Corene Michelle McKay

his is an old path. It leads down through a crack in the heat; down

beneath the summer.

| know | am supposed to be here, although-4he vines spell passwords | do not know.

| am fighting against morning glory twisted around cords of blackberry twisted around anchoring salmonberry the spaces filled of glossy salal and fern spikes and the ground beneath is damp and deep, pulling the remnants of the steps into itself piece by rotting piece; and the air is close and is filtered green drinkable light ... heavy with whirring and held together by the spider silk | tear, and the fracturing air spills down beneath my repellent soaked shirt, holding me firmer than do the thorns reaching into my blood.

When you tread the ground in a coniferous forest you can hear the hollowness at its centre.

| am sinking down into that place. And | am not afraid.

Then | am through and into dim, buoyant, vertical space.

The underbrush shudders and two dogs spill out. One a yellow football- player of a Labrador, and the other my own dog, a slimmer, tanner version of her with tracings of his Shepherd mother. Their energy is so concen- trated it almost hums; it hurls them over banks and crashes them through the bush.

| am walking further down. The trail switchbacks, working its way down the incline. | can hear the river faintly.

This is my backyard. This is forest

x6 Creative

from here across the UBC Research Forest to Pitt Lake on one side and Golden Ears Provincial Park on the other, then over the mountains, across a rift passable only by helicopter, then across to the other side of Garibaldi Park. This is too much space for me to comprehend.

| turn a corner. Something black is crouched in the bushes; my first, unbidden, thought is “wolf,” but then | recognize the German Shepherd from next door. The dogs spin about each other, growling, and then they are off. | call mine back. He comes, but he doesn’t take his eyes away from the direction the other dogs have gone. |

kneel down and talk to him, feeling a bit deserted. He turns his head cursorily in my direction, but won’t meet my eyes. | let him go and he’s gone.

| can see the river now, as bits of white between the trees. Grasping tree roots and branches, | climb down the

remaining bank, my feet landing on solid, uneven rock.

Up above to my left the river hurtles down a narrow channel then explodes over a cliff, filling a deep, rounded cavern with wet wind. The water in there is deep and black. | gaze at the waterfall for awhile, at constantly changing water constantly making the same shape.

| am standing downstream from the cavern. Here, the water has more space, and it is both quieter and greener. It widens to a thirty or forty foot across pool; the water over my head at its deepest point. Across from me,22 the only sunlight to get down this deep glows through the moss draped trees on the bank and strikes a gravel bar, extending a long, green finger into the water.

Two brown and white ducks rise from the pool and flap downstream. | Their wings are very loud, and the birds seem too big for this place. The dogs watch them with puzzled expressions on their faces.

Then the Labrador plunges into the water, as she did the first time, as she does every time, with a look of completion on her face. She paddles about, blissful and coughing. My dog follows more carefully. He learned to swim by watching her. Before, he used to walk into the gradually deepening water and get confused when his head went under and he couldn't breathe. | tried