BUSHWACKING...

"The mountains fell in love with the sky, while knowing the ocean is much nearer, and still they loved it the same..." -Laura Chouette

My mother loved the mountains. She would stare at them thru her binoculars. The one's my father gave her one yar, long ago. They were always upside down, of course, till my father would turn them around for  her. They both loved the ocean, but the mountains more.

The closest they had come to the mountains, was driving through  the Rockies. Camping on the side of the road. Pitching a canvas tent, watching the mountains rise above. Through those upside down binoculars.

There were  sunsets and sunrises  to see. My father wondering if they would ever actually climb a mountain.  He never got the chance to .  But my mother did once. A long time ago.Well, sort of.....

It wasn't exactly a mountain. More like a slope. A green slope covered with pines , salal, ferns and  fallen logs, bugs, and critters. It was located half way  from  the cabin we had out at Sooke. 

The slope was wild and green. You still had to climb. Sort of. Every time we were out at the cabin, my mother would take her binoculars and make me climb with her. Through the mud, and  the bugs, and the salal, and critters. Lots of critters, slimy or otherwise. 

We'd get half way and she'd try to have a look at the Olympic Mountains.  Through the spaces in the trees. Through the half light of tree branches drooping low to the ground.

She usually stood on the beach to see the Olympics. But she wanted to be up high. And this was as high as we could go.

Of course, she had an ulterior motive. End of our day out  at Sooke she liked to cut  a few dozen salal branches to take home. 

She carried a bushwacking knife for the purpose.  Hack Hack Hack she'd go  slicing through branches of green stuff. Hack, hack, hack went her huge knife. Sharp as anything. I got to hold her binoculars while she sliced away. Then she'd get me to haul slippery  leaves. Back to the cabin. Back to the car. Back to home. Critters and all....

She'd swing the massive knife  as we walked down the road . Cars passed. Me buried under evergreen salal. She always took them home to stuff into pails inside and outside the house. Sometimes a critter or two would peek out from the leaves.......I didn't like them critters. 

One day at Sooke, my mother  stood on the rocks watching through her binoculars, as a huge freighter went slowly passing by. She wanted to go up salal mountain again.

We took her binoculars and her big bushwacking knife with her.  So it was time to slash at . Hack, hack, hack....

Hack, hack, hack.....only to turn around and see an old man waving  at her. He had a pipe. He waved it at her, as she slashed away at the salal. "This here is my land," he yelled. He backed away from her. My mother waved the knife  around in the air as if she was painting  with it. He backed away even more.

She told him she'd been cutting salal,  for years , on that mountain . The old man waved his pipe. Turned out the mountain was HIS land. We had to leave. So we did. The old man said we could take the leaves we had gathered. But the rest was his, that and the pines, the ferns, and the critters. He could have the critters....

A nice policeman was waiting for us, when we got back to the cabin. Apparently, strangely enough, quite a few people had noticed my mother walking on the road  with her bushwacking knife, which  my father gave to her, years ago. To whack at things with. Preferably branches. The nice police man had a few things to say . Quite a few things. And he DID take away  my mother's big ole knife.  

We got to keep the binoculars, and the last salal branches she ever chopped. And the critters that went with them. From then on my mother gazed at  mountains from the shore, in front of the cabin. She never did climb a real mountain.  She was content with that.  She could see them so clearly. Once her binoculars were turned the right way....

    "It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves." -Sir Edmund Hillary

                                Sooke ocean front 1966
                                       

Photographs 2024 ( mountain photographs are from Mt. Washington range)