Ancestors
The weather is good these last days and dog and I walk in the forest often. She runs ahead, turns to make sure I follow, then trots back to me to put her nose just behind my knee. You know, just to make sure I walk on. She travels four times my distance on the same hike.
The walks are good therapy. I start to pay attention to the smallest things. The flowers, the insects, the salal, shafts of light, tiny rustles in the brush, the smell of mud and water, the birdsong symphony. I understand the forest as a luscious mystery. It is magnificent and utterly beyond human.
I read an article recently about people letting their dogs hike offleash on wild federal lands. The point of the article was how awful the practice was, how loose dogs could impact wildlife and dont belong in the forest. Leave Fido at home was the gist. When I hike with Echo, she is almost always off leash. I only put her on when we are passing another hiker. The article got under my skin - people have been traversing these woods for millennia with dogs trotting by their sides. Dogs and humans have always walked together fergodsakes.
I taught 6 sailing classes over the last few weeks. A couple of overnighters, one out to Sucia Island with four overachievers. They exercised their new skills and I coached them during an exhilarating 20+ knot bash to windward. We sailed down narrow Hale Passage inside Lummi Island. It was fun, challenging - the students were appreciative and intend to take their sailing further. The two men are employed in tech; are conversant with AI and excited at its prospects. Their wives are less tech savvy; employed in health care. Both couples work hard, have young ones at home and compared kid-stories non stop. They were so…..privileged. They aggravated me so I withdrew into sullen silence. They commended my “calm demeanor” in class reviews.
I was forced to drive the I-5 corridor to get to the marinas to teach. It was awful. Each morning and evening I joined the perpetual 25 mile long backup of fuming automobiles creeping bumper to bumper. I wont be doing THAT again. Its been years since I last succumbed to commuting and it hasnt gotten any better. We WILL drive ourselves to work, climate be damned.
Return to the forest, let the dog go. Listen to wooden music on the phones. Stop every few minutes to breathe and look. Small white and purple and yellow flowers line the trail. Birds flit and hop from branch to branch. Salmonberry blossoms promise sweet fruit. Big cedar stretches and yawns in golden sunlight. Dog takes a detour into the lake, stands hip deep in cold, clear water. Laps her fill and looks around, water dripping from her muzzle. Sunlight sparkles off the ripples in the lake. Robin egg blue skydome arches overhead. The still air is cool, crisp and clean.
This small parcel of forest has never been logged. For some reason - mucky wet ground perhaps - the ravenous loggers left this small chapel of old growth. The cedars here are immense - 600 years old if a day. I spy one with the telltale sign of indigenous bark stripping. Another with an ancient burn scar. In the haunted past, Samish people stripped cedar bark for basket weaving, to make clothing and to build shelter and canoes. They used fire to clear the understory.
A thousand years ago - or maybe a thousand hence - a cedar long house stands on the shore of the Salish sea beside a creek. Uphill from the house is a lush oak filled meadow of tall grass. Canoes are pulled up on the beach above the tide line. Salmon dries in racks in the sun. Smoke drifts through the air. Ravens hop along the tide line scavenging shellfish and scraps. A pair of osprey fish the shallows together whistling and chirping to each other. An eagle sits impassive in the crown of a tall cedar. Kids prance across the driftwood beach to splash in the salt water. Women weave baskets, pound berries, adorn ceremonial clothing. Old men sit outside the longhouse pontificate on the old days. Others carve raven art into the longhouse door. Young men prepare to sortie into the forest for deer. A teenage boy and girl exchange shy glances.
Their dogs run free.
