Suddenly, normalcy violently assaulted.
We, once more, catapulted into an
unfamiliar world of physical dissonance.
Together companionably in our house
when with no warning a monumental
sound and furious motion delivered us
to a place we had scant reckoning with.
That force assembled its resources to
utterly surround us with its long, loud
wall of shrieking sound and tottering
frailty against a trusted reality pantomiming
a deadly opponent. Our stark shock and
slow recognition betrayed complacent ease.
In a world where nature can assume
its threatening persona geared to respond
with cataclysmic force, like a powerful
presence suddenly awakened to a
morose and malicious mood. We’ve
faced these moods before; one might
surmise once exposed to such power and
danger sanguine attitude would be
forever buried in expectation, but no.
Taken by shock and surprise, we cannot
fathom what is occurring until the
fierce tremblor threatens to bring down
walls around us. We exit, and wait, lurk
as the motion and groans of the earth
are translated to the exterior; in the
atmosphere of motion and commotion,
deep creaks subside and stillness reigns.
Left with a foreboding and deep unease
at this brutal demonstration that we are not
and never will be, masters in our own house
we move trembling, awe-struck limbs and
furrowed brows back into our house.
To restore order where chaos so briefly had
charge, and pictures hang on crooked walls.
All the wall paintings, ajar. Fragile items
tipped, overturned, contents languidly
insensate, spilled. Our telecommunications
suddenly out of order, minds slowly reverting
to the ordinary comforts of an ordinary
summer day. The radio soon crackles with
the over-heated excitement of recent panic
stilled, and people begin to recount their
disbelieving reactions to our Earth’s
flirtation with geological intemperance.
This not the benign nature that so
assiduously tends my garden, sweetly
offering gentle rains and abundant sun
kindly soil conditions and minuscule
creatures within to nurture and bring to
brilliant maturity the trees and shrubs so
fruitful that delight our green experience.
That nature that sends us colourful
songbirds to nest in our garden trees
and hosts of insects, butterflies and
small, furry creatures to swell the
natural presence of all her subjects
impressing us with her goodness of
purpose and integrity to her design.
This is another presence entirely, one
we cannot help but be aware of, yet as
remote and rare, not to be thought overmuch
of, a fearful, powerful and utterly destructive
presence, threatening to rescind her gracious
demeanor in favour of her domineering persona
devoid of purpose but to terrify her creatures
with the bleak certainty of her dread presence.
We hear the symptoms of her dreadful wrath
the thunderous groan of the Earth as it convulses,
contracts and shudders under her impervious
imperious direction. We feel the constancy of our
naive belief in our place challenged, as what was
solid and unmoving, writhes in an agony of violent
creep, collapsing and separating and shredding.
We see the darkly menacing vortex of the
hot breath she blows into a funnel cloud
voraciously sucking everything in its path
into chaotic re-distribution, reversing order
what was assembled as a whole reduced to
its pathetic constituent parts, strewn brokenly
on a suddenly-sere landscape of despair.
These fearsome events leave us trembling
and trepidatious. Our clever technologies
laid bare to malfunction and disarray. Torrential
rains wash away landmarks and drown the
puny signatures of humankind's presence
leaving doleful regret and the misery of loss
in their wake. Nature effortlessly removes
and destroys what she has given. We begin
to understand our temporary ownership.
As placid nature, her violent outbursts spent,
reverses the geological and atmospheric
surroundings to reflect the soothing familiar
hope, then the conceit of vanity, then scorn
and entitled empowerment settle back into
place as we assume again the settled ownership
and determined control of our earthly domain.
There are vestiges of the small treasures
past their prime, already bloomed, the
flower heads dried, foliage yet maturing, still
proud, but devoid of the evanescent bloom.
There are in evidence others with similar
foliage to those whose presence we hunt
but they are unremarkable lilies, their broad
spear-shaped leaves deep green and promising
the flowers wan and unprepossessing.
Mountain sorrel is in bloom, and so too
blackberries, with their sharp, white, starry
flowers. Patches of yellow hawkweed and
buttercups sit alongside the deep forest trail
close to lushly swirling ostrich ferns.
Dogwood begin to form their floral panicles
and a meadow's-worth of bunchberry
their cheery white faces in peer-review
bloom follow our curious presence.
Then here, and there, sometimes shy
sometimes bold, in grand isolation and
group sequestration, behind and beneath
ferns and hemlock branches, pale pink
white and robustly blushing, they display
themselves, the grand dames of the moist
forest floor, those Ladies Slipper orchids
with their ballooned, nodding heads held
proudly above the rich humus of the forest
soil, and the spray of the mountain stream.
The rain barely shifted on the
horizon, mist rises from mountain
slopes, dark clouds hang suspended
determinedly lodged on the mountain
peaks, comfortable there, resistant
to the dim edge of the sun, anxious to
burn away dark vapour dimming the
day's early summer aspirations.
Hemlock, pine, spruce and fir
present in staid stately array, hung
with mosses and lichens that cling
too to the grey, red, black granite
walls of the gorge down which the
mountain stream storms over the
great boulders the mountain slopes
have shed since time lost its memory.
The robust understory of moose
maple, dogwood and ferns march
in orderly procession up the slopes
under the canopy of a growing
presence of beech and yellow birch.
Old, crumbly and opportunity-rich
trunks gently decaying, do double
duty as nursing logs, with spruce
and hemlock seedlings clinging fast
to their humus-rich surfaces. When
the seedlings become mature enough
to fend for themselves, their nurses
become part of the organic whole.
The air is perfumed with the fragrance
of seasonal blooms, wafted by gentle
breezes. The repeated peal of a
Pileated woodpecker rends the air.
Thrushes sing their welcome of
still-impending rain. Yellow Admirals
flit from ground to graceful, looping
heights, disappearing into the witches'
brew of bright-green tangled leafage.
The clear, ringing peal of a blue jay
dissipates the silence of the woods
as from its perch it asserts ownership
of all it surveys. Soon, however
winging silently off in search of
another perch for a repeat performance
clearly besotted with its idea of self
as master of its leafy-treed landscape.
A nestling crow, newly acquainted
with wide spaces and the emerging
buoyancy of its tender but boldly
outspread wings flies awkwardly from
branch to branch of an old pine, the
young bird's continual quacks of
querulous demands driving its hovering
parents to frantic distractionary tactics.
There, the sun ablaze in the vast blue
sky, sending shafts of pure gold through
the dense forest canopy to light up
four goldfinches, on the branches of a
neat little Hawthorn, like lemons
growing on a lemon tree - with the
fragrance of sweet pears wafting from
the blooming bedding grasses below.
Elsewhere in this summer forest, a
cardinal's high, sweet trill excites the
atmosphere, and the response is swift
and bright, as the pair take flight in
scarlet passage deeper into the
embracing, emerald-green woods.
Robins, a family of juveniles loathe to
take wing, scatter bipedally in short
purposeful bursts along the forest trail.
They forage among the cinquefoil, the
buttercups and blooming clover, sending
up startled blue, winged creatures whose
concern is to avoid becoming a meal
intent upon their very own life journey.
Interesting, matching supermarket
grocery-carts by their contents, to
the people pushing them. Cause for
smug superiority, like the appearance
on urban streets of the obese strolling
along, lapping at an over-filled ice-cream
cone, wolfing down take-out pizza,
hamburgers, with all fixings intact.
Have they never heard of appetite
restraint? Eating themselves into
morbidity, whacking their futures
patterning their offspring to vulgarly
immediate consumption. In a world
where temptation is everywhere, good
common sense has succumbed to greed
and heedless urges for satisfaction
well exceeding satiety and logic.
There is the shopper: young, attractive
grossly ponderous in height and girth,
shopping cart brimming with all those
notorious products aimed at vulnerable
kids through ubiquitous advertising.
One, however, with full knowledge and
concern, does not casually condemn.
Despite which, the assumption is made
this consumer is an unintelligent fool.
Your cart unloaded, its virtuous contents
of fresh produce predominating, a total
absence of pre-prepared "convenience"
foods absent nutrition, weighted with salt,
sugar, fats, in favour of only natural,
preparation-untampered foods; this is
your superior choice. Reach across to
grasp the bar to separate your choices
from that of the next shopper's faux food.
The large young woman beams with
gratitude, "thank you" chiming from her
bow-shaped lips in a completely spontaneous
charming lilt of obvious sincerity. Not much
of an effort to elicit such an acknowledgement
you observe, and she trills with laughter
claiming civility worth its weight in gold.
A response worthy of a noble prize for
social attitude. Gaining from you an
relaxed grin of total acceptance.
When your purchase rings through at
$132.28, and you proffer $150 in U.S. bills
and innocently enquire whether Canadian
coinage is acceptable: one quarter, 3 pennies
the cashier frowns, seeks advice from a
supervisor who briskly advises this to be
a disallowed irregularity. The errant shopper
behind you, she of the morbidly obese shape
and cupid smile, urges upon your unwilling
hand 28 cents in U.S. coin. A valuable,
required and kind lesson in due humility.
They reach everywhere, dark and
contorted, a wide-reaching tangle
of roots splaying over the steep
mountain trail. The better to trip
the unwary, unheeding hiker. But
this is, after all, the habitat of these
looming forest giants, the pines and
hemlocks, maples and beech whose
offspring luxuriate under their
forbears' canopy, in the rich organic
soil of earlier such great species,
felled by time and woodsmen.
Step lightly and be aware not only
of those strangling roots threatening
the progress of intrepid bipedal advance
but the rocks scattered on the landscape
surrounded by the granite peaks from
whose slopes they were dislodged many
ages ago. Consider the rocks, so deeply
embedded, stepping stones for the
breathless ascent to the mountain's far
summit, well above the treeline.
Listen in the process, to the fresh
clear sound of the cold mountain
stream as it too tumbles over boulders
interrupting downward passage
sending cool spray to vaporize into
the air from the waterfalls thus
created, where mosses grow thick
green and lush over trunks and soil.
Hear the thrushes' songs reverberate
through the forest, see the flight of an
Eastern Kingbird, a downy woodpecker.
Note the presence of oaks siding the
trail as you rise, and the prevalence
of tiny chipmunks whisking their way
over the roots and the rocks, their element.
There are, in the undergrowth, dogwood,
sensitive ferns, moose maple and sumac.
Beside the trail, dank, wet, rich bog and
here and there, lilies and orchids, blackberry
canes and blueberry patches. The ascent
steeper, more dauntingly arduous
the trees stunted in weather-agonized
shapes. Oak and azalea thrive, along with
laurel and small, twisted pines. Mountain
sorrel blooming, and birds on the wing.
The terrain becomes bare with huge
granite ledges and wide, smooth slopes
rainwater captured in small, ubiquitous
granite sinkholes. Gaze, from this height
on the miniature landscape far below.
Count, if you can, neighbourly peaks
marching into the far distance.
Marvel at the wide, deep bowl of the
over-arching sky, the placid white and
fringed clouds, hastily moving off to
make way for others, more aggressively
dark and hostile. Tree roots there are
none here, but a glut of tiny, delicate
alpine plants. Of rock there is a defined
defiant and deliberate presence.
