Parents cope with the loss of sons in kayak accident

ADVENTURESOME friends who met at the UW shared a love of learning and music, and were always planning the next big trip in the great outdoors.

The sky was too blue. The beach - bordered by long planks of driftwood and tall grass - too serene. Stephen Buergey asked to rent a canoe.

Michael Stolmeier, owner of Smuggler's Villa Resort on Orcas Island, wouldn't hear of it. Take the canoe out as long as you want, no charge, he told the father of one of the two young men who lost their lives while kayaking in the San Juans last week.

Buergey set out on the glassy water, using a paddle that had washed up on the shore of a nearby island days earlier. It was his son's paddle.

On it his son, also named Stephen, had drawn a cartoon of himself, hair in dreadlocks, kayaking on the crest of a wave.

"That was when he still had dreadlocks," Buergey said, holding the paddle, his voice as soft as water rolling over sand.

Seals and otters splashed through the gentle swells.

It's so peaceful, the elder Buergey thought. The boys couldn't have known what they were headed into.

Their parents say it was inevitable that their sons met. Stephen Buergey, 20, was from Virginia. Grant Tyler, 21, from Montana. They shared the same tastes in music, tastes gleaned directly from their youthful parents' album collections: Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles.

They became inseparable in the dorms at the University of Washington before renting an apartment near campus.

Always planning their next trip, they loved the road and nature. Their parents called them old hippies in young bodies, brothers with different mothers. Always smiling, they were magnets to other students.

They also were committed to school. Both studied Comparative History of Ideas, known at UW as CHID. Buergey, a sophomore, had notions of becoming an educator. Tyler, who wore Hawaiian shirts and baggy pants, had long thought about medical school but recently was thinking of developing a school, one with less focus on testing and more on engaging students in their own learning.

"That's what I really liked about them," said James D. Clowes, associate director of the CHID program. "They could be Deadheads, but they were really focused and engaged students."

Last fall, the two bought a tandem sea kayak. In their journals, they plotted out trips through the San Juan Islands.

They planned a four-day trip before beginning school this fall.

On Sept. 20 they stopped in Bellingham to buy groceries, then camped on the Lummi Indian Reservation. The next morning they set out from Sandy Point under clear skies and light winds. They planned to visit Patos and Tumbo islands before returning to Sandy Point on Saturday.

It made Stephen's mother, Susan Peterson of Little Rock, Ark., feel good to know that her son was with Tyler when they ventured out.

Though Buergey had plenty of experience in the outdoors, Tyler had grown up ski racing in the mountains of Montana. His parents had been ski patrollers; he knew survival skills. He had recently become seriously involved in competitive extreme skiing. Already a member of the North American tour of the International Freeskiers Association, he had found sponsors and was preparing to join the European tour.

His love of the outdoors had easily transferred to the mountains and waters of the Northwest.

From Smuggler's Villa, Sandy Point can be seen across the water about 15 miles away. Michael Stolmeier has been on this location for 11 years. Though these are considered safe kayaking waters, he's seen even light winds create dangerous conditions.

In 1998, Stephen Braun, an Orcas Island friend and a longtime kayaker, drowned off the island. The ocean that day looked similar to conditions last week, with a steady northeast wind forming whitecaps and short-frequency swells, Stolmeier said.

"It was discouraging to even regular saltwater fishing boats," Stolmeier said. "Thirty- to 40-footers were going out and coming right back in."

A small-craft advisory was issued Thursday, when the forecast called for winds of 25 to 30 knots and waves of 3 to 5 feet.

On Friday morning, the Coast Guard began searching for the two after a waterproof bag containing their identification washed ashore.

Buergey's body was found the next day near James Island, about six miles south of Orcas. Searchers discovered the kayak, damaged by rocks, washed up on Orcas' north shore. It still held the young men's camping gear.

One day later, the search was over when a pleasure boater found Tyler's body near Lummi Island. The San Juan County Sheriff's Department has concluded that the two, who were wearing life vests, drowned. But no one knows exactly how it happened.

It's a mystery their parents don't mind going unsolved.

"I don't want to know it all, it doesn't help any," said David Tyler.

The Tylers arrived in Seattle from their home in Red Lodge, Mont., on Saturday while the search continued. Tyler and Buergey's friends joined in a vigil while they waited for word.

After the worst news came, the boys' friends provided support.

On Tuesday night, they sat up with their sons' friends swapping stories. "I found myself laughing," said Sandee Tyler. "I didn't think that would ever happen again."

Clowes and other students are holding a memorial service at 4:30 p.m. Monday at Parrington Forum on campus.

It was one of the friends who accompanied Buergey's father out in the canoe near Smuggler's Villa.

Out on the water, Buergey, who lives in Virginia Beach, Va., could imagine his son and his best friend taking in the sun and the breeze, their slim craft moving through the water. He recalled a recent conversation he had with his son. It seemed to capture the sentiments of both young men.

"He said, `You know, Dad, nature's my church. It's awe-inspiring.' "

Ray Rivera's phone message number is 206-464-2926.