ForesTriangulation
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37. I notice how the outline of clouds mirrors the treeline. I stop cold. It is magical. I am transfixed and changed.
61. Discovering the Murakami Effect, like the clouds echoing the treeline, I triangulate my history. Stories emerge. I sextant my memory. The forest my North Star.
42. We attend a performance by Brent Carver at Harbourfront Centre, an intimate evening of Sondheim songs. Into the Woods. That night vivid dreams, the true twinned nature of the soul, hermaphrotwospirit. I begin to understand.
19. Rattlesnake Point, a hidden lake. Punk haircut in the woods, just the four of us. We don't swim. The lake has no bottom, mysterious deep within the ancient rock. Centuries-old dwarf cedars cling to the crag, with the face of the escarpment perpetually in shadow and traces of ice in the summer sun.
12. The woods offer succor. Cycling alone, the snaking trail leads on, alone. Treelimbs slide by cathedraling overhead as I navigate roots. Push hard, pedaling through puddles, the splash of mud, the splay of intricate lacework acute stained-glass webbing infinitely fleeting, calmly residing in the moment, veined branchtips forever watching from above.
15. Junior Forest Rangers, forty-two of us marooned in backwoods Ontari-ari-ari-o. In the first days, in our bunkhouse, I build triangular shelves from scraps of wood in the unpainted plywood corner above the head of my bed; on my shrine I place special rocks, pinecones and other forest detritus alongside already-read Carlos Castaneda and my half-read Doors of Perception.
In the last week of those endless weeks we overnight in a razed swath of woods, a bivouac to tree-plant. I find myself cold and shivering, alone in a tent before joining the others. Their muted spading and conversation ring off fallen tree litter and guide me to them, invisible. The skinny kid from Scarborough has come loaded w an oz of the mythic black hash.
One afternoon break we paddle downlake, away into the ringing wilderness silent, our aluminum canoes collide lead-like as we float and drift, passing our sacrament from bow to bow with laughter echoing off the treed shoreline. Rocks and low grey clouds silently scud by. Only the sound of the drip from paddles as we return stoically feigning an innocent outing. Ditching our canoes on the shoreline, we join the throng around the firetruck, taking turns trying the hoses in the gravel parking lot.
I know the counselors must know, the jig is up.
The next morning we spend three hours away from camp, spread out and straggled in pairs or ones or threes along the shoulder of an endless gravel road, picking litter that we place in ministry-enseigned burlap sacks. Crows murder.
