Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
old stories
i took this photo, and the one at the end of this post, in a grove of old-growth cedar and fir trees in the gifford pinchot forest. it is difficult to remember this type of forest covered most of the coast at one time, and in vancouver there were trees that grew to be over 100 metres tall (that’s 35 building stories). since i first learned this, i have looked out the window of my 15th floor cubicle, trying to imagine my office tower surrounded by trees twice its size. the fact it is so challenging to envision points sorely to a removal from our own roots as forest animals (the root of savage means “of the forest” interestingly enough) – but it also means the loss of many stories of the land’s history only these sentinels might know, since they are the longest memory beside the mountains that once existed on these shores.
she-ros
my friend and fellow activist – the infamous megan o. – is receiving an international human rights award tonight in montreal for her work on the illegal safe injection site here in vancouver last year. you can find information about her and the site here.
hooray for all the people doing this work in the downtown eastside! and congrats to megan on the award…..:smile:
also – sharai is in the news for her work at camp experience your dreams – speaking out with her strong grrrrl voice! here’s an article about her and the camp on the xtra west site.
here’s to the greatness of radical women!
mirror mirror
this is a photo of meta lake, a stop in the blast zone on the way to the mt. saint helen’s viewpoint.
on the last day of my trip south, we took a long drive up to the protected area surrounding the mount st. helen’s blast site. from deep rich forest of fir and cedar, to land that at first glance looks like a moonscape, the road winds through a varied and striking environment.
it has been 20 years since the volcano blew (an event i remember vividly from childhood), and there is rebirth in the land where the lava and fire knocked down and burned up the forest. small trees and plants dot the landscape, pushing their way out of pumice and ash.
the lakes in the area were scoured clean by the event (at spirit lake the water was all pushed out and then dropped back in by the force of the moving earth) – but are coming back with teeming micro and macro-life as witnessed at this small lake. algae, mayflys, pollywogs and small fish were all evident here – a testament to clean and viable water for aquatic life.
this place made me realize that volcanoes, like forest fires, help to flush the earth and create a base for new life to spring from – and give me some small hope that life can re-emerge anywhere given enough time (though i suspect human-made disasters take a lot longer for the earth to recover from).
this place, which initially appears desolate, is actually newborn and full of future.
twig bundles
these twig bundles don’t make for the best photo, but they are part of a series of revelations granted to me over the past year.
last october i met a friend who showed me the art of making fire using a twig bundle. i had never before seen a fire ignite so quickly without the use of any human-made substance such as paper (or in my dad’s case, gasoline) – one match and our fire made of damp driftwood was lit on a cold evening near all hallow’s eve. to make the bundle, this friend spent awhile in the forest behind the house we were staying at on the sunshine coast, walking and collecting the dry and fine branches from the ground. emerging from the forest with a large bundle of spindly branches, my friend proceeded to bend them into a horseshoe shape and tie a knot around them with a piece of live branch – making a rounded mass of fine starter and kindling.
watching this seemed like remembering to me, a lost art brought to life in the simple doing.
forest sentry
i took this photo of the waning sun setting over the research cut-block on my second night in the forest. as evening came on, i was reading in camp alone, as nathan was out in the field taking hemispherical photos for a couple of hours. the silence of the forest was occasionally animatted with the chatter of birds winding down for the day, when suddenly, from the dark forest at the bottom of the hill there came what sounded like someone playing a flute in the distance. at first i thought it was a bird, but quickly discarded that thought – though it had a definite pattern to it like a bird call: first a high note, then a low note then a run from high to low.
hearing this noise roused me from my book, and i came to the edge of the cutblock to look out, whereupon i decided to get my camera and try to take a few shots. i found out later that the fluting noise carrying in the dusk was the bugle of a male elk, common in that area during the fall.
i have been trying to locate a decent recording of one to share on this blog, but haven’t come up with anything that sounded like what i heard in the forest that night.
Red Cedar 