Khalpan stood on the beach and remembered all his relatives and friends gone and his daughter dragged into slavery. “Please spare my daughter’s life!” he howled. Wracking grief, retching, he fell to his hands and knees. Silent Carrier watched, no birds flew or sang overhead. Sobbing, Khalpan hauled himself up, faced his enemy.
Khadintel, scornful, jeered: “Khalpan, we sought revenge upon the men of your village to repair the great wrong you set on us, but you weep like a woman, so I will let you live. Go in peace, and weep to your heart’s content.”
Chinlac
Around the campfire at Fraser Lake, my feet drying on hot stones, I roll out the maps. One of them is by Father Morice, famous oblate of Fort St. James who spoke Carrier, Chilcotin, wrote the story of the Chinlac massacre. Map is dated 1907. Dot of Fort George. In random spots, words written: light soil, natural prairies, undulating with small meadows. Janice and I hunch over, hot dogs in hand, we find Chinlac written in fine hand, just down from wavy rapids, on the swift and shallow Stuart River. Indian trails traced in perforated lines. Sun sets, map squiggles start to fade but I find a little horseshoe above Summit Lake, where he wrote Stuart River springs from here from the ground about knee wide. I roll it up, watch the flames descend to cinders, cold nipping at my back. Walk weary to bed.
Mosquito Lake
Lucy dreams killer whales with shark teeth slice the lake. For three nights now naked fish deer children fight for shore. She sees Nigel, hears him calling, waving his arms, arrows strewn around his wounded waist. In his eyes pained, deep offering. When the lake dries up, starts to burn, she wakes Toby. Let’s get out of here. Drums beat the fist of invasion. The engine struggles, wheels roll, mountain heaves. Screeching birds claw at the space between her eyes, where the nightmare peaks. Killer whale turns reptile, talons tear the earth. What she dreamed before was shadows on grass, effortless flight. They sleep on an abandoned logging road, crossed by fallen trees. She wakes up, rolls over, drags souls like sacks of sand to the shore. The dream won’t leave the lake.
Selected Bibliography
Casey, Edward S. Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-world. Bloomin- ton: University of Indiana Press. 1993.
.Remembering: A Phenomenological Study. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. 1987.
Cresswell, Tim. Place: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. 2004.
Foote, Kenneth. E. Shadowed Ground: America’s landscape of Violence and Tragedy. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1997.
Hessler, Peter. River Town: Two Years of the Yangtze. London: John Murray Publishers. 2001.
Leighly, John. ed. Land and Life: A Selection of Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1963.
.“The Morphology of Landscape.” 315- 350.
Malpas, J.E. Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1999.
Morice, A.G. The History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia. Smithers : Interior Stationary. 1970.
Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1995.
Smith, Mick. Laura Cameron, Joyce Davidson, Liz Bondi.eds. Emotion, Place and Culture. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2009.
Hua, Anh. “What we all long for: Memory, Trauma and Emotional Geographies.” 135-148.
Tuan, Yi-Fu. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. New York: Columbia University Press. 1974.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my family for their faith in me and for always being there to come home to. Christophe and Leanne Lengagne, I am so grateful for your enduring friendship. I have wonderful friends who have encouraged and cajoled me through all my mishaps but never discouraged my spirit of adventure.
I am grateful for the stories of the Carrier and Chilcotin, which have given me a deeper knowledge of the land I grew up in.
Thank you to my inspiring cohorts at UNBC and Prince George—great writers and artists. Such fun.
Special thanks for the guidance and encouragement I received from Al Rempel, Rob Budde and Kristen Guest.
Most of all, thanks to the people I had the honour to travel with: Katrina Hoelting, Shannon Day-Cheung, Janice Gairdner, Sarah Colgrove, Kelly Posthuma, Winnie Lam and Peter Rodseth. Thank you for letting me share your experiences.
Photo Josh Massey
Adrienne Fitzpatrick earned her master’s in English at the University of Northern British Columbia, where she completed a creative thesis. Her fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction have appeared in Prairie Fire, CV2 and subTerrain, and she is one of the poetry editors for Room magazine.The Earth Remembers Everything is her first book.
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