Dreams Looking West Part 1

The Holy Toledo cat is in a curl on the hassock. You’ll lose if you bet against him sleeping away the rest of the grey rainy day.

When I began dreaming about moving to British Columbia I was twenty four living in rural Quebec. I dreamed of a log house in a forest. I moved to B.C. on May 4th 1978. The whole log house and forest of my dreams came twenty plus years later with a marriage.

My husband Courtney Cressy built a saddle and ride style of log construction on the first floor with regular frame construction on the second floor. The whole structure is built facing true north, situated on bedrock, with native rock footings forming the basement. All the logs the house is built with grew on this two and a half acre parcel of land. There were forty five 100 year old and more Douglas firs logs, with a few cedar logs where they worked.

Of all the testimonials about Court’s good nature I heard before marrying him, the one that lit up my heart with trust and love came from the giant Douglas fir tree you drive around coming onto the property. I had been on the property many times before that. I had walked across it when setting out on hikes with a girlfriend who lived next door for years, this before I knew the property owner. Later I had driven onto the property doing business with Court and making friends. This occasion was the first time we came onto the property together as a dating couple.

It took me almost a year to tell Court what that giant Douglas fir told me about him that day. The tree conveyed an image of Court as friend and steward of the land. The fir tree was acting as an agent or a go between for Court and I, introducing him to me as a kind, gentle, caring man. A profound conviction that the tree, all the trees, loved Court would be the simplest way to describe what I suddenly knew.

The prevailing southeast winter winds have shaped our coastal landscape. Every tree has dealt with this wind so an adult tree shape can tell the discerning eye much about a tree’s history and health. Four years of seasons later my connection with this land has strengthened, taken root. This rainforest is full of giant trees who communicate when I slow my metabolism and listen with feeling. The fecundity of winter rains not apparent in grey cloud covered tree tops and bog covered roots will spring to life, are now springing to life in the form of raindrops bouncing back into the sky they have fallen from. .

These years of shelter in and under the majestic dignity of this Douglas fir forest have blest me with that expansive relaxed pace I had dreamed of. The spring sap running in the tree runs in me and we grow together. When these old growth Father and Mother trees were laid sideways this last fall of 2006, our world thundered in their death throes. We were shocked and rocked by unimaginable change.

During these storms I felt that the changes in our natural physical world were a reflection of the changes in our energetic and inner worlds. When the Fall deluges of rain had begun after another summer of near drought conditions they had been heartily welcomed. The first shock then was to go from celebrating the rains to cringing about flooding in a few short weeks. When the winds began lashing the trees, it was the tallest that took the brunt. Tree roots soaked with weeks of rain, loosened like weeds under the brutal unending winds, were the recipe for natural disaster.

To be continued.