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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Some malign force has clearly moved
relentlessly through the forest, of
recent days. A mini-hurricane sweeping
trees imperiously from their secure footing,
uprooting great balls of earth, roots losing
the struggle to sustain their grip,
and stout trunks snapped under
a force too fierce to be resisted.
We pick our way carefully. Under,
around and over the carnage,
wondering at nature's awe-full, swiftly
unexpected and sharp tendency to
temper tantrums, disarray in the wake
of her emissaries' hot, fierce breath.
The atmosphere is humid with
anarchic display, vaguely foreboding,
sinister, as though some mysterious
presence still lingers. A wide swath
of snapped spruce and birch, ground
littered with shattered limbs and
green, fragrant-needled branches.
Nearby, the mountain creek runs
cold and rampant, over mountain-
strewn boulders, unconcerned by the
maelstrom's devastation. A grey
jay flies from the mast of a jagged-top
pine. Something sadly malevolent is
occurring, an infestation, a viral agent.
Some deadly scourge is haunting
the forest's massive old pines, and the
adolescents as well, turning needles
orange and dry, diminishing their
future aspirations, leaving the
forest with sad, yawning gaps. A
doleful, double stroke of misery.
How readily do people affect a
grievance not theirs, perceiving
injustice in an confused landscape
of dire human convergence of
spite, hatred and victimhood
head to head with the aspirations
of others to obey the imperative
to survive, by hopeful co-existence.
Hatred destroys those it drowns in
a sea of vast self-pity and the will to
avenge. Both inspire a cunning to
enable portrayals of abandonment and
piteous need where the goal is not to
seek conciliation but to impose a violent
reckoning for nothing less in flawed
human certainty will ease the anger
and the pain but to inflict revenge.
Clever manipulation of perceptions
provoke a soul-satisfying backlash
of heated denunciation to harry and
condemn those innocent of intent to harm,
whose feckless enterprise in ensuring their
own longevity has aroused the fury of
others, resentful of their presence in a
time and a space felt reserved for them.
A nation alone and condemned in its
establishment, where once its forebears
held thousands of years of custody of the
land, now isolated in stern denial of
presence. A nation, long homeless, dispersed
and oppressed, yet again singled out among
nations for contempt and rabid denial.
A people whose presence brings the genius
of knowledge to the world unparalleled by
any other, suppressed regardless, their
numbers brutally abbreviated in a vile
collaboration of planned extinction. The
remnants forge on instinctive with hope
and belief to meet again and yet again
brutal adversity without surcease.
Ancient sages forecast their dim visions
of an eternity of wild nightmares of
horrors and degraded aspirations. A people
apart yet of this time and of this place
held in uncertain esteem and quite certain
disdain. Holding fast and true to the
living dilemma of their presence in a
hostile world of others' beliefs.
Tragedy and opportunity are visitors
in equal measure on the threshhold of
that welcome-impoverished people. Their
struggle to surmount the obstacle of
apartness, other, and the strangeness of
subordinate status as lesser than most, yet
sustains the vigour of their needs and their
resolve and inner resources will, in the
final analysis, prevail; that stubborn lot.
