostly about the ocean.

Mostly. But there’s also the trees.

This is the land of the logging dispute. The clear-cuts that pock-mark the surrounding vistas tear your heart out. To the northeast is Clayoquot Sound, site of ancient rain forests, where environmentalists and loggers are set to face off in what’s predicted to be a long, hot summer.

You smell the trees here. They smell wet. You want to touch the moss that sits like lace on their boughs.

A natural experience of another sort awaits in Tofino at the Eagle Aerie Gallery, which shows off the work of its owner, Roy Henry Vickers. Himwitsa Gallery, across the street from the Eagle Aerie, is also worth a visit, offering a good selection of silver jewelry and pottery produced by 50 native Nu-Chal-Nulth artists in the area. I found the silver bracelets and earrings, etched with native symbols, most beautiful for the price: $50 and up.

Radar Hill just south of Tofino is another beauty spot. It’s a lookout point in Pacific Rim National Park that you can drive to, smell the fresh mountain air and, in total quiet, contemplate the shimmering beauty of Clayoquot Sound.

GUIDEBOOK

How to Find Tofino

Getting there: From Seattle, head north on Interstate 5 until you cross the border into British Columbia (two-plus hours later) and the highway becomes 99. About 15 minutes after that, take the turnoff west to Tsawwassen for the ferry from Tsawwassen to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island’s east coast. The scenic trip costs $33.50 one way for two adults and a vehicle. If you want to see the city of Vancouver, continue on 99 north, past Tsawwassen, right through Vancouver and into Horseshoe Bay northeast of the city. The Horseshoe Bay-to-Nanaimo ferry trip is about 1 1/2 hours and costs the same as the Tsawwassen trip. From Nanaimo, head north on the Vancouver Island Highway; turn west on Highway 4 for a three-hour scenic drive across the island to Tofino.

You can also ferry to Vancouver Island as a foot passenger, and rent all the cars you want in Nanaimo, a city with a full range of services.

Where to stay: Pacific Sands Beach Resort, P.O. Box 237, Tofino, British Columbia VOR 2Z0, Canada, telephone (604) 725-3322, fax (604) 725-3155. About 10 minutes south of Tofino, the resort is clean, quiet and had a knock-’em-dead view of Cox Bay; one-bedroom units with fireplace and kitchen, $90 a night ($125 after late June); two-bedroom suites $120, going up to $140 in summer; cabins (no fireplace or TV) $90, going up to $95; suite with private hot tub, $150.

Weigh West Marine Resort in Tofino, P.O. Box 553, 634 Campbell Ave., Tofino VOR 2Z0, tel. (604) 725-3277, fax (604) 725-3922, has a terrific view facing toward Meares Island. Rooms $60-$80 in summer, $97-$115 with kitchenette.

Other resorts in the area appear to have more standardized motel-style accommodations; summer reservations are a must.

Where to eat: Blue Heron Inn at Weigh West Marine Resort, tel. (604) 725-4266; seafood and continental cuisine, about $40 for dinner for two, not including wine.

The Schooner Restaurant, 331 Campbell St., Tofino, tel. (604) 725-3444; seafood, some pasta and beef dishes, about $40 for dinner for two, not including wine.

The Loft, 346 Campbell St., tel. (604) 725-4241; cozy interior, continental cuisine; about $18 for lunch without wine, dinner about $40 for two.

For more information: Call or write the Tofino-Long Beach Travel Infocentre, 380 Campbell St., Box 476, Tofino, B.C. VOR 2Z0, tel. (604) 725-3414. Or Tourism Vancouver Island, Suite 302, 45 Bastion Square, Victoria, B.C. VAW 1J1, tel. (604) 382-3551. Or the Canadian Consulate General, Tourist Information, 300 S. Grand Ave., 10th Floor, Los Angeles 90071, tel. (213) 687-7432.

--B.Y.