journal pieces ~ home & the forest
"May 21st, Queen Charlotte City, Haida Gwaii: My hands are scabbed and chafed, my left pointer finger swollen, wrapped, and black. My arms and legs blue with bruises. I’ve never been so exhausted from working. Three weeks on the gallery renovations; pouring concrete, hauling slabs of cedar, grinding metal, insulating ceilings… everything. And until two days ago I was living on the side of Charlotte’s main street - the “highway” - where my Bus had broken down. The other eve I finally got towed up here to the top driveway where it’s cozy and quiet. Despite the exhaustion, or massive work load, I am in love with this place. I am so glad to be here. The drive from Vancouver an adventure in itself. But even stagnant, my bus has never felt so homey. It’s the people I’ve met who’ve assisted most in bringing this word into a new light for me. Home. A term I used to spit rather than speak. A place I ran from, for a while. Until I learned how that word’s meaning could change. “Home” is not just the town you were born in or where you graduated high school. Home is wherever you have planted roots and given your time and purpose. It sometimes chooses you. Language puts it in your ear, in your head, it calls to you, and when you listen, follow, and arrive, it scoops you up and wraps around and through you…”
"May 23rd, the carving studio, Masset:
...I felt foggy yesterday, even after picking up my pal from the ferry and wandering the forest near Kagan Bay. But oh that forest... an effervescent mecca of green that drips and hangs and engulfs, that carpets and flourishes and oozes from every surface, every crevasse, every limb of Mother Nature. The rain danced in scattered procession over leaves above our heads, beneath our fingers. We waded through the river and across fallen logs, far from the beaten path, finding our own. We took our boots off and walked barefoot across the shag carpet of the woods. How astonishing, to become so lifted and elated, yet grounded and sure footed in the same space by the same influence. The wilderness, the wildness here is that which called me, I feel it out there, enclosed by the raw, unruly woods. I felt it at Taaw Hill too, the stories embedded in the trees emanate from their trunks, their stoic torsos, they fall from their fingers and rise from their roots. The wild has much to say, to those who choose to listen, and that is why I’m here. To listen, observe, to learn, and understand…”
