Speak to the Earth (17 page)

Bryan read the rest of the paper at the kitchen table, munching reheated pizza. His thoughts kept coming back to the article about the premier’s visit. That night, after Jimmy had gone to bed, Bryan set a fire in the fireplace, turned off all the lights and sat up late, feeding logs into the fire and staring into the flames.

The next morning, as usual, he went to Walter’s trailer to cook him breakfast. When they had eaten, Bryan said, “Walter, there’s something I have to do, and I need your help.”

Walter nodded and waited. Bryan pulled a chair in front of the rocker and told his neighbour what he had decided the night before. When he had finished, Walter was silent. Bryan studied his craggy, weather-beaten face.

“Do you think I’m crazy, Walter?”

Walter put his hand on Bryan’s shoulder. “I always knew,” he said softly, “some day you were gonna understand what they were telling you.”

“Who?” Bryan asked.

“The whales.”

B
ryan had lived in the Pacific Northwest long enough to know that he had to be prepared for all kinds of weather. He spent the rest of the morning assembling and packing his gear: rainwear, sleeping blanket, nylon fly; thick sweater; alarm clock (if he overslept, it would ruin everything), waterproof matches, toilet paper; sandwiches, granola bars, a thermos of coffee, a canteen of water; two large black felt-tip markers; Walter’s compass and topographical map, which Bryan covered with plastic wrap; a length of lightweight chain and a combination lock.

He packed the gear in his room while Jimmy worked outside, brushing stain on one side of the house, a slow process for a man with one arm out of commission. Satisfied with his preparations, Bryan made sandwiches for Jimmy and himself, penned a brief note telling his uncle he was over at Elias’s and would likely be there for the night, and slipped out of the house.

The midday sun was hot, the pack heavy and awkward, and by the time he made the docks Bryan was
sweating. He stowed his pack in the bow of Walter’s cedar skiff, which was tied up behind the crab boat. He unlocked the cabin and hauled out the outboard motor and gas tank, then locked the cabin again. Soon he was on his way down the channel of Gray’s Passage, accompanied by the slap of waves against the hull and the cries of seabirds overhead. He steered the little boat southeast, holding course for more than an hour as the old outboard engine pushed him slowly past the month of Salmon Inlet, round the point of Big Bear Peninsula and then east into Big Bear Inlet.

Near its head the inlet began to narrow, and Bryan steered for the rickety dock on the north shore that Walter had told him about. One look at the rotten pilings and planks persuaded him to beach the boat rather than tie up to the old dock. He cut the motor and tilted it forward. When the bow scraped the rock shelf, Bryan scrambled over his pack and hopped out. He hauled the pack from the bow, then half lifted, half dragged the heavy skiff farther up the shelf. Lifting the motor from the transom, he lugged it to the fringe of evergreens. He hid the gas tank beside the motor and pulled the boat well up above the tide line.

Bryan pulled his map and compass from a pocket of the backpack, hung the compass around his neck and stuffed the folded map into his shirt pocket. He shouldered the pack and moved off up the shore until he reached the log cabin. At one time it had belonged to Walter’s family; now, it was decrepit, the door gone, the
cedar shakes rotten and mossy. Beside the building, an overgrown path struck north along the edge of the forest. Bryan followed it up away from the shore. A short walk, and he reached the snag that Walter had told him to look for — a bleached and weathered skeleton of a Sitka spruce poking far into the azure sky. At its tip, the afternoon sun picked out the white head of a bald eagle, serenely surveying the deep blue water of the inlet below.

Bryan drank from his canteen as he watched the majestic bird launch itself with a screech, unfurl its wide wings, beat its way upwards to soar in wide gyres above forest and sea. After the eagle had become a dot in the distance, Bryan took one last look at the sea in the direction of his house, took a bearing, and headed into the cool shade of the trees.

The rough terrain rose sharply, and soon Bryan was panting as he struggled over and around moss-blanketed deadfalls on legs beginning to ache from the strain. He stopped for a rest, leaning against a fir to support the weight of the pack. Slow down, he told himself, panting. You’ve got lots of time. “You’re going to do this,” he said out loud, “and you’re going to do it right.”

Setting off at a more moderate pace, he soon crested a ridge, grateful for the respite offered by the relatively flat land, and followed it for a while before his compass directed him down a gentle descent into a sun-filled glen, through waist-high ferns. As he entered the trees again he noticed that the forest was gradually changing. The trees that canopied the forest floor were taller,
thicker, farther apart. He came to a creek that rushed away to the southeast — probably to join up with the Big Bear River, Bryan figured — twisting and turning through clumps of red alder, under moss-covered logs. By a large gravel bar that encircled the massive roots of a fallen red cedar, Bryan shucked off his backpack. He shook the last of the water from his canteen, refilled it in the stream, took a long drink so cold it numbed the back of his throat, and topped up the canteen.

Bryan sat on the sun-warmed gravel and took a long rest, eating granola bars and enjoying the afternoon sun that slanted through the bush. Birdsong trickled from branches. Squirrels scolded one another. The breeze sighed high in the treetops. Whoever, Bryan asked himself as he stood and shouldered his pack, came up with the idea that the forest was silent? He crossed the stream.

The terrain became rugged again. Bryan skirted swampy areas, struggled over rock outcroppings, climbed over fallen logs, constantly checking his compass, his only help as he slipped deeper and deeper into the forest. At the back of his mind, the itch of fear. He was not a woodsman; he could not read the forest the way Walter could. Would he become lost and wander for weeks until he starved? Trust the compass, Walter had told him back in the trailer. Don’t trust your eyes or your sense of direction: for someone like you, they’ll lead you around in circles. The compass will take you where the map shows. Trust the compass.

After several hours of rough trekking, Bryan found
himself in an old-growth forest, and the itch began to fade. Consulting his map once more, he nodded to himself, sighed heavily, and let his pack slide off his aching back. To the east, he could see the ground rise gently toward a ridge, the ridge that was a line on the map, the ridge Walter had told him to expect. Leaving his pack behind, he climbed the ridge and looked down on a road. He nodded to himself again and returned to his gear. He had made it.

Calmed, Bryan looked around. High above him, the early evening breeze moved through the treetops. He walked toward a colossal red cedar, then around it. The trunk was easily five metres in diameter — you could park a full-sized sedan on the stump, he mused — and soared like a living highrise almost a hundred metres above him. He stepped between the shoulder-high roots as if walking between two cars, and touched the thick shaggy bark, damp with moss and lichen.

Bryan knew from his Ellen-inspired reading that, when the Vikings pushed through North Atlantic storms and touched the prows of their galleys to the eastern shores of North America, this cedar was already old. It stood among Sitka spruce, each at least ninety metres high and three metres thick. They were already mature when John Cabot sailed from Bristol to begin explorations that eventually opened the Atlantic cod fishery. To him and his sailors, and to many generations after him, the shoals of cod must have seemed as inexhaustible
as this forest. Now the cod were gone, the fishery shut down. Bryan turned slowly in a circle, examining the giant living beings that surrounded him. Soon after Cabot’s era — a mere blink of time to these trees — Jacques Cartier sailed into the Gulf of St Lawrence and pierced the continent, looking for riches. They had all come looking for riches, Bryan thought, and believed they had found none.

Standing there in awe, Bryan understood now why Elias’s father filled canvas after canvas with images of these living pillars and the animals that moved among them; why Walter believed the spirits of his ancestors walked here. And why his mother — despite Bryan’s opposition — had chosen jail rather than do nothing while these ancient trees fell to the loggers, for she knew that, once felled, they would be gone forever. At one time indifferent to their presence, Bryan now shuddered at the thought of chain saws spewing sawdust as they ripped through the growth rings of these giants; of clamorous machines snorting diesel smoke, grinding ferns and seedlings under huge tires as they dragged away the corpses of the trees, leaving slash and waste behind like the bones of extinct animals to rot in ground that had not felt the unfiltered heat of the sun since long before Jesus entered Jerusalem.

As the light rose higher in the trees, Bryan set up his camp. He tied two corners of the nylon fly to young hemlocks springing from a decaying deadfall and pinned the other end to the ground with sticks. After placing a
waterproof sheet on the ground under the fly, he spread his sleeping blanket and set his alarm clock.

In the chill of the evening he ate his sandwiches, washing them down with hot coffee. Then he crawled under the fly, undressed and rolled his clothes to make a pillow. He tucked himself in his blanket and closed his eyes. He had walked a long way, packing a heavy weight, and he was tired.

A
t exactly ten o’clock in the morning the
whok-whok-whok
of an approaching helicopter beat the treetops east of the Talbot Inlet airport. A few minutes later, the aircraft gently descended from a clear blue sky, coming to rest some distance from the terminal building. A white stretch limousine drew up as three men and a woman deplaned, shoulders hunched against the turbulence of the blades. Clutching his cap firmly to his head, the chauffeur opened the limo’s rear door. Before the helicopter’s blades came to a stop, the limo had swept away, escorted by two police cruisers.

In the car with Premier Harrington were his two aides and Linda Hobbs, spokesperson for Mackenzie Forest Industries and organizer of the event.

“Nice here, eh?” Aide Two offered as the limo whispered along the highway. The last of the morning mist hung in the upper branches of the conifers that lined the road.

“Where are the reporters?” the premier demanded.
“What good is a photo-op without reporters?” He glanced at his gold Rolex.

“No sweat, boss. They’ll meet us en route,” replied Aide One, crossing his legs and brushing a speck of lint from his lapel. “There they are now,” he said after some time had passed.

The limousine came to a halt at a side road from which two
RCMP
constables were removing a red-and-white log barrier. Parked at the side of the highway were three sedans full of reporters as well as a TV news mini-van. The limo moved off again, trailing the police car along the road into the clear-cut area. Another cruiser slipped in behind the limo.

“This is the gathering place of the activists,” Aide Two pointed out. “There’s the so-called Rainforest Café.”

“Why weren’t those signs taken down?” was the premier’s response. “For chrissakes, Ben, that’s all we need!”

“Linda, I thought you said the area was secure,” Aide One said.

“Sorry,” the flustered woman answered.

Reporters were snapping photos of the
Orca Sound, Not Clear-Cut Sound
sign, while the TV man trained his Betacam on a poster that shouted in blood-red letters: B.C.
Chainsaw Massacre
.

“Too late now,” Aide Two said philosophically. “Besides, maybe we can turn this around on them.”

“Sure,” the premier muttered, glancing at Hobbs, who was making notes with a gold fountain pen.

The limo floated sedately over the uneven logging road and re-entered the trees. As it descended the hill, Ben pointed ahead through the windshield. “There’s the river, sir. The logging site is over the bridge and just on the other side of that hill.”

“You have my speech?”

Ben patted his pocket. “It’s right here.”

“Hey!” Aide Two cut in. “What’s that on the bridge?”

The Big Bear River valley had dressed up in its finest for the premier’s visit. Morning mist swirled and danced on the surface of the swiftly flowing water, gracefully rising, illuminated by slanting gold bars of sun, slipping among the thick green branches of the spruce and firs that lined the road. Above, a dome of blue sky. Ravens cawed. A bald eagle circled on the updrafts of warming air.

The limo had come to a halt and its rear doors hung open. Aides One and Two stood on one side of the car, the premier and
MFI
’s spokesperson on the other. Below them, the drifting mist swirled around the bridge. All eight eyes were trained on the large yellow patch.

“There’s words on it,” Ben announced.

“Words?” The premier squinted. AV HE EES, he read. A light breeze stirred the mist. The sun illuminated, briefly, the yellow sign. Yes, he could see clearly now. He could make out the words. “Get on the phone!” he shouted. “Get the cops!”

When the three sedans slid in unison to an abrupt halt
in the middle of the dirt logging road, all the reporters piled out, hollering, and ran toward the bridge. Unprepared for such a hasty stop, the TV van swerved around the reporters’ empty cars and roared downhill, careered alongside the police cruiser and, with a sickening shriek, ripped off the driver’s door. With all four wheels locked up, the van slid broadside, tearing up dirt and stones before it clipped the left rear fender of the pristine limo, shattering the tail light and coming to a stop in a cloud of dust, half in the ditch, blocking the road. The side door crashed open and, with a wireless microphone in her hand, a woman jumped out, followed by a young man with a Betacam. Without so much as a glance at the carnage caused by the van, they ran downhill.