The Earth Remembers Everything

by Adrienne Fitzpatrick

  The Earth Remembers Everything

  Adrienne Fitzpatrick

  Caitlin Press

  Copyright ©2012 Adrienne Fitzpatrick

  First print edition ©2012 by Caitlin Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, info@accesscopyright.ca.

  Caitlin Press Inc.

  8100 Alderwood Road

  Halfmoon Bay, BC V0N 1Y1

  www.caitlin-press.com

  Text and cover design by Vici Johnstone.

  Epub by Kathleen Fraser.

  Caitlin Press Inc. acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishers Tax Credit.

  Library and Archives Cataloguing in Publication

  Fitzpatrick, Adrienne, 1966-

  The earth remembers everything / Adrienne Fitzpatrick.

  ISBN 978-1-894759-90-8

  1. Atrocities. 2. Massacres. 3. World history.

  4. Fitzpatrick, Adrienne, 1966- —Travel. I. Title.

  D24.F58 2012 909 C2012-903360-X

  To my parents—Bernie and Helen Fitzpatrick

  Preface

  Mosquito Lake

  Poland

  Dene

  Poland

  Dene

  Poland

  Mosquito Lake

  Mile 13

  Dene

  Mile 13

  Mosquito Lake

  Mile 13

  Vietnam

  Dene

  Vietnam

  Mosquito Lake

  Vietnam

  Dene

  Vietnam

  Japan

  Dene

  Japan

  Dene

  Japan

  In Search of Mosquito Lake

  Dene

  In Search of Mosquito Lake

  Dene

  Return to Mosquito Lake

  Chinlac

  Dene

  Chinlac

  Dene

  Chinlac

  Dene

  Chinlac

  Dene

  Chinlac

  Dene

  Chinlac

  Dene

  Chinlac

  Dene

  Chinlac

  Dene

  Chinlac

  Dene

  Chinlac

  Dene

  Chinlac

  Mosquito Lake

  Selected Bibliography

  Acknowledgements

  About Adrienne Fitzpatrick

  Preface

  Place is prior to all things.

  —Aristotle

  To follow Aristotle’s view, The Earth Remembers Everything is a phenomenological experience of place that transcends boundaries and barriers, whether they are personal, cultural or political. I believe that the profound is possible, and because of this, changes in perception, views and emotions surrounding experience of place are possible as well. This book is based on my own experience, with the intention to seek connections, to show how we are all implicated, indeed involved, in the subtle, sometimes shocking but always changing experience of place.

  I acknowledge that it has been a great privilege to travel and to write about these places, and that my work engages in historical complexity, including colonialism, capitalism, racism, and appropriation issues. I could not tell my story without encroaching on these areas and I trust that the deep respect and compassion I felt at all of these massacre sites comes through in my work. I recognize that there are other views and stories of these places that have deep significance, not only personally, but to families, communities and entire cultures. The underlying theme of The Earth Remembers Everything is to express essence, not only of the experience of place, but of the self in place. Nothing can erase the past or the wounds incurred by it, but it is my hope that a profound sense of place can make room for connection and healing.

  I chose excerpts from A.G. Morice’s The History of the Central Interior of British Columbia as a basis for my fiction, with the view that his stories and accounts are also a somewhat fictionalized history of the area. The stories in The History of the Central Interior of British Columbia were translated from Carrier and Chilcotin into 19th Century English by Father Morice, who was a French Oblate priest with his own views on the area and its people. My intention was to weave the stories of the Carrier, which are powerfully rooted in place and to each other, with the stories of the places I travelled to and the people I travelled with. In my view, the memories and deep emotion the earth holds is the same as what exists within all of us. My hope is that these stories link not just the earth and its people, but show that what happened in the Central Interior of British Columbia a very long time ago is happening still on all corners of the earth.

  This book is a blend of fiction and creative non-fiction, and it can also be seen as a personal travelogue. Though I went to these sites as a tourist, my intention was not to appropriate in any way a story that was not mine to tell. I wanted to be open to the experience. In my view, that is the responsibility of a traveller—to learn something about a culture as well as oneself. This is the attitude in which I approached this book. My interest in massacre sites is not only as sites of trauma but places of historical significance, where I could be affected by an experience larger than myself, and to possibly be opened up, changed and then able to learn more about my presence in the world.

  Mosquito Lake

  At the mushroom pickers’ camp on Haida Gwaii there are stories of hauntings at nearby Mile 13 and Mosquito Lake. Legends of ghosts, mass killings, a wandering dead logger and a beast that stalks you in the woods.

  Pickers came but they didn’t stay, though it was beautiful. Mountains tusked with snow, clear deep lake. One or two nights and the dream would come.

  “I don’t believe it,” says Nigel, the crooked-nosed Australian.

  “I haven’t had nightmares since I was a kid and my grandmother was standing at the foot of my bed,” I say. “She had her dark heart in her hands. Her eyes were black holes.”

  “You dream of death at the lake.” Toby, the blond skater, swigs back a beer. We are standing around a licking fire and the guts of berry-fed deer. “Lucy and I stayed there and we dreamed of marauders three nights in a row. You can see their faces, even your reflection in their eyes. Some heard drums, thump of running feet, cries of fear and war. Lucy woke up screaming, we packed up, slept in the truck on some logging road.”

  Dogs rummage through scraps, strips of dead deer. There are hunters and you know them. Your mother kills your father. Your sister has a gash on her arm, you can see bone. It won’t heal. It won’t heal. People you loved with your whole self. It was a massacre. The earth remembers everything.

  Poland

  Leaning out the window of the train, hot spring sun warms my face, wind tears my eyes. Land slopes and rolls along, brilliant yellow fields, a few bored dogs watching. Rolling green hills with cottages needing an extra coat of paint; doors hanging off hinges, hammers, rusted saws strewn around. Fresh laundry needing to be gathered in from the yard. Passengers around us murmur and the rustle of dinner being unpacked prompts a “You hungry?” from Kat. Kat is short for Katherine. Tall, blonde and from Denver, she laughs easily, gives in to my whims. She’s recovering from a failed affair. I was so distraught, I cried all the way to the air
port, she said, slight grimace. Her ex had to pull over so she could gather herself, fake a bold front until it worked. In Prague, she is what my friends call a flatmate.

  Our flat has round, wide windows and two balconies where we sit and smoke. We are teaching English to very smart, unimpressed students. I am stunned by their smooth beauty, showing up my peasant roots. They speak German, Russian and excellent English, laugh at my attempts to entertain. Gone are the days when every foreign teacher was a star. Slowly I make friends with Jiri and Jana. We go to absinthe bars, talk about the sweet smell of oranges that they had to line up for during Communist times. How the taste told them of other worlds. They laughed when I told them I didn’t like castles, moats with chained bears, dark corridors with the heads of slain animals mounted.

  “I am starved,” I declare.

  We have not even thought about making dinner so we go to the dining car, square tables with pale peach covers, fake carnations in white vases. Air smells of burnt butter, onions and the salty yeast of rising bread. We order goulash and dumplings from a sour-faced waiter.

  With full stomachs and a glass of wine, we dodge stockinged and bare feet jutting out at odd angles in the aisle. Our beds have been made in our absence, a sleepy calm has descended. Soft sleeping sighs, eruption of snores. We flip coins and Kat gets the top bunk and we settle in for the night after a furtive trip to the bathroom to brush our teeth. Close the window, close the blinds, chat ourselves to sleep. What seems like minutes later we are shocked awake by the customs official standing at the entrance of our car. Bright hall lights illuminate the outline of his frame, short, bulky. His face is shaded by the wide brim of his cap. Businesslike voice requesting passports. He peruses our documents and hands them back, abruptly turns. Kat’s voice booms:

  “Can we get a stamp?”

  “No,” he grunts, annoyed, and is gone.

  “No? Why not?” She trails off. “What a rude bastard,” she whispers to me. We laugh a bit and the train rumbles and jerks. My body rolls to the sudden bursts of movement and I imagine all the other bodies on the train rolling, sleeping, rolling, sleeping.

  That night I dream of our street in Prague, where I am sitting on our balcony that overlooks a narrow cobblestoned street. I am watching dream people walking below, no one I recognize. Then a tall thin man with a brown dog leaping and barking beside him turns the corner and walks up just below the balcony and stops. He is trying to control the dog but then it starts howling, long mournful sobs. They are both dishevelled, and I can’t make out his face, just his mouth as he turns his head up to the sky, his lips move and a voice comes into my head You must get ready. Such a clear, urgent voice. I wake up immediately. Kat’s hand dangles near the window.

  We arrive at 7:00 a.m., grab some bread and sausage at the station and find a cab to take us to our hostel. The driver, distracted, balding, barely looks at us when we get in and we are already moving when he glances at our address, nods. Our hostel turns out to be a college dormitory with a long stall of showers. From across the courtyard we can see men showering, steam clouds, glints of skin.

  *

  Krakow is cobblestoned, smooth brick buildings, winking windows, nuns in dark robes flit across side streets, imposing churches on every block. We trudge the slow incline of a road to the church where Pope John Paul preached, passing tourists with cameras, stores with fresh irises in the windows. At the church, which is somehow quiet though crammed with people, there is a bell the size of a small house at the top of a narrow winding stair. I imagine it rings with a depth and clarity that I have never heard.

  “Stop crying!” A stylish middle-aged mother hisses at her daughter.

  The child is pale, blotchy and sniffling, with long, dark braided hair and pink shoes. “I’m tired!”

  Mother and daughter are at a standoff on the stairs.

  “Travel is hell,” Kat whispers under her breath.

  After the church we scramble down an embankment to the river. “What’s the river called?” I ask Kat but I know she doesn’t know. We travel well together. No forced conversation. Instant intimacy that often comes with travelling, family histories, past loves, has sparked fast friendship. Hurts bask in the open air of our balcony, seem less daunting. The word regroup comes up, and space. I listen to Kat, glass of wine in hand, passing a smoke. I don’t want to be home, I tell her. Japan changed me, the world opened up. I was going to Kyoto every weekend, climbing mountains to the tiny temples and listening to cicadas, bamboo click clack in the wind, watching monkeys scurry up the paths, careful not to look them in the eye to avoid a possible attack. I want to keep going, feel constrained so easily, and I am lucky and selfish right now, discontented, restless and unwilling at this moment to grab what is lying there, just below the surface, shimmering and alive.

  “What does it look like,” she asks, “this shimmering?”

  “An exotic fish, a koi in a Chinese garden, a salmon, bucking free in the ocean. Do you know that a salmon molts, that it loses its skin like a snake when it returns home?”

  We lean back in our chairs, into the world like it will hold us so we can do some great thing, or escape for a little while, or heal. Krakow continues on the other side of the river and for as far as we can see. Warm June sun melts us into a lounging recline on the concrete ledge where we perch.

  Dene

  The Carrier village of Chinlac is on the far side of Stuart Lake and is best reached by canoe in the summer months. When I was in high school, there were class trips to Chinlac, as it was and is an archaeological site, a place of artifacts, of memory. There were photographs in the school yearbook of campsites and clowning students and I heard stories of haunting, shadowy presences, sleepless nights. There was a massacre at this site in 1745 but I had a dim idea of what massacre meant. Certainly something bloody and raw, occurring for reasons unknowable and primal. This was my teenage version of things. A Catholic priest, Father Morice, spent ten years in Fort St. James and worked closely with the Carrier. Previously, he had lived in Williams Lake and began his study of Chilcotin as well as Carrier, and became proficient in both languages. He learned and transcribed their stories.

  The main tribes of the Northern Interior are divided into four. The Sekanais occupy the western slope of the Rocky Mountains and all the adjoining territory, reaching as far as the 53rd latitude. The Babines inhabit the shores of the lake called after them and the Bulkley Valley, though many of them hunt near French and Cambie lakes. The Carriers have villages all the way from Stuart Lake to Alexandria on the Fraser, and the Chilcotins mainly occupy the valley of the river to which they have given their name.

  These tribes form the Western Denes. Dene means men.

  Poland

  A white, dusty bus picks us up at 7:30 a.m. and we are the first ones in, so we take the best seats near the front. The driver is long and skinny, carrying on an intense conversation with the portly, middle-aged tour guide. It is all in Polish but Kat and I play a game and pretend that they’re discussing their uptight boss, stupid tourists, money, a really good restaurant. Pros and cons of buying a country home. Conversations that would be irritating, funny or intriguing, if we could understand them, but in another language, they’re like a spell being cast. Words parsed, mysterious, incantatory like chanting of the Buddhist monks in Japan, in Thailand, in Laos, the om that thrums and buzzes, burrows into you and then bursts out. Om. On the labyrinthine journey to pick up the others at their hotels, the city is just waking up. Warm spring air drifts and huddles in the corners of tiny cafés; we pass bakeries where customers stand catatonic, their morning mouths churning bread and coffee like cud, gruel of life. Finally the bus is full and our tour guide introduces himself as Josef, born and raised in Krakow. His voice is slow, sombre and matches the solemn blue of his eyes. The other tourists are middle-aged and formally dressed, khaki shorts, crisp white shirts and blouses. Sensible walking shoes.

  He stands in front of the bus and starts talking, his slow, deep voice rising ju
st above the rustling and mumbling. He knows eventually people will stop talking and listen; he has done this a million times, his eyes blanking out our faces. “The drive to Auschwitz will take an hour and a half. There is a short film at the museum and then you are free to wander the camp and take in its exhibits. There are guided tours in a variety of languages if you wish. After a few hours there, we will regroup and go to Birkenau for a few hours in the afternoon. There are guided tours there as well.” Josef counts our nodding heads. “There are twelve of you. Don’t get lost. We leave Birkenau at three and will be back in Krakow for dinner, drop you off at your hotels.” He sits down and resumes his involved conversation with the driver.

  City melts away and the country homes are tidy, all the laundry and tools gathered in, folded and packed away. Everything in its place. Window shutters painted in smart shades of red, lawns are cut and flowers toss their luscious June yellow, pink and purple coifs. Kat nods off in the seat beside me, sun lighting half her face, her firm brown arms. A couple behind us share a muffin, slurp coffee, mumble “where’s the guide book, how far did he say it was?” Heads are nodding, rolling side to side. Did they have relatives that died here? My ancestors could have died here. They could have been the killers.

  I need to see the wound.

  There’s a bubble of silence that happens when the home of language is not available, a reprieve from the constant change and decision-making, tinged with loneliness. It is not unlike waiting in line at the bank or a store, a kind of enforced meditation. Homesickness strikes, a sucker punch, then ebbs. In an hour we arrive and tumble out of the bus; we join a crowd of hundreds, it seems, filing into a large building where the movie will be shown. Wooden chairs shuffle and scrape the cement floor in a large, cool, utilitarian room and the movie is old, black and white with trains and children and it flies by me. I don’t catch a word. I don’t get it at all. Lights go on and the exit doors open and we are turned out into the sun like children at recess and there it is. Arbeit Macht Frei.