ON THE HEALING PROPERTIES OF FORESTS

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Late Starter

All night I’m cold,

terrified of every sound

especially the ones I can’t hear. 

Hungry, of course, the O’Henry bar long gone, 

cigarettes too,

amazed I’ve done this thing,

sixteen, first-time runaway, 

always the late starter.

In the morning I come down from the mountain,

see my mother looking over the bank,

see her relief when she looks up.

She is smaller than I remember.

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When I was sixteen I spent a night up the mountain behind our house. One Sunday in late April, after an argument with my mother, I headed off wearing jeans and a light ski jacket over a long-sleeved sweater, wanting to get away by myself. I climbed up higher than I usually did and sat on a log, despairing over my life as teenagers sometimes do, and then it began to get dark. I started to go back down, but pretty soon it was hard to see where I was going. Shadows everywhere and the occasional cracking of a branch in the distance soon had my heart racing. What if it was a bear? Were they coming out of hibernation now? A cougar? Far below me I could see the flickering lights of some of the houses on the ridge below. I found a rock I could press my back into that was right behind a large evergreen and there I spent the night. I remember watching those distant houses as one by one the lights went out. I was cold and scared and it was a very long night, but I still recall how leaning into that rock and touching that tree kept me sane.

Why am I telling you this? Last night I went to see a couple of films about forests and how important they are to us all.

First up was A 6,000-mile Search for Beauty, a short film by Amy Allcock written and narrated by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes from a manuscript-in-progress about her travels in 2016–17 when she was researching rainforests and climate change. She's been quietly blogging about her travels, little snippets that will surely find their way into her new book. Her posts are accompanied by wonderful photographs and sometimes even pictures of maps she's drawn in her notebooks. Back in September 2016 she blogged about going into the Incomappleux Valley.

One of the spring-fed ponds in the Incomappleux. Photo by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes

The second film was Damien Gillis' Primeval: Enter the Incomappleux, and you owe it to yourself to take 50 minutes and watch this sobering yet stunningly beautiful documentary about a part of BC that is the only Inland Rainforest of its kind on Earth. Some of the trees in the Incomappleux are over 1,000 years old and up to four meters in diameter. Old trees such as these host several varieties of lichen, a staple food for mountain caribou whose numbers are decreasing every year thanks to their preferred forest habitat being opened up by clearcutting or by recreational machines that pack the snow, thereby making it easier for predators like wolves to approach them.

Preserving one of the few old-growth areas left would seem to make sense, and yet it could be logged at any time as one of the largest lumber producers in the world holds cut block licenses for the area. 

When the film ended Valhalla Wilderness Society members Craig Pettitt and Amber Peters fielded questions from the audience, and then we were treated to some delicious snacks provided by Isobel, (I'm sorry I didn't check the exact spelling of her name and therefore invite corrections) in hopes we'd stick around and write a letter in support of having the area become a park with all the protections thereto appended. After seeing the film I'd have written even without the food!

Humans. We always seem to be at odds with each other over something—pipelines, housing issues, and just about anything to do with governments. The Valhalla Wilderness Society's website has a handy page you can look at should you wish to write a letter in support of the proposed Selkirk Mountain Caribou Park. It has the names and contact information of relevant government officials, both provincial and federal, as well as a list of points you can reference when you write. There's also good information to be heard during an interview with director Gillis on CBC Radio's North by Northwest. 

Map image from Valhalla Wilderness Society handout re Selkirk Mountain Caribou Park proposal

What made me think of my night on the mountain so many years ago? There's a scene in the Incomappleux film showing how, in order to get into the rainforest, hikers have to cross a creek via a log. On my way to climb up my mountain I had to get to the other side of Duhamel Creek the same way. It seems that anything worth getting to, worth saving, deserves a little effort. 

How about writing a letter?

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