The road less cycled

My internal clock must certainly be on Tokyo time by now. I got home from work early in the morning, around 3 or so, and decided to take a bath. In the bath I read Snyder and had two apples and eventually drifted off to sleep. Around 6:30 a.m. I left the bath and pulled out my futon, meaning to go to a Poetry Slam and an oil change, but completely slept through both, waking up in time for some delicious pea soup.

I’d been away or sleeping ever since Funny was put to sleep, so this was the first chance to give her a proper burial. (Papa wasn’t about to do it; he’s dug enough holes for animals in his time, and it wouldn’t have been right to do it without me anyway). We decided to bury her out in the Field, by the stream somewhere.

It’s the same Field where I spent countless hours throughout high school. A roughly 15 acre parcel bisected by a slowly meandering stream with a green belt on either side of it. It’s usage has been evolving for a long time now, from the time the first settlers cleared it for livestock to the current plans for a modern athletic facility. When we moved in around 8 years ago, there were some cattle. When the cattle were taken away, the former residents still came and mowed the hay for a few years. That was always an interesting time; until they came to mow the hay, the grass was easily waist high, and we’d take our wheelbarrows and make paths and play hide and seek while avoiding the goose poo. After the hay was mowed, the field would be dotted in square bales of hay, and then later with big hay-filled marshmallows that just begged to be climbed on.

Then we had some horses, in exchange for free riding lessons for my sister. They stayed for a few years, with some coming and going all the time. Recently it’s been a mere soccer field, and a bumpy one at that.

I spent many days there, observing the birds and wildlife. I’d spend hours cutting away blackberries so the native shrubs could re-generate and provide habitat for the hummingbirds. I noticed literally every sapling that sprouted in the riparian area along the creek, cutting back the blackberries when they began to encroach on the young tree’s growing space. Not that I hated the blackberries (who could?). There were simply too many of them.

Then I grew busy with paid work and university, though I spent much time in my vegetable garden as well. I visited less and less often, and these days the only times I pass through are when I plunge down the hill from the bus-stop on the way home. Much of the work I did will be undone; blackberries grow so unbelievably fast. My main goal was to give the native vegetation enough of a headstart that it would shade out the blackberries and escape from that suffocating blackberry blanket.

So today, going for a walk there for the first time in what feels like forever, was a joy to my spirit, almost like meeting an old friend or someone’s all grown up kids. Seeing the alders and birches and cottonwoods that were my height when last I saw them, that are now the height of a three story building. The grove of Pacific Willow that was just a small stand. The hard-hack, or Douglas Spirea, that was threatened by blackberry but is now a self-sustaining patch too dense for blackberry to penetrate. This is a recovering ecosystem that impacts the entire length of Downes Creek right to the Fraser River, and the more the vegetation recovers the better the water quality will be.

Boy, I really am a tree-hugger aren’t I? I know these plants, not just the species, but the individual, better than I know some of my acquaintances. I hope to come back there when I’m 100 and be able to say, you know, I planted that cedar in 2000; just look at it now.

I was there of course, because we were burying Funny. We chose a small, quiet grove of alders. I remember getting angry when Alca, a big black horse with a bit of Arabian in her, and Shazzan, the senior member of the herd, used to rub themselves on those alders when they were just saplings and tear them apart. Now their trunks are 20-30 cm. across, and their leading branches some 15m high.

Underneath them it is quiet and calm; stray rays of sunshine penetrate inside and robins call all around. A black-head grosbeak lands briefly before continuing on. Here, where the stinging nettles are as high as my face, and the grasses just about to go to seed sway and rustle in the breeze, is where we buried Funny, our dear companion. The alders are protected because they are in the mandatory streamside setback that must be adhered to even when they build a track in the field.

One day, just maybe, if transience permits, I’ll take my kids here, or maybe I’ll just be by myself, and the alders will be tall and dying and seed-laden, replaced with the next generation of trees, of hemlocks and cedars, and if I have kids they’ll ask me why I look so solemn, so thoughtful and pensive. And I’ll say, “well, it’s a Funny story…”