Every Day We Disappear

by Angela Long

  Instead my mother had been forced to find other ways to bond with me. She’d visited me in a dirt-floored adobe hut in Guatemala, a renovated pig shed in Ireland. She’d endured gastrointestinal disorders, gale-force winds, scurrying rats. Nothing had been as straightforward and comfortable as she may have wished. And I had to admit I admired her. I admired her because she cried at Gate C but not once had she asked me not to board the plane.

  When she came to visit, she would bear gifts suited to her daughter’s nomadic lifestyle – colourful dishcloths, paper napkins printed with poppies. She would sit down by the woodstove pretending not to notice the soot-stained wall. She would suggest sewing curtains for the kitchen window – something bright and simple – and this time, instead of telling her not to bother, I thought I’d offer to help.

  Baring All to Resident Squirrel

  Today is shower day. No small feat during a water shortage. The water comes all the way from the municipal tap in Masset, sixteen and a half kilometres down Tow Hill Road. I’ve been hauling it home in a variety of plastic containers, as our rain barrels have been dry for weeks.

  an off-the-grid shower:

  1. Heat hauled hauled water on wood-stove until perfect temperature

  2. Pour water into coffee pot, funnel into Stearns Sun Shower (a heavy-duty plastic bag with a nine-litre capacity)

  3. Stand on chair and hang shower bag on nail jutting out from cedar log on south side of cabin

  4. Retrieve towel and undress

  5. Walk outdoors to bare all to Sitka spruce, salal, huckleberry, and the resident squirrel

  6. Unscrew nozzle. Feel wind on wet skin. Watch a canopy of leaves shimmer in the sunlight

  7. If necessary to wash hair twice (and it’s always necessary), ensure to save enough water to rinse out conditioner

  8. Stoke fire in woodstove. Stand in front while drying off. Enjoy smelling clean for ten minutes – the amount of time it takes to smell like woodsmoke again

  St. Mary’s Spring

  “Be careful of the water,,” my friend said and patted her belly with that special smile reserved for expectant mothers.

  I’d seen that smile before. By now, almost all my friends had smiled that smile at least once. The smile said: I am woman. Fertile. You could do this too.

  But I was careful of the water. Very careful. Especially now that I was living off the grid where my only source of water fell from the sky. Who knows what happened to it up there.

  I collected rainwater in garbage pails that sat beneath an eavestrough. When it rained, which was often, a steady stream filtered through pieces of window screen stretched taut across the pails. The screens were meant to inhibit mosquitoes – and other creatures of Naikoon forest – from breeding. But they weren’t always stretched taut enough.

  When the pails were full, water ran from a rubber hose snaked through a hole in the wall of the log cabin to a faucet at the sink. It tasted slightly of bark and cedar needle. I was careful with it. I boiled it every time, a full, roiling boil.

  It wasn’t only the rainwater to be wary of around here. Not far from my doorstep lay Dixon Entrance – entranceway to a Pacific Ocean swimming with Haida creation myths. It was here, just a few kilometres up the coastline, where Raven was said to have discovered a gigantic clamshell filled with the first humans. Here, where he coaxed them out upon the sands, where they bred and had children that are said to have been strong and fierce, children of a wild west coast. Children of the water.

  In the opposite direction lay St. Mary’s spring. Legend has it if you drink from the spring you will return to the islands in the future. Twice I’d drunk, and twice I’d returned from places where I was perfectly happy – a hilltop room with a view of the valley of Kathmandu, and a villa beside a medieval castle in Italy.

  So you can see why I was wary of these waters. It was too easy while living in a place like this to get caught up in the mystery and power of nature. A place where people’s ties to sea and land were still intimate. Where they dug razor clams and dried chanterelles. Where they knew tide tables better than TV guides.

  It seemed only natural here to follow nature’s call, to down rainwater with relish, to do what nature did best – procreate.

  And there was nothing like nature to get you in the mood. A surf pounded rhythmically. A sky swelled with lush clouds. Evergreens exuded dark, heady scent. Air was laced with a northern chill, even in the height of summer, forcing you to light a crackling fire and seek out a warm body to share your bed. As the days shortened, the danger grew. I’d been told that islanders began their search for a winter mate after Labour Day, or else held on tight to the ones they already had. It was during these months to take heed, I’d been warned. It was during these months to be careful of the water.

  That was why I’d been thinking of switching to bottled. Ferrying in litres of the stuff – treated and sterile. Void of life.

  I knew that having a child was probably the closest I could come to producing a miracle. I just didn’t want one. It wasn’t because my biological clock wasn’t ticking or I hadn’t found the “right man.” It wasn’t because I didn’t like children – I had three nieces and a nephew I’d loved since the moment they were born. I’d witnessed friends’ babies grow into walking, talking beings capable of great acts of kindness. I had no doubt children were miraculous. But I thought there were enough of them now.

  Experts said our planet was bursting at its seams. My time in India had been enough for me to believe them. There I’d witnessed villagers crowd around a pail of water to wash themselves, and children fight with feral dogs over mouldy chapatis.

  It was difficult to imagine an overcrowded world while sitting on an isolated beach watching the tide come in. In two hours, two people would pass. What harm could one more tiny being do? Especially a cute one with blonde ringlets who liked to build sandcastles and walk along the shore holding my hand? But I still didn’t want to smile that smile.

  It wasn’t an easy choice to make. It wasn’t something celebrated with balloons and cigars. Maybe because it seemed to go against the flow of nature. But nature was changing: ice caps were melting, resources dwindling.

  What did all this mean for a woman living on Canada’s Northwest coast, for those children in India? How long before we’d all be fighting for those mouldy chapatis?

  The Moon Over Naikoon

  Forget about book tours or reading engagements. Forget about “branding” yourself and promoting your work to the unseen masses. Just get a job at the Moon Over Naikoon and bring along a pile of books. Here you will meet a photographer from New York City, a cellist from Scotland, a local fisherman. And all of them will buy your poetry book. While the coffee percolates, they will ask what your book is about and you will tell them stories about hitchhiking to Mexico with a French Canadian you met while tree planting, about your thatched cottage on a rocky isle in Ireland. You will talk until interrupted by the next in line asking about the daily soup, or “What kind of muffins are those?”

  You will cream butter and sugar, and then you will listen. You’ll hear about serving in Vietnam, about guarding a Buddhist monastery carved into stone, a spiral staircase descending into the centre of the Earth. “The monks would go down there for weeks to meditate,” they’ll tell you. The family from Washington State building a house down the road will tell you about travelling on business to India, Bangladesh, China, about countrysides filled with factories, and entire towns unable to breathe.

  The dough will finish its first rising, and when you punch it down for its second, the man who works for the Ministry of Agriculture will peruse the “read local” books for sale and notice Susan Musgrave’s name. “She lives down the road,” you’ll say.

  “I love this cover,” he’ll say of a deer lying dead in the snow, of the title When the World is Not Our Home.

  “So do I,” you’ll agree. And you’ll l
ook at one another then, understanding something. And he’ll buy your book, too.

  After this sale you’ll realize you’re doing what you’ve always wanted to do. For a few moments, you’re entering the life of another. More importantly, they’re allowing you to do so – they’re even paying you for it. You’ll stand there greasing loaf pans while they read about the little boy tortured in Guatemala, your friend dying of cancer, your heart breaking again and again. After a few minutes, they’ll look at you differently. They’ll thank you.

  And you will want to thank them for much more than their twenty bucks. You’ll want to thank them for making poetry, for what else could this exchange be called? This chance encounter transformed into a moment of shared humanity? You’ll want to thank them for making you realize it’s possible to feel a little more at home in this world. But they’ll leave before you can tell them all this. They’ll see you’re busy, that there are people waiting in line.

  Where the Pacific Meets the Sangan

  Today, a famous poet walks into the Moon over Naikoon and orders a grilled cheese. She talks about her preference for shortbread over scones, rainwater over tap water, of how she sleeps in an opium bed once slept in by David Bowie and Mick Jagger, and the time she lived in London back in ‘75. “I don’t know who’s writing there these days,” she says, biting into her grilled cheese. She sits at the table beside the sea lion skulls and the shell fossils, her eyes flicking from the huckleberry muffins to the spinal disc of a humpback. The talk turns to wind turbines and peat bogs, and her finger taps the small hollow of her throat, searching for the right word to describe where the Pacific meets the Sangan. Her eyes flick from coffee urn to moon snail to the yellow cedar floor, and you could almost hear the tap...tap... tap... of a finger searching for the right word to describe how the May light gathers in pools across its surface.

  The Spare Girl

  “Grab a sleeping bag and go to Colin’s place,” Meredith said above the cell-phone static. “You’re blocked in. Trees are down. This wind is strange, and it’s making me nervous.”

  I hung up the phone and another gust rocked the little cedar-log cabin. Thunder rumbled. Lightning struck. Rain pelted the cedar-plank roof without mercy.

  Another gust hit. The wind turbine made the noise it made when wind speeds were higher than usual. Imagine a giant bed sheet made of metal hung on a clothes line snapping in the wind. That night it sounded like the bed sheet was as big as the sky.

  Was I safe here? The answer came quickly: Yes. I’d weathered many a storm in the Spare Girl cabin. I’d arrived almost three years ago with a broken heart, and the Spare Girl had been my refuge ever since. I’d learned how to split wood and tend a fire. I’d learned that every drop of water I consumed to bathe, cook, and clean fell from the sky. I’d been too busy surviving to remember things like feeling sad. But when I remembered, when I sat by the fire and watched my whole life go up in flames, the eighty cedar logs stood firm. I knew I was safe in their embrace.

  I’d spent a lot of time alone in this cabin. Many times I’d cried myself to sleep – especially on dark winter nights when the wood was damp and I couldn’t get a fire going. I’d spent weeks listening to wind – southeasters, northwesters, all directions between – blowing through the chinks. I’d watched hundred-foot trees bend like blades of grass. Coldness, darkness, the relentless cry of the wind – these were the things that had tried my spirit. With no central heating, stable power source, or insulation, I was forced to confront the reality of the elements, and how alone they could make me feel. Again and again, I’d been humbled into realizing that I was a creature of the elements. I was a creature of light, warmth. And company.

  I’d hosted dinner parties in this cabin with the types of friends one could only hope to meet at the end of the road at the tip of an island archipelago. I’d read countless books – of opera singers in Central America, novelists living on Capri. I’d watched a tortoise-shell cat sleeping on the bed in a pool of sunlight.

  And I’d touched the logs of the cabin walls, every single day, wondering what life still coursed through them. There was reason to believe their embrace wasn’t just imagined, that no matter how alone I may have felt, it was impossible to be alone. Even during a hurricane, I was safe.

  This Thing Called Community

  I have a P.O. Box and a bank account at the local branch. The cashiers at Delma’s Co-op know my name. I own waxed paper, three sets of sheets, a hot water bottle. I arrived here with a backpack, and now my possessions would easily fill my Toyota Corolla. But it’s more than that: I have friends. Friends I’ve grown to love and depend upon. And I have this thing called a community – people who will change a flat tire for me, or come to hear me read poetry, even if they don’t like poetry.

  For years, while travelling alone in the kinds of places I’ve never told my mother about, my life often depended upon the kindness of strangers. Now it depends upon this community. I think of all the things that could go wrong while living off-grid sixteen and a half kilometres from town, and who I could call for help. The list is long. In fact, I know I could call anyone with a phone number and they would come to my aid. This comforts me. Who do I thank for the gift of such a comfort on such a remote and windswept archipelago?

  And who do I thank for the continuum of gestures that make a gypsy feel at home? Thank you for the gift of blackcurrant jelly, for the loan of your truck. Thank you for stacking my firewood and picking up my library books. Thank you for saying you wish I could stay whenever I think it’s time to go.

  Last night, an older and wiser friend said it’s these types of gestures that create community. Not potlucks and loonie auctions and clothing swaps. It’s not about being somewhere you think you should be. It’s about doing something. Something that may seem insignificant. As she turned to cream the butter and sugar, I realized, as usual, that she was right.

  Today I wonder if community could mean a place of common humanity rather than common residence, if we need a place to call home to create it. As the north wind continues to blow and the water barrels freeze, I wonder if community could fit into my backpack. For when I leave, as all gypsies must, I hope you’ll travel with me this time. You, the one who left a bottle of salal wine on my kitchen table, who changed my oil free of charge, who always remembers my name.

  Woman in Blue Bathrobe

  The day began with a cat sitting on my chest. Then a blue fleece bathrobe and slippers. I walked down the stairs to the semi-darkness of the kitchen. I could see my breath. Penelope ate her teaspoon of Fancy Feast. I pulled on my rubber boots and walked up the path to the outhouse. I almost slipped on the ice. By now, Dark Star, my absent neighbour’s black Lab, had arrived. Hungry. She watched me pee.

  Still in blue bathrobe, we walked to her food bowl. Then I walked to the chicken coop and unlatched the door. First the ducks ran out, beating their wings, and then the chickens flew down from their roosts. I broke the ice on their bathtub full of rainwater with the heel of my boot.

  Still in blue bathrobe, I split kindling. I crumpled up balls of newspaper and prayed the fire would start. I turned the oven to Broil to take the chill off. I turned on the faucet. No water. Still in blue bathrobe, I put on my rubber boots. I walked to the water barrel that didn’t seem to freeze as quickly as the others. I plunged a bucket into water floating with ice shards.

  Still in blue bathrobe, I watched the fire spark and crackle and then peter out. For the past week I’d been struggling to ignite the roaring flames essential to my warmth. Several people had told me their theories about my fire-starting dysfunction – maybe I wasn’t grounded enough. Maybe the fire sensed my impatience. Maybe the fire knew I was leaving soon.

  Yesterday, a Haida Elder with whom I’d worked for nearly three years at the transition house in Masset – a safe place for women and children who had experienced violence – had visited while I’d struggled. She’d looked at the smouldering fir
e, then at me, and I awaited her words of wisdom. “That thing needs to be cleaned out,” Margaret said. For the first time all week, I noticed the embarrassing layer of debris and ash that had accumulated after numerous attempts to fuel the fire with anything remotely combustible. I closed the woodstove door. Margaret laughed.

  Yes, I was leaving. Soon. The Haida had been to bid me farewell. The daily chores had acquired a new poignancy. I did them in silence. I’d begun to see myself as a character in a documentary. I imagined a camera panning from hatchet to red bucket to spruce crowns. I wondered if I could appear in my blue bathrobe in every scene.

  I did my chores, slowly, so the camera could get a good shot. It was important this was well documented. Watch as I sit in the chair by the fire and drink Earl Grey. Watch as I walk down the path towards the Pacific. The sky is streaked with winter rose. Dark Star chases after the sandpipers. Can you see Alaska in the distance, fresh snow on the chain of peaks? Can you see the woman in a blue bathrobe, head bowed against the wind?

  epilogue

  The Slow Lane

  When I disembark the Inside Passage ferry in Port Hardy, B.C., I quickly learn to pay attention. I am befuddled by noonday sun and blinking lights, by lane merges and left-turn arrows.

  My Toyota Corolla is packed with all my possessions and Penelope. She sits in her carrier case beside a box filled with bottles of elderflower wine. I look in the rearview mirror, trying to see above the totes crammed with clothing and books and items I couldn’t bear to leave behind – an antique oil lamp, a yew cutting board, two porcelain tea cups.