journal pieces ~ the spruce & the sangan
"May 25th:
...last night I stayed along the Sangan River. The eve before I was taken out to see the property. The rains had been replaced with howling winds, and as we wandered the two acres we eventually veered off from one another. I went traipsing t'ward the Sangan, over and through the brambles with a good stick in hand. The tangle of foliage marches right to the edge of the river where the land drops suddenly, a few meters, to the mucky, sandy bank. There, an old Sitka Spruce tilts and hovers out over the drop off, heavily laden in moss and old man's beard, seemingly pushed off balance by the temperamental weather of Northern Haida Gwaii. All around me leaves and branches jumped and shook, tossed to and fro by great gusts. The wind and the forest the only audible sounds, the creaking and cracking of both. The old spruce's great trunk bounced slightly as I grabbed hold and began to climb up and out. The tree bobbed the higher I went, until I found a comfortable cushion of moss where I sat amid the broken branches, facing into the bellows that came bustling over the Sangan. The spruce nodded with the wind and I glowed, grinning and soon laughing as I held on tight. How alive I felt! Rocking and weaving with the tree and the wind! The great gusts varied from strong to hugely massive, thundering past my ears until I called out, howling in response! Like a wolf to the Moon I howled relentlessly into the wind, and each time I did she would kick into high gear and push my tree back with her reply! Soon my face was numb, but still I cat-called, un-able to cease my smile, until my friend emerged from the woods and climbed up to join in. He said he'd heard me, way back there in the trees..."
May 28th:“…yesterday morning I awoke before 5:30, out at the boat house, I crept from bed and gathered only a blanket around me, slipping out into the crisp morning air. It had been such a windy week in Masset but finally I had a beautiful, still, spring morning. Birds called and chatted between trees as I walked into the underbrush, through salall, salmon, and huckleberry bushes. I wandered toward the Sangan River, which was on the retreat to the sea. Across it’s glassy surface the pastels of sunrise shifted with the skies and I waded through the water to stand on the grassy spit emerging in the river’s middle. Everything unfolding so languidly with the morning. I observed and admired the weathered tangle of trees that traced the water’s edge, roots blackened from constant tides and seaweed caught in low branches. The sun brought deep yellows into the eastern sky and I smiled at the small sound of the river’s departing flow. I looked up and filled my lungs, saying Thank You to the Creator. Saying Haaw’a to Sah ‘laana. I walked back into the woods and out onto the deserted road, still wrapped in only my blanket, repeating reminders to myself in rhymes; “As a living being I shift, and change, and grow. In tune with Mother Nature I must let the dead things go.” Speaking affirmations that the past is indeed the past, and although it has shaped me it has no effect on what happens today. Only the situations, circumstances, and people that are currently existing around and with me have an effect on what happens today, and ultimately only I decide how this day of my life will unfold. I am not the girl I used to be, each morning I am not even the girl of yesterday, I am only ever the woman of now. I am only ever the woman I choose to be in this moment…”
