THE EARTH REMEMBERS EVERYTHING
by
Adrienne Fitzpatrick
B.A., University of Victoria, 2000

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
IN
ENGLISH

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA
April 2012
Adrienne Fitzpatrick © 2012

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The Earth Remembers Everything
A Narrative of Place

In 2004,1 travelled to Auschwitz and Birkenau to witness the site of a massacre. Though
I did not comprehend its impact on a visceral level then, the experience sifted through and
emerged in my writing as a profound connection to place. In addition to Auschwitz, I have been
to massacre sites in Asia, the central interior and northwest coast of British Columbia. My thesis
is a creative recounting of these experiences. I chose the genre of creative non-fiction, as it
allows me to use my poetic prose voice to describe my lived experience, and intersperse it with
historical information. I am drawn to places of disruption and deep emotion, and in finding
narrative that explores these wounded places. In my thesis I hope to show the links between all
these places, starting with my presence in all of them. Though I do not own the stories of any of
these places, I do own my experience of these places. This is a record of my experience.
Edward S Casey contends that we hold memories in the body, which is the centre of our
phenomenological experience of the world. I argue that just as our bodies hold our memories
and experiences, the earth too holds memories. When we go to a site where there has been great
feeling, we participate in that experience through the memories the earth holds. Just as we are
changed by a place, we in turn change a place by our presence; our own thoughts and energies
are mixed in with the undercurrent of energy that is already there.
The hybrid thesis has given me the freedom to pursue my interests in imagination,
memory and place. It has enabled me to see my own creative work and life experience

ii

through the lens of philosophers such as Casey, Jeff Malpas, Yi-Fu Tuan and Simon Schama.
Seeing my words woven with theirs has made me reflect more fully on the power of place, and
my own place in the world.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract
Table of Contents
Introduction
Thesis
Conclusion
Bibliography

Place is prior to all things.
Aristotle
To follow Aristotle's view, The Earth Remembers Everything is a phenomenological
experience of place. I hope to show in my work how this experience can transcend
boundaries and barriers, whether they are personal, cultural or political, to create a deep
personal experience. My view is that the profound is possible, and because of this, changes in
perception, views and emotions surrounding experience of place are possible as well. My
thesis is based on my own experience, with the intention to seek connections, to show how
we are all implicated, indeed involved, in the subtle, sometimes shocking but always
changing experience of place.
I acknowledge that is has been a great privilege to travel and to write about these
places, and that my work engages in historical complexity, including colonialism, capitalism,
racism, and appropriation issues. I could not tell my story without encroaching on these
areas and I trust that the deep respect and compassion I felt at all of these massacre sites
comes through in my work. I recognize that there are other views and stories of these places
that have deep significance, not only personally, but to families, communities and entire
cultures. I reiterate that the underlying theme of my thesis is to express essence, not only of
the experience of place, but of the self in place. Nothing can erase the past or the wounds
incurred by it but it is my hope that a profound sense of place can make room for connection
and healing.
My thesis is a creative non-fictional account but it can also be seen as travel writing.
Though I went to these sites as a tourist, my intention was not to appropriate in any way a
story that was not mine to tell. I wanted to be open to the experience. In my view, that is the
responsibility of a traveller - to learn something about a culture as well as oneself. This is the

attitude in which I approached my work. My interest in massacres sites is not only as sites of
trauma but places of historical significance, where I could be affected by an experience larger
than myself, and to possibly be opened up, changed and able to learn more about my
presence in the world than if I had never gone to these places. As a writer, my hope is that
this thesis be read with the same openness to experience as it was written.

1

In the fall of 1996,1 went to Haida Gwaii and picked chanterelle mushrooms on
Moresby Island. I camped on abandoned logging roads, spent every day walking in the
forest, and most evenings around campfires with the other pickers, many of them
travellers. This is when I first heard the story of Mosquito Lake. People who camped
there had terrible nightmares; they saw family members attacking and betraying each
other. Their experiences were truly horrific, and no one could stay there for long. Though
it was a beautiful lake, the horror the land contained made it what Kenneth Foote calls an
"obliterated site" - a place that is not returned to 'normal' use after a traumatic event. An
obliterated site is stigmatized by the dark side of nature, surrounded by an aura of shame
and silence (24).
My experience on the islands had a great impact on my imagination. Years later,
while I was living in Japan, I began a story about a haunted section of forest I picked in,
called Mile 13. This story became "Green Chain," which was published in Prairie Fire in
2007. When I started graduate school, my imagination again turned to Haida Gwaii, and I
wrote "Mosquito Lake," a poem about the mushroom pickers' nightmares at the lake,
which was published in CV2 in the fall of 2011.
In the spring of 2011, after fifteen years away, I returned to Haida Gwaii with the
intention of revisiting Mosquito Lake, as the legend of the place stayed with me. It has
become the genesis for my project, as it was then that I began linking the affects of
human trauma with the landscape, and how these emotions affect those who come in
contact with the place. It is also when I began connecting narrative to place, and I saw
massacre, or obliterated sites, as a pause or a cease in conversation; the kind of emotional
tension that belies silence. In writing about Mosquito Lake, I realized that I had visited

2

massacre sites in almost every country I had travelled to. Some of them were obvious
tourist sites, but I knew people who refused to go to these places, due to their gruesome
past. What drew me to these places? I decided to write about my experience as a way to
uncover the answer to this question.
My creative thesis is an account of massacre sites that I have visited
internationally and in the Pacific Northwest Coast and Central Interior of British
Columbia. My interest in these places, which I see as examples of violent eruptions that
have occurred throughout the history of humanity, stems from the fact that these events
have created deep disruptions in emotional bonds between people, as well as greatly
affecting and transforming the physical location of each site. I am interested in the
narrative that surrounds these disruptions. How do we say the unsayable? Speak the
unspeakable? For me, the answers lie in the memories of these events that are stored in
the earth. Philosopher Edward Casey contends that all memories are formed and retained
in our bodies: our first, most essential place. I argue that just as our bodies store
memories, so does the earth, and these stories are central to my thesis.
The Earth Remembers Everything combines poetic and creative non-fictional
accounts of my experiences visiting the Cui Chi Tunnels in Vietnam, Tiananmen Square
in China, Hiroshima in Japan, and Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. I have also visited
First Nations sites including Mosquito Lake on Moresby Island and Chinlac, a deserted
Carrier village at the confluence of the Stuart and Nechako Rivers, where the Chilcotin
massacred the Carrier in 1745. Woven through my narrative is the oral history of the
Carrier nation, written in my own words, but taken from the accounts of A.G.(Father)
Morice, from his book The History of the Northern Interior of British Columbia. Though

3

this is a colonial account of the nations of the central interior, I argue that its value lies in
the oral history that was passed on to Morice, due to his knowledge of both the Carrier
and Chilcotin languages. These stories help keep the history of the land alive, a crucial
link to the themes of trauma, memory and place that are the framework of my thesis. This
trip was also the basis of a creative non-fiction piece entitled "Chinlac in Dene means
'wood floats to,'" which was accepted for publication by subTerrain magazine for its
Prince George folio issue, coming out in the winter of 2011.
My intention is to seek links between the international sites I have visited and the
lesser known First Nations sites. In my view, the narrative I have created from my
experiences can be seen as one link, with another being that all these sites represent
wounds that have not truly healed, or if they have healed, these places will never be the
same. They also signify an undercurrent of violence and cruelty that is common in
humanity that is difficult to make sense of and articulate. My goal is to explore these
histories of the earth and the common link between all of them. I contend that ruptures of
human bonds are also ruptures in the earth.
A retaliation to the Chinlac massacre supposedly occurred in 1748 on the Dean
River in the Chilcotin, between Anaheim and Nimpo Lakes. Unfortunately, due to time
constraints, this site will not be included in my thesis. In a conversation with writer Sage
Birchwater, I learned that the area has been marked by commemorative plaques, but that
they have recently been taken away. The Dean River, along with Chinlac and Mosquito
Lake, provides a strong counterpoint to the high profile international sites I have visited. I
argue that the earth holds stories here that are as powerful as any other site in the world.
Though my journeys to these places have been profound and I have enjoyed writing

4

about them, I also realize that there are strong feelings around the history of these places,
and I have approached my travels with a high level of respect and attention. I anticipate
that what I have learned will contribute to the underlying themes of revenge and
retaliation that are so often motives to massacre. I mix historical accounts with my actual
experience of the place.
I see my thesis as a hybrid form of travel writing that includes historical
information, poetic impressions and creative non-fiction accounts of the deep experience
that place has had on me as both a traveller and a writer. I have chosen the genre of
creative non-fiction as it allows me the freedom to explore my experience of place in my
own voice offering a true account of events mixed in with created dialogue and some
invented characters. This freedom allows me to delve into the actual and the imaginative
as sources of expression. To me, this combination accurately reflects my experience of
place, which is grounded by physical bounds that are also permeable and open to change.
Creative non-fiction allows my work to address both the limits and spontaneity of
experience. While my work focuses on specific places in writing about massacre sites,
the underlying theme is the phenomenological experience of place. My view of
phenomenology is the search for the essence, not only of a place, but the experience of
the place. Creative non-fiction also allows me to express something of my own essence,
as the underlying core of all writing, I believe, is the need to express oneself. My thesis
will combine these experiences in my own voice along with my research into place
theories that support my views. My research and creative work focuses on an area that is
rarely discussed but crucial to further understanding of place in two main areas: first, by
linking massacre sites from different places in the world, it demonstrates the continuing

5

effect that the stories of the earth have on us, and second, as the ruptures of the earth are
also ruptures in human bonds, they reflect the lack of separation between self and place. I
argue that this interconnection is intrinsic and is the very root of what it means to be
human and living in the world.
Place is prior to all things, claimed Aristotle, one of the first recorded thinkers on
place. He also saw place as a vessel that cannot essentially be moved, as it is our bodies
that move in place and this movement forms the basis of our experience of the world. We
are both rooted and free to move, and our entire existence is held within the confines of
place (Casey 31). In addition to place as the experiential fact of our existence,
philosopher J.E. Malpas claims that place is also primary to the construction of meaning
and society (Cresswell 32). I argue that this combination of rootedness and freedom of
movement forms the basis of our experience not only of the world but also of the self in
the world; it is the foundation of identity which in turn forms culture. The meaning of our
experience of the world is derived from place. Further, places are affected and informed,
just as we are, by a history of experiences; this is what we encounter when we are in
place.
By the end of the seventeenth century, however, place had become geometrized.
It became space, which was conceived as a continuous extension of length, breadth and
width that could be three dimensionally mapped. In this view, space, or site, superseded
place as a topic of interest. Descartes argued that place was not a container but an open
area specified by maps, making sites essentially indifferent to what might occupy or be
contained in them. Sites do not enclose, and there are no points of attachment. An
example of site, in Descartes' view, can be a building site; an area that fills up with

6

clutter and events that appear and disappear. Newton, however, saw place and space as
closely tied. Place was a part of space, a specific region located within the more basic
area of space (Malpas 28). Space, seen as general and containing sites, also does not
possess a horizon, while place exhibits an internal and external horizon. The external
encompasses all places and regions, held within the line of earth meeting the sky, while
the internal horizon is our immanent inner limit, the one that holds us in place (Casey
203). These horizons contain both place and our bodies in place, upholding Aristotle's
assertion that the primary action of place is containing. Casey argues that the "point is
that place, by virtue of its unencompassability by anything other than itself, is at once the
limit and the condition of all that exists" (15).
If place is the container of experience, so is the body, which, as I mentioned
earlier, is our most essential place. Casey views the body as a place of passage, both inter
and intra of place: intra meaning a place of anchoring, and inter is the place between
places - the in between (194). Thus, the essential link between all these narratives of
massacre is my body; my presence in all these sites can symbolize the in-between, the
place where my experiences and past encounters the story of place. As exampled by the
nightmares at Mosquito Lake, there is a visceral connection between the land and the
body, which combines to create an in-between, or inter space, which mixes the essence of
the land and those emplaced in it. This in-between space can also be seen as "thirdspace,"
as developed by the phenomenal geographer Edward Soja, Soja based his theory on Henri
Lefebvre's work that deconstructs the binaries that structure how we see the world:
space/place, real/imagined, objective/subjective. Thirdspace is practiced and lived rather
than simply being material (conceived) or mental (perceived) (Cresswell 38). I find this

7

definition apt in describing my experience of place, as it includes the combination of
factors at play that create this in-between experience: the memories and stories of a place,
and the stories and memories in the presence of a person. Both affect each other to create
a lived experience - a thirdspace. In my thesis, I have attempted to explore this inbetween experience considering how place is changed by the experience of a human
presence, just as presence is affected by place. Further, I also realize that the in-between
includes much more than the earth and the presence of a human; it contains and is
affected by the non-human as well, which includes abundant plant and animal life, as
well as the supernatural. Though it is not the focus of my work, the non-human is
included in sections of my accounts of massacre sites. The search for mushrooms and
timber, for example, shows how a quest can force us out of our usual paths to confront
the story of place. This openness to experience enables us to encounter not only what is
in the land, but what is within us. Historian Simon Schama claims that landscape is the
work of the mind (7). I argue that whatever is in us is reflected on the land and further,
that the land, including the non-human, has its own mind and way of being that reflects
back to us.
To follow Kant's theory that all knowledge begins with experience, I argue that
knowledge of place begins with the bodily experience of being-in-place. To know a
place, is an intimate experience: it requires the presence of a body, which is the basis of
our own experience of the world. As I mentioned earlier, my thesis is based on my bodily
experience of place, and, I argue that not only is my body one of the links between all
these sites, but also that my body determines how I am emplaced in the world. I cannot
experience place or know it without the presence of my own distinctive being; thus, it is

8

essential to my work that I have the physical experience of being in a place. Though
reading provides valuable information, it also slants certain perceptions and images.
Although I read basic historical information of many of the sites I visited, I found that the
facts pale compared to actual experience. The truly exhilarating part of a journey is the
spontaneous, direct experience of the body in place, as the body is continually taking us
into place.
We are bodily oriented by what Husserl termed "the absolute here." In this sense,
I see my body in place as a means of being altogether here. It is an all-or-nothing affair
(Casey 51). Being a traveller and often getting lost offers another dimension to the
absolute here, as any sense of disorientation can be overcome by what Whitehead argues
as finding other "(t)heres": "The traveller who has lost his way should not ask where am
I? What he really wants to know is: where are the other places?" (54) Knowing the 'here'
is how we know where we are. The reason for this is that the body is never simply
positioned in space; it is implicated in the theres that surround it. When travelling, this
experience is especially evident, as the organic body is a 'total event' that reaches out to
many locations (66). This total event of being interacts with the event of place, making
the experience of place both internal and external. This interaction of body and place
happens continually, but, as a traveller, this sense is heightened. I was often disorientated,
which caused me to reach out, and open us up enough to recognize the encounter between
myself and place as the deep experience it is.
The absolute here also infers that there is no doubt about where you are. I argue
that one can only experience the in-between - the inter of experience between body and
place - in the absolute here. However, I also contend that while the body is the lived

9

experience of the world in the moment of the here, our actual experience of place
perdures since the intermingling of presence and place continues. This is the distinct
experience that I hope to capture in my work, by demonstrating how place lives on in our
imaginations and memories even after we leave.
From the absolute character of here, the body proceeds into directionality in
which near and far have more porous and emotional boundaries than can be measured by
degree. Casey posits that emotional, cognitive and memorial elements structure the
experience of near and far (58). I argue that the subtleties of near and far inform the
phenomenological experiences we have, as more than any other dyad, near and far reflect
the way we are inserted in the life-world. It also measures the self-world that is emplaced
spatially and temporally. Place theorist Yi Fu Tuan argues that we get to know the world
through human perception and experience of place. He has developed the term topophilia
to refer to the affective bond between people and place (Cresswell 20). To me, Tuan's
topophilia is very close in meaning to what phenomenologists mean by essence, that
which makes something what it is (23). As I have mentioned, the search for essence, for
meaning and feeling, is the drive behind experience.
When I spoke of my travels to massacre sites with friends, they were often
incredulous as to why I would want to go. I told them that the dark places are as
important as the light. Going to massacre sites, for me, was a balancing of the generally
carefree existence of a traveller. We are all implicated in the atrocities as well as the
triumphs that happen in this world. A sense of repulsion was evident among some of the
visitors at the sites themselves. I found this interesting, as there was a kind of
confrontation that was occurring, which I view as the darkness of the place meeting some

10

deep internal experiences in those who were encountering it. This engagement of
personal experience and the imagination interests me, and, I argue, helps to create the
memories through which place perdures.
Near and far also engage in depth. In particular, what is of interest to me is
primordial depth, which Merleau-Ponty saw as 'existential'. This depth is more like a
medium than an axis line. Primal depth is not a matter of space or time: "It is a matter perhaps the matter - of place," which is based on the active intervention of the lived body
(68). I argue that the emotional and memorial experiences of the near and far are based in
the medium of primal depth, which is also the basis of imaginative engagement with
place. This mixture is what constitutes the in-between; the physical, emotional and
memorial aspects of place that lives on in the body, and the actual place itself.
Mosquito Lake was my first transformative experience of the in-between, which
includes memories of trauma the place holds. It inscribed itself on my imagination and
lives on. This perdurance, I argue, has little to do with actual memory of place. Schama
contends that "we are accustomed to separate nature and human perception into two
realms, [when] they are, in fact, indivisible" (6). An interesting experience illustrates this
point. When I went back to Moresby Island, driving down the old logging roads I had
been on fifteen years earlier, Skidegate Lake and Mosquito Lake had switched locations
in my memory. When I arrived at Skidegate Lake, a place I had been to almost every day
during the months I spent on the island, I remembered it as Mosquito Lake. When I drove
past the sign that said Mosquito Lake, I became confused. Hadn't I just been to Mosquito
Lake? The memory of Mosquito Lake stayed with me as a place, but also, perhaps more
importantly, as a story. To me, this suggests that Aristotle's model of place as container

11

remains deeply pertinent to the remembrance of place - that it has a holding power
(Casey 212-13). I argue that this power is physical, emotional and spiritual. Though
things may give structure to place as a visible world, they do not always contain the
invisible, which has equal, if not greater power to inscribe place in our memory.
Cultural geographer Carl Sauer argues that "cultural landscape is fashioned from
a natural landscape by a cultural group. Culture is the agent, natural area the medium,
cultural landscape the result" (343). This interplay of culture and experience is how we
become attached to place on a personal and collective level. Thus, the experience of
massacre sites is produced by the combination of an individual who is also a member of a
collective (a tourist, a woman, a Canadian,) and a place that has been both an individual
and collective experience. The experience is both personal and social, and culminates in a
profound impact on culture.
Massacre sites enter the collective memory, but they are remembered, or not,
differently. Some sites are obliterated, as in the case of Mosquito Lake, where the
traumatic event persists in stories and nightmares, Chinlac has been excavated by
anthropologists and memorialized by the Carrier with a stone marker, which
acknowledges the massacre and its enormous affect on the Carrier nation. A physical
marker requires a conversation about the traumatic event, and a consensus about how to
memorialize it. Because of this, memorials are inherently political. Yet, they do not
necessarily speak for an entire population but rather for those who have the means to
erect it. Even if there is a vote, memorials do not include the voices of all who were
affected by a tragedy. Even though Chinlac has been commemorated, the feeling of the
place is of obliteration. Nothing grows there. As with the other sites I visited, it has not

12

been returned to use. Anh Hua, in her essay "What we all long for: Memory, Trauma and
Emotional Geographies," claims that "memory is a narrative, not just a replica of
experience. It is a form of interpretation. And how we remember is as much about desire
and denial as it is about remembrance" (139). Referring back to my view of the narrative
of place, Chinlac represents a pause in a conversation, or a conversation that has stopped.
The story of the event at Chinlac is not my story, but my experience of the place is; I
moved in the silence, the deep grief that still hangs in the air and that has sunk in the soil.
There are no markers of commemoration of the massacre at Tiananmen Square,
though the event is internationally known. The square is the heart of Beijing, a major
meeting place for Chinese and tourists alike, but it also represents a pause in a
conversation that signifies an unwillingness to discuss, on the part of the Chinese people,
what the massacre meant and continues to mean in the story of the nation. My experience
of Tiananmen was of a great emptiness that I experience in my body. If there is a pause,
however, it is edged by defiance,. It is still a place of protest, where violence occurs.
The Peace Park in Hiroshima, on the other hand, has a plethora of statues, stones,
and fountains as well as the ghost of the past represented by the A-Bomb Dome, which
presides over the park. All these objects are inscribed with memory: the small community
that was incinerated at the epicenter; a school, a business; a stone chest that contains the
ashes of thousands of people who died in the blast. There is an eternal flame that
commemorates the trauma that is inscribed not only on the Japanese psyche, but also on
the earth in the physical landscape of Hiroshima. The museum records the horrors the
Japanese lived through via translated stories of survivors that line the walls. Comparing
memory to narrative, Hiroshima represents many conversations happening at once; the

13

past is acknowledged and discussed but the wound is opened and may never entirely heal.
The park is a crowded, beautiful place with an underlying sadness.
Though there are few stand alone memorials at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the physical
experience of walking down the dusty lanes, through the buildings and barracks where
the prisoners lived, suffered and died, turns these sites into places of memory. An
especially powerful experience is walking through the ovens where inmates were gassed.
The barracks at Birkenau are empty shells, the wooden slats where people lay every night
seem pitiful and bare, like human shelves. There are wash basins and a painting on one
wall. All the smoke stacks of the ovens have been removed. What I remember is the deep
silence, how the earth stopped responding in some way. There were no birds flying across
the expanse of either Auschwitz or Birkenau, as if in memorial, or avoidance of a deep
pain.
At Cui Chi, just out of Saigon, the tunnels that the South Vietnamese built
underground are a memorial to suffering, war and survival. Even being underground,
squeezing through the cool, dark tunnels, it was difficult to imagine what it would have
been like to have lived there. Walking through the jungle, there are still deep pits in the
earth with shaipened bamboo poles spiking out. There is the sense in all these sites of
trauma that the past is present. Memories perdure in these places, just as my memories of
the places perdure in me.

Defining the genre of my work has been challenging. I see it as a creative nonfiction account of my intimate experience of place which has its roots in travel writing. It
is not travel writing in the traditional sense, though in a contemporary sense it is on the

14

border. Travel writing began in the fifteenth century with written accounts of colonial
explorers from countries such as France, England and Spain, who set out to find the
Northwest Passage, to discover India, and ultimately to conquer lands for the glory and
prestige of the nation. The first travelogues were written by sailors, usually men, and
much of this early writing focused on appropriation. Whatever these voyagers discovered
was to be claimed for their country. Whoever they found in their path were to be
subdued. Travelogues were not of literary value so much as a record of booty, of riches
discovered and captured.
The time of the Grand Tour - from the latter part of the seventeenth through the
nineteenth centuries - continues in this vein, albeit for more sophisticated reasons.
Writers such as Boswell and Shelley all made requisite trips to Europe, which was a
prestigious finishing school for the well-heeled and culturally minded, and their works
reflected a narrow view of the world they experienced. Again, this writing was done
mainly by men. With the exception of a few stalwart female travellers and writers, such
as Freya Stark and Mary Kingsley, there would have been no female voices at all. In the
Victorian era the world was still a restrictive place for women and even with colonialism
on the decline, unaccompanied women were rarely allowed to venture outside the home.
When they did, they often appropriated a male voice and their work was rarely viewed on
the same level as that of their male counterparts.
The combination of World War II and the advent of trains and passenger ships
made travel accessible to all in the twentieth century. This was the dawn of mass tourism
and it is now commonplace to go half way around the world in a day, with very little time
to prepare for what awaits upon arrival. Writers such as Pico Iyer claim this global space

15

structures a new way of being. For Iyer, we are in the age of the global citizen, where
boundaries that used to be traversed by the privileged few are regularly crossed by
anyone who can afford a ticket. This ability creates the opportunity to experience many
cultures not possible in the past as well as the tendency to take this great gift for granted.
Tourism has become commercialized and travel writing, as a result, has become
commodified; travel writers work for magazines, which in turn sell tours to readers. This
kind of work has not garnered respect among the literary community.
There is, however, some exemplary work in the genre of contemporary travel
writing. Peter Mathiessen's The Snow Leopard (1979) and Bruce Chatwin's The
Songlines (1986) are deeply personal records not only of physical exploration, but also of
interesting and unwieldy internal journeys. Both writers begin with a quest: to see the
rare snow leopard for Mathiessen, and to trace the aboriginal songlines in Australia for
Chatwin, and neither fulfills his goals. Instead, they are waylaid, confused, opened up.
Their resulting books are not accounts of conquest, or appropriations of a culture through
the cool eye of the observer; rather, they record personal journeys while emplaced in the
cultures of Nepal and Australia.
The strongest influence on my work is Peter Hessler, who calls himself a long
form journalist. I read his first book River Town, which is based on his experience of
teaching English in China as a member of the Peace Corps. I found much of his
experience living in Asia similar to my own. He wrote very honestly about the physical
experience of being in China, and about his equally powerful contacts with people. For
me, Hessler's work evokes people as landmarks that grounded him and also shared his
journey. I incorporated this idea in my own work by including the people I travelled with,

16

whether they were friends, strangers or fellow travellers. On a bus full of travellers
crossing a border into an unknown country there is a subtle bonding that happens,
produced by excitement and fear. Being-in-the-world is vulnerable; personal boundaries
are broken down, and the journey becomes about the people and place, or more
accurately, about people in place.
I realize that the examples of contemporary travel writing I have chosen have all
been written by men. Their work seems to have resonated with me the most. I have read
travel writing and theory by women, most notably Sara Mills, who repudiates the
colonial, patriarchal past of travel writing. I would suggest, however, that the
male/female dichotomy in travel writing is changing, as women are travelling, writing,
and receiving recognition for their work. Though not, in my view, literary travel writing,
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is still an empowering story of a woman striking out
on her own. Women are starting to make their mark in this genre, and I acknowledge that
without the significant advancements and freedoms that women now enjoy, especially
Western women, my work could not have been accomplished. It is on the backs of Mary
Kingsley and other Victorian writers that I owe my current freedom to travel and write.
My unmarried and childless state was often, sometimes enviously, commented on when I
lived abroad, and I realized the privilege I had in coming from a country that lets me
follow whatever path I choose. I was treated differently as a woman, but more
specifically as a Westerner, a foreigner. That was the most important difference for me. It
did not matter so much that I was a woman, but that I was a Western woman.
While I write as a woman who travels, gender is not a central concern in my
work. I argue that the experience of place as a woman or a man is profoundly personal, I

17

did not see myself specifically as a woman travelling to massacre sites, but rather as a
body emplaced in a culture, directly experiencing place. The space I am interested in is
the in-between, the thirdspace, where the human and the nonhuman connect.
Though I never did find out if there had been massacres on Moresby in the past, I
did hear stories from locals while I visited that Sasquatches are on the islands, that you
can tell they are near by the stench, and their laboured breathing. This story stayed with
me. It illustrates, to my mind, how stories live in the land and effect the landscape. I used
this image of the Sasquatch in one of my stories, when Cook encounters one in the forest.
There is a territoriality that I wanted to explore: who does the land belong to? Cook and
the creature both inhabit the same place, but are from different worlds. They also seek
similar ends. Cook wants to claim the area - Mile 13 - as his own territory, where he can
start logging and make a life. He makes his mark by chopping down a tree. But he is in
the Sasquatch's territory; it tracks him, and has left its own marks; a pile of clam shells, a
pile of dung. Sasquatch, in my view, has always been at Mile 13; its story is a part of the
landscape. Schama states that "the wilderness, after all, does not locate itself, does not
name itself," and to me the story of Sasquatch is of the wild, it cannot be removed or
claimed. Like the memory of a massacre, it lives in the land, and is experienced, like
Cook does, by being emplaced (7).
Reading the stories of the first Carriers, albeit through the voice of the colonial
A.G. Morice, gave me a sense of the territory I was and am living in. I am from
Vanderhoof, which is the traditional territory of the Sai'kuz Carrier, but I knew very little
about them. There were the annual trips to Chinlac for senior science students, guided by
George LaBrash, but the actual story of the massacre, as told by Father Morice, had a

18

powerful effect on my imagination. I saw it as a connection to all the other massacre sites
I had visited; it was the foundation story of massacre. It captures the fear, the pain and
anguish, the retaliation; the cycle that seems to continue throughout history. Massacre
never ends. The unspeakable, the unsayable is continually inscribed on the land; it lives
in the land. I also included the story of Na'kwoel, the first man to have been storied by
the Carrier. His story, to me, is a commemoration to the past and to place. He was the
first man to own an adze; he was violent, he loved his sons to a fault. He railed against
old age and caused a side of mountain to fall when he died. His life was completely
bound with the land; indeed, his body became stone and he entered the landscape - the
human becoming non human. These stories weave the story of the land I am from in with
the stories of the places I have been to.
Another reason why I have chosen these stories is that I wanted to make them my
own. This may be an appropriation of an appropriation, as the works of Father Morice are
merely translations put into his own words. There are varying degrees of respect for
Father Morice and his work, and I also know that there is some disagreement amongst the
Carrier nation that the massacre was actually committed by the Cree. There is also deep
silence and pain around certain aspects of First Nations history that would take me years
to unravel. In my debate with myself about using oral histories, I knew I would run into
the problem of appropriating someone else's voice. If I interviewed someone, I would
have to honour their voice, how they chose to tell the story. As this is a work of creative
non-fiction, however, it is my story. So I decided to honour a story already told - already
appropriated - and use my own voice. All these interlinked experiences are, in this sense,
my story.

19

Why have I partaken in the experiences of all these wounded places where the
narrative has stopped, where there are many and varied voices? I argue that I have added
my own unspoken, my own unsayable to the ongoing conversation. This is some of my
essence. Everyone has their own dark places. My attempt to give voice to my experience
of wounded places is also an attempt to give voice to my own pained places. In exploring
the in between of all these sites, The Earth Remembers Everything can also be seen as a
record of my own in between.

My thesis weaves together three avenues of knowledge: the place theorists whose
insights spoke to me and closely mirrored my own thoughts; the genre of creative nonfiction that allowed me the freedom to use personal and imaginative accounts to express
my experience of place in my own voice. The theory has greatly influenced the critical
thinking surrounding my work; it has been valuable in giving perspective, not to mention
the words, to articulate what I knew and felt instinctively in the writing of my thesis.
Further, the genre of creative non-fiction was a great breakthrough for me. Using this
form in my thesis was the first time I ever used it and it was liberating. I found the right
voice for this work. Finally, the underlying cohesive theme that there is no separation
between the land and people connects all my far-ranging accounts of massacre sites. The
land and the people are one, and what happens on and to the land deeply affects all those
who come in contact with it.

20

At the mushroom pickers' camp there are stories about the haunted lake.
"I don't believe it," says Nigel, the crooked-nosed Australian.
"I haven't had nightmares since I was a kid and my grandmother was standing at
the foot of my bed," I say. "She had her dark heart in her hands. Her eyes were black
holes."
"You dream of death at the lake." Toby the blonde skater swigs back a beer. We
are standing around a licking fire and the guts of berry fed deer. "Lucy and I stayed there
and we dreamed of marauders three nights in a row. Lucy woke up screaming, we packed
up, slept in the truck on some logging road."
Dogs rummage through scraps, strips of dead deer. There are hunters and you
know them. Your mother kills your father. Your sister has a gash on her arm, you can see
bone. It won't heal. It won't heal. People you loved with your whole self. It was a
massacre. The earth remembers everything.

POLAND
Leaning out the window of the train, hot spring sun warms my face, wind tears
my eyes. Land slopes and rolls along, brilliant yellow fields, a few bored dogs watching.
Rolling green hills with cottages needing an extra coat of paint; doors hanging off hinges,
hammers, rusted saws strewn. Fresh laundry needing to be gathered in from the yard.
Passengers around us murmur and the rustle of dinner being unpacked prompts a "You
hungry?" from Kat. Kat is short for Katherine. Tall, blonde and from Denver; she laughs
easily, gives into to my whims. She's recovering from a failed affair. Her boyfriend
drove her to the airport and she cried the whole way. He had to pull over so she could get

21

a hold of herself, so she wouldn't miss her flight. In Prague, she is what my friends call a
flat mate. Our flat has round wide windows and two balconies where we sit and smoke.
We are teaching English to very smart, unimpressed students.
"I am STARVED," I declare.
We have not even thought about making dinner so we go to the dining car, square
tables with pale peach covers, fake carnations in white vases. The air smells of burnt
butter, onions and the salty yeast of rising bread. We order goulash and dumplings from
a sour-faced waiter.
With full stomachs and a glass of wine, we dodge stockinged and bare feet jutting
out at odd angles in the aisle. Our beds have been made in our absence, a sleepy calm
has ascended. Soft sleeping sighs, eruption of snores. We flip coins and Kat gets the top
bunk and we settle in for the night after a furtive trip to the bathroom to brush our teeth.
Close the window, close the blinds, chat ourselves to sleep. What seems like minutes
later we are shocked awake by the customs official standing at the entrance of our car. A
bright hall light illuminates the outline of his frame, short, bulky. His face is shaded by
the wide brim of his cap. Business-like voice requesting passports. He peruses our
documents and hands them back and abruptly turns. Kat's voice booms:
"Can we get a stamp?"
"No," he grunts, annoyed and is gone.
"No? Why not?" She trails off. "What a rude bastard," she whispers to me. We
laugh a bit and the train rumbles and jerks. My body rolls to the sudden bursts of
movement and I imagine all the other sleeping bodies on the train rolling, sleeping,
rolling, sleeping.

22

That night I dream of our street in Prague, where I am sitting on our balcony
which overlooks a narrow cobble-stoned street. I am watching dream people walking
below, no one I recognize. Then a tall thin man with a brown dog leaping and barking
beside him turns the corner and walks up just below the balcony and stops. He is trying
to control the dog but then the dog starts howling, long mournful sobs. They are both
disheveled, and I can't make out his face, just his mouth as he turns his head up to the
sky, his lips move and a voice comes in to my head You must get ready. Such a clear
voice. I wake up immediately. I see Kat's hand dangle near the window.
We arrive at seven am and grab some bread and sausage at the station and find a
cab to take us to our hostel. The driver, distracted, balding barely looks at us when we
get in and we are already moving when he glances at our address, nods. Our hostel turns
out to be a college dormitory with a long stall of showers. From across the courtyard we
can see men showering, steam clouds, glints of skin.

Krakow is cobble-stoned, smooth brick buildings, winking windows, nuns in dark
robes flit across side streets, imposing churches on every block. We trudge the slow
incline of a road to the church where Pope John Paul preached, passing tourists with
cameras, stores with fresh irises in the windows. At the church, which is somehow quiet
though crammed with people, there is a bell the size of a small house at the top of a
narrow winding stair. I can imagine it rings with a depth and clarity that I have never
heard.
"Stop crying!" A stylish middle-aged mother hisses at her daughter.

23

She is pale, blotchy and sniffling, with long, dark braided hair and pink shoes.
"I'm tired!"
Mother and daughter are at a stand-off on the stairs.
"Travel is hell," Kat whispers under her breath.
After the church we scramble down an embankment to the river. "What's the river
called?" I ask Kat but I know she doesn't know. We travel well together. No forced
conversation. Instant intimacy that often comes with traveling, family histories, past
loves, has sparked fast friendship. Hurts bask in the open air of our balcony, seem less
daunting. The word 'regroup' comes up, and 'space'. I listen to Kat, glass of wine in
hand, passing a smoke. I don't want to be home, I tell her. Japan changed me, the world
opened up. I was going to Kyoto every weekend, climbing mountains to the tiny temples
and listening to the cicadas, the bamboo click clack in the wind, watching the monkeys
scurry up the paths, careful not to look them in the eye to avoid a possible attack. I want
to keep going, feel so constrained so easily, and I am lucky and selfish right now,
discontented, restless and unwilling at this moment to grab what is lying there, just below
the surface, shimmering and alive.
"What does it look like," she asks, "this shimmering?"
"An exotic fish, a koi in a Chinese garden, a salmon, bucking free in the ocean.
Do you know that a salmon molts, that it loses its skin like a snake when it returns
home?"
We lean back in our chairs, into the world like it will hold us so we can do some
great thing, or escape for a little while, or heal. Krakow continues on the other side of the

24

river and for as far as we can see. Warm June sun melts us into a lounging recline on the
concrete ledge where we perch.

A white, dusty bus picks us up at 7:30 and we are the first ones in, so we take the
best seats near the front. The driver is long and skinny, carrying on an intense
conversation with the portly, middle-aged tour guide. It is all in Polish but Kat and I play
a game and pretend that they're discussing their uptight boss, stupid tourists, money, a
really good restaurant. The pros and cons of buying a country home. Conversations that
would be irritating, funny or intriguing, if we could understand them, but in another
language, they're like a spell being cast. The words parsed, mysterious, incantatory like
chanting of the Buddhist monks in Japan, in Thailand, in Laos, the om that thrums and
buzzes, burrows into you and then bursts out. Om. We are off on a labyrinthine journey to
pick up the others at hotels and the city is just waking up. Warm spring air drifts and
huddles in the corners of tiny cafes; we pass bakeries where customers stand, their
morning mouths churning bread and coffee catatonic like cud, gruel of life. Finally the
bus is full and our tour guide introduces himself as Petr, born and raised in Krakow. His
voice is slow, somber and matches the solemn blue of his eyes. The other tourists are
middle-aged and formally dressed, khaki shorts, crisp white shirts and blouses. Sensible
walking shoes.
He stands in front of the bus and starts talking, his slow voice rising just above
the rustling and mumbling. He knows eventually people will stop talking and listen; he
has done this a million times, his eyes blanking out our faces. The drive to Auschwitz will
take an hour and a half. There is a short film at the museum and then you are free to

25

wander the camp and take in its exhibits. There are guided tours in a variety of
languages if you wish. After a few hours there, we will regroup and go to Birkenau for a
few hours in the afternoon. There are guided tours there as well. Petr counts our
nodding heads. There are twelve of you. Don't get lost. We leave Birkenau at three and
will be back in Krakow for dinner, drop you off at your hotels. He sits down and resumes
his involved conversation with the driver.
City melts away and the country homes are tidy, all the laundry and tools
gathered in, folded and packed away. Everything in its place. Window shutters painted
in smart shades of red, lawns are cut and flowers toss their luscious June yellow, pink and
purple coifs. Kat nods off in the seat beside me, the sun lighting half her face, her brown
firm arms. The couple behind us share a muffin, slurp coffee, mumble "where's the
guide book, how far did he say it was? " Heads are nodding, rolling side to side. Did they
have relatives that died here? My ancestors could have died here. They could have been
the killers.
I need to see the wound.
There's a bubble of silence that happens when the home of language is not
available, a reprieve from the constant change and decision-making, tinged with
loneliness. It is not unlike waiting in line at the bank or a store, a kind of enforced
meditation. Homesickness strikes, a sucker punch, then ebbs. In an hour we arrive and
tumble out of the bus; we join a crowd of hundreds, it seems, filing into a large building
where the movie will be shown. Wooden chairs shuffle and scrape the cement floor in a
large, cool, utilitarian room and the movie is old, black and white with trains and children
and it flies by me. I don't catch a word. I don't get it at all and the lights go on and the

26

exit doors open and we are turned out into the sun like children at recess and there it is.
Arbeit Macht Frei.
This sign like some omen shivers me when I pass under it, crossing over into
ghost town brick buildings with curved roofs separated by dirt foot paths, patches of
flourishing grass. Glassed in rooms separated by the creak of knotted wooden floors,
piles of hair, piles of glasses, piles of clothes, piles of toys. Crutches, plastic legs, plastic
arms. Piles of shoes, kid-sized, women's heels. Small dark rooms with slatted spaces for
air where people spent days in solitary. In an empty courtyard there was a pole with a
hook on it. I heard one of the tour guides say that this was where people were punished;
they were hung howling by their wrists for hours.
"Do you want to get a tour guide?" Kat whispers, like we are being watched.
"I don't know. How much do you want to know?"
She looks at me, squinting in the sun. There are groups thronging through the
camp, huddled close to their guides like clinging children. We stand in the middle of the
road for a few moments.
"What do you think of all the mounds of stuff?" I ask Kat. "Is that what becomes
of us? A pair of glasses?"
"Maybe," she says. "It's hot. You're chest is turning red. Did you bring a shirt?"
"Yeah." I pull a blue cotton long sleeve out and shuck it on. It clings to my
clammy skin.
We follow the crowds to a small building with a flat roof, a half buried bunker.
People are lining up to get in and there is a steady stream coming out, like marching ants.

27

As we get closer a couple of young women dressed in shorts and tanks ahead of us stop
suddenly, hands on hips.
"I'm NOT going in there!" One of them cries out as Kat and I approach.
"What is it," I ask. They are both blonde, a bit plump, strong Australian accents.
"It's the ovens," the one closest to me says, distraught.
"Where you from?"
"Melbourne," they both answer.
We stand and chat a bit about Krakow. They are staying close to our hostel and
introduce themselves as Lila and Linda. Sisters.
"This place is horrible," Linda laughs, rueful. "We're heading back to the bus."
"I don't know why we came here," Lila says and they turn around.
"Should we?" I'm curious, feel dirty. "Let's go." We follow the crowd, line up
like pilgrims to see something holy. Descending the three steps, an oppressive wave of
heat shot through with sweat hits, room is cramped, guides talk above the shuffling and
mumbling. This was the first gas chamber at the camp and was kept to show the
annihilation that was going on here.. . The largest chambers and ovens were at
Birkenau but they have been destroyed. What happened was this: the inmates were
segregated into two groups, women and children together and then the men. They were
told they were going to bathe so everyone took off their clothes. Once they entered the
chambers, gas came out of the walls. There was no water. Panic soaked in, changed the
molecules of the steel and cement like a force field, toxic, undiluted. Small bits like
shrapnel absorb into our bodies, like gas seeping in, silent flood. Ledges of seats and
little shower heads like the stalls at our hostel, innocent, utilitarian.

28

For a moment we are submerged, buried alive in consuming tongues of panic,
arms and legs pounding in fear and then futility against the steel walls. Like a drum still
percussing, reverberating fear, flowing out in waves, a grenade exploding the sea. We
emerge from the chamber disoriented, stand in the sun. Breathe. It is time to head back
to the bus.
The faces of the other travellers are flushed and overwhelmed. I am reminded of
another hot bus full of tourists in Chiang Mai, where shooting rapids in a bamboo raft and
hiking in the hills to Hmong villages, created a casual camaraderie and personal
disclosure that connected us. Here, we are confronted by enormity, by horror and history
and it is too much to talk about. Eyes are averted. Quiet reigns, thoughts reined in.
Somber Petr announces we will be at Birkenau in fifteen minutes.
Brzezinka. Polish word for birch.
Auschwitz has three simple words to introduce its horror. Birkenau has train
tracks and a narrow brick train station, relentless stare of the lookout tower. Kat and I
find a map of the site at the tourist centre and start our exploration through the rows of
barracks, blank buildings, dirt floors. Deep, battered sinks for washing. Wooden slats of
bunks in stacks of three. Grounds feel like a graveyard, the barracks are memorials with
no written names, fringed with stark, thin birch trees, sky wide and void of birds singing,
flying.
"Here is the place where the old women were left to starve," Kat points at a mark
on the map, crumpled and sweaty in her wide hands.
When the women became too old or ill to work anymore, they were moved here
and given no food or water. Warm wind blows through the hollow empty center, shafts

29

of dirt fan the doorways and on to the next one, where a painting of German officials in
dark blue, thick severe moustaches still menacing. They are holding clubs in their hands,
waving them in the air. Konigsburg is written above the scene.
Earth has absorbed so much emotion that all it has the energy to do is grow grass.
It is June and the buildings are dappled. I would love a smoke but I won't, it would feel
like a desecration. All the crematoriums have been destroyed. There are only flat pieces
of concrete to mark where they were and memorials of bright yellow daffodils, soft pink
carnations, black and white photos rest on the corners of memory. Kat and I settle on
one, the heat of the concrete rough on our bare legs, passing a bottle of water between us.
Unknowable hovers at the entrances, the gates, the railroad, and rises up through the soles
of my feet. We walk back to the bus, weary, like we are wading through knee deep water
instead of grass. The ride back is quiet, even Petr and the driver have worn out their
conversation. Something has been settled, maybe, between them, the world fitting back in
to where it should be, and we are the voyeurs of black holes. The earth remembers
everything.

DENEi
The Carrier village of Chinlac is on the far side of Stuart Lake and is best reached by
canoe in the summer months. When I was in high school, there were class trips to
Chinlac, as it was and is an archaeological site, a place of artifacts, of memory. There
were photographs in the school yearbook of campsites and clowning students and I heard
stories of haunting, shadowy presences, sleepless nights. There was a massacre at this
site in 1745 but I had a dim idea of what massacre meant. Certainly something bloody

30

and raw, occurring for reasons unknowable and primal. This was my teenage version of
things. A Catholic priest, Father Morice, spent ten years in Fort St James and worked
closely with the Carrier. Previously, he had lived in Wiliams Lake and began his study of
Chilcotin as well as Carrier, and became proficient in both languages. He learned and
transcribed their stories.

*

On our last day in Krakow, we come across the Remuh synagogue beside the
Jewish cemetery, a smooth, white-washed building guarded by a black gate and up
winding stairs there is a gathering of school age children surrounding an old man, short,
bald, sagging blue eyes with a bit of dance in them. Laughing, he clears his throat, and a
quiet descends. The kids are expectant, American we find out from a translator, a brighteyed woman with a bouncy dark pony tail.
"The man is a holocaust survivor, one of Oskar Schindler's kids," she says by
way of introduction. "He was chosen from the Krakow ghetto at the age of ten and
worked in one of Schindler's factories making mess kits for the German soldiers."
"I was very scared." His voice muffled, a bit shy. "But I kept quiet, kept busy,
for my family. Most of whom, including my mother, father and brother, were killed at
Auschwitz." Placid face, no wrinkle of emotion worries it.
"I survived the war by working in other factories and by the time it was over I
was a young man and an apprentice mechanic. I never left Krakow." I notice that a few
teeth are missing in his warm smile. "And when I turned twenty-one, I married a

31

Catholic girl and we had five children!" He laughs to himself and the talk ends.
Everyone claps enthusiastically.
That night at the hostel we watch the men shower from the women's bathroom.
They preen, soap up, some shave, shampoo rolling down their faces in white waves.
"They know we are watching," I tell Kat. They are putting on a show. We eat bread and
cheese in our room and then go out to the town square, drink wine while the gypsies
make their rounds, playing violins, a tattered guitar. They are young.
"Ten? Eleven?" I say to Kat.
Some part of me is hollowed out, a clear space for the wind to blow through. We
almost miss our train even though we've had all day to get ready, we scramble and swear
on the platform. God. What is wrong with us.
Later we laugh, roll and rock in our narrow beds like babies. We return to Prague
and discover that our other flat mate, Robert, has left without paying rent. No note, just
dust under his vacated bed. I see this as a sign and I decide to go home. It is the summer
of 2004. Kat stays on, finds a job, falls in and out of love with a Czech man and moves
to England. I find a job in Vancouver and begin the process of what I call normal life,
but I'm restless. Kat meets a man in the army and begins a long distance relationship.
She moves back to Colorado and teaches but is restless too.
What is it? She writes me. This urge.

DENE ii
The main tribes of the Northern Interior are divided into four. The Sekani occupy
the western slope of the Rocky Mountains and all the adjoining territory, reaching as far

32

as the 53rd latitude. The Babine inhabit the shores of the lake called after them and the
Bulkley valley, though many of them hunt near French and Cambie Lakes. The Carrier
have villages all the way from Stuart Lake to Alexandria on the Fraser, and the Chilcotin
mainly occupy the valley of the river to which they have given their name.
These tribes form the Western Dene, with Dene meaning 'men'.

*

In 2008,1 go to Ho Chi Minh City to work for a friend for six months which
extends to a year because I fall in love with a Japanese man. I am becoming unhappy
though I try to convince myself I am fine. Kat finds a job travelling with a retired army
captain who wants to go back to Vietnam before he dies. She makes the arrangements,
keeps him company. When they come to Ho Chi Minh City, I meet Kat at a Lebanese
restaurant down one of the narrow, twisting dark alleys. There is outdoor seating, plush
pillows, candles, puffs of sweet apple hookah smoke. When I see her I begin to sing and
the Kat came back, the very next day, yes, the Kat came back, we thought she was a
goner, but the Kat came back the very next day, the Kat couldn't stay away. She is
effusive, laughing, tanned, wearing big silver hoops and heels that show off her shapely,
athletic legs.
"Should I leave him," she asks me. "I never see him."
" I don't know. Do you love him?"
"Love is the least of it," she sips her wine.
"I can't stay here. It kills me to leave him but this is not for me."

33

We order tangines and a bottle of wine. It has been four years since our trip to
Krakow, since we lived in our flat with the balcony where we talked, smoked, healed a
little. We don't mention Auschwitz or Birkenau.

Toby dreams he crosses the lake. Marauders throw flaming hatchets past his
head, hiss as they plunge. He paddles an old canoe, insides scooped out, scratched raw.
He can hear the howl follow, searing sound. Leaves of skin glint sinking waves, glow of
bone. Water still cold after all that burning. Canoe reaches a hill so steep he scuttles
sideways. Shell of torn jacket pummeled with cones, branches tired of holding. All this
dreaming war arrows slice. Salal rustles, grumbling bear gnawing roots, berries. Blood
pounding shifting guts sweat speckled. As a child he made shadows on grass, shape of
cross. He did not dream then. Bear becomes his father, smooth hair glowing skin. Only
circle of light in the forest. When Toby wakes, Lucy is screaming. His father shakes his
head his hollow mouth shaped no.

HAIDA GWAII
No one goes to Mile 13 to pick mushrooms except Cook. Efficient, he chops,
cuts, carries. Chanterelles he picks show up in omelettes, in stews, peppery and light.
"There must be more where they came from," Corey says. "Picking territory gets
snatched up quickly. Here's a chance to grab ours."
"But isn't it Cook's territory?" I say, judicious, trying to back out for good
reason. Respecting tribal lines, invisible to me but inscribed as surely as any drawn on a
map.

34

"He doesn't care, I asked him." Corey gives me a level gaze. So it is decided.
We're going in. We're going in with buckets that used to hold oil, cleaned out, scoured
but still retaining a whiff of noxious residue. Bear bells, fluorescent rain gear that is not
standing up to the weather. Box cutters as mushroom scalpels. Packs around our waists
with nuts, raisins, chocolate chips. Gardening gloves for a firm grip of the thin plastic
handle. My fingers ache in them. Dirt still clings to my scalp after my shower yesterday,
imprint of permanent earth on my knees. Corey insists that we bring bright pink tape to
mark our way in so we can find our way out.
"But we have a compass," I say. They don't always work here, he tells me.
Something about iron deposits or the ghost of a logger killed here awhile back, sliced up
at the green chain, messes with the directions. The green chain, a makeshift mill with a
giant saw is at the center of a clearing, Corey tells me, a few miles north from the road. I
imagine a crude gallows, where trees refuse to grow, moss shrivels from branches.
Impatient to get going, he is already climbing the embankment, looking over his
shoulder: "Come on!"
An experienced picker, Corey offers terse instructions. Make sure you wear cork
boots, double tie your laces. Stop to take a reading on your compass at the top of a hill,
every few hundred feet if you can remember. Watch where you step, it's easy to break an
ankle if you slip between logs. I am careful, careful like I am carrying tea cups in my
hands while walking tightrope. Moisture coats my face, twists my hair into a thick,
immovable wave. At night we are so exhausted we hardly speak and in the morning I
wake up first, make coffee in the blue-tarp lean-to, sit on the cold bench. Mist makes
pudding pools in the hollows of the road. Knees, elbows ache. Noseeums, tiny

35

transparent flies, dive into my eyes, ears, try to crawl up my nose. Bites and unbearable
itch force me down the road, involuntary morning walk.
We met in a bar in Vancouver, long glances over brims of beer. On a break from
tree planting contracts, he told me about Haida Gwaii, about Yoho, sand dunes in
Oregon. Letters with pressed purple, orange, blue petals, seeds settled at the crease of the
envelope. Smell of stony mountain slopes, sun warmed earth. Three months later we are
squatting on an abandoned logging road, huddling together for warmth, instructions
filling the up and down of our days. Passing patches of trees ripped and strewn and
rotting. Every so often I stop to tie ribbons on sturdy branches, so they will stand out
from the blobs of moss, bulbous mounds thick at the base of trees, spatters from a child's
paint brush.
"Does the ghost do anything," I ask. Our feet make light hollow sounds on the
moss like we are treading softly on the moon. Smell of earth beneath, taste of sea. I am
hungry but it is too soon for lunch.
"No. He watches," Corey answers, out of breath from a fight through a salal
bush. Streaks of blood from scratches graze his fair skin, leaves stick out of his hair,
sheaves of wheat ruffling his collar.
Trailing blobs of bright pink ribbon, we continue north. I think of the van,
peaceful behind us, long to be safe in the seat, rolling down the road. In the gully below
a patch of peach chanterelles calls out to Corey, who descends on then, ravenous
gatherer. I catch my breath, cold sweat slips down my spine. While he can spot them
instantly, it takes a few minutes for them to peep out at me from the moss and rot that
they are hiding in. Clamber over fallen logs, haul our half full pails over and crunch

36

down to cut. Monotony of trees, trying to calm my sea sick stomach. Constant fear of
bears. At the campfire in the evening there are stories, bears eating salal berries surprised
by a sudden face in the bush. Curious ones climb trees, claws ripping through thin bark.
You're supposed to make noise, fight fear, look big, jump up and down. We are a bony
nuisance or novelty, Corey says, and the pickers nod. Fire licks the dried wood and
roasting deer, raw meat braising brown.
As I lean down and cut, heat blazes the back of my neck, unmistakable sense of
presence. Corey cuts stems and doesn't raise his head, so I carry on. Stories pass the
barriers of knowing. I could be making it up. Down the next hill, our buckets covered
with old t-shirts to keep the leaves and moss out.
"Let's stop for lunch," I say to the back of his head.
"We've just started," he looks at me, frustrated.
"Do you feel like someone is watching you?" He looks at me blankly; no, he
didn't. "Why? Do you?"
"Yeah, when we were picking I thought someone was staring at me. Felt like get
out, you know?"
"Yeah, well, there's plenty of good picking. The ghost isn't going to hurt you."

DENE iii
Na'kwoel is the first really historical aborigine mentioned by the Carrier Indians
of Stuart Lake. General agreement of his birth is 1660 and his name became the symbol
of old age. He was short and very corpulent, which was quite rare among the western
Dene. He held the position of toeneza, or hereditary nobleman, of the Stuart Lake clan

37

and is the first Dene who owned an iron axe or adze, which he acquired in 1730 from the
village of Tsechah, which is now Hazelton, on the Skeena. He held a great feast for his
fellow-tribesmen and the adze hung like swinging gold from the rafters of the lodge to be
admired. Na'kwoel kept it always within his sight except one winter, when it fell off a
bough it was tied to into the snow. It was found only after a Medicine Man divined it,
being lead by his prayers to the gods.

*

Cook heard about Mile 13 from the loggers at the boarding house breakfast table
years ago, men twisted over eggs and porridge, knotted and rough. No one had been
there in awhile, green chain blade was slimy with moss but there were plenty of trees to
be taken, that's for sure. Wouldn't recommend going alone, son, they said.
"I'd just moved from the mainland. Didn't know anyone," Cook said. We are in
the cooking shack, chopping vegetables for venison stew. I help him out, rest from the
bush. And it's warm in the shack, out of the rain.
"They told me 'it's a two man job, and with you, maybe three,"' they laughed at
him, chortling around the table. He decided then to go, report back to the geezers that
Mile 13 was his. He had been shadowing for a week now, bucked a few trees on his own
and it was time to stake his territory. No one would stop him at Mile 13.
"I was skinny then, not like now," he pats his soft stomach. He grew up in the
interior, the lakes and rivers and open space of the Carrier. Lithe, he slipped through the
rain forest and wasn't stopped by the thick salal. Only homesick in the evenings, he told
me, he would've written to his aunt but he didn't know how. He learned the basics in

38

school, the loops and curves of his name but he quit in grade eight, didn't learn how to
write his insides.
Packed lunch in his burlap sack, the truck let him off at Mile 13 to raised
eyebrows and silence. Sack slung across his shoulder, he carried his chainsaw and axe up
the embankment and into the soft moss. Quiet closed in, moist embrace. Sound of his
thunk thunk footsteps, he stopped every once in awhile to rest, chain saw weighing his
right side. I can see him, picking his way through, sharp eyes measuring the huge trees
that crowded out the sun. Moss dripping from branches, sound of wings, tchock, tchock,
tchock of the raven. Breath rising and falling with the hills. Last night, I dreamed the
hills were swelling waves, rising higher and higher until I was crawling, hand to knee,
like a child.
"It may have been going on for awhile but there was the sound of breathing."
Sizzle of frying venison, air heavy with herbs and oil, we both stir steady. "It was heavy,
like an animal dying right beside me. Reminded me of a horse my uncle shot, it had been
hit by a truck. And it tried so hard to keep breathing. Sounded like that. And the smell
of shit was so strong, almost made me sick." He kept stirring, I added the onions. "Felt
like someone was watching me, you know? When your neck gets all hot, you look
around and no one is there. Frick. I thought that maybe one of the men had followed to
scare me, but there was no way that breathing was from a man."
"What did you do?" I asked. Cook wiped his hands on his smudged apron, lit a
smoke, bits of white and black hair in his eyes.
"Thought I would scare it off, take a swing with my axe, make some noise. I
yelled really loud, aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh, maybe it was a bear. I started up my chain saw,

39

chunks were flying, and I bucked the tree. Kind of like, this is my territory, leave me
alone."
Shaking, sweating, too afraid to look anywhere but straight ahead to the next hill,
he told me, the smell got worse. Thing was breathing like its lungs were full, like it was
drowning. Cook grabbed his gear, moved on. There was money in the forest, he wasn't
going back until he saw the size the trees. And he didn't want the men would know he
was afraid.
At the top of the next hill, there was a clearing with a trail of mushrooms in a dip
of valley below. By a shredding trunk was a pyramid of mussel shells, perfectly shaped,
stacked in precise diagonals. Pile came to just past his knees when he got up close.
"Who could eat all this?" He looked at me, his eyes narrowed. "Frick. This was
no place for a picnic, believe me." Breathing became a high pitched scream like a
warning, off to his right.
"It was beside me, close enough that there was a dark shadow in the bush.
Screaming right at me, I could feel its eyes." Rasping gasps curdled breath. He knew
then the horror behind the silence of the men and he hated them, he told me, angrily
hacking up the venison for the second pot of stew.
"I couldn't go back, it kept walking beside me. It didn't get any closer but it
didn't go. Frick. I made it to the green chain, notched a few more trees, show it that it
was my territory now, it had better go." Cook swept his arm in front of him, clearing an
invisible path.

40

Luke got lost past Mosquito Lake last night. Said all night he was so thirsty, he
was more thirsty than afraid. And here there is so much water. I'd be so hungry I'd see
fish frying in the bush, smell the smoke if I let myself. Or remember things like when my
best friend left in grade nine I wrote a poem about her by the side of a choppy lake.
Maybe I'd remember that. I think maybe I would remember lying down in the sand in
some hot place, feeling the perfectness of my body, the completeness of that somehow.
What does it matter when it's dark and there's no one to listen. Keeping your flashlight
on till it burns out. You're in some war movie you watched when you were a kid and safe
on the couch. Keeping your wits about you like someone would steal them. Laugh while
they're taking them.

At Skidegate Lake, I choose a place that is protected from the still cold wind so
the smoke from the fire doesn't blow in my face. Swirling wisps and crackles rouse me
from the dream of watching coals flare up, crumble. Snow capped mountain presides
over the lapping depths. Not many campers here, too early in the season. Fifteen years
ago Corey and I camped on an abandoned logging road not far from here, bounced and
rolled in the van. I got out and moved fallen trees from our path. In Sandspit, loggers
leaned out their windows to glare at us, hippie mushroom pickers, and they blasted by us
on the narrow dirt roads to Moresby Camp. Now, logging has stopped. Everything has
been cut for the time being. Muddy roads, knee deep potholes force slow swerving
travel. Deer pass me, nonchalant, on the road.
Nightmares happened here. Campers told me that first a mist covered the lake
and then it cleared, hatchets and arrows flying. Crying, moaning, ravens translating who

41

was killing who. Acrid smoke flesh incineration. Pickers didn't stay long at Skidegate
Lake, the uncovering was too much, bones and fears dug up and swimming in the lake,
coming straight for you.
At Mile 13,1 pull over, gather water, nuts and chocolate, compass. No bright
tape, or buckets. No corks. Trail in is still deep, wet brown cut through the moss, edging
around salal and wild rose bushes. Pickers up in Masset, who still come here every year,
tell me it's not as good as it used to be. ATV tracks have ripped through where the tread
of boots hardly left a mark. Machines cut down time, no more hauling buckets.
Mushrooms don't get crushed, stay clean. No need for bear bells, screech of motors
drowns out any warnings of ravens. After a few minutes of trudging, I recognize the
feeling of the first salal bush we broke through to where the hills roll.

DENE iv
One day when Na'kwoel was butchering a caribou on solid lake ice, killed and
brought to him by friendly neighbours, he heard footsteps on the frozen snow. Bold, they
echoed in the stillness, then a sudden stop. It was a native from Natleh, Fraser Lake, and
Na'kwoel immediately seized his bow and arrow and aimed it at the unwelcome intruder.
"You know that we do not speak with people from Natleh. Why are you here?"
The visitor pretended not to notice and if he was afraid, he hid it well. Snow blew
veils of white dust between them. He looked straight into Na'kwoel's eyes and walked
over to where other members of Na'kwoel's tribe stood on the lake, watching. They
welcomed the stranger and talked and laughed for some time when the stranger suddenly
bent his bow and aimed his arrow at Na'kwoel.

42

"Who are you, old Na'kwoel, who will not speak to our people. What reason do I
have not to sink this arrow between your ribs."
The men stood on the firm ice in taut silence, waiting for some word or gesture of
forgiveness or aggression. Na'kwoel sharp dark eyes took their time deciding and
eventually his body bent back to his work. The stranger from Natleh chatted and laughed
awhile longer and then returned to his village, named for the salmon that come back.

*

Horror of the sound passed like the shock of pain after a blow. Cook stopped
wondering what it was. He could still hear the heavy thump of footsteps beside him,
keeping pace. Dense like a moving mountain, whatever it was, pungent smell warning
him to stay on edge.
We are taking a break, sharing a smoke by Skidegate Lake, grey and motionless,
sprouting stalky reeds like spears.
Outline of the green chain in the bush reminded him of an extinct animal. "Some
kind of long, lean raptor with a gouged crown down its back," he said, his face drawn, his
compact body sprawled on a log. "There were piles of logs waiting to be cut, so I turned
on the generator, found the switch for the blade and it was a little wobbly, but it worked."
Eyes watched him but he ignored it. Maybe it would at the sound of his weapon.
Screech of the blade the sound of money rolling in.
"Then a huge hairy beast comes into the clearing. Tiny black eyes, teeth bared
and a wide squashed nose. Smell so strong I could hardly breathe." Cook stood up on
the log, his short thick arms flung straight up beside his head, trying to convey its size,

43

but I can't picture it. "We stood and looked at each other. It was breathing like it was
dying but I couldn't see the wound."

After lunch, we continue to the green chain. Corey hasn't seen it in years and he
wants to show me the scene of the crime. Back of my neck is still tingling, burn of eyes
but I try to put it out of my mind. It's just a story. Logger was killed so long ago that
there can't be anything left of him here. Further in we go, the more nervous I get. It's
always like this, like wading into the ocean past your head until you're walking
underwater. Further and further away from the van and the road, where the clear light
hits and you can see where the next bend is, comforting curve. I stand at the next hill and
check my compass. Due north it points and Corey is already heading down to the next
mushroom patch. His internal radar is alert, he doesn't need the safety of checking and
re-checking the way I do.
"So good that we have come here! This is it. Our new territory. We have to come
at least once a week, these buttons need to grow some more, waste to pick them now."
He glances over his shoulder at me with a look of are you listening? He sees me staring
at the next hill, bright pink ribbon tied to the end of a mossy branch. I have tied well and
carefully and it is easy to see from here. I point to it, say, there's a ribbon I tied and
we're going north, I just checked.
Corey says nothing, leaves his buckets where the mushrooms are and hikes up the
hill, grabs the branch, checks it and keeps going straight down the next valley, up the

44

next mossy hill. Checking the ribbons on the branches to be sure that we have come full
circle in the maze, that we are being lead out the way we came in.

DENE v
Na'kwoel had two sons, A'ke'toes and Chichanit, both of whom wielded great
influence among their co-tribesmen, with A'ke'toes being in line to become hereditary
chief. He was a fierce, jealous man whose demons forced his two wives, Chalh'tas and
Atete, to live in isolated seclusion, fighting off accusations of unfaithfulness. Tormented
and lonely, Chalh'tas was quick to anger and fought often with her husband. Atete was
more submissive, overwhelmed by the demands of her husband and Chalh'tas. A'ke'toes
was believed to have the forces of evil at his command, to be possessed by malicious
spirits that could prove fatal to himself and those close to him. He was feared by the
Carrier and was protected by the love of Na'kwoel.

*

After some false starts, I find the path that leads to the green chain. Piles of brush
hide clear cuts, raw sides of hills laid bare like slabs of meat. Dead stumps grey in the
mist. Sprinkling of saplings are protected with tall white plastic sheaths to keep the deer
away. Tree graveyard seems like nothing will ever grow here again. An hour in and I
should be at the green chain but the clearing has been taken over by salal and I dive in
making swimming strokes, twisted branches tearing my jacket, catching my hair. Earth

45

has claimed most of the structure and the saw lays on the moss, entirely covered in green.
No longer a symbol of prosperity, a weapon, a landmark. Extinct, like Cook said.
Corey told me about the time he was lost for days in the forest, kept alive with
berries and water from streams. We are lying in bed in the van, held by the black night.
He was so cold and thirsty that it consumed his fear. Panicked, he wandered at first and
then he gave in, surrendered out of exhaustion. Helicopters and other pickers searched
the hillsides of the territory where he picked, guessing that he had hit a patch of iron ore,
metal that disturbed his compass. He was found huddled at the base of a tree and cried
with relief, shaky when he walked out. A rookie, he was bolder, less afraid, he said,
more aware than before he got lost. He went picking after a few days rest and stopped
talking about it altogether. There isn't a lot to say when you are alone in the woods.
When you know where you're going and the picking is good, the forest is friendly. When
you are cold and lost, the moss turns into shrouds, keeping you from the light. You fold
in, focus on survival, on imminent rescue. Like after a meal and all the blood rushes to
your stomach, all your thoughts crowd around that one thing.

Wake to the sound of rat-a-tat choppers, searchlights beam through sloped tent
like some war movie. Thought I was in Vietnam leaving killing fields, a wounded hero
going home. Clutched guts scrunched fists to my sides, breathed through it. Toby
whispers "it's okay Nigel" cold hands on my flushed arms. "Choppers will take you to
Rupert. Your appendix burst, don't move. You were yelling," Toby says "you wouldn't
stop." I tell him I saw Lucy drag bodies from the lake, wading through flaming arrows
untouched somehow. I called her name from shore but I couldn't move. Marauders

46

threw axes, the trees screamed, kept missing her. Canoes capsized flinging bodies, the
lake red with blood. "It's OK" Toby says. "Lucy saves the lake."

VIETNAM
Vietnam is oppressive wet heat, apocalyptic murk hangs in the air, ground
particles, detritus from the war that everyone breathes in, though no one ever talks about
it. Relentless roar of sputtery motorcycles swerving and swaying on the pocked streets,
skimming by pedestrians, guided by road warriors, expressionless eyes, faces covered
with cloth masks that look surgical from a distance but when I buy my own, they are pink
and blue, patterned with flowers, ribbons. Long black pony tails and high heels mark out
the women. The men wear cheap flip flops and sag a bit more in their seats. Terror slows
my steps so that it takes me half an hour to cross an intersection.
"Act like you're a pylon", Winnie says, "and they will go around you." Winnie is
my friend and my boss, giving me the benefit of her time and experience, showing me
where to shop, what restaurants are good, how much you can expect to pay for clothes
and food.
"Which cabs are the good ones?"
"The white ones with the green writing. The drivers speak some English usually
and they won't rip you off." She has lived in Saigon for five years already and is adept,
matter of fact. I rent a room in the centre of Ho Chi Minh City, in a narrow cinder block
building, blue tile with white skinny balconies legoed amongst yellow, pink, green
blocks, pushing up against the pavement, the confines of narrow alleys, looking for space
to grow.

47

Within a week I am working and I have a xe om, motorcycle driver, Mr. Quang,
who picks me up at my door for work. He must be in his fifties and so slight that I have
to be careful not to crowd him off his seat. A makeshift cafe with plastic stools sets up
every morning in the alley, along with the fruit lady and the couple that make
sandwiches. Coffee is thick and sweet, the bread crunchy with feathery insides, tang of
pickle and salt of hot fried egg. Young men in dark blue pants and crisp white shirts
smoke, laugh, ice tinkling on their teeth, constantly checking their cell phones. Sleek
SUV's squeeze by, picking up expat executives, holding up the constant hum of
motorcycles for a moment but then they veer around like ants encountering obstacles.
Drivers stand and chat with the men drinking coffee and mothers half drag their
uniformed children to school. Harry Potter backpacks, smiling Winnie the Pooh. At
work, I am interviewing young Vietnamese for jobs with our clients, checking for
English, confidence, good eye contact. Applicants, mainly young women, are eager and
want to work for foreign, prestigious companies. Is the boss a foreigner? If not, they are
not interested: No chance to improve English.
One lunch break, I find a new restaurant, a two story outdoor cafe with a pond on
the main floor, murky water and the flash of fins. From bins of food I pick out fried pork
chops, rice and green beans, find a table on the top deck, wreathed with hanging lanterns,
fringe of elegant trees. Leaves flicker in the breeze. Burn holes in the red table cloths,
glasses of iced beer click, laughter. It was difficult to walk here, crumbling sidewalks
crowded with parked motorcycles, vendors selling t-shirts, coconuts, handbags from
China. A charming waiter teaches me numbers, writing them out on my stained paper
placemat.

48

"One is mo!" He declares in his laughing way. His hair is styled to stand straight
up with the use of gel, which does not flag in the heat.
"Mo, hai, ba\ That's one, two, three. It's also what you say for drinking. Mot
tram. Say mo jam, means one hundred." He shows me a one hundred dong note with the
beatific face of Ho Chi Minh. I go to the outdoor cafe twice a week and eventually learn
the numbers, which I cobble together with my street and the first thing I learn is my
address- moi tarn bis wee tee minh kai. I am triumphant. I can find my way home.
I go to the backpacker district, Pham Ngu Lao to seek out company; busy blocks
of hostels, restaurants, bars, internet cafes, revelers drinking beer, waves of tourists, of
Vietnamese on the sidewalks, chatting in alleys. Indoor and outdoor markets crowd
narrow streets, tables with raw lumps of beef, pork, squirming fish, bundles of bananas,
coconuts, stern women calling children out of the street. One night I meet a woman from
Vancouver, Teresa, middle-aged and chubby with a green and yellow scarf shot through
with silver tied through her unruly hair, cheeks flushed from the beer and the heat. She
was on her way home after two months living in Phnom Penh, volunteering at an
international aid organization.
"I lived by the river and watched old people pick through the garbage every
morning. The riverbank is full of hotels with old foreign men and young Cambodian
girls they rent. It's disgusting. The heat, the bugs, my place was a dump.. ..I kept trying
to talk to the girls saying don't do it, they're pigs. But they need the money. It's awful.
I didn't know what else to say. There was this great restaurant. I went there all the time.
The owners were so wonderful." Putting down her glass, she looked at me with
bewildered eyes. "I wondered what I was doing there. I felt so useless."

49

DENE vi
One such secluded place where the family stayed was Long Island, at the outlet of
Stuart Lake, five miles from the village of Tsauche, where their tribesmen lived on the
same lake. A violent fight started between A'ke'toes and Chalh'tas, in which she
accused him of the recent death of her two children. It started like many of their fights,
angry words hurled like stones, raining down wounds but this day it escalated to a raging
storm of blows and Chalh'tas became determined to kill her husband. She fell on him
and cried out to Atete to help her.
"If you do not help me I will kill you myself!" she screamed and Atete, who fell
on A'ke'toes with more fear than rage. They beat him to death and dismembered his
remains, Chalh'tas feeling triumph and Atete intense fear and shame. They carried his
bones to the mouth of a stream emptying on the opposite side of the lake, and buried
them in the sand.

•

When I pick my way around the hawkers and travellers to our appointed meeting
spot, the Sink, or Peace Cafe, Kelly is waiting, reading a travel guide, his Singha beer tshirt already sticking to his bit of a belly.
"Kelly!"
He rises. "ADRIENNE!" Big warm bear hug, he is clean shaven, leaner than
when he is at home. He is known, familiar, like a landmark.
"How was your trip?"

50

"Fine. Got in last night, ended up arguing with the cab driver, he was driving
around in circles, running up the meter." We order bacon and eggs, Vietnamese coffee.
"How are you?" he asks, looking over at me quickly. De Tham Street in front of
us is a crowd of taxis, buses, ladies in matching print tops and bottoms that remind me of
pajamas, old bow legged ladies with cone hats selling fruit, coconut drinks, xe oms, men
and boys smoking on the seats of their motorcycles parked on the sidewalk. Children
coming to our table with stacks of books in their arms; Lonely Planet Guides to Vietnam,
Laos, Cambodia, Graham Greene's The Quiet American. They stand silent in front of us
until we say no thank you and they move on to the next table.
"I'm okay. Adjusting. It's so hot and noisy. Work is hard." Kelly and I were
roommates for seven years in a revolving number of houses in East Vancouver. We have
survived friends, lovers, boyfriends, girlfriends, pets and cleaning disputes. One night in
Bangkok we shared a room in a hotel. I was living in Japan and had come to travel with
him. He cuddled up to me and I froze.
"Kelly! What the hell?"
"I missed you," he said. I removed his hand from my hip. We have since never
spoken of that moment.
"The bus to Cui Chi leaves at nine right across the street. You got everything?"
"We don't need much, just some water. I got money changed at the airport."
"What do you think of the city?"
"Cross between Bangkok and India. Except India is worse. Crazy, crazy traffic,
people following you around. Traffic here makes Bangkok look slow; it's all the

51

motorcycles. Food's really good. Chicks are pretty cute," he winks at me, crossing his
legs, a sandal hanging off his toe.
The bus is already full when we arrive, so the driver pulls out seats that block the
narrow aisle and stuffs us all in. Forty of us in a bus that comfortably seats twenty-five.
Kelly and I are next to a couple from England, Matt and Kerry.
"What happens if we have to get out? Quickly? We can't MOVE in here! And
it's so bloody HOT!" Matt complains.
"How do we get out? In an emergency?" Kerry wonders aloud.
"Slowly, I'd say. Slow as hell."
"I hear it's cooler there," Kerry says hopefully, telling us that they are heading to
Hanoi the next day. She is blonde, flushed cheeks, freckled arms. Acid coffee churns in
my stomach and the oxygen seems to be all used up. As the bus pulls away from the curb,
a group of skinny, beautiful kids kick a deflated soccer ball into traffic, their mothers call
out in sharp, staccato voices, call out to passing tourists in loud, listless voices, carry on
their chats that sound like arguments, the caw of crows. Eyes weary, wary. Pots of soup
and noodles at a tiny street cafe, plastic tables accompanied by tiny plastic stools like the
furniture from childhood tea parties. Customers slurp, chat, smoke. Wafts of charring
meat mixes with exhaust.
The tour guide shuts the flapping doors as we lurch forward into traffic, grabs a
crackling microphone as he clears his throat.
"Good...morning. My name is Thanh. It's spelled T- H- A -N -H. It is
pronounced 'ton'. Like ton of fun!" He is tall and more solidly built than many other
Vietnamese men I have seen, lustrous black hair cut short, slicked back with gel, unlike

52

the usual parted on the side style. His white shirt has a blue and white name tag of the
tour company with his name printed in black. THANH. Ton.
Sweaty heads bob and roll and panic, incited by claustrophobia, tingles up my
spine. All I can think about is how do I get off the bus? Even if I could? Where would I
go? Wander through the miles of back alleys, be chased by dogs, listen to the screech of
karaoke from tiny cement living rooms?
"I spent two years living in America, in California, where I learned English,"
Thanh continues. His pronunciation is slow but clear, like he is reading a well-practiced
script, "so I could come back to my country and talk to YOU."
Kelly laughs beside me. "This Thanh guy is pretty funny."
"I was born in Saigon, I am Saigonese. All people from here call Ho Chi Minh
City Saigon. We are the workers. Saigon is a lifestyle city. We are going to a residence
of war orphans on the way to Cui Chi. These people have lost their family. Or they have
lost limbs, or are sick from the war. They are very talented artists."
"How long are we going to be there?" someone asks from the front of the bus.
"This stop wasn't mentioned when we bought the tickets."
We start and stop through the centre of the city, streets, sidewalks, alleys are
swarming. A few of the sightseers on the bus are munching on sandwiches, the smell of
fried eggs in the close heat is overpowering.
Thanh is quick. "Not long at all. They are very talented. We will be there one
hour!" And he sits down.
"We will be expected to buy something," Kelly says and Matt nods in agreement.
After an hour of slow progress, the city thins out, replaced by fields of skinny trees and

53

rice paddies. Oxen pulling ploughs and dots of wide brimmed hats mark farmers,
digging, pulling, pushing. When they stand up they still seem bent, like curved wire.
Roads turn to gravel and a fine mist of dust floats through the open windows until finally
we pull up to a field with a hangar-like building and a few sheds. We file out slow as
hell, as Matt predicted, and follow Thanh to the entrance.
"This should be an interesting detour," Kelly laughs. India has taught him to
wait, he says. "I have to go every day to the factory or nothing will get done. They're
always happy to see me, make tea, chat, I ask how things are going with my clothes, ask
to see things and they show me. And I come the next day. Same thing. But if I don't go
they will forget about me, not do anything. And I need my shipment by a certain time
and they say they will make it for sure. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't."
"Why do you keep going back?"
"I don't know. It's the way it is."
The hangar is cool, fans swish swish from the ceiling to bring us back to life. The
ground and plywood walls are covered with pearl in-laid Vietnamese women, elegant in
their ao dai, riding bicycles, white fabric flowing, waves of black hair. Young men and
women are bent over, sanding wood, painting frames. Some look up and smile at us,
hopeful, others completely ignore us. Shelves of black and apple red lacquered bowls
gleam and when I pick them up they seem to float in my hand. Wall hangings dashed
with Chinese characters, women crossing a bridge, iconic cone hats.
We file out and Thanh herds us back to the bus. Some of the travellers carry
packages wrapped in newspaper.
"Cramming back in our sardine can." Matt says under his breath.

54

Instead of a movie, Thanh gives a presentation in a square room with scraping
wooden chairs that reminds me of Auschwitz, with the exception of whirring fans and the
dripping heat. Swish Swish. Thanh stands beside a diagram of the tunnels, which look
like the elaborate paths of ants corkscrewing into the ground. Halls and meeting rooms,
kitchens and bedrooms. An entire community subsumed. Through an open door the
jungle beckons, thin trees, hillocks, screech of cicadas. Air free of fumes from exhaust,
salt and tang of food. Stillness. Thanh uses a pointer that reminds me of my Grade Two
teacher Mrs. Benner, firm diction, frequent eye contact with the class but with Thanh's
distinctive, forceful voice.
"The Viet Cong planned their attacks here," he points to a conference room,
square shaped and separate from the other spaces that are round and hovel-like.
Expansive, the heart of the underground village, where all the men met, the soldiers and
commanders and generals, drinking, smoking, planning. "People carried on their entire
lives underground.' Swish, swish. Part of our group is nodding off to Thanh's tone.
Though distinct, it lacks cadence to rouse us from the heat. "They cooked. Raised their
children. They even got married. And had a honeymoon! Underground!" He points to a
small roundish blob at the far reaches of the community, a private space. "This is where
the happy couple spent the first few weeks of their marriage, alone together. They didn't
have to work." They were allowed to be happy together before rising to the surface and
continuing with life, with the war. But they were fortified, according to Thanh's tone, by
love.
He went on some more, said a few things about the Tet Attack, which was
planned here as well. But my mind wanders, trying to imagine a life underground. I

55

cannot. But I cannot imagine a war going on above me either. Would I have escaped?
Left my home? But to where? War was all around. The Vietnamese dug in, they stood
their ground underground, coming up from the depths to maraud in the night like ghosts,
like the Terra Cotta warriors standing at attention in the ground in China. Except they
were alive and fighting, planning, getting married in the dark earth.

DENE vii
The women hid his bows and arrows in the woods and rocks of Stuart River and
fled to Fraser Lake, leaving behind a message with the Tsauche tribe that following one
of their usual disputes, A'ke'toes had tried to kill them but they escaped his wrath in his
canoe. When he tried to pursue them he went past the level of his skill and drowned.
Believing the story, the Stuart Lake tribe searched the river for days, where they
recovered his missing quiver. A few days after this they recovered his mangled remains
buried in the sand. The pain and anger Na'kwoel and Chichanit felt knew no bounds and
they guarded this feeling, kept the need for revenge dive through the years that the wives
had disappeared.
*

Finally Thanh leads us to the jungle. There are dark stains under his arms and the
line above his lips is beaded. We are guzzling water.
"Do you have more?" Kelly asks.
"Yeah, in my pack." He reaches in and hauls out a warm bottle as we walk.
Birds are singing, small little black sparrows that hop lightly in front of us. Gun shots

56

ring in the distance. Rat a tat tat staccato sounds. We stop at a deep hole in the earth and
gather round, looking down at thick pointed bamboo poles waist high embedded like
jaws.
"This is a booby trap!" Thanh proclaims loudly. Air smells like earth, mineral
like dried blood. Birds chirp. "This hole would be covered by leaves in the night. And
BOOM. An American soldier would fall in. And he would scream in pain. The goal of
the Viet Cong was NOT to kill but to maim, to cause pain. Then the other soldiers would
hear their friend's cries and come to the rescue and BAM. The Viet Cong would be
waiting in the dark. And they would kill all the soldier's friends that came to help. The
plan was to inflict pain, to inflict fear of the night in the American soldiers. They did not
know the jungle they way we do." There is pride in Thanh's voice and his eyes flash as
he stands there. Gun shots continue, get louder as we follow him.
"What is that?" asks one of the travellers, an edge of nervousness in his voice. He
is tall and dark. I hadn't noticed him on the bus. "Oh. There is a shooting range near the
canteen. You can shoot machine guns after if you want. AK-47's!"
"Holy shit!" a girl says behind me. Her accent is American, I think. "Guns?"
"Yeah. It's creepy," Kelly replies, turning to check her out. Dirty dog. Stinky
smelly Kelly with the jiggly jelly belly.
"God, I need a beer," the tall dark traveller says and the group titters, a little wave
of welcome laughter. Unrelenting sun blasting through the thin branches and the meager
dusty leaves. The next booby trap is above ground, a huge net made of fishing line lies
dormant on the ground. Once we gather around obediently, Thanh covers the net with
leaves, crunchy and dry, mottled green and brown. A few thin vines connect the net to

57

branches over head, like veins connecting to flesh. From behind a shrub he hauls out a
mannequin, a bald plastic sexless body, loose and jangly. He tosses it in a casual heap on
the net and WHOOSH the body and net boomerang up to the sky, where it bounces and
flails, simulating what would happen to an unsuspecting soldier wandering in the jungle,
on the alert for the enemy. Rattle of guns getting closer.
"You see. Another booby trap. American soldier would scream when he got
caught and his friends would come. Another ambush. Viet Cong strategy." I am hoping
he notices that we are in need of a break, sustenance. Rat a tat tat. "God it's hot,"
another girl, English, complains. She is covering her freckled shoulders which are a raw
red with a scarf. "Now we will go to the tunnels!" Thanh declares, unflagging in the
heat and we follow him single file through a knot of trees to a clearing with a small hole
with a ladder on the edge. Again, we gather around like sheep and it slowly becomes
apparent that this tiny aperture is the entrance to the underground world.
"Any volunteers!"
Stunned silence.
"I will." A young man with blonde dreads in a blue head band steps forward. I
can't place his accent. He's wearing a white t-shirt, long jean shorts and skater shoes.
"Go down and walk through the tunnel to the end," Thanh points to another
ladder in the ground, a few hundred feet away. Ground is hard and packed and golden
like brown sugar. "What's your name?"
"Chuck!" he calls out and impossibly disappears down the hole, his hand shoots
up as if to surrender.

58

"The tunnels have been widened for tourists who are taller and bigger than
Vietnamese. But you still have to bend over, crouch a little, and follow the light to the
end."
"There's no way I'm doing this." Panic waves from the soles of my feet, nipping
along my thighs, sweat of my spine to the flushed nape of my neck, watching the
procession of travellers going down, down into the pit.
"It's what you came for. Come on!" Kelly laughs, giving me a flustered look.
"At least try."
I am the last one in line.
Thanh notices my blanched face. "It's okay."
I climb quivering down the stairs and the bird- sounds of the jungle muffle. It's
cool. Voices ricochet down the length of the tunnel. Light is immediately eclipsed by
the shadow of ground. I make it to the bottom, which is a small enclosure, a mini cloak
room, with four others waiting to enter.
"I don't think I can do this," I say to no one, to all of them.
"Yeah, it's pretty freaky down here," says a comforting voice of a young girl, I
can't make out her face, just the outline of her curls. Smells of earth, metallic fear in my
mouth. Anxiety claws, ready to tear. At least try. Bodies are clearing out and soon I am
the next one to enter the tunnel. I hunch over, make myself into a comma, crunch in and
as I move through the walls squeeze. Just keep going. No air, can't breathe. Bodies
moving ahead of me, muffled voices make it hard to see the light at the end. What if I
can't make it? No one's behind me, I can turn around. Stop for a second. Breathe.
Breathe. High pitched thrum and then nothing. Nothing. Just close your eyes and go.

59

But I don't. I lie down very still and wait for the wave to pass and soon there is no sound
at all, just cool air, dirt against my cheek. Heart slows slows breathing silence. All the
people that have passed through here, running, screaming, crying, stealthy, maybe some
of them crawled out like I did, hands and knees, hands and knees towards the light.
When I finally haul myself up, Thanh is standing there. I am the last one, he
has been waiting. "You did it. Yay!" he cheers, beaming at me. Everyone else is
standing around, drinking water, laughing, lively again. We did what we came for, made
it through the tunnel and how awful. In three minutes I combusted to the pressure of fear.
Sound floods in and I recover to full, quaking height. Kelly is chatting with Matt and
Kerry. I stagger up to them.
"You okay?" Kelly questions, alarmed.
"Yeah."
"Pretty fucking crazy, heh?" Matt explodes. "Can you imagine living down
there? UnbeLIEVable. Like little bugs scurrying around."
I gather myself together, bit by bit, picking up missing pieces, visible only to me.
As we walk towards the canteen, the dummy American GI is lying in the dirt, limbs
splayed, its blank face watching our slow procession. I can see the tourists standing in a
row, firing at bulls-eye targets through a clearing up ahead. Not so long ago those were
soldiers in a jungle with the Vietnamese talking, smoking, planning in the ground, living
like rodents. Invisible during the day. At night, cunning marauders.

60

CHINA
Leaving the controlled grounds of the airport, our feet on cracked concrete, we are
now in China. Without a visa. After a tense conversation with a middle-aged man with
the demeanor of a fighter, 'the boxer' leads us to an old white BMW and the driver
unlocks the trunk. At the airport, the driver avoided eye contact, shrugged into his black
leather jacket that seemed too big for him, his face soft and hairless, thin dark hair
standing straight up like grass. He still has not looked at us. We toss in our bags and
squeeze in to the back seat. This will be the last we see of the boxer and his short bursts
of irritation. He pockets half of our fee. We have negotiated to his great annoyance to
pay the remainder of the fee when we return to the airport.
Taxi leaves the airport and moves into the rush and haze of Beijing traffic.
Uncomfortable thoughts rise along with the exhilaration of movement - we might have
been too hasty, we could be going anywhere. Christian is a stranger but it was the driver,
seemingly harmless, that I am now worried about. What have we done? I almost utter,
but don't. Then we will both lose our nerve.
Everything will be okay. Everything will be okay. Everything will be okay.

DENE viii
Living in exile started to wear on Atete after several years. She missed her family
and wished to return home. Feeling vindicated by being the unwilling accomplice in the
murder, she decided to end her exile and tell the whole truth of the matter to her tribe,
hoping to have a happy homecoming. But as she neared Stuart Lake her return was

61

revealed to Chichanit, whose rage sent him out to the edge of the lake and he killed her
with his bow point - a spear fixed to the end of a bow - before she had a chance to speak.
He later found out that Atete was coerced by Chalh'tas in the murder of A'ke'toes and he
repented, feeling shame that she was unable to explain herself. He then decided to spare
the life of guilty Chalh'tas if she became his wife in memory of his late brother.
Messengers were sent back and forth and Chalh'tas agreed to the arrangement, which was
quite common then. Widows often re-married their late husband's nearest kin.
*

Dark silt hovers over every building in little depressed clouds. Trees waiting for a
few more weeks to bud. Spring would add some sheen, bring some life that seems
missing. We move through the suburbs, short squat apartments interspersed with shiny
steep skyscrapers. An occasional old man or woman on a bicycle peddles down the side
streets. Aside from them, we could be anywhere. Downtown rises in the distance, white
and grey blocks fused together. The driver turns off the freeway and my stomach
lurches. Looking over at Christian, he seems calm, half asleep, his hoodie covering his
head. We met at the Bangkok airport, just a few hours before, where he mentioned that
we could leave the airport without a visa if we flew out within twelve hours. When we
got to Beijing, found some coffee and changed our money, I convinced him to go see the
city. It was an opportunity that wouldn't happen again, I told him, seize the day. We are
freezing in jeans and hoodies. Just a few hours ago we were sweating in Bangkok heat.
My lips are sunburned, stinging, puffed up.

62

After driving through increasingly bumpy residential roads the driver pulls over
suddenly and parks. He has not spoken the whole way and I know now that either he
can't speak English or is not confident enough to try. Instead of telling us where we are
going, he saunters a few steps ahead. Apartment blocks, about four stories high, rise up
beside us. There is no one outside and a few pots of plants are trying to grow at the
entrances.
"Where the hell are we?"
"Doesn't look like the Forbidden City."
Around a corner some old men are feeding pigeons in an ornate, manicured
courtyard, lounging on cement seats, seeming out of place in such a formal setting. There
is no litter, which I noticed collected in the alleys and ditches on our way. We must be
getting close. They wear parkas and caps and laugh to themselves, smoking and talking.
Cages with tiny white sparrows rest on the ground between them. A gazebo is raised up,
surrounded by trimmed hedges.
Further down the block all signs of ordinary life disappear. Just birds singing and
our footsteps. The park expands to include ponds with cement bridges curved over like
drawn bows, grass a dull green, thin yellow stalks struggling up from the soil. Christian
and I must have picked up speed because our driver lags half a block behind. Bunches of
tourists sprout up across the street and we cross to join them. Suddenly, we are in
Tiananmen Square.
Enormous slabs of concrete fringed with puffs of trees and shrubs and grand,
faceless government buildings seem to mute all sound. Masses of tourists are swallowed
up whole by the mouth of an invisible dragon. Mao watches with guarded eyes. Sky

63

gains weight, presses in. I think of the squares I've been to in Europe: lively plots, the
gathering point. This is hardened voiceless earth, empty, impossible to fill, no matter
how many people it could enclose. A soundless tomb. Young, serious guards standing
like saplings, guns at the ready. Tourists gather and scramble all the while being watched
like moving targets. Small, exposed, insignificant. You could walk the perimeter, down
the centre and not get the sense of anything. Except size.
Christian stops to look for his camera and I am suddenly dizzy but there is
nowhere to rest. The driver stays nearby, hovering like a ghost. Groups of tourists gather
around guides who hold signs above their heads, cameras flashing and swinging around
their necks. An expectant feeling in the air, some children are laughing and eating candy
but they don't stray far from their watchful parents. Vague tension, like the feeling of a
headache coming on. Christian starts snapping shots of the crowds.
"So this is where the massacre happened. The stand-off point of China," I say to
him. Families surround their aging mothers, fathers, who look tired and overwhelmed.
There is no centre, no hearth, fountain or statue. Great blank expanse beneath us, energy
flowing out through the soles of my feet. This is where soldiers opened fire on random
citizens dumb with disbelief at such betrayal. Burning tanks, citizens beating lone
soldiers with sticks, steel bars, hurling Molotov cocktails. Bodies being carried on park
benches, behind bicycles. Blood sweeping down the smooth faceless granite, dripping
through the cracks into the earth.
Beside us is a group of older Chinese men and women, about ten of them, holding
a wide yellow banner like a shield with Chinese characters written in black, with red and
green exclamation points at the end. At first their expressions seem blank but their jaws

64

are taut, mouths pressed grim in defiance, chanting a rhythmic incantation that rises just
above the clear voices of tour guides, yelling children.
"Are they waiting to get attacked?" Christian sees me watching them.
I am nervous looking at them, stalwart in the cold day. There is a wide berth like
an invisible moat around them, but nothing happens, at least not while we are there.

DENE ix
Na'kwoel grew to be so old that his snow white hair turned a yellowish hue, his
knees and elbows were covered with scales that looked like moss. His hearing failed
him, and his eyelids drooped until his eyes disappeared. His limbs knotty and swollen,
his heart hardening to stone, the earth taking root, claiming him through the soles of his
feet. Basking in the sun on a rock or emerging from the shallow water, he would howl in
rage at seeing himself ravaged and powerless against time. But he would fight back,
exclaiming: Ah, here I am, a young man again!
*

"Let's head to the Forbidden City," I say, looking at his watch. We have a couple
hours left.
"Sure," he says, snapping a few more pictures. We head towards Mao, the face
that was desecrated and rehabilitated. His gaze steady, unchanging.
"What are you taking pictures of?" I ask.
"Interesting faces when I see them. I took a photography class before I came
here."

65

"You know that the guys who threw egg on Mao are still in jail. One of them was
beaten so badly by a guard that he can't function. Did you take a picture of the guards?"
"No, I didn't want to attract their attention. Though it's hard to tell what they're
looking at."
As we approach the entrance the crowds thicken and swarm, heads swaddled in
hats, bright scarves wrapped around bundled children. As we pass through the gates a
young woman runs up to us, her sleek black hair flapping down her back.
"Come buy my pictures! Where are you from? I studied English in San
Francisco. I am an artist. Come with me, there are many beautiful pictures." She latches
on to Christian's arm and leads him to a gift shop, exclaiming, "Where are you from?
Canada! Beautiful country!"
Scrolls of rivers covered with curved bridges, koi fish swerving upstream.
Mountains encircled with clouds, cranes, black characters spelling out poetry. The room
is crowded but warm, I feel the tension melting a bit from my shoulders.
"My name is Hui. What's yours? Are you married?"
"No," Christian says, laughing, "we are strangers."
"Strangers? What?" Hui is puzzled. Christian seems taller here than at the
airport, ruffled blonde hair, slight fringe of a beard makes him seem older than twentyfive. He is a manager of a real estate sales team in Kelowna. In Thailand, he went to
Chiang Mai to learn muay thai, Thai boxing. The Thai boxers are tough, he told me, he
was beaten every day and they laughed at him. It took awhile for him to get used to
praying before the fight started, but he liked it, it calmed his nerves.

66

"We met on the plane," I explain, wanting to get away. The driver is just outside
the gift shop, eating a bag of peanuts.
"We should get going," I say to Christian and Hui relinquishes his arm as if she is
his betrothed.
"Why is the driver following us," he says as we leave. "She was nuts."
"Not nuts. Just eager. I don't know why he is. Probably he wants his money."
Courtyard opens up, enclosing cement arms, swallowing sounds like a blanket.
Gold urns rest by the pomegranate walls trimmed with gold. Dragons writhe up the
staircases to all the separate buildings, sinewy snakes with flashing eyes, open jagged
mouths. Leaning in over the balustrades, we gawk at the elaborate objects left behind by
the emperor. Tiny chairs embossed with dragons, gold and silver strokes, semi precious
inlays. An oval mirror, brocade cloths draped on the fairy tale high bed, all that is left
from the emperor and his family, who lived here in seclusion, in luxurious lock down.
High walls of dark wood, the simple furniture with ornate designs in stark contrast to the
freshly painted bright swirl of sky blue, yellow with orange pointillist dots on the
underside of the eaves. Inside seems cavernous, without light. Guards stand at attention
on the periphery, handsome in pea green fitted suits, dashes of red, hooded eyes.
Compounds of the city rise up like mounds from the sea of concrete; grand library,
secluded bedroom, quiet ceremonial meeting room. Squares of perfect gardens dot up in
corners, symmetrical, vertical lines.
"Are you hungry? I need to eat." Christian pauses from his picture taking. There
is an outdoor buffet lined up along a wall, vast vats of food covered and watched over by
old Chinese women. No one is eating.

67

"Is that a good sign? No one is there except now there're some guards. Don't
think they would poison them."
The women are eager and beckon us with crumpled hands as we approach,
smiling eyes. Uncovering pans of chicken legs, noodles, red soup with yellowish balls
floating, fragrant steam rising. They give us a bit of everything on paper plates, laughing
at us, and we settle on a concrete step to eat.
"So. What do you think?" I ask in between mouthfuls of gooey salt and sweet.
I'm freezing, huddling in against a sudden sharp wind.
"Of the food or the place?"
"Both."
And he considers for a bit. We are suddenly all alone. I haven't seen the driver
for awhile, wonder where he's loitering, now that he's finished his peanuts. Comfortable
silence. Oh girl, I love you so, never, ever going to let you go. Once I get my hands on
you ... in the background.
"It's amazing. Glad we came though this morning I was thinking nahhhh.
Thanks for kicking my ass." Sun glints off his hair, cold wind ruffles it a bit.
He laughs, a hoarse cough. "Do you think this is really chicken?"
"Maybe. What else would it be? Duck? Goose? Snuffulupagus?"
"Snuffulupagus would not have bony little wings."
"How do you know? No one ever saw the Snuffulupugus."
"Yes! He was an elephant that snored a lot."
"No. That was the fake Snufftilupagus. The real one can never be seen. Just like
dragons."

68

Christian rises and we walk to the entrance gates where the beige driver is
waiting, huddled in his black leather jacket, his fine hair blowing like grass. We take the
same route to the taxi and ordinary life returns. The old men are still in the garden,
feeding birds, smoking. Trash returns to the streets and the brownish light of March
becomes duller with smog as we head back to the airport. Standing in the customs line
with a crush of straining bodies I think: We did it. We made it. When we choose our seats
the attendant assumes we are together and we sit side by side in the crowded plane,
sleeping against each other, eating in weary silence. I have the dream I had in Prague
again except this time the man is blue-eyed and stern, sharp lined face but also not old,
looking up at me saying, "You must get ready!" and I wake, stiff with fear. At the airport
in Vancouver, Christian stays to catch his flight to Kelowna and we hug good bye. No
one is watching.

JAPAN
After a year in Osaka, I have learned the basics of Japanese from my teacher
Yuki. I started lessons with her when the US invaded Baghdad. I still remember
watching the first bombs being dropped, looking up from my notebook, tracing the lines
of hiragana over and over again, slowly sounding them out. I know how to navigate the
myriad train stations by the time I go to Hiroshima. It is 2003 and I am at the beginning
of my years of travelling, though I don't know it then, the urge, the restlessness, has
already begun to seep through the earth, up the soles of my feet. I want to see everything,
go everywhere. The exhilaration of learning a new language makes me feel like I am in
grade one, shy and insecure, counting numbers with my fingers under the desk. Train

69

travel in Japan is efficient, a smooth ride through the monotonous suburb that is Honshu,
bumps of mountains, occasional glimpse of a temple, bright orange gates of a Shinto
shrine, cement embanked rivers. Farms, but no animals. I ask my students, "where are
the animals?"
They laugh. "They are inside!"
Shannon and I go with her parents, who are visiting from Canada. They are
exhausted from the flight over but want to get to Hiroshima as they are only in Japan for
a week, so we take the shinkansen the day after they arrive. My students tell me I will
love Hiroshima. It is so beautiful. You must go to Miyajima too Adrienne san. Floating
torii in the sea is very beautiful. Shannon does not look like her mother. She is small
with thin dark curly hair that she has been trying to grow; it swirls in ringlets, popping
like corkscrews. Her mother is voluptuous, blonde, worried. What time are we arriving?
Is the hotel near the museum? Shannon assures, placates. We eat bento boxes we bought
at the station, carefully packaged, perfect piles of rice, pickles, thin grilled fish. Salt
smell of miso, soya sauce. Train conductor in official blue with white gloves and blue
brimmed cap walks calmly through our car, turns around and bows slightly before he
moves on to the next car, where he bows again before walking through. The floors are
immaculate, the windows shine and we move at the speed of a plane gearing up for take­
off.
We take a taxi from the train station, the driver with immaculate white gloves
and blue brimmed cap efficiently packs our luggage in the trunk. I hand him a piece of
paper with the address and he nods. Hiroshima is much smaller them Osaka, and greener,
my students tell me. The city ranges over craggy hills by the sea, hotels and residential

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streets fringed with blooming May flowers, the covered shopping streets, shotengai,
hosting streams of tourists. Cicadas screech in the humidity.
Shannon and I met a few weeks after I arrived in Osaka, became inseparable,
sharing a restlessness that brought us here, urging us past the familiar. We had tea every
day in the alcove of her long narrow apartment, seated on the floor on silk cushions,
leaning out the window to watch women in business suits and high heels ride their
bicycles to the train station, talking on their cell phones. Moshimosh? We would
complain how there were no men in Japan. Is that why we came? I moved from the
suburbs to her apartment building where many teachers lived, which was known as the
space ship, due to its shiny silver exterior. The landlord wore plastic flip flops and
drowned a rat in my bathroom. Occasional giant cockroaches raced down the hallways.
We sprayed them with insecticide and took pictures - some had wings and could fly,
which was a revelation. It was an old building. My next door neighbour was a Buddhist,
his chants low and sweet coming through the walls, competing with my electronic music.
On my days off I would go to ramen shops, line up with the rest of the customers at the
narrow counters, slurp the salty noodles. I would pick a village within an hour train ride
and wander the streets, find a temple I could sit in for awhile and if I was lucky, there
would be monks chanting, their wrinkled heads bowed. I learned to kneel in Japan
though the bones of my ankles would never quite conform to the hard ground, being
reshaped by a new discipline that felt unnatural, exhilarating.
Shannon's step father pays the driver. He's tall and lean, friendly, rangy like a
corn stalk. Dave and Muriel. They are going to China after this, to see the Terra Cotta

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Warriors. Shannon is breezy, bright, summer wild flower. Muriel a potted plant, sturdy,
that blooms in the spring.
"The Peace Park is over there," I gesture broadly to the left and no one notices;
they're already inside the air conditioned lobby. A porter dressed in hotel colours, white
tailored shirt, blue pants holds the door for them, his head bowed slightly, hair gleaming
blue black.
Our hotel is a few hundred feet from the hypocenter of the atomic bomb. Where it
stands was flattened, burned for weeks, bloodthirsty, parched. After dinner Shannon and
I walk across a curved stone bridge to the Peace Memorial Park, built on the banks of the
Motoyasu River. Dave and Muriel are at the hotel resting. Elegant inscriptions on stone
tell us that the Park was built on the grounds of Nakajima District, which contained seven
towns and 6.500 people, most of whom perished in the bombing. The district is about the
size of the village I grew up in. A round mound rises up on our right, a grey concrete
pagoda resting at the crest, holding the ashes of 70,000 unclaimed or unknown bodies.
Elegant hotels with balconies, street side cafes and shops, puffs of shrubs and trees watch
over the park. The A-Bomb Dome is a shambling dinosaur, the only wreck left standing
after the incineration. Majestic and eerie, a sign says it was built by a Czech designer and
is a World Heritage Site. Blasted window frames like eye sockets, dark, immobile. A
river eases past.
Blue green white yellow red delicate cranes folded in sharp pointed angles and
tied together in long strings drape over natural stone monuments, dedicated to villages,
schools and workers wiped out at the hypocenter. A three pronged sculpture in the shape
of a bomb with a young girl standing atop, arms stretch wide to hold the shape of a

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bronze crane. Imposing arc shaped cenotaph at the heart of the park keeps the souls of
221,893 names safe in a chest and fountains spray tonnes of water a minute to quench
thirsty souls. Behind the A-Bomb Dome there are hundreds of cranes hanging in
bushels, made by school children from all over Japan, a sign says, in the hopes that a
disaster of this magnitude will never happen again.
How many bodies are buried here? Bones, ashes beneath pavement, deep in the
ground. All the signs say the souls are resting and they may be. The park is peaceful.
Families, knots of friends seem to float by as if on some invisible, calm breeze.
Teenagers sit on the edge of the river where the grass is soft and nubby, chatting and
smoking. Some girls wear the classic school uniform: boxy blue blazers, short blue
pleated skirts and white leggings past their knees. Jagged, straight glossy hair. A boy
with dark blocky glasses and rolled up grey jeans sits alone, listening to music through
head phones. Air smells like green buds, fresh and lemony.
Walking the circumference of the park, monuments pop out pale like ghosts from
the trees and shrubs. Severe grey concrete monoliths ribboned with strips of kanji,
natural stone standing bold, immovable. Sculpted willowy woman with a delicate deer
by her side. Lion's head fountain spouts continuous streams. Coins glint through the
clear water. We find a bench, share a smoke. As the sun goes down, the shadows from
the A-Bomb Dome stealth across the grass, part of the river, the holes of the windows
blacken so no light gets out at all.
Glow of cigarettes spark the night. We don't leave right away. It's cool, the
flutter of voices and bark of laughter punctuates the black. Birds flit, sing to each other.

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Stillness sets my legs straight out, toes hanging out of my sandals, even they feel relaxed,
weary after cramped crunching on trains and taxis. Puff of pot floats by, aromatic.
"Smells good. Should we crash that party, track down the smoke?"
"Nah. They don't want to hang out with gaijin."
"I could get some for your mom. I think Muriel needs a puff."
"My mom is driving me crazy. I wish she would relax."
"She's worried about you. God knows why."
We don't move for awhile, pass cigarettes back and forth. Breeze picks up, flips
my hair around, and we curve to the hard slats of the bench beneath us. It is inscribed
with the name of Naoto Yamamoto, a respected teacher and former resident of Nakajima.
She was forty-three when she died.

DENEx
Na'kwoel was constantly smarting under the pain caused by the untimely death of
his eldest son. Though he was now well advanced in years, he used to visit Chichanit's
lodge and reproach Chalh'tas with her crime, in which case blows would generally follow
words, to all of which she had to submit, though the blows stoked her own rage.
One day, when she was stripping willow bark with a small stone knife, her fatherin-law became so violent that, unable to stand his abuse any longer, she grabbed him by
the hair, and, throwing him to the ground, stabbed him in the neck. Her knife broke in
the old man's collar bone before it could inflict serious injury, and Na'kwoel screams of
pain brought Chichanit running, and he killed Chalh'tas on the spot with his bow point

74

*

Next morning Jack Johnson's mellifluous voice breezes in the background of the
cafe. On and on, on and on, on and on .. . Dave and Muriel seem to have recovered,
clear eyed, buttering their toast. Muriel looks at Shannon intently, as if trying to glean
some secret she knows the answer to. Best to be quiet, her firm even mouth seems to say.
When Shannon told Muriel she was going to Japan, her mother slapped her, marked her
cheek like claws.
"Coffee's good! So girls, what's the plan?" Dave is handsome when he smiles.
An efficient waitress dressed in a faux Dutch uniform with an elaborate hat that
looks like a folded diaper clears our table. She smiles, "good morning!"
"Museum and then Miyajima in the afternoon," I answer. Shannon is texting on
her phone.
"Will we have time?" Muriel is hunched in her seat. The room is yellow, bright,
stuffy, smells like sweet bread.
I am not rested. Even with the air conditioning I woke in a sweat and stared at the
blank grey ceiling which was screening an internal war movie, wooden forts being
defended, gun shots and whizzing axes. I watched daylight seep in white ghost fingers.
Shannon didn't move in the next bed.
"Yeah, we should," Shannon answers curtly, flips her phone. "Let's get going."
Our cafe is in a shotengai, a covered shopping street. In Osaka, the shotengai at
Namba feels like a surging carnival, a colourful roving shopping breathing being.
Hiroshima crowds don't run in the same numbers and it feels like being in an atrium,
rounded opaque awnings giving off a refracted greenish light.

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Irashaimase! Irashaimase! Beautiful young girls in shops call out to us.
"It means welcome," I say to Dave, who is walking beside me. Muriel and
Shannon are in heated debate behind us. I can hear Shannon hiss, then yell "NO!"
"Mothers and daughters," Dave says lightly and laughs.
We are nearing the end of the tunnel where the park opens up, a Saturday morning
moving, milling landscape, groups of families festive with portable karaoke machines.
Bash of drums and slash of guitar- two or three impromptu jam sessions crank the air.
One singer is swiveling his hips like Elvis, his hair in a slick pompadour, bright red
lipstick.
Dave is delighted. Muriel takes pictures of the A-Bomb Dome, asks us to stand in
front of it. Cacophony seems to have erased the mood of last night. Earthy aroma of
roasted nuts, moss-coloured matcha ice cream. We follow the crowds to the museum.
"What were you guys talking about?" I ask Shannon, as I dodge a huge pink Miss
Kitty balloon.
"She wants me to come back home, get a job teaching in Toronto."
"Why? You're teaching now."
"That's what I told her. She's never happy. Wants what she wants, you know?
She was like that with my dad too." Shannon's father is remarried and lives in China
with his second wife.
The museum is grey, sprawling blocks, flat-roofed, like a spread out accordion,
slatted sections with brief black windows. At the entrance a picture of licking flames
takes up the entire wall. Orange red yellow daubs and gashes. Spattered spilled and
splayed like flesh.

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"That was painted by a survivor," says the cashier brightly and hands me my
ticket.
Inside there's a slab of stone emblazoned with the shadow of an incinerated
body. Those closest to the hypocenter combusted instantly, leaving black imprints and
ash. Behind glass, torn and burned school uniforms, books, crushed eye glasses. Framed
letters from the Japanese government pleading for an end to the war. Pictures painted by
survivors of naked bodies, tongues bursting. There was no water. Thirst was so intense
that people threw themselves in wells, off bridges into the river circling the park. Skin
peeling off in whole sheets like puff pastry. Accounts from the survivors, translated,
etched in vellum, accompanied by broad charcoal strokes of leaning naked bodies.
As we near the end, Shannon realizes that we've lost Muriel and we back track to
find her sitting on a bench, weeping. We circle her, shielding her from stares. Dave is as
shocked as we are.
"I don't know," she cries in a high voice that croaks in a sob. "I can't imagine
how horrible it would be to lose..." People pass by, too polite to stop but I can tell
they're listening. "To lose a child. How horrible." We are near the exhibit with the
children's clothes, blasted book covers.
"Muriel, you're exhausted. Let's go back to the hotel," says Dave. She doesn't
look at any of us, pulling her face together after its collapse, determined, smoothing out
wrinkled thoughts.
"No. Let's go to the island. I need to get out of here." Grown up voice again
with forced cheer, which does not inform her weary laboured walking. Shannon hands
her a napkin to dry her eyes.

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"What a place," Dave says as we walk toward the bridge to our hotel, hoping to
open up the conversation, deflect from the outburst. He may have a knack for making
light of things. The path is less crowded than when we came, the bands have packed up.
"It was grim," I say, thinking of all the survivors, talking to translators, the
wrenching of words, images seared to their insides. Primal, unbearable heat. "How can
you not remember it and carry on?"
"I guess you cannot not remember," Shannon adds. We stop for matcha ice
cream. "Does that make any sense?" We laugh but it takes awhile to shake it off, like
the morning after a bad dream, wanting the familiarity of your room to crowd out the
unrest that came from somewhere. A little boy's jacket, a little girl's skirt.
We get directions to Miyajima from Kimi, a clerk at our hotel. She has very thin,
fine hair that frames her narrow face, tiny curved shoulders huddled in a cardigan, her
narrow fingers point at the red torii on the map and trace backwards to our hotel. A
streetcar will take us there. We catch it here, and she points to a tiny spot in a myriad of
lines, marks it with her pink pen.
"You will find it, no problem," she smiles.
"Can we take the map?"
"Of course," and she hands it to me, bows slightly.
Although Shannon and I are famous for getting on the wrong trains and not
noticing for several stops - stories which we regaled her mother with - we are allowed to
do the navigating. Probably because Dave and Muriel don't want to think.
"Things all cleared up now?" I ask.
"Who knows. What's with the public meltdown? Is she trying to guilt me?"

78

From the immaculate streetcar windows Hiroshima peeps out in carefully
cultivated beauty, flashes of tankers on a choppy sea. New housing areas open up outside
the downtown core, chunks of ripped up earth covered over quickly in concrete, paved
roads. Tiny perfect cars in the driveways. We pass a school that is playing children's
songs on the outdoor PA system, high pitched clear voices float through some open
windows. In my guide book the Shinto temple on Miyajima is built on wooden pillars,
resting on the lap of the sea.
"We should go for a swim," I suggest to Shannon. I want to get away from Dave
and Muriel. It has been uncomfortable being in a family dynamic that is not my own.
Streetcar weaves and climbs nubby green hills. Industrious caterpillar about to
shed its passengers at the ferry dock. A young gaggle of girls giggles at the back, light
tittering laughter. Afternoon heat dumbs us down. Muriel is sleeping in her seat.
"Great idea. They can shop for awhile."
My legs are sticking to my seat and I have to slowly unglue them. The ferry is a
welcome, breezy boat and I lean over the metal railing, trying to catch a glimpse of the
torii like some beacon. My guidebook says the torii is a traditional Japanese gate most
commonly found at the entrance of a Shinto shrine. It symbolically marks the transition
from the profane to sacred.
.Salt air reminds me of home and for a moment sadness mars the moment; I want
the familiar, to feel snug instead of wide open.
The ferry grunts and puffs and sways off to the island and when we arrive the torii
is as magical as the book, floating on the sea though its foundations go deep. Shinto
shrine has light tatami rooms that smell like wheat, lined up against each other like secret

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compartments. Incense circles in the corners. We walk on the wooden slats, bright
orange beams reflect off Shannon's sunglasses in blobs.
"Think about walking out here every morning with your java!" I say, enchanted.
We find some concrete steps that we can jump off of near a little beach at the end
of the shopping street. A well dressed little boy is picking up pebbles, dropping them in
his mother's lap, one by one.
"We can change into our suits at a restaurant bathroom when we have lunch."
"Does anyone swim here? I don't see anyone swimming? What if we're not
allowed to?" Suddenly, Shannon is apprehensive.
We have to go swimming, I've decided, that it is necessary at this time to feel
clean. The shopping street on the island is an elegant shanty town selling rice cakes, ice
cream, paper fans painted blue green outlining thin white cranes. Smell of roasted
sesame seed, a dry green mixed with salt.
"Come on. No one will stop us. What will they do?"
DENE xi
He could feel his end coming and he told his people that at the time of his death
the mountain Na'kal, which rose on the eastern shore of Stuart Lake, would dance in his
honour. It was an agreement he made with the mountain for his long life. A spur of the
mountain fell into the water, just as he himself fell to the earth.

80

*

Water laps past my knees and the roundish stones rub my feet. The torii looms in
front of me and I think briefly of swimming to it. Shannon is splashing beside me,
"Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink," she calls out to me. Sounds recede
and I think of the Shinto priests listening to the rush and suck of water as they go to sleep,
when they wake up. From here, there is no Hiroshima, just the mountainous island
behind us, the jagged Japanese coast where a warlord decided to build a city. When the
water reaches the bottom of my chin, I submerge myself and then let the salty sea lift me
back up, resting my feet above water. Blue sky opens up, unbounded, swirls of grayish
cloud like smoke drift past the horizon and show up, I am sure, of the other side of the
world, which would be home.
DENE xii
Chinlac chief Khadintel was a respected man who had two wives and told stories
of his ancestors to his many children. Strong warrior, brave, a graceful dancer. He had
killed an equally respected warrior from the Chilcotin clan some time back. Chinlac
villagers heard rumors of revenge, of marauders that would come to the village. They
talked about it with fear, like a coming storm. What would they do when the avengers
arrived? They prepared, made bows and arrows and armour, waves of the choppy lake
slapped the bottoms of their repaired canoes. They prayed and waited, hoping that the
reprisal would not come. And then one day the marauders came, a large group of
Chilcotin warriors paddled in from the south, armed and ready in sturdy canoes.

81

*

Day we go in to Chinlac the morning pours, doesn't let up till we start at eleven
a.m. and the muddy road to the trail is flanked by excavators, fallers, trailers for the
loggers to fill up on coffee.
Peter in the back seat with his white-haired dog Phoebe built the trail in years ago.
Fit and sixty-one, still a beaming boyscout passionate about beauty the earth shows. He
wants to reveal it, clear away tangled brush and muddled minds. Hatchet sticking out of
his canvas backpack is for hacking the small stuff; there has been a lot of blow down in
the past few blustery months. Though it is summer, sun has yet to warm the earth and
water floats on top of the soggy soil, waiting to sink in. Janice and I are in recovery from
a late night with wine at the campfire, when she decided to join me.
"Take two ibuprofen and drink a ton of water before bed and I'll tap on your
window in the morning," I told her. And it worked, minimal headache, though the
scratching of a pack rat skimmed the edge of sleep. Thought it was under the bed, but it
was beneath the floor of the cabin, trying to find a way in.
Sign for the provincial parking lot, brown with white carved letters, is pounded to
a pine tree. Parking lot is mush. When I pull in, Peter says I should turn the car around;
if anything happens we want to be sure we can get out fast. He is matter of fact, pointing
out survival strategies natural to a forester. He gathers his maps, shows me the squiggly
trail. I stare at it blankly, anxious to get going. It's a two hour hike under the best of
conditions, which we do not have. So he rolls them up, leaves them in the back. Later, I
will look at them and wonder what squiggly lines we actually did trace through the bush.
"I forgot my lunch!" he cries out.

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"That's okay. We've got bologna sandwiches, some cantaloupe..." says Janice.
A lab tech, mother of three, practical, enthusiastic, she is prepared. She even brought
foam bug dope you can spread on your face, the back of your hands. Before we start,
Peter combs his perfectly cut white hair and pulls on a Norwegian knit toque. He shows
us his sensible wool pants, orange rain coveralls, mirrored compass. I am in jeans, rain
gear and ankle length hiking boots; Janice in running shoes, Cleveland Indians ball cap
perched on her head. We are completely soaked within the first five minutes, edging
around deep mud pools that inhabit the path. Bush is lush, much more than last summer
when the dry heat scorched the green to a mottled brown. Looked like disease but it was
just thirst.
DENE xiii
Chief Khadintel was not at the village when the Chilcotin arrived on the shores of
the lake. He had left early in the morning before the village had woken to inspect snares
further up the Nechako River. He liked the stillness of the dawn, the sound of his
footsteps soft on the earth. Violent avengers did not wait for him to return, they
annihilated the village with vengeance. Hatchets and arrows flying, panicked thud of
feet, hands and knees pummeling the earth. Terrified, a few young men ran away to the
surrounding forest, in search of their chief. They came across him on the banks of the
river and Khadintel could tell by their stricken faces that the Chilcotin had come and he
knew they had come for him.
"1 am the one they want, you must run back to the forest to save your lives. I
alone ought to die."

83

•

Through the thin stands sprouts of new trees cover the earth and a full throated
creek rushes clear and cold. "We used to portage a seventy pound canoe down this path,"
Peter tells us. First part of the trail is a road that meets and then follows the swollen
Nechako, leading to a switch back up a ridge to an eskers, he tells us.
"Do you know what an esker is?" he calls over his shoulder. Dollar size leaves
flip silver sides in the breeze. Rain cloud hovers; I hope it will hold. I don't know what
an esker is but it is a beautiful word, like a baby Eskimo.
He doesn't wait for a response. He is spouting knowledge, unstoppable: An Esker
is a long winding ridge of sand and stratified gravel which occurs in glaciated and
formerly glaciated regions of Europe and North America. Eskers are frequently several
kilometres long and have a peculiar uniform shape.
Phoebe trots ahead, follows scents off the trail but always comes back. She is
silent, steady. I am always relieved to have dogs around, a kind of sonar for what lies
ahead, though some say they bring back bears. When we reach the Nechako, pink and
yellow ribbons are tied to trunks. Pinks are Peter's and yellows are from a friend with a
GPS, I gather from his conversation, mainly with Janice.
"I've been doing this for years, ladies, and I know the best way in and out. Not
always the fastest. GPS'11 tell you to cut clear through," he explains but I barely follow
through the exertion of trying not to slip in the pools that widen we walk.
We stop on a ridge and the river, twice its normal size, is languid, braiding
ribbons bubbling brown sugar. Across from us is an abandoned ferry dock, white
platform still half in the water, half on shore. Ferry brought miners and foresters to work

84

and it cut down on bridge building, of which there never was one. Grass on the landing is
long and leaning from weight of water. I want to stay longer but the mosquitoes descend
in a merciless haze. Janice and I move towards the trail but Peter stands behind us, a half
dozen mosquitoes feasting on his face. He wipes them away in a bloody swipe.
"What are foresters like," I ask. Peter has been building trails, planning logging
roads for years, mainly on his own. "Foresters are individuals. Independent. Bit on the
extreme. On both ends, I'd say. We like people. We don't like people." He smiles at me,
gentle misanthrope. When I asked him to take us, he was reluctant but then he relented.
"If it's important to you, I will take you," he said, like he needed some time to gather
himself, not for the bush, but for us.

DENE xiv
Khadintel could see the canoes of the avenging warriors rounding the curve of the
river, slowing at the sight of him, sudden war cries coming from the dark of their open
mouths. Terrified, the young men scrambled up the bank but the chief stayed to face his
enemy, his feet and body doing a crazy dance, nimbly dodging all the arrows whizzing
by. Khalhpan, the captain of the war party, stopped the attack. He didn't want to waste
more arrows. What if the Chinlac chief was charmed, watched over by strong spirits?
"Khadintel, you have the reputation of being a man and I see you are a good
dancer. You have danced for your life once. If you are a man, dance for me again."

*

85

Submerged trail means we have to bushwhack to get to the steep ridge on our left.
And we plough through, Peter leading the way. Undergrowth is light, you can see ahead
but it hides slippery trees you can fit your hands around, black from rot but still solid
obstacles. We huff up and down, following what becomes a kind of slough beside us,
accompanied by a trill that declares I am here.
"What's that bird?" I ask Janice and Peter at a brief stop. Slough around the
eskers is rounding a bend and it looks like we'll have to backtrack to where we started to
reach the ridge.
"Don't know my birds, just the bush," Peter says. Off the trail we see things.
Half-eaten deer announced by smell of decay, ripped in half by a hungry bear. Curve of
jaw and hollow eye socket, rounded ribs in one spot, bent legs with bits of hide clinging
in another.
"Sounds like a chickadee," Janice says.
"I read somewhere that chickadees only sing in isolation," I say. I've seen
pictures; they are full-breasted, black-capped, aware.
"Something has been sleeping here," Peter points to a round space crushed by
weight.
"Bear sleeping close to the food?" I say. A pause and no one answers. Raw
death sleep satiated hunger.
"I've lived here for twenty-five years and this is the first time I've bushwhacked!"
Janice breaks the silence. Sweating, smiling face, rosy cheeked, straight brown bangs
plastered to her wide forehead. Wanted to climb Fraser Mountain, but any adventure
would do, she told me, throw herself unplanned into the thick, see what comes out. Peter

86

is her neighbour, she waves at him when she goes jogging but he doesn't remember her.
All of us have fallen, lurching off slippery wood into prickly bushes, getting back up,
wetter, muddier. Forty minutes of backtracking and finally the steep side of ridge rises
like a green wall.
"At least you can see what's up ahead here. In Haida Gwaii, salal was so massive
you didn't know the direction you were going when you came out," I say. We have all
wanted to turn back at some point, but not at the same time. "My instinct was to head for
the ridge, skip all this," Peter said, surveying the swamp we had slogged around and
through. I had wanted to follow the path, so I could come back another time, know my
way, but water had forced us to improvise.
Peter showed us his scar, jagged red indent on his right forearm like the sharp
curve of the trail we were taking. "Nearly lost my arm, chainsaw skidded off a log and
cut to the bone. I was by myself, half hour from the road." Though we're up out of the
muck, ridge isn't as dry as it looks, I keep skidding. "So I hold my arm up, tie a rag at
the elbow. Blood is running down my arm, my side, filling up my boots. I want to lie
down, feel light headed, but I keep moving. Phoebe was with me."

DENE xv
To show that he was in control of his emotions, that the fear and pain of death
could not overcome him, the Chief danced on the beach of the river, but this time a
traditional dance of the Carrier people, slow and rhythmic his feet touched the earth and
he sang in a cracked voice. He was sure that he was going to die and he thought how he
was not prepared, that he was a selfish man. The warriors watched and jeered at him,

87

trying to break his spirit but as he continued to dance it came to him that if he survived,
his job was to gather the bones of the dead and heal the earth as best he could.
"You are a strong man," Khalpan said. He stood in the canoe, his arms across his
chest. "We will leave you with your life."

*

ATV tracks suddenly emerge and we cheer, trudging turns to walking and we start
to look around. Bloated brown Nechako just to the right of the Slough of Despond now
below us.
"I got to the truck keeping my arm up, and I called the ambulance when I got
close enough, using the radio phone. Told them get here quick or I'm going to die. I got
in and drove straight, that's why I told you to turn around. Never know what's going to
happen."
Above the tree line and still no birds. Eskers is the next winding stage, slippery,
like walking on the back of a snake. Peter says it's about two thirds of the way there.
Four different environments take us to the site, he tells us. First, boreal forest along the
creek, then the meadow by the river, then the eskers and finally Chinlac, which is on a
level plain thirty feet above the Stuart.
"Ambulance met me on the way to Fraser Lake. By then my boots were full of
blood and I tried to tourniquet my arm. Lucky I didn't or I would've lost it. We sped to
emergency and the attendants were so quiet, I think I was yelling at them. The doctor, I
still remember his face, he was tired, you know? And he looked at me like O my God but
he saved my life." Halted suddenly by gratitude, he stops and looks over his shoulder at

88

us, blue boyish eyes. Sun starting to warm the edges of the day, we shuck a layer of coats,
rain pants. Air some skin. Lean over trail edges around a sheer drop. River fills the
whole frame, smudged green reflects on the brown. Peter takes our picture but it doesn't
turn out; we are blocked by light, just an outline of bulk and smiles.
He tells us that we are walking through a burn that looks recent, trunks tarred up
to the edge of our ribs. But it was four years ago. Earth has not recovered. Spindly
growth doesn't absorb our voices; they fly like arrows in the silence.
"Notice anything different?" Peter quizzes. Janice sees it right away. "The burn
stops at the edge!"
"Yes! The burn stops at the edge, and that's where the trail is, where it always
has been. Carrier feet made the original trail that we're walking on." Burn is the natural
border then as it is now. We are finally on the path and it feels like hauling on to shore
after a long swim. Peter says something like you can still see footprints if you brush away
leaves and topsoil, careful excavation revealing scuffs of toes and heels. Raw years
marked with fire, tough feet holding to the edge.

DENE xvi
As the Chilcotin departed, Khadintel, shaking badly, forced himself to stand
straight as he could. Even so, his shoulders sagged like an old cow. But he howled his
vengeance, that one day he would come like a nightmare to their village and avenge their
marauding and the Chilcotin again jeered and laughed at him. The young men came silent
as ghosts out of the forest and they all returned to the village. Everywhere there were
broken bodies and the earth was bathed in blood. There were two long, sturdy poles

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planted in the ground and on thick forked sticks the bodies of children hung, ripped open
and spitted through turned out ribs like drying salmon.

*

Fork in the road down a steep hill gives us pause. Yellow and pink ribbons
separate, go their own way. I am really starving now. "How long till we get there?" I
am plaintive.
"Thirty minutes from here if we take the pink line across the burn. Heard the
yellow line is full of blow down, it'll slow us down. Though it's by the river, way
prettier." He shows us the confluence of the sleepy skein of the Nechako slipping into
the muscling Stuart; two rivers, negotiating curves and obstacles at their own speed,
converging in a circling maelstrom.
"Why do they move so differently? A river's a river, right?" I ask. No one
answers. We all turn left to cut across; fastest is best this time. "This trail was done by
GPS, should take us pretty close to the site. It's not what I built, what I made took time, I
considered the beauty, what was easier going in, coming out." Peter's voice is indignant,
that the best way has been so quickly side tracked by a machine. His boyscout energy is
unflagging as ours starts to, out of hunger, weariness.
Land flattens, desert plain offering brief oasis. Death pulls stronger than life here,
surrender to enormous force. Undertow of silence sharpens thin blades of grass tufting,
clumps of scraggly growth. Earth listless, hasn't recovered. Bright pink ribbon flashes in
the blackened grey stalks, leafless branches. Sky brings heat on a frigid wave, season
seems confused. Beneath us, dirt hardened by thousands of footsteps.

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"See these holes?" Peter points out deep indents, about two feet down and
around, packed close together, pockmarks on the level ground. There are 2200 of them,
he tells us. "People from Chinlac smoked their food and buried it here. Generations used
the same spot." We are cutting through, so we'll miss most of them, he says. If we circle
the perimeter, we would lose our breath counting.

DENE xvii
Khadintel carried out his fate, he burned all the bodies and saved the bones,
placing them into leather satchels for the surviving relatives of the victims. For three
years he sang and prayed and danced on the earth of the village, trying to bring it back to
life. But his heart was full of pain and rage at his loss and he could not rest until the
massacre was avenged. In the spring of the third year, he prepared to journey to
Khalpan's village with a war party built from allied bands in the area, from Stoney Creek,
from Natleh. They travelled deep into Chilcotin territory and passed the night in a terrace
above the long row of lodges where the Chilcotin lived. Though his men slept well in the
dark, Khadintel lay awake and watched the stars of the night shift above him, knowing
that if he slept he would have the nightmare of despair, of torn flesh and howling dogs
that had tormented him for three years. The next day the Carrier soldiers moved stealthily
through the forest to attack.

*

Final pink ribbon takes us to the edge of the swirling Stuart. Dead grass,
blackened rotting trunks circle around us. Opposite bank is high and green, looks healthy

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in comparison. "Where do we go from here?" I ask. Rush of river is welcome after eerie
hush.
"Chinlac is down river, ten minutes or so," Peter is already scrambling over a log,
bedraggled, we follow. All I can think about is food. Should have eaten more this
morning but all I could handle was coffee and a bun. Silence spreads over us from the
clearing in a mute wave. A hollow space, a vacuum the size of a baseball field. Knee
high grass. Yellow heads of wild daisies. At the centre a skeleton teepee stands,
dessicated sage hanging from a string. Heading towards it, our feet feel out the edges of
ghost buildings.
"Thirteen houses were built here, along the edge of the bank," Peter calls out.
"I thought the Carrier were nomadic," I say.
"They were and they weren't. I don't know. Maybe after the massacre no one
wanted to live here anymore, they became nomadic."
"What's with the outhouse?" Janice says. Dark green, modern, it looks odd,
plopped down.
"It's for Carrier ceremonies. There're some white boards in the bush, they make
them into bleachers."
Chinlac was a thriving community for a thousand years before the massacre. A
Ming dynasty coin was found in the dirt. Arrow tips, tools, made by knowing hands. No
digging happens now; the Carrier won't allow it. Enough has been uncovered and land
has gone back to sleep. Finally, we settle on the banks and Janice unpacks lunch,
squished sandwiches, crushed cantaloupe. We are ravenous.

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"Many people who come here say this is a sacred place," Peter says. I've heard
this before - how people are moved by it, like you are in a temple or a church, some kind
of holy place. Across the river tall dead trees gnarled branches wave at us.
"Why aren't there any nests there?" Janice says. We sit eating in restful silence.
Wind blows wisps of grass between us.
Peter talks about how the Carrier kids in town should help him make a better trail
instead of playing video games, watching TV. This is their heritage, after all. He tells us
that in his yard he has cut huge swathes of branches from a beautiful spruce near the top
and the bottom in the Carrier way, so he can see what's coming the way they did. Dried
grey wood carried by the river collects at the tip of a narrow island just below us.

DENE xviii
Khalhpan was not in the village that day, but his younger brother, 'Kun'qus, heard
the marauders approaching as he was checking salmon traps and rushed back to the
village. Kind, stubborn, strong, thick legs, round belly, his footsteps thundered on the
earth. Rumors that had spread through the Chinlac village before its own demise had
then spread through the Chilcotin village. 'Kun'qus was wise and fortified his house.
His first wife plastered the walls, watched over his adored son but his second slave
Carrier wife was sullen, threw stones and sticks at him. 'Kun'qus did not sleep well the
night before, feeling an uneasy sense of eyes watching from the forest, silent and
cunning. As he approached his home, passing his Carrier wife crying and running to her
people, he ran after her with his war club in hand, but he gave up and returned to the fight
and to protect his wife and young son.

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Peter gets up to look for another trail out besides the one we took. He has been
here many times and talks through the silence, so I'm grateful for the moment of quiet, a
full stomach. Think about the eyes that watched the bank I'm looking at, watched the
wood gather, the ones who named this place Chinlac.
"So. Was it worth it?" I ask Janice. We share a chocolate bar, melted a bit but
still crunchy. "Absolutely! It's beautiful but so quiet. Weird quiet."
"I know. No birds."
"And no birds sang," she adds, like it is the name of a song, or book.
I get up to walk around, get a feel of the weight. Try to discern the pull. Trees
only grow so close to the clearing, then stop. My feet feel out the edges of things, shapes
of places that still take up space. When Peter was talking I thought I heard singing, a
hearty male voice, but there was nothing when I paced the place. Maybe voices weave in
when we're not really listening, subtle like grass binding with flowers.
Peter is back, talking to Janice when I return, triumphant with a rusted tin can in
his hand. "I found a midden! Which is a nice word for garbage pile. This must have
been Borden's stash. Probably a can of milk, you can see the punctures." Charles
Borden was the archeologist who excavated the site in the 1950's, wrote a book, got
famous. His book is lying on my living room floor, full of graphs and lists and maps.
"Follow me. I'll show you where we come in by canoe." Peter calls over his
shoulder. We come across a stone just before the steep climb down to the water. A story
is spelled out in Carrier shapes and symbols, round loops and straight backs. We stare at
it dumbly. "English is on the other side!" Janice calls out.

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"Here it says that the massacre was over women," she says.
"I thought they had killed a chief," I add. Stone says Chun-lac. "And it's not
Chinlac. We've been saying it wrong."

DENE xix
'Kun'qus' wife sobbed as she helped him into his wooden warrior armour, the
sleeveless moose skin tunic slathered with glue and gravel. Fighting back tears he
watched his people fall, shooting arrow after arrow, he squeezed his son between his legs
but an arrow struck the young boy in the heart. 'Kun'qus fought the urge to lie down
with his dead son, let the earth take them both. Carrier warriors set upon him like hungry
dogs, but he held them off with a stone dagger, slicing the air. Then one Carrier warrior
dodged his lance and held it, and the avengers swarmed him, clubbed him between the
eyes, bludgeoned his body. Dead children were butchered and splayed on three poles
instead of two and then the marauders left the village.

*

It's too steep and we're too tired to go down to the river. Launch area is
submerged but Peter points it out anyway, it will emerge when the water stops
swallowing. Coming by canoe is the ancient way, how it was done for hundreds of years.
We would see Chinlac how the Carrier did, how their friends and enemies did, by
climbing up the bank.
"That's what the Chilcotin did," I say. "Paddled in quietly, got out with their
bows, arrows, spears. Probably smeared paint on their faces, braced themselves for war.

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Just women and children were here, the men had gone fishing." I stand on the edge,
trying to imagine fierce warriors coming up the bank. Silence of shock, then running,
screaming, some young men escaping the slaughter, trying to find their chief, Khadintel,
whose misdeed was being avenged with such brutal force. Try to imagine Khadintel's
face changing as he sees them coming, alarm spreading through their lean limbs and into
the ground.
Janice tells us it's four and we should be heading back. Sun has relaxed, spread
out across the whole sky. And we walk to where the emptiness meets the trees, from the
in between into the world again. There is no singing, bold voice swallowed up or
stubbornly silent. We clamber over the same trees to get to the first pink ribbon. Peter
points across a sand bar in the middle of the river. "That's where Kadintel, the Carrier
chief, danced for his life." See him dancing and crying, dancing and crying, the Chilcotin
chief taunting him. But were the men quiet or jeering who watched safe in the canoes? I
can't hear them. They had just flayed flesh, torched dried hides, dragged off young
women to be their slaves, killed the old ones. Long history. Sudden stop.

DENE xx
Returning from his fishing trip, Khalpan sensed an unnatural silence as he
approached the village that turned him cold, but then panicked yelp and howl of dogs
crying for their masters broke through the air. Carrier had come, hunting for him. Smell
of smoke singed hair hovered above the clearing of the village, splashed with carnage and
blood. Brother half swallowed by the earth, family dead, ripped arms and torsos strewn
by vengant storm. Lonely daughter taken as a slave. Greatly shaken, he set out with the

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other survivors to pursue the Carrier. No stealth in his shaking legs, feet dragging,
clumsy. At a fork in the river the warriors were preparing to leave. They all stopped to
stare at the chief, hollow-eyed, but it was Khadintel who stepped forward to meet him.
"They say that you are a man, and you call yourself a terrible warrior," Khadintel
said in Chilcotin. "If you are, come to meet me and do not retreat."

*

Way back is always shorter than the way in. Body eases up and down, jagged
corners become gentle curves. Sun helps, brightens things.
"The massacre happened in 1745. After all the buildings and bodies were burned,
the village was abandoned," I tell Janice. Peter is up ahead, he has told us all of his
concerns and is quiet on the way back.
"It's strange that it is so empty," I say. "After all that time, something should
have grown there. Nature always takes over."
"Nothing will ever grow there," she says, like she is sure. Passionate gardener,
she knows more about growing things than me.
We stay on the high ridge back, edge around the Slough of Despond. I have given
up on following the trail -1 know it is waiting to be revealed when the water goes. And I
trust Peter, he is gallant, apologizing for taking us through ATV tracks, deer trails and
Carrier footsteps until he decides to check his compass, make sure we hit the wide trail
near the Nechako.
"Do you know what a culturally modified tree is?" Peter asks. We have
stopped by a spruce with a broken branch. Mosquitoes dive to our exposed skin.

97

"I don't know!" I cry out.
"Yeah, the mosquitoes are bad," he takes another bloody swipe at his face.
"Anything that has been changed by people. See this branch? It was broken on purpose
to mark a direction in the trail. Carriers did it all the time."
"Like trees become part of the path," I say, wanting to be a good pupil, but Peter
has charged ahead. "What hasn't been changed by people," I tell Janice. Probably every
step we are taking has been taken before. No part of here is untouched.

DENE xxi
Khalpan moved on shaky legs, strength seeping out, gush of blood thundering his
temples. Enemy stood still, flexed, glaring and he could not face them, inched back to
the forest, crying.
"Now, Khalhpan," Khadintel, triumphant, bellowed, "when, all alone against your
people, I was cornered on the river bank and you wanted to kill me, I danced for you. If
you are a man, dance now for me, as I did for you."

*

When we finally make it back to my car Peter has declared our trip the worst ever
in all his years. Day is marked by dubious honour.
"You were troopers, stellar, I tell you," he says and we laugh, relieved to be
sitting, safe from the bugs. Phoebe is huddled on her blanket, her white hairs are floating
with the dust in the waning light. It's 6:30, two and a half hours back but it felt faster, like
we were helped or hurried along. Heading back to the highway, lemon fields of alfalfa

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wave to us. At Peter's house, he shows us the tree we can see through, cars speeding
around a curve below. Canoes and kayaks in his garage.
"Don't have a car. I walk or ride my bike everywhere, so Phoebe can come with
me." Smiles his boyish grin, goes into the dark of his house.

DENE xxii
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, wretching, he fell to his hands and knees. Silent Carrier watched, no birds flew or
sang over head. Sobbing, Khalpan hauled himself up, faced his enemy.
Khadintel, scornful, jeered: "Khalhpan, 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."

*

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

99

ground about knee wide. I roll it up, watch the flames descend to cinders, cold nipping at
my back. Walk weary to bed.

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.

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The Earth Remembers Everything is open-ended in the sense that its focus is the
intimate, spontaneous experience of place. I hope to have captured the exhilaration and
confusion of the events surrounding these journeys, as well as the people I shared them
with. I've tried to write as close to what I felt as possible. By exploring my experience of
place through massacre sites, I hope to give my readers an opportunity to think about
their own relationship to place. Maybe some of the questions that I asked myself will
arise: What is it about certain places that we are drawn to? What is its essence? The
writers I most admire use words to evoke characters and events that have a powerful
effect on the imagination. I believe that the goal of any writer is to let their readers come
to their own conclusions. This has been the aim of my thesis, and I hope I have achieved
this.
My years abroad were essential to my development as a person and as a writer.
Coming full circle has changed my perspective. There is a term called ground-truthing
that scientists and technicians use when they gather data, measurements and observations
to give a fuller, more realistic view of information. This term feels apt in the writing of
my thesis, as I used actual experience - field work - viewed from the perspective of my
original place. I wrote about travelling from the firm stance of home. This grounding has
added depth to my work as I sorted through my experiences. Coming home and writing
has been my own ground-truthing.
One central discovery that has come from this process is that place is central to
my work. Place is the main character; that which holds us and forms us. Place has power;
it is its own entity, and it has its own story. In my thesis, place is also the earth; they are
interchangeable. Writing about massacre sites made me think about place as a body with

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its own surface of skin covering all the layers underneath. I saw the surface of the earth as
the skin of our own bodies, with our insides - though intimately us - as unseen and
unknowable. We live on the surface of things. We see ourselves and others from the
outside, but there is an on-going dialogue, a conversation that we have with ourselves.
When we travel, that conversation becomes engaged in place, and the experience takes us
to a deeper level.
I mentioned in my introduction that place is narrative. Obliterated sites are a
pause or cease in conversation, and there are places in us where that is true as well. In
writing my thesis, I came to see the earth and our bodies as connected. Our bodies
remember everything. The earth remembers everything. The special power of obliterated
sites is that on some level, they speak the same language as our own desert places. By
exploring the wounds of the earth, I explored my own. The process of writing has been
cathartic and transformative because of this, but it was not what I set out to do. I was
drawn to this topic because of a question. Why do I want to write about this? I was
interested, which was the most important thing, as it carried me through the writing,
which was really an uncovering - an excavation. I found my voice and was able to speak
the language of these places.
As a writer, trying to create a 'true' and 'real' piece of work seems possible only
from using a variety of perspectives. Each one reveals its own bit of insight. By weaving
different genres and experiences, with my body squarely in place, I believe that some
small part of the essence of these places, mixed in with my own, has been revealed.
Looking back on the process of my graduate work, I see the combination of research and

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thought around travel writing and place theory as sifting through and shaping my work. It
is at this intersection that The Earth Remembers Everything was created.

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Works Cited

Casey, Edward S. Getting Back into Place: toward a renewed understanding of the
place-world. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press. 1993.
Casey, Edward S. 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.
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.

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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.