Mnemonic by Theresa Kishkan

Author:Theresa Kishkan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Goose Lane Editions, Non-fiction, Theresa Kishkan, Mnemonic: A Book of Trees, Canada, eBook
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Published: 2010-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Pinus ponderosa

A Serious Waltz

The heart is the warmest organ. It has a definite beat and movement of its own as if it were a second living creature inside the body.

— Pliny, Natural History

There is a moment, driving on the Coquihalla Highway between Hope and Merritt, when the landscape changes. The spruces, which have carried snow in their strong, supple arms, give way to ponderosa pines. The highway begins its long descent to the Nicola Valley where the pines stand among the soft grasses and artemisia, providing shade for cattle, seeds for chipmunks, Clark’s nutcrackers, grey jays, and the myriad small birds that dart in and out of the branches.

Is it excessive to say that I have loved those ponderosas all my life? On family trips in my childhood, up the Fraser Canyon — this was before the construction of the Coquihalla Highway — I remember waiting for them. Was it around Boston Bar where the beautiful groves began? Or at least individual pines on the benches above the river, standing with the firs and delicate aspens. The pattern of branches against the sky changed as the firs and cedars gave way to the lyrical pines, their airy latticework and straight trunks a signal that we had entered new country. Sometimes we’d stop north of Lytton at the picnic site at Skihist and there were pines in that dry air above the river, stately and sweet smelling. I loved their bark, thick and puzzle-shaped, and would scrape little drops of sap off, rolling it between my fingers. In my sleeping bag at night, in a tent of blue canvas, I’d sniff my hands for the faint memory of resin, of vanilla.

In that tent, patched by my father with scraps of brown canvas cut from even older tents, we slept our way across Canada, by rivers snaking through prairie grasslands low with wolf willow or slender birch, in boreal forests, the mixed forests of the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence, and Atlantic regions; but it’s British Columbia’s park-like ponderosa forests that I remember with an affection approximating deep attachment.

In the other woodlands, mosquitoes rose in clouds; I was allergic to them. Once we had to go to the emergency room of an Alberta hospital after camping in drizzle somewhere low and marshy; my infected mosquito bites were dressed with gauze, and I was given penicillin. (I can still feel the fierce sting as the bandages were changed each day, the tape drawn quickly off, taking the fine hairs of my arms and legs with it.) But in woodlands graced by pines, it was usually dry. Instead of rain, we’d wake to the sound of squirrels and grasshoppers clicking in the grass. There was almost nothing nicer than the smell of coffee perking in the aluminum pot; it came to me filtered through fire, bright in a circle of stones, as I pulled on my shorts, dancing a little because I had to pee. Our tent was gilded in sunlight and pollen, surrounded by brown-eyed Susans and rabbitbrush.

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