Hometown

by Anny Scoones

  Archie and I climb over the rocks and logs for miles—that way we can visit the little hidden bays and take in more of the sea. There are fewer people down below—often only signs that people have been there. Somebody at night on occasion crochets a red woollen spiderweb between the washed-in logs! I often sit on a bleached log or on the great black rocks and have a little think while Archie sniffs and paddles or chews on a stick.

  The beauty of the sea and shore has me in awe every time I stop and feel it. One of the most magical parts of our walks along the shore are the tidal pools—little communities full of shimmering blue and silver shells, delicate, pearl-white sea anemones swaying in the cool water amongst seaweeds of amber and burgundy, and the tiny busy sea life scurrying to and fro, trying to get their chores finished on their tight timeline. That is when the tide returns with its surging mighty force that covers the rocks until it retreats again, right on Mother Nature’s schedule—Mother Nature has an amazing datebook! Her monthly planner is far more accurate than ours, and she rarely misses an appointment.

  When the tide is high, the emerald eelgrass holds tight, the little creatures go into their homes (their shells), gripping the rock with every ounce of their strength, and all is asleep and calm inside. But sometimes, in the wild winter storms, a huge, thick mound of kelp can wash onto the shore, and within it are strange creatures that have been unable to stay in the sea due to the force of the waves—red-shelled creatures with soft blanched underbellies are tossed onto the shore, chitons that have been ripped from their rocks—Mother Nature is amazing, but she can be cruel.

  One day I looked at a tidal pool when the sun made it glitter even more. It was truly one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen; well, let’s say felt. There’s a difference, I think, between what we see and what we feel (sometimes I wonder what moves me more, what I see or what I feel). So this little tidal pool, shimmering in the sun like a jewel box, was so beautiful, full of garnets and opals, but it also moved me because it was full of activity, just what nature intended. All the busy creatures were moving around finding dinner and cleaning the little pool and preparing for the high tide and not needing any praise or attention for just living the life that Mother Nature gave them. And then I saw the bobbing cigarette butt. The cigarette butt “rained on my parade.”

  I felt so sorry for the little tidal pool. I scooped the butt out and put it in one of Archie’s dog-litter bags. And then I had this thought, a reaction, of apologizing to the tidal pool, to the beach, to the sea. If I were a poet, I would write a poem called “Apology to the Beach.” The final lines would be:

  I’m so sorry, beach,

  Sorry to the sea,

  Something something something, (about interfering with Mother Nature)

  For man’s careless indignity.

  Or something like that. I might have a line about how the sea would forgive us, would adjust or just carry on. I am not sure how to write a poem, but I wish I knew—just to capture the rise of the heart at particular moments.

  (The other poem I always wanted to write was about the complete in-aweness—I made up that word, but I think in poetry one is allowed—and pleasure I had when eating a pork roast with the warm crackling—the fat was so delicious, all over my lips, running down my chin. I was sucking on it and I remember thinking, “This is so good that I can’t tell where my lips end and the crackling begins,” and then I saw that the crackling also had some hair on it, cooked, of course, and I thought, “This is the only time in my life when I will eat hair and moan about how delicious it is.” That would be some poem! The moment of bliss with fat and hair, the absolute pleasure, sitting there in my drafty blue kitchen in the old log farmhouse on Glamorgan Farm, the air thick with steam and woodsmoke, eating that warm, thick, fat crackling!)

  These are the types of little thinks I have while staring into the lovely tidal pools on the beach in James Bay. James Bay encourages, and makes possible, these little thinks.

  After I saw that cigarette butt, I noticed other things—plastic bags and bits of rope and some unmentionables. At first I used a stick to pick up things that I didn’t want to touch, but then I bought some blue rubber gloves. I began to pick up these foreign objects and lug them up to the freshly painted dark green litter baskets that sit in the grassy meadows above.

  My friend Lorna says that I have simply transferred from picking up manure all day on the farm to picking up trash in town. But at least I may be saving a life by picking up plastic bags—sea mammals think that plastic bags are jellyfish and swallow them, with dire consequences. I’d like to tell you of one more incident on the beach.

  One day Archie was climbing all over the rocks and I, with my keen eye, was picking up bits of litter—candy wrappers, bottle caps, and such. I usually leave the returnable beer cans and wine bottles for others to pick up, but on this particular day, I put a beer can in my bag. I had stupidly put Archie’s new red leash down someplace and couldn’t find it, so I used an old rope I’d found to lead him back up to the meadow to dispose of our day’s loot. It was incredibly windy, so I know I looked dishevelled, and I was wearing my grubby barn clothes as I planned to go and see my horse after Archie’s walk. So I was quite windswept, with a torn bag full of garbage with a beer can on top and a dog on a frayed rope pulling me up the steps. Halfway up, under a thick canopy of shady overgrowth, stood a slim, tanned, older woman in a large straw hat, a form-fitting lime-green shirt, white jeans and sandals, with some gold chains around her neck. She handed me a ten-dollar bill and said she hoped it would buy me a good meal! And then she gave me another five-dollar bill for “food for your dog!”

  Of course, Archie was all excited, leaving his seaweed-amber paw prints on her crisp jeans. I explained my situation, that I loved picking up the occasional bits of trash and that I had lost Archie’s leash on a rock, and good thing I’d found the rope! She laughed and we sat on a bench and looked out at the whitecaps, dotted with colourful windsurfer sails and little black rubber figures being tossed into the dark green sea. The sky was full of kites and parasails. She told me that she had read a book about the death of the albatrosses off the coast of South America, and that when the oceanographers looked at the dead birds, they found that their innards were clogged with bottle caps.

  Walking the wild beaches of Dallas Road is never boring, even though nothing much changes except the weather, which just goes to show that it is not a place or thing that amuses a person, but how you feel. I know that people go on great retreats to India or Tibet to learn this, but you don’t need to—it’s all right here on the Dallas Road beaches!

  One of my most magnificent and memorable views of the sea from Dallas Road was in the autumn at sunset; it had been a clear, chilly day and the sun had just dipped below the horizon, leaving a golden glow that shimmered and skimmed the deep green and silver water—it left me breathless. I will never forget it—it was a Turner masterpiece.

  Sooke Hills from Clover Point

  But every so often, one does in fact come upon an unexpected change of sorts. One morning I was walking over the pebbles and thick twisted masses of kelp washed up from the previous night’s high tide. Archie and I were the only ones on the beach. The oystercatchers were squeaking in the excitement of finding shellfish; a silent great blue heron stood like a mime, staring into a tidal pool. The gulls were drifting under a low grey sky above the cold black rocks. As I scrambled over the washed-in pile of bleached logs and stepped back down onto the smooth grey pebbles, I was stopped cold by what I saw—a drowned ram in his white wool, his elegant black face and stone eyes staring at the sky, his legs spread apart. The first thing I thought was, “How undignified.” Had it been a human, I am not sure I could have passed him by, but an animal seems much nearer to nature than we do, so after a moment I calmed myself and hurried Archie along too; he was sniffing curiously at the great mound of saturated wet wool.

  It was the undignified position of the ram’s rear legs that made him so vulnerable. (I fe
el the same way in my yoga class when we are “invited” to establish ourselves in a similar position.) It made me feel such pity for him, beyond the fact that he was drowned on a beach (he’d probably fallen from a cliff along the strait at Metchosin). His wide-open stance on his back, combined with his passive nature, lying there in the golden kelp and white shells and washed pebbles, was sad—he didn’t look at rest, but simply tossed by the sea (which of course he was) and abandoned. It was more undignified than if the crows had pecked out his eyes; even the crows had ignored him.

  That night, after Archie was asleep with his bone on his blanket at the foot of my bed, I soaked in a hot bath in an old-fashioned tub with legs. Then I lay in my cozy bed with my stack of books and I thought about the ram on the beach. A cool sea breeze blew in the little window. The street was quiet and there was a faint amber glow from the street light. The old lilac was rustling outside against the bathroom window, and I could smell the window sills and frames I had painted that morning—it was “eco paint,” with a clean, light odour.

  Bedtime is my favourite time of day. When I go to bed, everything seems to be clearer, including the memory of the day. I lay there in my cool cotton sheets and I thought, “I should have closed the ram’s legs. I should have given him dignity.” I decided to go to the beach in the morning and do that for him.

  Then I remembered something that happened a long time ago, with Mum, when I was very young. It was a scorching-hot day in the New Brunswick countryside and we were walking along an old railway track with dry grass encroaching on the rusted rails. The intense dry heat had brought out the faint smell of the creosoted ties. Mum had a burlap sack and was looking for wild apples in the thick, dusty shrubbery—she made the best apple jelly, which dripped for days through cheesecloth hung between two chairs in our kitchen. Suddenly she turned to me in a momentary horror and said, “Anny, what’s that under that bush?!” I bent down on the tracks and saw a huge, bloated, smooth grey body—it could have been a cow. I poked it with a stick as Mum stood back, speechless, but it turned out just to be a great boulder. It’s a tiny memory, a moment in time with Mum that I will never forget—the horror on her face, the same, I am sure, as that I had when I saw the poor ram, a horror that perhaps comes with age.

  The next morning, Archie and I made our way back to the little hidden beach. The grassy meadow at the top of the cliff was damp from an evening shower and by the time we went down the crumbling cement steps to the beach, Archie was wet and covered in flecks of oatmeal-coloured grass seeds. The sea mist was just dissipating into the white sky that hung low over the green sea, which was lapping and washing over the pebbles. We climbed over the slabs of granite and rock toward the place where the old ram rested amongst the sea debris and salt air. I thought as I climbed that if I had ever joined the Canadian Forces, I would have chosen the navy (Mum says they always had the nicest uniforms—she was a uniformed war artist in the army), so that if I were to be killed on duty, at least I would go back to the sea, the salty beautiful sea—perhaps eaten by some sea creature to be part of nature’s food chain. I wonder what part of me would be the most tender. I wonder what part would actually taste the best.

  Archie and I jumped down onto the whitewashed shells and freshly washed-up smooth, amber kelp. There he was, the old ram, slightly shifted by the night tide but still intact, gazing in another direction. I thought, “All I should do is close his back legs—just pull one over,” but I couldn’t touch him. I was torn between which was more dignifying: to leave the body with nature, exposed and vulnerable, or to interfere and close it up? And I thought that if I knew only the sea and its creatures would see him, it would be okay to let him be, but it disturbed me that human beings might wander by and see him so undignified. That’s what upset me and made me sad—animals wouldn’t judge him but humans might.

  A naked man was meditating farther out on the rock. At least, he looked naked. Archie ran out and sniffed him and I followed—I saw a piece of plastic just behind the man’s (tanned and hairless, I noticed) buttocks. He was deep in thought—his eyes were closed and he was facing the Olympic Peninsula, a lovely snowcapped mountainous wilderness across the strait, in the United States. It’s like a linear backdrop behind our sea, full of old-growth coniferous trees, hot springs, and cedar smells.

  Mum always says that in the United States, “the coasts are so intelligent,” but I would say that in Canada, the entire country is intelligent—we seem to be so much more bonded with intelligence, with modesty, and with a special compassion, and as much as it is at times frustrating, it is the right way to live. I am sure of that, because it is kind and positive, no matter how big we are. This, I think, is why we are in the greatest country in the world, and we should be secretly proud.

  Well, back to the little beach where I scooped up the plastic within inches of the meditator. (One time Archie and I picked up beer cans around a person standing on her head, humming). My little inner voice held me back from repositioning the sad, water-sodden ram—I just couldn’t do it.

  Archie and I trundled home. A ferocious wind was picking up. Flags were flapping off porches, and freshly mown grass was blowing up the street. The old pinto horse pulling a carriage of tourists up our street bowed his head into the gale. The wind howled late into the night. Wind is a bit frightening, but I felt safer than I used to back on Glamorgan Farm, where I remember lying in my brass bed under the red tin roof, terrified that a huge cedar would come crashing down into the bedroom at any moment.

  The next morning the street was scattered with debris and leaves. Archie and I took our beach walk, and I hoped that the old ram by this time had been swept out to sea forever. And sure enough, there was no sign of him, but rather, next to where he had been so exposed was a small bouquet of bluebells, lying limply on a black rock. My heart leapt in relief that compassion had been felt for the ram by another human being. Somebody else had paid their respects to his death.

  Since then on our walks Archie and I have come across dead seals, gulls and one day a small fawn, its delicate mouth slightly open, amongst the washed-up kelp and seaweed. And the next day a little bouquet appeared on the carcass of a nearby log. Sometimes there is a small cairn of pebbles and shells, decorated with a feather or small pieces of driftwood. I add to the shrine, a bit of salty, blue sea glass or a scarlet leaf of seaweed. I do not wish to meet the secret shrine builder and fellow lover of life—I like the mystery, and I love knowing that there is somebody out there who is compassionate toward life. And I feel almost honoured to add to the little graves that appear mysteriously in the quiet dusk and dawn hours of the James Bay beaches.

  In early autumn, the meadows along Dallas Road are a dry golden mass of wild oats and grasses, pale mauve asters, fireweed gone to seed, and thickets of bright orange rosehips. As Archie romps through this wildness, full of weeds and native plants with funny, naughty names such as bladder campion, hoary cress, and tansy ragwort, I think that nature is sometimes more beautiful in its ending stages, that the dying golden meadow is lovelier than its promising lushness months before.

  On the slopes and bluffs, a mass of tumbling purple vetch fades into the sandy cliffs, and a ridge of yellow gorse on top dries to a brown, tangled, prickly mass. The thickets and random hedges are spotted orange with the Nootka rosehips in the meadow glades. I love the City for allowing the wildness of Mother Nature to put her meadows and thickets to sleep in the cool autumn sea air in her own way. The friendly Victoria workers do just enough—they mow around a patch of asters, and push the beach logs back from the water just enough that we can walk along the shore without getting wet at winter’s high tides. These workers have a lovely intuition for when pristine is not necessary.

  When I was on the farm, I’d drift off in my little bedroom to the frog chorus and the faint smell of woodsmoke from the last embers of the fire in the wood stove in the kitchen. In James Bay I sometimes drift off to the same woodsmoke smell, but it comes from beach fires, which are not allowed but
appear regularly anyway. Every so often a burning log will spark and set fire to the dry grasses of the bank, and then you hear the sirens of the fire trucks from the neighbourhood fire station down the road. The next day Archie and I will see blackened logs and grey ashes, sometimes still smouldering, amongst the beach stones. It’s as if people really need to have a beach fire—for far more than just warmth. Everything seems much more right in the world when we sit beside a beach fire. Then the glow from the ashes fades. After that, it’s back to the harsh, cool world of reality. Fire seems to be an escape of some sort; perhaps it is even like a kind of purge, especially in the outdoors.

  I don’t know why the autumn, the “going to sleep season,” brings on a time of reminiscence. Even the names of some of the wispy wet grasses that drape over my ankles and the dry seed pods that burst as I brush past them have farm-like names that make me remember the heavy autumn labour I did on Glamorgan Farm. Sow thistle, sheep sorrel, redroot pigweed, giant hogweed, jointed goatgrass—all wild and considered invasive, with names related to livestock! I wonder if these tough, invasive plants are named after livestock as a compliment or an insult.

  The dying golden meadows and tangled invasives going to seed, the low grey skies, the empty beaches with remnants of beach fires washed by the cold sea bring on a certain melancholy, but at the same time a certain joy, a certain relief that a time of rest is approaching. The tides are suddenly higher, usually right after the Saanich Fair. The water is cold and clear, and thick blankets of voluptuous, emerald-green seaweed wash up over the beach like exotic dessert toppings. Beautiful, shimmering, deep-amber jellyfish float along the lapping shore, apparently migrating. What would be in a jellyfish to tell it to migrate? How does it know? What did Mother Nature put into the jellyfish’s mind to tell it to migrate? One may mock the idea that a jellyfish has a mind, but then, I would ask, what’s the definition of a mind? And is a jellyfish’s mind as harmful as the mind of a human who starts a war or commits a planned and cruel act?