Colin Ellard - You Are Here

Summer fiction

Ok.  I once promised my agent that I would never mention to anyone in the business that I wrote fiction sometimes.  But this story, written a couple of years ago, resonates with the themes that obsess me, so it seemed worth a gamble to show it the light of day. Besides...it's summer.  And I'm on vacation.  I called it What Spiders Know.

 

High season ends. The weather cools. I remain, stubbornly walking up and down the only road in town, clambering over the rocks on the beaches, kicking at the sand. A man with a rusted dump truck and a worn out hat drops a small mountain of firewood on my driveway. I spend days stacking it in neat piles, having driven slowly past the neighbour’s houses to take mental snapshots of the proper technique. Now, I tell myself, they’ll believe that I’m here to stay. When every piece of this wood has turned to ash in my little stove, I’ll still be here, digging in, fending off the long Maritime winter, walking up and down the road. By then they’ll know I’m serious. By then I’ll be a fixture.

My simple plan to stay and grow roots did not sit well with the ghost of Risser’s Beach. I met her one quiet afternoon in a thick stand of birch trees lying just off the water. All of her possessions sat in plain sight, piled on an old stump in the woods: A plastic deer, a baby bottle, some scraps of ribbon and a few coins, arranged in a crude pentagram. My hands, old and wrinkled like my father’s, hovered over the stump. These were hands worn down by time and love, but as foreign to the winds and tides on this lonely piece of beach as if they had just blown onshore in a hurricane. They hovered over the flotsam shrine but could not touch it.

She made a sound. Not the guttural moans or wails you might expect from an old Atlantic seawitch, but more a gentle coo, a melody. I turned my head, but seeing only empty space, turned away with a shrug. If she became bolder, reached out with icy fingers to touch my shoulder, blew her chilly breath through my hair, I could soar off this beach without a backward glance and never return. So what’s to fear? I walked on, thinking less about what kind of eerie presence might be behind me than of how best to tell the story to my family at dinner.

Darkness falling, I made my way back to our rental house, stumbling along the shoulder of the highway. More than half of the houses along the way were empty. Curtains down, fridge doors propped open, chains across the driveway, the inhabitants fled to the city for the winter or possibly forever. Those who had stayed behind could be seen through their windows, sitting around tables, bathed in yellow light, lost in conversation. They seemed as though they were posing for me, showing off the tight consistency of their lives, proving that, unlike me, they belonged here. I stood before such a house, trying to imagine myself on the other side of the window. It hurt to be outside, looking in. I wanted to share what they had, be inside the neat corners of that room, defined by light and warmth. I convinced myself I could pay the price, rise at four in the morning in January, blue fingers fumbling with a match to light the stove, fending off the gnawing hunger and screaming children.

Who was I kidding? The worst part about inventing the wheel was that it gave us mobility. Ever since then, we’ve been rolling about the globe, scrambling so hard to be somewhere else that we forget where we started out. I’ve tried to find virtue in that kind of drifting, a nobility of detachment. When I broke away from the ground that bore me, flew to

Canada

from a motherland an ocean away, I cut all ties. Now I hover above the earth, looking down on geometric plains of land like a high flying eagle, as I plot great circle routes over the planet. I can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. But no matter how hard I plunge my fingers into the soil here beneath my feet, it is as an interloper, a stranger lurking in the bushes beside the highway, an isolated incident soon to be blown away and forgotten.

A place just has to be more than its water, trees and rock formations. Stories are what glue it all together. Each bend in the road is knit to the next one by a name from the past, and each name joins with others in a song. In some places I imagined rousing anthems, in others, quiet hymns. Bathed in lonely silence, I strained to listen, like an old man nearing the end of his senses. I convinced myself I could hear a note or two, but it might have been nothing more than a stray breeze.

Walking the rest of the way home, I remembered a conversation with my daughter. On a long drive, she asked the timeless question:

“Dad, where are we?” I gave what I thought was a reasonable answer.

“We’re about halfway between

Milton

and

Guelph

.” I could see her rolling eyes in the rear view mirror.

“Yes, but where are we?” she persisted. I smiled. How to explain municipal boundaries, county lines, the miasma of urban politics and how arbitrary borders get defined to a tired little girl looking out the window at a blur of passing trees and grassy hills?

“Well, right now, we’re not really anywhere.”

I deserved the rolling eyes. I was the one who didn’t get it.

Milton

and

Guelph

were places. We’d been to them, roamed the streets drinking coffee, stretching our legs in the middle of a long journey to some other place. This place right here, outside our windows, was nowhere. Empty space. A few clumps of vegetation and a stone farmhouse or two. Not far from the giant neon Schneider’s Meats sign beside the highway which meant that, no matter how tired we were and how bad the weather, we’d be able to make it all the way home to Kitchener. That’s all it meant.

Now, remembering this conversation, I wish I had answered her question by pulling onto the shoulder, stopping the car, taking her by the hand and leading her into the middle of one of those grassy fields where we could lie down, side by side, smelling the soil, listening to the insects crawling and watching the clouds ring the sky like giant pearls on a tangled necklace.

“This is where we are.” I would say.

The trailer home I passed looked rough. One end was held together with old tarps and nylon rope. A scattering of articles around the property formed a crude fence, lit up in harsh monochromes by a single bare bulb dangling in the yard. A car wheel sat collecting rainwater, weeds poking from the bolt holes. The iron door of an old stove stood resting against a post. There had been times when I had puzzled over such sights. Why cling to cold, sodden ground like this when the world waits just around the next corner? How sad to be trapped, to lack the imagination to climb to one’s feet and take flight. What piece of brain were these people missing that chained them to the ground, dooming them to an existence scratched out of the old parts that had fallen off of other people’s possessions? Why didn’t they just move, for God’s sake? Were they alcoholics? Mentally retarded? Now, as the wind flapped at the few tattered bits of laundry hanging from the line, the truth washed over me like the first decent wave sliding up the beach as the tide changes. These people could no more imagine cutting themselves out of this place than they could reach in and rip out their own organs. This lonely stretch of land along the side of the ocean wasn’t just the container that held their souls. It was their skin, blood and bones.

In darkness only pierced by stars, I reached out with tentative fingers to find the front door. My hands swept through a cobweb. The plump spider, unstartled, slipped down a filament of silk to peer at me. Such optimism. They were immense this year, the local residents had told me. It was a sign. I didn’t ask ‘of what’ so as not to give myself away. In movies, spider webs symbolize decline. How did this insect, in two hours, claim this place with such alacrity while I bumbled about in darkness by the side of the road, wishing only for a brief taste of belonging? I know too much. I’ve seen this place from above, even if only in my dreams. I can find it on a map. My web, in sorry tatters, blew into the sky long ago.

The cold doorknob turned with resistance, as though there was a hand on the other side, holding on lightly. The door scraped open, and the thud as it hit the wall echoed through the empty house. All lights were off. I’d forgotten that nobody would be home. Or home but not here. Real home was somewhere else at the moment. Perhaps it always would be. Leaving the lights off, I kicked off muddy shoes and mounted the stairs to the bedroom and let myself fall, face down, on the unmade bed. Fitful sleep took me almost immediately. Still in darkness, I woke to a voice in bed beside me. The words were muffled but insistent, as if she were shouting at me from a great distance.

“I’m here with you,” she might have said. I wasn’t sure.

The sound of the old fashioned twist-bell on the front door was unmistakable and startling. I sidled down the stairs like a cat against a wall. I threw on the light and opened the door. A man stood on the threshold, blinking in the light.

“I didn’t know anyone was living here,” he said. “Saw someone creeping around earlier. Must’ve been you. Thought I should check.” We stood in confused silence for a few seconds. The man shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. He looked past me into a living room littered with toys, newspapers, coffee cups. “Here with family?”

“Yes, but they’re away tonight. It’s just me here. I’m sure it’s me you saw. I’d been walking. I came home.” Still groggy, I struggled to put together a sensible set of words. The man reached out a hand.

“Name’s Finn. I live just across the way. This house is usually empty this time of year.” He gave me a questioning look.

“Colin. I’m renting. For the year.” Finn straightened up and turned his head slightly to fix me with one eye.

“You’re not leaving? Here for the winter?”

“Thanks for looking in,” I said, nodding.

“Got some wood? You’ll need some.” He looked up and surveyed the house, pushing his cap back to get a better view of the roof. “Nine cords, I’d say.”

“I’ve got three.”

“Three?” he fixed me with the sideways glance again, assessing. “Thing is, nobody lives here anymore. Maclean moved away years ago. I’m not used to neighbours. I’m all by myself.” Whatever he was trying to tell me was just beyond my comprehension. It seemed safest to nod. He looked up at the spider, still dangling in the doorway, a new web almost completed. “Sure three’s enough? Oil’s high this year. Sure you’re gonna stay?”

“I’m staying,” I said, feeling more awake now and able to push a hard edge of certainty into the words, “no matter what.” Finn smiled.

“Winter’s miserable here. You’ll hate it. I do. Everybody does.” He turned to leave. “See you again,” he said over his shoulder. I watched him walk down the driveway. When he reached the large rock that marked the house from the highway, he sat down. I waved. He waved back. He took off his hat and crouched forward, elbows resting on knees, fingers running over the edges of his hat. He was rocking slightly as if he was thinking, weighing matters up. I took a step toward him. He looked up at me, waiting. I raised my head, as if I’d stepped outside to look at the stars. I subjected the sky to a thorough, sweeping scan and then let my gaze land on Finn, as if by accident. He straightened his back and shifted, preparing to stand, but it looked effortful. I took a breath, plunged in, and walked the few steps to where he sat.

“Thing is, I wonder if you could drive me into town. I’m not feeling altogether too good.” My reflex was to hesitate, weigh, filter, analyze, ask a probing question or two.
“Sure. Let me get my keys.” By the time I had fumbled through discarded pants pockets, found the keys and met Finn in the driveway, things looked worse for him. Even in the dim light of the yard, I could see the sweat and smell his sickness. He sat in the passenger seat of my car, breathing heavily, eyes closed.

“Finn? Do you think we should call an ambulance?”

“No need. I’ve seen you fellas drive.” Finn had his left shoulder raised and his right hand was pushing hard on his chest. He slumped forward in his seat, head bobbing with every movement of the car. I sprayed gravel as I pulled on to the highway. By the time we reached the emergency entrance at the hospital, Finn was white, drenched with sweat, gasping for air. Before I could get out of my seat, a paramedic had yanked open the passenger door and had poked his head into the car. I could see the top of his head, close shaved and shiny as he looked into Finn’s face. He smelled clean, medicinal, safe.

“Finn, my old son. You’ve cut it close this time I think.” The attendant looked up at me. “Ticker.” he said. “Third time. You must’ve driven here quick. Thank the Lord for those

Ontario

plates,” he chortled, “They sure burn up the highway.” Another attendant had appeared with a stretcher and, with characteristic economy of movement and effort, the two of them had unfolded Finn from the car and had him laid flat on the stretcher. I stood under the awning of the entrance and watched him pass. The second attendant eased me aside. “Staying out at The Point?” he asked.

“Yes, staying….just moved in. New neighbours.” I struggled to explain myself.

“Lucky for him you were nearby,” the paramedic mumbled without looking up, busying himself with the straps on the gurney.

“Yes, lucky,” I replied. Finn raised his head slightly as he passed by and grasped at my arm. His face was ashen. Eyes locked with mine, his lips moved to speak. I leaned in closer to hear him. His voice was a croak.

“Three cords’ll never do her,” he said. I nodded, patted his arm and watched until he disappeared through the sliding doors.

Spell of the sensuous

"An alder leaf, loosened by wind, is drifting out with the tide. As it drifts, it bumps into the slender leg of a great blue heron staring intently through the rippled surface, then drifts on. The heron raises one leg out of the water and replaces it, a single step. As I watch I, too, am drawn into the spread of silence. Slowly, a bank of cloud approaches, slipping its bulged and billowing texture over the earth, folding the heron and the alder trees and my gazing body into the depths of a vast breathing being, enfolding us all within a common flesh, a common story now bursting with rain."

David Abrams - The Spell of the Sensuous

Being and knowing

I wrote this brief entry in the summer of 2006, just before ending my sabbatical. My first-hand experience of extensive quiet periods with nature, perhaps the first such opportunities I'd had since childhood, were leading me gently by the hand to a new understanding of the importance of place.

I'm spending my last reading hours here with Rachel Carson.  I'd always wanted to read "Silent Spring."

As I discover one interesting thing after another from Carson -- the complexity of soil ecology, the perfect interlock between bird, fish and insect ecosystems, I find myself wanting to know more. When I read of the role of spindle fungi in soil, I become drunk with the desire to know a few more details and I resolve to find something good to read on soil. Same thing happens with fish toxicology. This is a very old pattern with me. I've always worried that my thirst to know, to catalog, to memorize was a desire to possess by understanding. Now, having had so many chances to stand in unmediated rapture of the greatness of the sea, the quiet wisdom of a saltmarsh, the brazen confidence of a tiny tidal pool, I wonder whether something else much more disturbing has been going on. Has my desire to relegate all of my experience to a carefully ordered bank of knowledge been an escape? Is this constant needling desire to 'know' an attempt to avert my gaze from the bright glare of life by scooping it up into a rack of books that I can line up on a shelf like a collection of tamed tigers? Is that what academics do? In collecting knowledge, are we spurning wisdom?

It is, perhaps, a wonderful thing to be able to generate a flow chart of the intricate interactions between bacteria, algae, fungi and insects on the floor of a forest. But to let that stand in the way of the feeling of your beating heart as you lie under a 400 year old hemlock tree, sifting a handful of cool, damp soil through your fingers, is a mistake I hope I've learned to avoid.

Teaching place

My daughter puts a toe into Walden Pond.  I hoped she would never be the same.  So far, so good.

The coherence of nature

Here's a reflection written not long after my return from Nova Scotia, in July 2006.  Re-reading it now, I'm amazed by the extent to which what I said then about coherence resonates with some of my current research-related thoughts about how nature heals minds.  When I wrote these words, I had expected my return to Waterloo to consist of a brief period of tying up affairs prior to a permanent move back to Nova Scotia to do, um, something or other  as yet to be determined.  Little did I know....

Yesterday, I fled from grey-streaked office windows into the deeps of Schneider's woods. There's a marvellous tract of forest and field, not very far from the university. You have to know it's there to find it. It's at the end of a long, dirt road. There are no signs, per se, other than the ones that warn off dirt bikes, joggers, dogs, and hunters. The land is privately owned and purposefully left unspoiled for the pleasure of walkers in the summer and cross-country skiiers in the winter. I've known about these woods for years, but only visited once before. When I leapt away from my computer yesterday, I knew that was where I wanted to go, but wasn't sure I would be able to find it. With nothing more than a rough compass direction in my head, I set off through winding country roads. I was there in less than ten minutes. You'd have to know what a hopeless navigator I am to appreciate how remarkable this is.

I ditched the car at the side of the road and staggered into the woods through grass higher than my head. You could make out the remnants of a trail running beside a small pond, but it's pretty clear that these woods are not visited often in the summer. I was surprised and delighted by how quickly the sounds and sights of civilization melted away, leaving me in the company of an orchestra of natural sounds -- the wind in the trees, the calls of a dozen different birds, a cacophony of insects buzzing around my head. It didn't take long for me to fall back into that wonderful state of unfocused attention in which my awareness went from one stimulus to another with an unmeasured ease. It does seem to be true. Like mindfulness meditation, once experienced, these reflective states are a little easier to find on the next voyage. What struck me this time was how well everything that was happening fit together. With minimal intercession from human beings (the main one here being a continued effort to keep the developers at bay), nature builds perfectly interlocking systems and cycles. But this isn't really the surprising part. What surprised me was that when you stop thinking and just watch, listen, feel and smell, it becomes obvious that this is what is going on. You don't need to read a textbook on ecology to feel it in your bones. A sound draws your attention to a branch of a tree, which points to a contour in a field full of wildflowers, from which your awareness is lifted by a pair of dueling butterflies. Everything fits together, building to a powerful resonance that, for now at least, staves off the worst effects of the encroachment of human development. It encouraged me that, with a little bit of help from us, nature has the power to seize hold of even tiny specks of wilderness like this and make them work as they should.

As I left the woods, I could make out the distant roar of bulldozers. The city fears that our steady influx of knowledge workers will slow unless we find places to put new McMansions into which they can pour their earnings. So the weak zoning laws that have protected this region are being softened, blow by blow, like a thousand tiny kidney punches rained down on a flabby opponent by a skilled boxer. The Schneiders have said that if too many suburbs come to dwell here, they will close access to their woods. They're not willing to watch this beautiful buzzing ecosystem degenerate into yet one more suburban dog poo park.

Waldorf gardens

A couple of years ago, I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to extract myself and my family from our busy life here in Waterloo to go and live in a little village on the South Shore of Nova Scotia.  In many ways, I think this year spent walking beaches and forests and learning to adjust to a different pace of life was instrumental in bringing about a sea change in my own life that just seems to keep accelerating.  Some of the insights gained on that sojourn are never far out of my mind, especially those having to do with the importance of place and space as an organizing framework for life.  The picture shows my little daughter, Mei Ling, gazing at a Waldorf garden-- a kind of learning tool and tribute to nature and place that is used to help children connect with their settings in all kinds of ways.  When I first discovered this garden, I had no idea what it was and even wrote a short story imagining that it was an altar to an unrequited love that had been set up by a ghost.  Then I met the teacher who had set the garden up (and her astonishing children).  After that, I brought my own children to the site once or twice week to see what was new.  We left a few of our own contributions there as well.  I talk about it a little bit in my book.

The Martians have arrived in Beijing

Lots of reasons to be following the weather in Beijing.  Here's a nice site that includes a "Room with a View" a daily photograph taken from a hotel window.  The video is well worth watching for the lovely photographs, the balanced reminder that air quality in China is everyone's problem (and everyone's fault) and for Orville Schell of the Asia Society's comparison of our environmental problems with a Martian invasion.  It doesn't matter what country you're from -- it's time to stand together to figure out if there's a way out of this mess.

artful design

I've just stumbled across this company via a nice write-up on the influence of nature on the healing process in Orion.

Here's what they make:

That's not a skylight.  It's a gorgeous kind of lightbox designed to create the illusion of open space and nature in an ordinary interior.  From the point of view of the observer, this clever device is actually changing the shape of the space inside the room.  Sky Factory tells me that they have installed such products in thousands of health care settings, where there is every reason to believe that these devices are having beneficial effects on patients which might range from more rapid healing to the lowered stress levels that might help them better tolerate some of modern medicine's difficult or painful protocols.

At least that's what we think.

The problem of applying the tools of modern psychology to the question of whether or not designs like this really work, why they work, and how to optimize them, is one that I find increasingly fascinating.  Indeed, the very fact that the description of this product appeared in a short article in Orion, a magazine devoted to understanding and preserving nature, raised my eyebrows.

At some deep level, we're getting that it's important to use technology to understand our relationship with nature.  Fascinating technology, deep understanding of how the tools of behavioural science can illuminate the effect of such technology on our minds, and a desire to make life better for the weak, the sick, the shut-in, the institutionalized.  That's a pretty nice agenda for a Friday afternoon of blue sky thinking.

350

Sometimes I feel as though I'm trying as hard as I can to do my part.  I power my house with green energy.  My children understand the three R's.  I have an air conditioner but I don't use it.  I walk or bike whenever I can make it work.  Other days, those little measures seem woefully, laughably inadequate.  And maybe they are  There are days when I read the latest media report of a large group of politicians who are agreeing to sit down two or three years from now to try to agree on a goal for the next two or three years when I despair a bit. 

Like too many others, I think that I cover up my growing anxiety for how my kids are going to cope with the legacy we've left for them with some cool, ironic posturing, some jokey sneering about short-sighted policy makers and the incredible inertia of a population that by now is very well-informed but still remarkably slow to act considering that so many signs suggest that we're perched on the edge of an abyss from which there will be no return.

There's a chapter or two in my book where I address what I think are some of the reasons for our ability to deny what is obvious.  I even make some modest suggestions for some measures that I think might help.  But I always somehow come back to the trusting look in my toddler son's eyes as I put him to bed with the reassurance that in the morning when he wakes up things will be the same as they were the day before and I'll be able to look after him and keep the world safe for him.  I think about my bright-eyed daughter, just become a teenager, smart as a whip, filled with fire and energy, and I wonder how she'll have to live when she's my age, or if she'll even want to.  I think about everything we've accomplished in a span of time that amounts to a tiny blink of an eye, and I want the legacy of the miraculous dawning of human self-consciousness to be something more than a scorched and ruined planet.

We need many things, but perhaps one of them is a single, simple, loud message that everyone can understand and support.  Perhaps we need a number that we can stand behind, believe in, and use as a call to action.

The place of food

I've just come back from a few days in the wilderness with my son, Captain Oreo, to many news accounts of flood devastation in the US Midwest, especially Iowa.  Most of the mainstream news accounts seem to have been focusing on the devastation of homes in Cedar Rapids and the (fortunately very low) losses of human lives.  It's completely human that our attention would be gripped by the images of submerged houses and cityscapes.  As most of us live in urban settings, we can identify most strongly with families who have lost everything in the rising waters.  But the sleeper story, which is now slowly but surely rising to awareness, is the impact on US agriculture.  These floods have also laid to ruin millions of acres of planted fields.  We'll all feel the effects of this rain in the fall but by then it will be so much more difficult, because of the distorting lens of space and the quiet passage of months, for us to put together cause and effect. 

I just went out to my yard to check on our seedlings -- a small patch of spinach and kale in a postage stamp urban yard.  They're doing just fine so far.  I'll take the Captain out there tonight for a little survey.  It may not seem like much, but I'll do whatever I can do to help him understand that his dinner doesn't really come from the supermarket.