Since our purchase of Tangwyn, logging on Quadra has gone on steadily. As we drive from the ferry terminal at Quathiaski Cove and turn onto the road to Heriot Bay, the large swath of forest to our left was clear-cut long before we got there, and the section to our right was cleared a few years ago. The cynical strip of trees left standing beside the road cannot hide the devastation of clear-cutting. Every day, truckloads of trees leave the island; yet one of the ironies of globalization is that at the lumberyard on Quadra, the only lumber sold comes from California.
Another problem is that most of us today live in large cities: we've become urban animals, occupying a human-created environment that is almost devoid of biodiversity. We have a few domesticated plants and animals that we like to have around us, and we tolerate the pests we can't eliminate, but basically we live in a biologically impoverished region wherever we dwell. That means the baseline against which we judge the wildness of nature is so shallow that to us, the Tangwyn of today seems rich and abundant.
And that, it seems to me, is a major challenge we face as humanity explodes in numbers and consumptive demand — our collective memory is so short that we soon forget how things were. We take for granted a small cluster of trees in an empty lot, and then suddenly one day the trees are gone. Soon after, an apartment complex goes up. Within months, we barely remember the trees and open land that were once there. And so it goes all across the planet as we lose links to and reminders of a richer world that has disappeared in the name of economic development.
When I was growing up in Vancouver, Dad would row a boat around Stanley Park in downtown Vancouver, and catch sea-run cutthroat trout. We would jig for halibut off Spanish Banks on the city's waterfront, catch sturgeon in the Fraser River, and ride horses up the Vedder River to catch steelhead and Dolly Varden trout.
My grandchildren have no hope of experiencing the richness I knew as a child. And there is no longer any living memory of passenger pigeons, of prairie lands covered by millions upon millions of bison, which were preyed upon by grizzly bears all the way across to Ontario and down to Texas. And so we continue to celebrate our imprint across the land, taming the wild and reminding ourselves of what once was with the names of suburbs and streets — Oakview Lane, Forest Hills, Arbutus Drive.
When we purchased Tangwyn, the agent took great pains to inform us it could be subdivided into three pieces. “You could sell two and pay for all of it,” he said, as if that were an incentive and option. It wasn't. We are privileged to claim to own what was once First Nations land and would like to see it become a part of a larger entity, the forest. Subdividing it into smaller parcels that would be sold off to be developed further will not do that. Somehow we have to find a way to maintain the integrity of wild areas.
It's not all hopeless if we can transcend the current conceit that what is the latest is the best, that history and the past are mere academic pursuits. We can learn much from lessons of the past; indeed, we can find ways to husband scarce resources and even replenish and expand them by applying ancient methods.
In 1995, a geologist, John Harper, was flying in a plane along the British Columbia coast at low tide when he noticed semicircular structures radiating out from shore at the tide line. He recognized that they were not natural and must have been made by people. He investigated these structures, which have now been found up and down the coast of B.C., and today it is recognized that the original people on the coast created them by placing stones at low tide. Over time, the incoming tide would wash shells, sand, and debris over the rocks and into the semicircle, perfect beds for clams. In fact, these were “clam gardens,” deliberately created so that clams could be harvested on a regular basis.
When Severn began her graduate degree with the noted University of Victoria ethnobotanist Nancy Turner, she learned about clam gardens and met Adam Dick, a Kwakwaka'wakw elder who was traditionally educated and knew about many of the traditions lost by most tribes. Severn was sure the rock structures along the connection between Tangwyn and Heriot Island were not natural and took Adam to look at it. “Oh, yes, that's a loki way,” he said, matter-of-factly. It was indeed a human-made clam garden, and that also explained the midden we had found on the property near the beach.
For centuries, explorers finding new lands occupied by aboriginal peoples have dismissed those peoples as primitive savages lacking the technological evidence of civilization. We are only now realizing that, in fact, thousands of years of observation and thought had created a profound knowledge base that allowed people not only to exploit nature's abundance but also to enhance certain parts of its productivity, from clams to forests.
SEX HAS BEEN a driving force in my life. In today's liberated society, the ideas about sex I grew up with seem quaint at best, naive at worst. Chastity and premarital virginity of prospective brides were still hoped for and highly prized. Where the men were to gain their experience, I have no idea, because certainly paying for sex was not socially acceptable. Puberty hit me like a concrete wall, testosterone hammering through my body and wreaking havoc on my brain when I was about twelve. Only as age has brought relief from the high titer of sex hormones have I been freed of thinking of sex once a minute. Now it's about once every five minutes.
I am delighted to see the role sex plays in the lives of Tara and my daughters; it is part of their lives but doesn't necessarily mean a permanent commitment. It just seems so much healthier to be able to have sex instead of the prolonged and agonizing petting sessions that passed for sex in my youth. When I was a boy, it was widely believed that for many women, if not most, sex was not a pleasure but something to be borne. Frigidity was widely regarded and accepted as most women's lot, a notion I am sure women today would vehemently reject. My generation placed far too much value on the act of sex itself.
As well as being liberated to explore their bodies and sexuality to the fullest, women are breaking down gender barriers as I never dreamed would be possible in my lifetime. My daughter Tamiko decided to play team hockey when she was in her late thirties, and though I never saw her play, she is such an athlete that I'm sure she did very well. I say “did” because she was forced by knee problems to give it up after a few seasons. When I was a young man, we would never have imagined teams of middle-aged women playing ice hockey. I have delighted in cheering on Severn and Sarika as they played a kind of basketball that wasn't practiced in my youth; when I was in high school, girls in “bloomers” were allowed to dribble the ball twice before passing, a completely different game from the rough-and-tumble sport today. My niece, Jill Aoki, was a soccer star, as is my granddaughter, Midori.
As women have been widening their athletic opportunities, academically they have exploded ahead. I well remember my high school graduation in 1954, when perhaps 10 percent of my class went on to university and boys captured most of the prizes and awards. Almost fifty years later, when I attended Severn's and then Sarika's graduation, girls earned most of the awards and held incredible records of community and extracurricular service.