I have been exploring local Coast Salish forests (Burnaby, BC) with my kid who is 5, by foot, by trail running, hiking, biking and trailer biking. We leave our house directly and proceed to forests by foot or bike. Being outside like this brings me into connection and lifts my spirits. We also tend the wild spaces we visit.
I have been surprised to find many many giant stumps, mostly along the north sides of steep forested slopes. They are ancient cedar bones. The trees were very large. Many of them still show the cut where a board was inserted to lift the men higher while cutting so they would not have to cut through the giants’ low wide girth. Have you ever thought of our urban areas as giant clearcuts?
When settlers came to this land, this place, this stolo river valley, Tsleil-Waututh and Kwikwetlem places, Coast Salish as we now call it about 2 out of every 3 humans living here died of smallpox, most of them before actual contact with europeans in this area; disease traveled swiftly up from the south. So 2 of 3 people died, crushing families and their fabric of survival.
I have been reflecting on death of a people, and death of giant trees. What world view allows a body to cut down a tree giant and believe it is the right thing to do, to destroy the forest like this? What world view endorses enslavement? of human to human, or cedar to men? Where have I come from, and how did we believe this was good?
I wonder what kind of new species of human could arise and ‘conquer’… a human community that was reciprocal and care-focused, that did not seek profit by the extraction and destruction of all other life forms.
I WISH that all who seek to work for care of humans and care of other life and care of life-supporting elements should be able to do so by the guarantee of a living wage, so that we may do this work our hearts yearn for, and learn now how to thrive together.
-photos using my cell phone camera-
-Sara Ross, April & May 2020-
