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 The Nuu-chah-nulth Trail crosses a large bog
before winding into rainforest. Bogs are subtle. Not for them, the
drama of oceans and mountains, of high cliffs or roiling streams.
Because bog soil provides little food for plantlife, whatever grows
here makes up in adaptation what it lacks in spectacle. Stunted
shore pines, backing away from the boardwalk trail protecting this
fragile habitat from human feet, scatter themselves across the open
landscape. Sphagnum moss spreads across the bog like carpet. Small
mounds of moss offer dry enough conditions for crowberry – its
leaves like tiny fir-needles -- to grow. Innocent looking little
sundew snares insects with the sticky droplets on its leaves. One
way to survive a soil that will not feed you – become a carnivore.
Walking on a July morning, under a hot sun, I
am grateful when the trail enters the cool shade of the rainforest.
Among the cedars and hemlock, the trail becomes soft beneath my
feet.
This trail through Pacific Rim National Park
Reserve, part of Canada’s national park system, lies in the country
of the Nuu-chah-nulth, the people who have lived here, on the west
coast of Vancouver Island, for thousands of years. The land I walk
is traditional territory of the Ucluelet First Nation—one of many
Nuu-chah-nulth nations.
Interpretive signs along the route are the work
of the Nuu-chah-nulth. All offer a glimpse into First Nation life
in this place, but one strikes me as a lesson beyond all the rest.
“The Nuu-chah-nulth have no word for ‘wild’ or ‘wilderness,’” the
sign says. “There is only ‘home’.”
I’ve been wondering ever since – what part of
home don’t we understand?
 In grammar school we were taught that only
animals on the edge of extinction soil their nests. Is not Earth
our nest? How, then, should we describe our activities in wild
places? Don’t roads, mines, logging, oil wells, dams, sprawling
developments on Earth’s pristine areas soil our Earth nest?
A few days after that hike, I visited a gallery
in the town of Ucluelet. David had seen a wall carving he wanted to
see again. A Ucluelet man came into the gallery, bringing his art
work to show the owner. He wore dark polyester gym shorts and a
white t-shirt. His black hair was disheveled and his face slightly
distorted by a hare-lip that had been mended. He was shorter than I
am (5’6”), with a body that seemed out of balance.
A story teller, he wasted no time after being
introduced before he launched into stories. I was fascinated by
his insistence on story as a means of communication, story as a way
to relate to people of another culture. His first stories were
meant as jokes, although I didn’t find them especially funny. Then
he told me this.
The chief was coming to the village to
choose a wife. He sent his messengers ahead to tell the men of the
village to prepare their daughters and sisters for his arrival. All
the unmarried women of the village put on their best clothes and
their jewelry. They lined up along the beach to await the chief’s
arrival. At the very end was an ugly woman. She had only one eye
and no beautiful clothes or jewelry. Her hair hung down in her
face, and she held her head lowered, her single eye focused on the
earth. The other women teased her. “Why are you here? You’re so
ugly, no one would ever look at you!” They all laughed at the sad
poverty of the ugly girl.
The chief’s canoe arrived. He climbed out
onto the beach and, starting at the opposite end from the ugly girl,
looked at each of the women so finely arrayed before him. When he
came to her, he stood before her a long time. Gently lifting her
head, he said, “I choose you. I see into the beauty of your heart.”
What could I say to this artist who was telling
me the story of his life? I wanted to turn away, to go outside to
the truck, to cry. But I could neither turn away nor hide my
tears. “Thank you,” I said to him. “Thank you.”
We stayed several days in a lodge on the beach
south of Tofino. Because David was leading a small photography
workshop, and they were always out by dawn, I had the days to
myself. One morning, the first grey morning in over a week, I was
the only one at the lodge to eat breakfast outside. The other
guests cosied themselves in the lodge’s warm main room, snuggled in
against the dampness of the mist.
But I wanted the drama of ocean. Ocean is so
much more the ocean in mist; grey water to grey sky, without
boundaries at the merging of the two. The sound of waves rolling
in, breaking, falling back upon the sea is magnified by mist.
Breaking waves are brilliant white against the grey, wet sand. With
the tide out, the beach is striped an undulating grey and beige. At
the forest edge of the sand, Sitka spruce flag inland, wind-pruned,
their move away from sea winds simply how they live.
Beyond the deck where I sat, small birds
flitted from branch to branch in the spruce, the spruce their life.
Days later we traveled inland to Strathkona
Provincial Park, a mountain world that seems a thousand miles from
the sea. (I need to remember that Vancouver is a big island.) As a
Provincial Park, Strathkona does not have the protections of a
National Park, so much of this region is heavily logged.
One morning I went with David’s photography
group to Lupin Falls. After walking a quarter-mile through forest
with no sign of water, the waterfall appears suddenly. Pouring
through a high slit in dark rock, a narrow cascade plunges its long
way down. Partway, it curtains across an overhang, hits rock and
splits in two. The two streams of water fall into a hidden pool,
rejoin, spill down a sloping narrow slide into a dark, transparent
pool at the bottom. In the pool, stones lie like jewels beneath the
water. Ferns sprout from moss-covered rock along the sides. Where
the creek exits the pool, logs stripped by the action of water, lie
in a jumble.
A pale blue sky roofs the slight open space
above the falls.
Gentle, early sun angling into the forest
reaches the ground in small, dappled spots.
I am the only person here without a camera. My
recording is in words. I fill a lot of notebooks when I accompany
David on a photography trip. Is it some kind of defense against the
camera? The ways of seeing are so different. One word is worth a
thousand pictures, I tell David. But what do I write in my
notebooks? Am I observing, or only describing? Is there any depth
to my description? Or do I simply perform a writing exercise. Am I
fully here? Is questioning a form of separation?
Copyright © 2009 Ruth
Rudner |
