The Word for Wilderness is Home

 

As I enter the forest, I tell the tree beings
and the others who live there, I am here.
They already know; they are watching me
as I pass. The forest is draped in old man's beard;
thick moss clumps lie on trunks and branches.
Silver sun rays filter through the trees.
Mushrooms and swamp lanterns, rose hips
and salal, line the path.

High on an ancient cedar,
a strip of bark has been peeled away.
When the First People were the only ones
living here, each family was responsible
for an area of forest.
When they felled a tree for a canoe,
or removed bark for their baskets and hats,
they left that area undisturbed
for a hundred years so it
would recover.

They say, back then, the People
and animals and trees and rocks,
the whales and sea and rivers,
all spoke together,
for everything has a spirit.
The salmon were so plentiful,
you could have walked
upon their backs.

When it was necessary to hunt a whale,
the whale would appear to the young brave
in his dreams; they made a pact,
and only that whale, and no other,
could be taken.

I walk the same pathways now,
a mamalthni, in reverence,
yet some sadness, knowing
the forests, the ocean and
all the wild ones are suffering
because the dominant culture
has not yet learned how to live
upon the earth.

To the First People, there is no word
for the wild. They tell us
"The only word for wilderness
is Home."

Cox Bay ~ Warren Rudd photo

A mamalthni is a white person.

For earthweal where we are taking A Walk On the Wild Side. I am fortunate to live with wild nature all around me: ocean and forest, wolves and cougar, bears and whales. But even here, we are fighting to save what forest is left. Even here, in what was a rainforest, we now have drought through spring, summer and fall. And a million tourists come year-round, leaving few wild places for the animals to be free of us. This fall, bears are stressed and hungry, as they have been unable to put on enough fat to get them through the winter. My heart breaks for them.