It’s been a season of bears. Looking out to see one swinging in the high branches of the crabapple tree, watching another (or maybe the same one?) walking up from the old orchard and slowly circling the garden, seeing a mother and a cub* amble across the grass just beyond my study window, chasing two cubs off the upper deck where they’d been sent by their mother to check for grapes (all picked). In late November or early December, there will be coho in the creeks draining into Sakinaw Lake, and soon, maybe even now, there will be pink salmon a little further afield, in Anderson Creek. We don’t usually see bears after the salmon have finished. They don’t reliably hibernate but they do sleep for long periods. The other day we went down to a favourite chanterelle site and I have to say I kept thinking about bears as I saw areas dug away under trees, places we’ve found pine mushrooms in the past. Oh, and the chanterelles? So abundant this year. We came home with a shopping bag full.
On Sunday I swam in the lake and realized I couldn’t feel my toes. Time to shift, I thought, and so this week I’ve been swimming in the local pool. I’m glad to be able to do it but already I miss the quiet mornings, the kingfishers, the fish jumping for flies. I miss the living quality of the water, even if it got too cold for me to continue comfortably. Over the winter I’ll take the occasional plunge in the lake, just to maintain our relationship. I love the way it closes over my shoulders when I first glide out, love its buoyancy, its clarity.
After a long period of not being able to think my way back in the novel I’d put aside, I found a way to proceed with the material I was exploring, the characters who’d emerged out of it, and also a way (I hope) to create a trajectory for the two separate locations of the novel. Every day this week I’ve been writing, writing, and yesterday, when I closed my computer to drive down to Sechelt on errands, my main character was in a car with a newly-found cousin, driving south-east out of Lviv towards Chernivtsi. This is 2015 and so there’s no danger of missiles or drones and they are talking about food. What will happen next? I have no idea — and that fills me with excitement.
In less than 2 weeks, John and I will fly to France for a few weeks of exploration. We will mostly be in the Dordogne and I’ve been looking at maps, planning routes. Last night I dreamed we were about to enter the Font-de-Gaume cave in Les Eyzies but somehow we got sidetracked somewhere else. Luckily I’ve booked tickets for the cave and with any luck I’ll be able to go on with the dream. When I was 19, I wrote a poem about one of the Dordogne caves and reading now reminds me that it’s a dream that has always been part of my consciousness.
We have come
hearing of Paleolithic animals
hearing of underground galleries/An electric rain holds fifteen people,
goes down into the caves each day…
The electric train is at Rouffignac and luckily we’re going there too. I understand there’s one cave bear image in this cave and scratch marks from the bears who lived here earlier than 15,000 years ago. A little bow to those bears from the ones who amble by my window, waiting for salmon.
*John took this photograph. The mum was just in the woods beyond.
...Theresa Kishkan 