A Walk in Two Voices

... the engine appears on the tracks ...

Bonnie pulled out one of the many maps of LaRue’s 60 acres saying that she was going to chart all of the walks around the property that she was planning to take.

Looking at the map, I imagined that she would plot trails along the 66 foot road, mark paths along Pilling’s Road, along the Grandfather’s Trail, walk the section down old Sicamous Road, trod a beach walk along a ¼ of a mile of loose gravel, and, perhaps take the hardly known trail from the Ramp Camp past Shady Beach, cross on top of the three wooden planks over a stream, and into Sandy Beach.

But when I looked at that map, I thought about a lecture I had gone to where Indigenous mapping had been done on the back of a bear hide.

That trail started in central Alberta, went down through the Porcupine Hills and into the US.

The presenter had followed the trail, that wasn’t measured in the length of miles, but more in terms of which landmark preceded the one before and after it.

... Arta rests in the forest ...

I began to wonder what a page would look like if I were to do mapping in my fall walks in this fashion.

On today’s walk I started giving my own names to places; the spot where a five-clump birch had fallen over, all file boles still attached to the roots, but it had fallen across the path where we were walking.

I could see where the trail maintenance people had cut out four foot lengths of wood to let us by. 

I look at how the birch boles stretched out on the other side of the trail, past the cuts.

Another spot, one might be familiar with, is the fork in the trail behind David and Shawna’s house, the one where a person can easily go straight ahead instead of turning left, and thus miss that trail altogether, and just end up walking the steep embankment of that first creek, the one where LaRue has a walking easement now for its Lot Licencees.

A shame to miss that fork, since there are charming landmarks along the trail that leads to Shady Beach.

... Greg on his way to Sicamous ...

I don’t have a good name for one of the spaces where previous holiday-ers left the debris from their parties where they were practicing shooting their guns: pierced plastic 4 litre jugs, a bull’s eye ring now deteriorating on the ground, pellet pock-marked pop cans.

No sin in using them as a target. 

A case to be made for at least laziness in leaving the debris behind. 

I always have the impulse to bring a bag and clean the forest up in that spot, but one wiser than I has told me to leave it alone so that all can witness what happens when others don’t take care of the forest.

A spot that would be on my metaphorical bear skin map is always the place that leads south down to the creek where there is a chance to cup my hands and get a cool drink of water.

... mushrooms as a fried egg ...

Along the steep embankment, is a fir sapling, whose branches were twisted back and forth among its other boughs, none of them cut, but instead braided out of the way of passers-by. 

A couple of years have passed now and that bowed bole is crescent shaped, and I enjoy the interlacing pattern of the boughs in that space.

I’ve walked this trail with others, for some reason Cindy (Crabtree) Bowe and Ria Meronek came to mind as I walked the trail today.

I thought about how memories of other loved ones are imprinted along the trail, not just the actual walks that I have taken with them, but photos I have studied of other families as they have walked that trail.

Bonnie is the one who spotted mushrooms.

I was treading on them, not really seeing them. I was walking three feet behind her and on occasion I wanted to have her stop and take a picture with her superior camera, pictures of the tiniest of mushrooms once I saw them, far smaller than a baby finger fingernail.

But what good would a picture have been, I thought. 

There was no other forest measurement to let viewers know how really tiny those mushrooms were.

... an eagle soars by ... now only a smudge on a photo ...

We were walking under the forest cover of many tall Douglas fir trees.

I had to position my legs and my cane in a three-point stance and hang on to another tree so I could run my eye along the bole to the very tip of the tree.

I used my camera to get a picture, but was laughing at myself for I had to take a picture of the top third, the middle third, and the bottom third.

I wanted to touch the bark, because it’s crevices were so brown and dark and deep, and I wondered if anyone else will take that tree as a marker in the forest.

If you do, you’ll find the tree still standing, just where you leave LaRue’s property and walk up the steep incline of Crown Land that takes a person to the end of Old Sicamous Trail. 

That tree has been there a long time, but probably not 200 years. 

 

... Annis Siding ends ...

When I first came to the property in the early 1960’s I would walk through the forest with Doral and on occasion we would come to a pile of deteriorating garbage, old cans now rusted away so that only half the can was left. 

I have a three-sided glass bottle at my house that I picked out of this pile.

I cleaned it up and still use to put fresh flowers in.

Doral told me it was the debris from old work camps that I was looking at. 

Glen has explained to me that the property is an old-growth forest that has been logged, so I know that the remnants when the land was an ancient forest are now gone.

... bleached bones on the trail ...
Is one a scapula?

As we walked home along the shore a couple of days ago, Bonnie alluded to a story we found that had been written by early settlers.

A team of horses had broken away and for some reason had run into the water and the driver who had been hired by the farmer, instead of abandoning the horses, rode with them trying to save them, and all perished -- drowned.

The writer of that column hypothesized that sometimes you can see the horses and the driver galloping along the top of the water. 

I’m not that kind of romantic story teller.

I always think, too bad that fellow lost his life in the service of his master, rather than spending what years he might have had left enjoying this part of the earth as so many before him have done.

Arta

Photo Credit: Bonnie Johnson