Teleportation to Haida Gwaii - DAY SIX - 2nd (and last!) full day on Haida Gwaii

Friday, August 15, 2008

Of course, actually, it's Saturday now, and I'm sitting back in my hostel in Prince Rupert, not having officially checked in, but making good use of the free wireless internet and - eventually - the shower. The overnight ferry back from Skidegate on Haida Gwaii arrived this morning at 7:45 am in a thick thick fog - so thick that Andy and I, up on deck, couldn't see anything but a small apron of water around The Queen of Prince Rupert until the enormous cranes at the harbour suddenly loomed out almost directly over top of us. As far as I can tell, the captain (a joyful seagull named "Cap'n Salty", if you trust the on-board colouring books) navigated us in using only the sense of sound - his own (via foghorn) and that of the SONAR [is that an acronym, like RADAR?] equipment on board. And possibly the smell of the barnacles, seaweed and gull guano. And here I am in PR, still fogged in at noon. I'm waiting around today before I can catch my ferry to Port Hardy (at the top of Vancouver Island), which I have to check in for by 5:30 tomorrow morning! So today is a laying-low. If there's much to blog about it later, I'll be surprised. There is a museum. There are walks. I hope the fog burns off.

You may have been wondering what logistical things I was wrangling with before I went to the blisfully Rogers-signal-less archipelago. Well, here goes. It's big. The secret's out: we've had to make a cast change. Due to "circumstances beyond our control", as we say in the biz*, Aura had to drop the tour, and our director, Alison Williams has stepped in to replace her. So when I hit Victoria on Monday night, we will swing into rehearsal mode. It's going to be a different-ish show, but I'm excited. This kind of personnel swap is always bound to be stressful, I think, but Alison has been working on "Old Growth" since the brainstorming stage, over a year ago. I couldn't ask for a better last-minute replacement.

*(the biz of life, and living in it)

---

And now, to yesterday, before today is too far advanced...

I woke up, of course, and still found myself at the Golden Spruce Motel, of course, and after a fierce blog session (my score is gradually improving, despite setbacks) Andy and I met up for another breakfast at the GSM dining room. Of course! This time I had the french toast, with a full side order of rosti, bien sur! Cooked to order. I asked the proprietor about his Golden Spruce-related treasure that he kept in a jar, which turned out to be some golden-needled branch cuttings preserved in gin. The colour was beautiful, and very yellow, and apparently accurate. He keeps the jar covered and out of the light.

When we were checking out, I got up the courage to ask him what room Grant Hadwin stayed in. Room #1, one of the kitchenettes in what I assume is the older yellow motel building out front by the highway. He asked whether I'd read the book. I explained my reason for being on the island and he smiled ambiguously. He said that he hadn't realised what had happened until Grant Hadwin had already returned to Prince Rupert and was checked in to the Moby Dick Inn (which I drove by this morning). Nobody realised it. The Golden Spruce didn't fall until 2 days after it was cut - in the next wind storm. Hadwin had flown. So the proprietor of the Golden Spruce Motel didn't realise until later, when he checked his room records, that the man who destroyed his (and everyone's) totem tree stayed under his own roof before he did so.

Which is why I stayed there - a kind of morbid curiosity. And it turns out it was a nice place to stay!

People were curious about the reasons behind my visit to the island. Andy has been very patient on our excursions, where I have had to soak things in and go through subtle emotional processes that befit a playwright visiting, for the first time, a place that his characters has visited so many times before him. Andy was expecting it. I probably could have stood on my head in the muck and recited Proust and he would have taken it in stride. I did fall in the mud - but I'll get to that in a moment.

Just as we were leaving the Golden Spruce Motel, and were actually already out at the car, the Swiss proprietor rushed out with the telephone. "Alex - you have a call. A girl is calling you," he said, with an ambiguous twinkle in his voice. It was another Alex - and not one known to me - but rather a journalist with the Queen Charlotte Island Observer newspaper, who wanted to talk to me about my visit to Haida Gwaii, and my fairly unique reasons for visiting the islands. She had stumbled across this blog. It has always been my secret hope that a journalist would stumble across my blog and be inspired to interview me. We set up a loose interview for later that day. I was to pop into the Observer office in Queen Charlotte City, once Andy and I made it down the long interior logging road.

Then we went to see the Golden Spruce a second time. It was finally sunny, which was the main reason - and also, I was considering crossing the river to see the GS up close. I recorded more sounds: this time an obnoxious tractor that was chopping out brush along the road - and some ravens. At the river I tried to walk along the bank to get a view *down* the GS instead of just from the side - and ended up slipping on the mud and going down hard on, thankfully, something soft. Also the mud. It's still on my pants now as I write. And I thought long and hard about crossing the river and eventually decided not to. For a few reasons:

1) Rivers are rarely as safe and easy to swim across as they seem. The current looked stronger underneath, the mud would eat my sandals, and the tangles of logs could be dangerous. But I could have done it. Really, it was that

2) Going to see and touch the GS up close would be like a catholic opening St. Peter's tomb and realising that after all, he was a man, who rotted like a man does. And,

3) That side of the river is sacred ground, and not *my* sacred ground. It just seemed like an invasive thing to do, especially to splash over there, and

4) I've had some bad luck on this tour and I didn't want to invite any more.

So, once I'd spent quite a bit of time on the tourist side of the Yakoun, making sure that I was reconciled with my decision, we went back to the car and followed the logging road all the way south. It was a much longer way than I expected, perhaps because we were going 40 km/h max all the way. And sometimes, 10. We met a lovely logging guy in a pickup truck, whom we asked for directions (or more like, asked to confirm that we took the correct fork back at that unexpected and nonsensical junction back there) and he kept glancing at our tires and undercarriage to gauge whether we'd make it over the recently laid patches of loose sharp stones - which he himself had laid! We made it, barely. On the way down we stopped at an abandoned Haida canoe (half tree, half canoe, not so seaworthy by now and not really near the sea either!) and otherwise listened to violin and piano music by Charles Ives (Andy has a fine iPod) and drove the bumpiness through.

By the time we got the Queen Charlotte and pulled up to the Observer, however, Alex had had to go home for the day. Her boss took my number and picture and invited us to an art opening that evening. It turns out Alex and her husband were the artists, and they had to go set up at the gallery - I guess. Andy and I decided to head there later, as our last stop before boarding the night ferry. We went to the brand new Haida Heritage Centre museum, which isn't even officially open (it opens August 23rd I believe) but is in a kind of preview mode. The exhibits were fantastic...and it is the only museum I've ever seen where the exhibits refer to themselves in first person plural. We, the Haida people, do this. These are our customs. Here's what happened to us, and here's what we're doing to reclaim our rights. I learned that the Haida never signed a treaty, and that they have been forced by the Canadian government to *prove* that they inhabited these islands, pre-contact. From the Haida point of view, from what I can tell, the resource extraction occurring here is 100% illegal. Andy and I wondered what would happen if Canada used this as a test case, and gave Haida Gwaii back to its people. What would happen? It might be the best place in the country to try something like that.

So this short visit has got me thinking. About the legalities of colonialism, about what rights I truly ought to have on this land. About how cruel history can be. And about some possible future artistic projects...

When the museum closed, we went for a quick hike up to the two Spirit Lakes above Skidegate. The lakes are very still and probably have an amazing mist over them in the mornings. Dead trees stick up from the water and are reflected in it. We were alone except for a trail runner in full Lululemon regalia.

Along the road, we saw bald eagles sitting by the shore at low tide - about 12 adults and 4 chicks! The chicks were big and speckled like gulls. And I had never noticed before that when a bald eagle throws its head back and squeals, it looks and sounds rather like a gull. We wondered where all the gulls were. It looked like the eagles had eaten their fill of seafood and were chilling out. Some ravens pecked along the shore, ever hungry. Crows played in the trees above us. Next to ravens, crows seem a little bit juvenile. But I love them...!

We went to Queen B's gallery and coffeehouse in Queen Charlotte City for the art opening, which turned out to be art made from firing shotguns and splatterpaint at metal appliance panels. One Sanyo fridge door had splattered yellow image that, from the right angle, looked like the portait of a woman's face. Deliberate or not, we couldn't tell. We ordered tapas for two (including beautiful BC salmon) and ate on the porch overlooking the harbour. I met Alex and we set up a phone interview for tomorrow / today / just now (she called while I was writing this)... and the article will probably be published on thursday. I'll post the link!

Hope all's well, wherever you are...