Standing here at the bottom of the valley in Avatar Grove, I recall the apprehension of destruction, followed by uncertain reprieve after logging was prevented many years ago in 2010. Still officially unprotected, in 2019 the loggers came back for the final few percent of valley old-growth when the catchy invocation of Avatar as a tourist draw had faded; when few asked anymore, “Why was the grove called Avatar?” Yes. Use of the past-tense already foreshadowed its destruction.
Redcedar, Avatar Grove, Port Renfrew, Vancouver Island
That morning the loggers finally came with chain saws, skidders, loaders and trucks. Destruction seemed all but accomplished with a little effort. It was only a question of shifting trees to the stumpage side of the ledger along with calculated profit. But then, as if materializing out of the morning mist, mothers and fathers, along with a few elderly people, began to appear, advancing from all directions, winding their way between the trees. Each couple or single parent carried a bundle.
The Magic of Avatar Grove
A logger cried out from the logging road; and then another shout, a more urgent riccochet amongst the trees, from one who advanced quickly to see what was happening. I didn’t see him until he was on the edge of the ravine, casting about with bewildered eyes at the advance of the interlopers walking toward a prominent, gnarled Redcedar—two thousand years of life. An engine revved angrily, impatiently from the road as the logger crashed back the way he came, surrounded by the shadows of his own muttered profanities. Other loggers stood or sat in curiosity as the gathering closed into a circle.
Eventually, the engines sputtered and silence descended. It was still early--the mist persisted in luminous pools between the trees and ethereal wisps curled from the lower branches of a scattered stand of Hemlock. Deeper across the ravine where I stood and watched from an obscure vantage point, the mist remained heavy.
The gathering around the old Redcedar was about fifty adults and twenty children. All, even the children who looked about in awe, remained silent. Entering the grove had imparted to them the soft tread of the deer or cougar. Without consciousness, ego had dropped away and they became more and more indistinguishable from the life of the grove. I was curious about the bundles—thirty maybe—until an infant cried. It wasn’t distress, you’ll understand. A father gently handed a bundle to his wife and she set about feeding the little one where she stood. Then I understood that all the bundles were infants.
A elderly woman’s voice was raised from some meditative place and dispensed like manna to the gathering:
“I don’t need to thank anyone for being here. We share a single purpose. We’re not here to save the trees as warriors—no spiking or language of battle will be uttered amongst us, because this is for our children. Today in particular, it’s for our babies”.
A man amongst them softly cried. Someone touched his arm.
The group members turned about them in silence; each couple or individual seemed to be looking, listening, feeling—scanning with their entire being. Piecemeal, some were drawn away with certainty, others more cautiously; but the purposefulness of ego was completely absent. I’d seen many people come and go through the years—heads and mouths too busy to know the grove with anything more than a fleeting sense or two at any one time.
I’d often see them look back as they left the grove with grief etched in their faces, as if they’d left something indefinable there, or knowing that they’d failed to see the sublime—and they had. But the grief—ahhh! That was another thing. For most, it was a grief for something they’d never had--had not even been born with the vision to see; like creatures deep underground whose distant ancestors were deprived of light for so long that their eyes were filmed with membrane and then eventually dissolved.
But all this was different. All of the dispersing members were here with mindful intent, stripped of desperate, grasping desire. A little girl, perhaps nine-years of age, stepped ahead of her uncertain mother, holding her hand; she looked back and smiled, “This way, mamma. I see it!” Her mother followed.
I looked about the grove in which I’d spent so much time and harvesting as much wisdom as I needed to know this place as part of myself. There are such things as auras you know. All the trees and shrubs in their health emit a verdant green luminescence. There were changes here today, for many of the trees emitted a golden aura that breathed and wreathed spirals around their trunks and into their branches. This is what the little girl had seen as she brought her mother to the base of an old Douglas Fir. The mother attended to the tree and then to the infant in her arms. She smiled and knew her infant’s heart.
Two of the elderly with their account of many years had found trees that called them and invited them to lay amongst the roots to which they would soon enough return.
By now all had arrived at the trees with golden auras, each held an invisible signature that signalled a sisterhood or brotherhood to the infants or elderly who were called. Some of the mothers and fathers had already slung ropes over low branches and were hanging their swaddled infants like cocoons from rope slings. Some of the men moved quickly to assist parents throw a loop of rope over trees with higher branches. One of the loggers up on the hill understood something he could not yet explain and quickly followed the urge to assist. With bright eyes he arrived to help a young mother standing beneath a gigantic Redcedar with the first broken branch twenty feet above her. Within seconds he had looped the rope and secured her infant.
Barely a whisper was heard until the elder who had brought all together raised her face to the sky, flung out her arms in supplication, smiled and declared, “It will rain, the wind will come, and there will be song”. A sudden gust broke into and murmured diffusely through the grove. The loggers up near the road turned and left, save one who squatted with his chainsaw, emanating a black aura. His eyes were as narrow as his vision, for he saw nothing except stolen pay.
The first gust of wind was followed by a gale that barely penetrated the forest floor, but set the canopy two hundred feet above thrashing in excitement. Such was the power of the wind that even the sturdiest trees transmitted movement to the forest floor so that each of the swaddled infants began to rock. The golden aura seemed to take power and movement from the wind and all those present emanated a white aura that wove a tapestry amongst the gold. The infants glowed silver; and song could be heard through membranes of skin and bark. Mothers and fathers joined the song with voices that issued untutored from open hearts; and then came the misty rain that blessed upturned faces and the soil of the earth. Not an infant cried.
Two hours later the wind and rain ceased. The infants were lifted from their trees and all gathered around the elder: “Your babies—all of you—are forever one with this grove. Treasure it as your earth family. For now the grove is safe".
In the ten years that followed I watched from my usual place across the ravine the infants and then the children return. Green, gold, silver and white enchanted the grove whenever a single visitor from that sacred day returned.
Crises that I don’t understand happened outside the grove that saw its abandonment by all but the special ones whose home it remained; but it was enough. One morning I heard engines from the roadway. The loggers were back to trade old growth for a desperate dependency on economic growth. Then the chainsaws were in the grove. I watched as the teeth tore into a eighteen-hundred year old Redcedar, obliterating the record of its age at a rate of one hundred years per minute. The luminescence of green aura disappeared faster than the trees fell. Somewhere beyond hearing I could sense children screaming in visceral sympathy before I felt the teeth of the saw at my base.
Now I lie here at a terminal age of fourteen hundred years, unable to see across the ravine as I did for my entire life; but I can see a black aura wreathing across the forest floor and amongst the broken branches. The children wander aimlessly nearby and add their dark sorrow to the weave of inconsolable lament. A dispirited sky spreads a grey shroud of clouds across the valley floor.
Tomorrow morning at first light, from beneath shadowed mists, the hauling begins.
Tomorrow morning at first light, from beneath shadowed mists, the hauling begins.
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