Banana Seats and Barbies

I was eight years old, sitting at the dining table of my family home. With an open box of Ding Dongs, I searched the Simpson-Sears’ Spring catalogue for my dream home Barbie and Ken style. Flipping through items of favour, I dog-eared the pages editing and re-editing until I had it down to just a few special things.     

            Tucked between the Barbie camper-van and the Light-Bright set, something caught my attention. A small tear-out reading, Father’s Day Writing Competition—First place $500 shopping spree.  A spark inside of me ignited, what if I could win? I grabbed my peppermint scented, candy-cane pen and my best stationary, adorned with Shultz’s Snoopy, the Red Baron. I knew exactly what to write about.

            My parents had recently purchased me a second—maybe third, hand bike. It was affordable and ridable, but needed TLC. Dad promised to take it apart, fix the bent wheel and chain that incessantly fell off and add a chain-guard so the cuffs on my favourite denims wouldn’t get caught or greased up as I rode.

            Grey duct tape criss-crossed the gold-glitter banana seat letting through small tufts of foam stuffing. But it was a banana seat, they were the coolest. The bike was my favourite colour, purple.

            Dad had been working on the bike for over a week. I hadn’t seen much of him or the bike over this time. He worked shifts that sometimes brought him home just as I was leaving for school and he would rarely be awake when I arrived back home. He worked on the bike while I was at school and told me I wasn’t allowed to see it until it was done. Though it near killed me to keep away from the little port-hole window on our laundry room door that led to a view into our garage, I did as Dad asked. I looked forward to the excitement that would match a Christmas morning tree-footing full of unopened presents.

            Walking up our street, I was surprised to see the garage door was up. Dad’s tool cabinet was rolled out onto the asphalt drive. His Honda motorbike, which he seemed to love taking apart and putting back together just for fun, sat unattended beside the tool kit. Dad’s red t-shirt and patterned-blue welders cap were bent over something else in the driveway.

            As I got closer, I could see that Mom was there too, sitting flat on her bum with her legs open in a ‘V’. It was a hot day. She wore a hand sewn, mustard-yellow hair band tied with the ends dropping at the back. Her bell bottom jeans were pushed up around her knees and sweat darkened the back of her striped tank-top. Grandma’s sewing kit was at her side. Chin up and glasses low on her nose, it looked like she was examining something with great intent.

           Seeing me, Dad raised his arm in the air giving a slight wave, palm open toward me—like he was magically drawing me in with his powers. Feeling the pull, my walk turned into a full sprint. Was the bike finished?

            Out of breath, I stopped in the driveway just in front of them.

            “What’s the hurry,” Dad said, grinning. The fender of the purple bike peeked from behind him. I looked down at Mom. She raised her shoulders, smiled and turned back to her project.

            “What’s that?” I asked, pointing around his side.

            “That’s not for you.” Dad said, tilting his head and squinting his eyes in disapproval.

            “It is!” I yelled and pushed him aside.

            There it was. My new (to me) bike. A pristine, sparkling banana seat had been attached. The fenders gleamed of polished chrome. Dad added rainbow streamers to the hand grips and reflective cherry-on-a-stem stickers to the back. He recruited Mom, who had wrapped rainbow drinking straws around each one of the bikes wheel-spokes.

            Mom hovered over the bikes basket. She had small sewing scissors between her lips and was attaching pink and yellow crochet flowers she had made to the front of a new rattan basket fixed to the handlebars. She took the scissors from her mouth and placed them into the sewing kit before standing up beside Dad.

            “Mrs. Beasley will fit in here perfectly,” Mom said, grasping the edge of the white basket.

            Suddenly I felt my life had changed. I was on the map of cool-bike-kids in the hood. And most notably Dad had done something for me that was just for me. Not something that was piggy-backed upon someone else’s gift, like rides on Dad’s new motor-bike or treats brought back from tropical holidays my parents took without me. I loved that bike, and with my best-doll, Mrs. Beasley in the basket, I felt proud and sure.

            Shortly after this, never before and never after, Dad sat down with me while I was colouring at the kitchen nook. Hunched over my Holly Hobby activity book, I could feel his warm stare. I looked up at him and he smiled. I skootched over the bright-orange vinyl covered bench seating to make space for him.

            He sat down, and without words he picked up a coloured pencil and began to shade in the opposite page to mine. There we sat, my Dad’s thick, callused millwright’s fingers, tenderly filling in the fine lines of the little fawn tucked at Holly’s feet. Me, dusty-rose tinting Holly’s cheeks just so.

            I can’t say exactly what I felt that day, but it shone. Somehow our worlds came together in a way so deeply connective that it stirs emotion for me even today. The sensitive energy of this rugged and sometimes gruff man as he gently coiled himself into my world of rainbow-dreams and imagination made me feel special.

            These events are what I wrote about in the Father’s Day essay contest. The story of my Dad at his best. The contest readers at Simpson Sears must have felt this too because I won the contest. I was the recipient of five hundred cold, hard Simpon-Sears dollars!

            I bought a leather-elbowed, tweed-knit sweater for my Dad, and though it bears many holes and snags, it still inhabits a hanger in my parent’s closet. I bought Mom a new cotton, floor-length nighty. I fulfilled several pages of my dog-eared dreams, including a Barbie-Boing 747 airplane, (fold-up suitcase style) and a Barbie-Motor-home with Jeep towing capability. Most importantly, I wrote the best story. This feeling was invaluable, and I still chase it today.

            That following September, I went into grade four at Betty Huff Elementary school. This was the newly built school around the corner from my house that replaced the trails where we used to pick wild blackberries and occupy twig-forts.

            My newly appointed radical jeans and t-shirt wearing teacher, Mr. Cleary, would do things a little bit differently than any other teacher I’d had before him. He’d encourage outside-of-the-box thinking, sometimes making the grass field that lined the forest, or the forest itself, our classroom. For this, I’d bound out of bed each morning excited to go to school.

            My summer contest-win had given me new confidence. This was something I hadn’t known. The uncertainty that held my words behind my tongue seemed to disappear. I wanted to shoot my hand up and answer every question asked, and oh, how I wanted him to pick me.

            Mr. Cleary pulled me aside one day and said, “I think you have a knack for telling a good story, Leesa. Keep writing them down.” He said my name with such clarity, I wasn’t just another kid in my grade four/five split class, I was Leesa, and someone wanted to hear what I had to say.

            Beaming, I cycled home that day, Mrs. Beasley in my basket and the wind at my back. I had some writing to do.

Rocky Mountain Convoy

Clank-clankity-clank!

            “Bear!” Clankity-clank-clank-clank.

            I woke up in the darkness, “Bear…?”. Unfurling from the comfort of my sleeping bag, I knelt at the edge of my foam mattress and peeked through the small camper window.

            Uncle Boyd stood on the fold-out aluminum step of his camper. His wire rimmed glasses teetering crooked on his face and his meager waft of oily hair fell flat in front of them. Except for a well-worn pair of cowboy boots and sagging white underpants, he was naked.

            Clanking and hammering pots and pans together, he yelled back into the camper, “Brenda, get the shotgun!”

            “What’s happening,” Mom whispered from the top bunk.

            “Someone left their cooler out again. That bear’s back,” I said. “Uncle Boyd’s gonna shoot it.”

            “He’s not going to shoot it. He’ll just scare it.”

            The blast rang through the camp followed by a testosterone charged fit of laughter and the cussing of men.

            “Come back to bed, Leesa. You don’t need to hear any of that. The bear’s going to be fine.”

            I cuddled back into my covers, wrapped my arms around my faithful rag-doll, Mrs.Beasley and pulled the flannel sheets up over my head.

            Camping in the Rocky Mountains was something my family has done for as long as I can remember. A convoy of friends and families, including my Alberta uncles, aunts and cousins, would settle in to a pre-selected clearing, deep in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. Surrounded by slate cliffs and rugged, plunging rivers we’d set up for the months of July and August.

            My mom, dad, brother and I were city dwellers with rural, small town roots. We anticipated this trip with excitement. As a child, I knew camping made me feel blissfully happy, I now know why. I was and am spiritually connected to this land. Thick forests and rushing mountain water was the conductor in our family’s exploration of new habitats, ourselves and of each other.

            In preparation Mom would make bread and hundreds if not thousands of buns, freezing all of them. Shopping for ‘camping food’ was almost better than Christmas morning. Instant hot chocolate, hot dogs, marshmallows, mini-cereal packs of frosted flakes and corn pops brimmed out of our shopping cart. This was the good stuff that Mom would never let us have at home.

            Some people brought tents, some had motor-homes sporting stovetops, and televisions—all the luxuries of home. We had a small camper that sat atop our yellow, nineteen-seventies Ford super-cab. Mom made ruffled curtains for its tiny, square windows. These matched the bench seat cushions she made for the campers only sitting area, a picnic style, arborite table and two benches that when reassembled come night-fall, served as my bed.

            The main camp was set up close to a small stretch of the vast Athabasca River. Along its shores, I would create small tidal pools with river-rocks stacked into crescent moons, leaving an opening to meet the currents flow. All sorts of creatures and peculiar forest debris would drain into these natural science labs. Careful examination of tiny fish barely the size of my pinky-nail and dragon flies, with their delicate crosshatched, iridescent wings ensued.        

            In this vibrant river, we would fish for trout—baiting our own hooks with worms and flies. We were supposed to find our own bait, but Uncle Boyd let me use his. He’d pull an old coffee tin from his tackle box, saying that they were ones the fish liked best. We had to kill and clean the fish we caught. This was impossible for me. Even if I closed my eyes, I was not capable of clubbing the fish—it was hard enough to pull the hook from its cheek. My uncle would take mercy on me, and with one swift swing of the club the fish was dead. He’d cut and toss the head to eagerly awaiting eagles who seemed to know this was his plan, swooping—talons out, and snagging it at exactly the moment before the fish-head hit the river.

            I finished prepping the fish for an awaiting skillet that bubbled with hot butter. I gutted and scaled the fish as per Uncle Boyd’s guidance and insistence, and slapped the trout down into the sizzling pan. The cast-iron skillet sat atop a small grate balanced over a twig burning fire. This fish was the best thing I’d ever eaten. Salted and crisped to perfection, we ate fresh trout on the rushing-river’s edge under the jagged outline of the darkening pine trees against the orange twilight sky.

            The camp had two communal tents. One was a music tent with amps plugged into generators and a dance floor made of rough planks and plywood. My cousin Pete, a real musician, set up his entire drum kit in here. My Auntie Brenda played the bass, Uncle Boyd played guitar and sang along with my dad. Johnny Cash songs were a family favorite. I loved to join in with them because I knew all the words. My New Zealand born dad had a ‘Kiwi’ twang to his rendition of ‘Ring of Fire’ that everyone cheered for.

            Kids armed with Tupperware-shakers filled with dry-rice and soup-spoons taped backside to backside added percussions. The plywood dancefloor served our dancing boots well and I’m sure you could hear the hootenanny all the way back to our long-forgotten city.

             The other communal tent was the kitchen. Here, everyone ate, cooked and washed up. Both tents had a potbellied stove that was always stoked. These were surrounded by clotheslines strung this-way-and-that. Wrangler-jeans, t-shirts, towels and unmentionables dangled from the lines in every variation. Boots stuffed with newspaper jutting out the top lined the bottom of the stove, scenting the air with the burn of rubber. The kids would sit on the ground on the other side of these shoes drinking hot chocolate from tin mugs.

            The first person up in the morning stoked the kitchen stove-fire. Welcome sunshine penetrated the canvas roof and walls burning the chill morning dew, creating a halo of fog as you approached. Upon entering, the steamy scent of porridge bubbling on the stovetop perked the senses.

            After breakfast, we’d hear the daily camp-news report—who caught the biggest fish and what type of fly they used or who found a new hiking trail. Adventure germinated with announcements of anyone loading their pick-up truck with passengers on route to the swimming hole or heading up to explore the century old trapper’s cabins.

            One day was dedicated to pealing and shredding at least one hundred pounds of potatoes into big rubber bins. From here, Aunty Brenda, Mom and Grandma would make ‘pult’. This staple of my Grandmothers Swedish upbringing was one of the few things Grandma took away from her home when she left Sweden at seven years old. It is a simple recipe of potatoes, flour, water and lots of butter. This created the dough for dumplings, spoon dropped into boiling water until they’d float. We’d fry up huge amounts of white onions and fry thick-cut bacon to serve alongside the pult. Uncle Boyd and Grandma would drink the warm, gooey pult-water afterwards, something I would gag watching.

            There was always a grown-up willing to take the kids out on a nature walk, this was my favorite thing about camping. We’d search for vibrant forest and field flowers, the brighter coloured the better. Back at camp we’d crush them into a colourful paste, creating a natural paint pallet. Then, we’d compose the most wonderful mountain landscapes using our fingers or frayed twigs to create our masterpieces. Older kids had jack-knives and whittled small forest animal sculptures or wiener roasting sticks.

            We’d string garlands of pine cones around the camper and watch as the chipmunks came to retrieve their seeds. These little creatures were typically seen hyper-speeding throughout the camp so if we could get them to stop for a moment to nibble on a seed or two it gave us time to see their sweet, wiggling noses, twitchy whiskers and nimble paws manoeuver the tiny seeds.

            With many of the Rocky Mountain camping-clan elders are gone now, my immediate family has continued with these old traditions, adding some new ones in a more intimate camping experience in Rock Creek, BC.

            We still enjoy the excitement and adventure found in the natural world, floating together down the lazy, Kettle River and riding our bikes through forest narrows and sprawling grass fields, always keeping an eye out for colourful paint-flowers.

            Though a bear has never made its way into our camp, there are many chipmunks to watch, eagles to listen for and a resident beaver who isn’t afraid to flap its tail on the water in protest to our presence.

            I am grateful for a deep connection to the wilderness that I share with my daughter, Ruby and my husband, Warren. I consider these moments and memories as some of my dearest treasures.

Nature's call

Amid a pandemic, where the common rule is to self-isolate, walking the forest trails has been one of the most important resources in maintaining my mental and physical health. Why does this small act of moving across the earth, one foot in front of the other make such a difference in our lives?

I have always found a measure of peace while walking. As a child, I’d find space to sort my thoughts while walking through my neighbourhood. I’d stop to greet each lady-bug or snail, giving them proper names like Dotty and Slick. This familiarity gave me the feeling of kinship with nature. I felt there was a real possibility these creatures were sent to me by my guardian fairies, reminding me I wasn’t alone.

Stepping stones trailed through a herb garden in our back yard, winding a pungent path between rosemary and lavender bushes. Plump with a large vegetable garden and wispy greenery this was a great place to collect specimens. I had a collection of old jam jars that I had dotted with air-holes. Filled with grasses, leaves and dirt from the garden, I’d embark on a search for critters to fill the home-made terrariums. Once filled, these jars lined my bedroom windowsill. In one, earthworms occupied ‘Wormville’, a cricket I named Jiminy stayed in one and my treasured lady bug, Dotty was in another.

With a spritz bottle of warm water I’d create small, humid habitats for each one. Watching Jiminy rub his tiny, toothpick legs together like he was strumming a fiddle kept me busy for hours. Imagining him in his own cricket-world, building a home, gathering food or basking in the sun, made me feel like I was inhabiting the pages of one of my cherished Richard Scarry picture books. By nightfall I would take the jars outside and let everyone go, back to their homes.

In my teens, I walked because I had to. I walked two miles to school, to and from my part time job at Newlands Golf Course and I walked to my friends’ houses. I lived in a small, rural neighbourhood in Langley, BC, where the roads were lined with small hobby farms spattered with livestock. Cows, horses and sheep kept my attention along the way. There was always a peaceful connection when our eyes met. I adored them from afar knowing they may run if I reached out. This mutually respectful distance felt calming and I was blissfully happy to have these gentle souls watch me as I watched them.

Apple trees, grand oaks and trailing fence lines framed small pastures like they were hung upon gallery walls. Brilliant greens and yellows were the background for century old barns and farmhouses. The rain invited a whole new experience, making the colours vibrant and reflective. Still leaves on low hanging branches of old-oaks came alive, weighted by heavy, bouncing droplets, rolling as they’d fall, pooling into shallow, muddy puddles.

I moved to the beach community of Kitsilano in Vancouver, British Columbia when I was twenty-three years old. Sitting on one of the several massive logs that settled on the beach there, I found connection to the earth by digging my toes into the warm sand at the shores edge and counting the waves as they rolled in.

So many of my senses were seduced by the sea. I found rapture in the lull of waves, seagulls squawking to the Gods, and the smell of earth and ocean intertwined. Thirty meters away, bustling Cornwall Avenue fell silent while I walked through tangles of sun dried seaweed, always keeping an eye peeled for washed up offerings from my darling-ocean, like bits of flotsam from sunken ships or coveted sea glass.

Today, I live across from a magnificent old-growth forest in Port Moody, BC. This forest calls me to her, like she knows exactly what I need and exactly when I need it. My mind and soul have been soothed under falling branches of cedar and over leaf carpeted trails. I have come to trust her invitation like that of my beloved grandmother offering a loving embrace.

Walking the path beside the heavily travelled Murray Street that parallels my home, cars rush by on one side of me and the deep, wild forest’s gaping lungs pulse on the other side. It truly is two different worlds separated by a walking path. Look one way and see a world of man-made towers and construction rubble, look the other way and there’s patience and creation underway.

Entering the trails recently I was struck by some colourful painted rocks. Adorned with rainbows, hearts and words like ‘love’, ‘gratitude’ and ‘peace’ written on them, they were seemingly placed there by a kindred soul. These beautiful fragments of the human world felt like an offering of peace to Mother Earth.

Within seconds of walking the path the human world diminished. I could no longer hear the swish of cars or clatter of trains. Walking through a tunnel formed of sweeping cedar and pine branches, I could only see thin shafts of daylight seeping through. Hundreds of grand trees surround this trail, most are over one hundred years old, many are over five-hundred years. They stand like sentries, and in the space between them there is a golden haze sparkling with fairy light and a quiet bustle of creature activity.

Fallen trees crumble onto the earth and melt into the soil giving struggling seedlings every ounce of life they have within their nutrient rich and age old wisdom. Their deep-rust colouring is alive with gratitude and a sense of community. Thick, velvety-soft moss blankets the forest floor giving cover to the grubs and worms that serve in abundance to the scavenging crows. Rows upon rows of shelf fungus ladder up into the coniferous branches. ‘Fairy puke’ speckles peeling bark shingling the tree-trunks. These colourful tiny spots of tangerine lichen are rare. Finding them feels like discovering a magical treasure.

On the other side of the forest there is the marshland inlet off Indian Arm. When the tide is out the dense, black mud flats reveal long vein-like waterways. Perched upon one leg, in yoga tree-pose, herons stand over these narrow running streams—still. They stand patiently awaiting a flinch of movement to induce their keen hunting skills, then with one swift reach, a small fish wriggles helplessly in their bill.

I walk these forest lined shores daily because I must. The more disconnected I feel from myself and others, the louder this call from nature becomes. Once in her presence, immediate reminders of gratitude, community, patience and selflessness are so prevalent that immersing myself in this habitat helps me understand the circle of life on a greater, more meaningful and Universal scale. I believe we as humans are one with the natural world and thus I believe we can find our purpose by watching and listening to the wisdom of the forest. Giving what we can and taking only what we need, being present and patient, and knowing that if we have faith and remember there is always something to be grateful for, we can achieve a blissful joy for living in peace and abundance.