Cathedral

Let's go back a few years. A lifetime, almost. When I was a child some 70-something years ago, we lived on the far coast of Nootka Island on a narrow strip of flat land above the high tide line. Behind us, the mountain rose steeply, Douglas-Fir clad, unexplored. To the right, a couple more houses, the abandoned remains of a fish cannery, an old dock. That was it. That was the “town”.

On our left, beyond my bedroom, on stilts above the creek, the forest was a green wall. We kids crossed the creek on a fallen log. On the other bank salal bushes made an impenetrable barrier, but another fallen log, this one hollow, tunnelled through. We crawled through on hands and knees, and emerged into a dark, open space, the roof far overhead supported by wide, brown, bark-covered pillars. I called it the cathedral.

My brothers ran ahead, shouting, crossing the small promontory to the shore beyond. There, an islet, a pile of bare rock topped with sun-baked moss and a few trees, was accessible at low tide. There we would run around aimlessly, poke into tide pools, climb the rocks and trees, my brothers shouting all the while. Once we carried lunch and had a picnic.

But often, I let the boys go on and stopped in the cathedral. Here were ancient monsters, trees so tall and wide that they shut out the sunlight, leaving the area in permanent shade. Nothing grew here but the trees, the moss, and evergreen ferns.

I would find a mossy log and sit. Just listening. To the silence, the deep, heavy silence of growing things, occasionally punctuated by a laggard raindrop, filtered through the moss far overhead. Plop!

The forest smelled of wet wood, of sharp-scented moss, of musty ferns. Outside, there was always the smell of salt water, ancient fish-scented lumber; here none of that penetrated. All was green and brown; those colours still bring back the scent of that sanctuary fo me.

Virgin forest: no saws had bitten into this bark, no chainsaws had broken the silence. Looking at Google maps today, I see that the area now is criss-crossed by logging roads, with large blank, clear-cut spaces. The little creek now enters a muddy estuary. I can't find our house.