The sea beckons, hazy white expanse of slippery, glistening rocks, assembled hodge podge – we make our sloppy, tenuous way. Picking paths from the sides of ancient stones. View from these wild old trees, a family of three – it is an enticing mirage. In the end, we didn’t get there. We sweated and swore, didn’t we, and finally unpacked our lunch and ate in the sun, crunched on slimy rocks. Crabs skittled and it was like the sea was seeping up, pincers poking us – wake up from the dream that is the sea – was the message. Sandwiches soggy, smushed apple slices in bags and candy wrapped in blue and pink foil, intact and perfect in our mouths.
These trees watched us stagger out, squabble, stagger back. Decades they have watched the dreamers venture, toil, despair, come back to the refuge of trunks, branches, their conversation deep underground tingling up my legs. I stand in the centre as you wander off, looking for an easier way. Gazing up as the trunks and branches wend grey sinew ribbons in the sky. A holy place and a place to stash junk in Easter colours, like presents, bright oval eggs. Secret refuse in pretty packages that maybe no one will see – that may have floated in from the sea.
♠
♠
Adrienne Fitzpatrick grew up in the north and returned to complete her Masters in English at the University of Northern British Columbia; her creative thesis won the John Harris Prize for the best in Northern Fiction. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Prairie Fire, CV2, subTerrain, The New Quarterly and Thimbleberry. Her art reviews have appeared in Border Crossings, C Magazine and Canadian Art and book reviews in the BC Review. She explores the phenomenological experience of place in her work and her first book, The Earth Remembers Everything is based on her experiences travelling to massacre sites in Europe, Asia, the Central Interior and Northwest Coast of BC; it was also short-listed for the 2014 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. Instructions for a Flood, based on her experiences of living and working with Indigenous Nations in the Central Interior and Northwest of BC, came out from Caitlin Press in May 2023.
The Litter I See Project 