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Ancient trees have a presence all their own, and on Gabriola Island grows the S’ul-hween X’pey, or Elder Cedar. The surrounding area has been deemed a nature reserve, a sacred place in the traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation.
A map at the entry shows a 1.4 km loop trail, from one edge of the reserve into its center and back. No side trails fork off—good for exploring alone without getting lost. If the trail were a clock face (it’s more of an arrowhead), the Elder Cedar itself would be at about 4:00, the entry at 6:00. I take the long way round, for the opportunity to become acquainted with the forest before hanging out with the local elder.
And the opportunity to take a wrong turn—unexpected with no side trails, but alas, the map was incomplete. My hike was a mile and a half, not the 0.86992 mile the calculator told me to expect, and which I was confident my knees could handle. So, it was a sweaty, sore, doubt-ridden hiker who greeted the majestic western red cedar.
A Woodsy Rorschach
All along the way, the forest demonstrated unexpected and sometimes amusing lessons about life in the face of obstacles. I wasn’t aware of needing to learn these lessons, but maybe hikes are another kind of Rorschach test.
One of my hiking delights is to peer at what is normally hidden, as when exposed roots of a fallen tree reveal the rocks pulled up with those roots. Rocks that have become so enfolded into the subsurface workings of the tree that they do not tumble out—despite hanging there exposed to the elements (image below, bottom left). When they encounter a rock—even a boulder—roots slowly and steadily grow around it, enveloping the obstacle till it has become part of the whole.
And remember marriage trees? I noticed one such marriage of convenience, between a Douglas fir and western red cedar. Sometimes one tree crowds so close to another that neither is likely to thrive. These two responded to this airline coach-class experience by engaging in inosculation, joining at a cellular level, in a perhaps extreme form of creative compromise (below, right).
Other trees were marked by near tragedy (below, top left). A large tree falls on them, and they just keep doing what they’re meant to do. A trace remains, like if a tree had a limp.
At every turn of the trail, I encounter more evidence that when faced with death, life finds another vessel, another shape. I almost overlooked the bit of trail that actually was a fallen tree—the ground had accumulated around it, yet the bark was remarkably intact, especially considering the tread of people like me. It seems a small thing, but it blew my mind.
Fallen trees foster an abundance of life when not hauled away as “downed timber,” say, after a fire—which the oldest trees here showed the scars of.1 Huckleberry, salal, moss, fungus and more settle in. Red squirrels and mink may den in their shelter.
Long after the trunk of a fallen tree has merged into forest floor, the saplings that once sprouted from it (vertical branches?) show up as an unusually straight row of trees. Their ages are far older than counting their rings might suggest—but how to compute the years that the origin tree adds on to those that are its continuation? And are those trees the four separate plants they appear to be, or one?
In the woods things get metaphysical fast.
Music Made Visible
I look up into the heights while lying on my back on the boardwalk that circles Elder Cedar at a respectful distance, protecting roots from my trampling. It’s a vulnerable posture—I can’t see if someone comes, and anything may fall: needle, splinter, caterpillar poo.
At ground level, Elder Cedar seems solid, rooted, pure mass. At the very top, it gives body to wind, dances in a clearing of pale blue sky. A clearing formed, I discover, by a large fallen fir and all it took out on the way down.
Lying back on the planks, mostly I see the cedar’s lower branches—bare, broken, on their way to becoming soil. I’m looking through their bar-crossed tunnel when the breeze descending through them begins playing something akin to music—I experience it almost audibly, almost visibly. Almost like watching rills in a stream or mallets on a marimba: what is seen links to what is heard, only this linkage registers deep inside me, giving rise to a full-body thrill.
And shaking me right out of my reverie. I’m in the presence of centuries embodied, of time, given shape. And if I weren’t so mindful of time and age, what would I see?
That’s when I notice how the bark flows around each of one of those melodic branches. Flows like roots, like water in a creek around rocks.
So: a tree may transition from dancing to immobility, flowing like water and playing a tune as it goes. Got it.
Time Matters
Oh, that this elegant witness to strength in age could help me shake the nagging sense of running out of time. Aging brings new physical challenges, and it’s hard to accept that I cannot live as my inner self (agile 24-year-old) wants to. Because of a few particulars, most anything I do to build agility backfires into injury and weeks in a sedentary state. (I first typed sedimentary.)
How to make the most of every day, to not waste time? Carlo Rovelli, in The Order of Time, takes apart conventional notions of time by using the tools of theoretical physics, then puts them back together. The evening after visiting S’ul-hween X’pey/Elder Cedar, I read, “Ours is a world of events, not things.”2
And I recall that many Native American/First Nation languages (and Indigenous languages elsewhere, presumably) are verb-based, rather than noun-based, as is English. Those languages and the cultures that gave rise to them also share vastly broader notions of what is animate, alive. Worlds of events, not things.
Rovelli describes time as a human notion, although some scientists have explored time as the fourth dimension—an idea first published in 1888 by the great writer H.G. Wells.3 Given time (hah) I hope to sort it all out, but so far, my first take-away is that at an ultra-small scale, it’s not time that matters, it’s energy.
Will exploring time help me prevail in my daily—workday, holiday, writing day—battle against running out of it? Already, I’ve realized that my calculus of how to spend time is rooted in a scarcity mindset. The alternative I’m experimenting with is letting intuition guide my choice when an available chunk presents itself.
Enter the challenge of distinguishing intuition from indolence, appetite, restlessness and other motivations. Rovelli also writes, “The entire coming into being of the cosmos is a gradual process of disordering,”4 or entropy. He’s describing a paradox in which formation (galaxy, star, planet) requires disorder (entropy). And “every attempt to impose order leaves something outside the frame.”5 Something like intuition, perhaps? Might letting go of order make room for intuition?
I have no justification for applying the forces and patterns of the cosmos to my daily life. It’s just a perspective I want to try on. Like using binoculars to see what’s right at my feet.
The Gabriola Museum lists a large fire in 1938, during a time of extreme drought in the area. https://gabriolamuseum.org/history/gabriola-timeline/
Carlo Rovelli. The Order of Time. Tr. Simon Carnell and Erica Segre. (Riverhead Books, 2018), p. 195.
Michael Lockwood. The Labyrinth of Time: Introducing the Universe. (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 41.
Rovelli, p. 165.
Rovelli, p. 212.
Another wonderful post and some calendar worthy pics! Well done!
Thank you! They are amazing creatures, for sure.