A self-confessed nature novice, Catherine Naylor discovers her wild side on a nine-day sail through British Columbia.

I am frozen under a canopy of aspens on an island off western Canada, trying to ignore my rumbling tummy and the cold touch of rain upon my un-gloved hands. My top-of-the-line wet weather gear suggests I’m an old hand at waiting for animals to show up, but I’m finding it hard to tune into my inner greenie. Patience is not one of my strong points.

We followed an old logging trail to get here and the signs suggest someone, or more accurately, something, has walked the path before us. Scratch marks scar the trees and piles of fresh poo litter the ground, but we haven’t spotted any life so far, other than a few lethargic salmon in the creek below.

Then, just as my eagerness to see a big scary beast gives way to daydreams about lunch awaiting me back on board the schooner Maple Leaf, I hear the call. “Oh look, over there, on the right,” Ellen, one of my fellow observers, whispers. Camera lenses and binoculars swivel to focus on a fallen log – revealing, in full view, the great white bum of a spirit bear. Prior to this moment, I had never seen a bear in the wild. Now I’ve been mooned by one.

That night, over a gourmet meal of honey soy salmon and coconut rice (with a bottle of sauvignon blanc), my fellow sailors gasp when they learn this was my first wild bear experience. “I’ve spent eight years trying to see a white bear,” says Doug. “And you see one on your first go.” It is only day two of our nine-day voyage through British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest and we have already seen – briefly – one of the world’s rarest bears. We don’t know it yet, but this adventure cruise is only going to get better.

I’m the one real nature novice among the nine passengers aboard the Maple Leaf. Doug, a gentle giant who was a battleaxe on the American football field 30 years ago, has long harboured a love for untamed North America. Like many on board, it was his desire to see a white bear in the wild that drove him and his wife, Chris, to sign up for this journey through the greatest swathe of temperate rainforest still standing on earth.

And what a forest! Its contours stretch along the coast from the tip of Vancouver Island right through to the border with Alaska, and most of its 64,000km2 can only be accessed by boat or sea plane.

Its trees and plants date back hundreds, even thousands of years. And its fjords – towering walls of black granite – plunge under the water to depths of 600m.

One morning, our Maple Leaf captain and guide, Kevin, gets us to sit on the bowsprit of his boat as he drives it bow-first into a powerful waterfall. We shriek as the water splashes over us, our ears filled with the roar of three days’ worth of rain tumbling into the ocean.

Mostly, though, Great Bear Rainforest is blanketed in an almost disconcerting quiet. Even the leaves on the trees seem hesitant to rustle. When the Maple Leaf anchors at night, the only sounds we hear from our bunks are the patter of rain on the cabin roof and the water lapping against the wooden sides of the 104-year-old schooner as it rocks us to sleep.

The Maple Leaf is a glorious old boat that has earned its keep as a racing yacht, a fishing boat, and, since 1986, a bastion of eco-tourism. The sleeping quarters – one room and two bathrooms – are below deck, as is the galley in which the chef, Lila, prepares delicacies such as cranberry scones and maple ginger crème caramel. On rainy afternoons, and at night, we curl up on couches in the Maple Leaf’s wheelhouse or around the table next to her kitchen, poring over picture books and swapping life stories, knowing she is keeping us safe.

Those aboard the Maple Leaf are just one part of a great migration across oceans and continents to be here in early September, when millions of salmon return from the Pacific to the streams in which they hatched five years earlier.

In every river and inlet we see them, fighting the current and each other to get home. At the mouth of one creek, I glance back to see thousands of fins cutting the water. Near another, I settle into the embrace of an 800-year-old yellow cedar to watch pink salmon hurl themselves at a swollen waterfall, driven by some innate need to return to their birthplace, to spawn and to die.

This is their last journey – the fresh water is already eating away at their bodies. “They are dying, right before your eyes,” explains Alison Watt, an artist and naturalist, who has joined us on board to answer all our questions. Those salmon that don’t succumb to the fresh water will be devoured by bears, wolves and birds. “This is the week,” says Kevin. “Everything is here for this. It is the Great Salmon Run.”

As I watch gulls pick the salmon eggs from fast-running streams, and bald eagles, perched like statues on tree tops, eye their next dinner in the waters below, I am acutely aware of how much I feel the bumbling, dependent foreigner amid company of such primeval self-sufficiency; our tools for survival are so prosthetic compared to those of the beasts living in – and off – this place.

But as the days pass by, I find myself falling into the rhythms of the forest. I forget what time it is, even what day it is, and am guided only by the mist-laden sunrises that wake me, and the salmon-coloured sunsets that kiss me goodnight. We fall under this spell, and Kevin, gently, lets us set our own pace as he guides us down small inlets and narrow bear trails that he knows like the dog-eared pages of a favourite book.

While he could not promise we would see a white bear, Kevin knows where to look, and does so without intruding on the natural environment. Over the years, the Maple Leaf crew has come to recognise many of the bears – and the bears have come to know them. “We’ve even ended up doing some babysitting,” says Maureen, Kevin’s wife and the second mate on the Maple Leaf. “The sows know we won’t do anything to the cubs, and also that the bigger bears won’t come near them while we are there, so they leave them and go off to do some fishing.”

The white bear, also called a Kermode or spirit bear, is a genetic offshoot of the black bear – about one in 10 bears is white, and they are found on only a few islands and pockets of the mainland. It holds a reverent place in First Nations folklore – legend has it the white bear is a remnant of the Ice Age, a reminder of the force of nature. But their numbers are dropping, as is the overall bear population in Canada. Marvin, the bear guide who led us to the white bear on day two, blames this on weak conservation laws, over-fishing, and too much logging – last year commercial fishing vessels took seven million salmon, and only 35 per cent of the Great Bear Rainforest is protected from logging. But salmon numbers are up this season and the nature guides and environmental researchers are hopeful the bears will fare better this winter.

It is raining heavily and has been for days when we drop anchor off Princess Royal Island and climb into the rubber dinghies tied behind the Maple Leaf to venture down the river. Receding flood waters have strewn salmon carcasses across rocks and branches. Fishy bodies line the river bed – hundreds of them draped over each other, their glassy eyes staring up at us through the water, their fins fluttering in the current. “The great salmon graveyard,” notes Ellen, wryly.

Kevin has never seen the water level so high, but we find a place to pull up and then pick through the flooded grasslands, scanning the rain-blurred landscape for life. From the edge of the estuary, Doug spots the head of a grizzly wading across the fast-moving river. As we look on, he pauses halfway to lift a heavy paw and grab a log covered in dozens of gulls. He holds himself up to catch his breath before continuing on, oblivious to our presence.

Back in the dinghies, we see another grizzly on river’s edge, pulling at roots. With Kevin watching closely for any reaction from the bear, we edge closer until we are only metres away. Despite the rain, we can see every hair in his drenched coat, each claw in his paw as he turns the roots over and sniffs what he has uncovered. I have never seen an animal so settled in his environment.

“That is one very cool bear,” says Kevin.

As if he has heard our admiration, the bear climbs onto a fallen tree and shakes his whole body, sending water droplets flying. I manage to take one photo of him before the rain kills my camera. With disappointment I watch him leave – I would have sat there in the rain keeping him company all day. Already this forest has imparted to me the gift of patience.

The wildlife on land is only rivalled by what we see in the water as we journey south towards Bella Bella, our last port of call. The sea, like liquid glass, reflects an image of the sky and the mountains that channel it – a mirror only interrupted by curious sea lions that pop up beside us, or humpbacks and their calves trailing for krill. One afternoon, Ellen and I take the kayaks and cut across the bay, following two seals that delight in evading us.

I come to recognise the markings of the different gulls and to follow the fast-moving wings of the peregrine falcon, but the sky offers its best gift after lunch one day, when Alison calls our attention to a flock of cranes migrating south, their wings gently caressing the air in a delicate dance. “Oh, look up there, that’s really special,” she says. “You don’t often see sandhill cranes.” An hour later, I interrupt Kevin to point out another flock of birds: “Ooh, more cranes.” He looks up and then back at me, amused. “Uh, Catherine, they’re just ducks.”

The rain lifts for our last full day aboard the Maple Leaf and I climb onto the deck to see ribbons of fog unfurling from the treetops. “Look at that, the forest is breathing,” says Kevin. After lunch, we head into open water and cut the engines. The sounds of the sea are amplified and to its chorus we hoist the sails, working in teams to pull on the ropes until the ship bows to the wind.

An excited shout from port side alerts us to a pod of breaching killer whales. We tack to give them space. Their dorsal fins tower out of the water and one whale comes right up beside us to do a body roll, exposing his big, white belly. Maureen drops a microphone into the water and we listen in awe as the orcas gently sing to each other.

Hoping for a better view of their aerobatics, I clamber onto the bowsprit and sit with my feet dangling over 250m of Pacific Ocean. I am rewarded when another, smaller orca leaps head first from the water and falls back onto the sea, imprinting his shape on it. I turn around laughing. “This is way more exciting than the humpbacks,” I call to Alison, then marvel that I’m even making that judgement. I have seen so much of nature in its element over the past eight days that I’m almost beginning to take it for granted – almost.

Next morning, we watch as Bella Bella unfolds before us and the Maple Leaf docks before lunch. Chris, the deckhand, brings our bags up, a little salted after their time at sea. Bella Bella is small – there are no roads linking it to the rest of Canada and a bank teller flies in once a fortnight to do business – but even this little piece of civilisation is confronting.

We huddle on the wharf like refugees and eye warily the taxi pulling up to take us to the airport. We are hesitant to leave the Maple Leaf. Doug stands looking fondly at the boat that has borne us – and bound us – over the past nine days. “This boat’s got spirit. You can feel it,” he says.

Then I hear a familiar call. We turn our faces to the sky. A flock of sandhill cranes is flying in formation above us, their slight frames arranged in a delicate, unconscious symmetry. “It’s a natural fly-over,” someone remarks. “What a goodbye.” We watch until the birds are out of sight, enveloped by the great forest we have left behind – and then it is over. The taxi is waiting.

Open Road January/February 2010