Vol.9,
No.49, 2006 Valley of the shadow By Elaine Hurlburt
Our
father turned off the ‘49
Merc, and we tumbled out
into the lumber camp that
was to be our new home. Delighted
to be out of the backseat
with the lurching, jolting
journey behind us, we stood
rooted in awe at the whine
of the sawmill and the roar
of the logging trucks. My
older sister, Lois, took
a deep breath, sucking her
nostrils together once, then
again.
“Smell it, Elaine,” she
said. “It’s like
a million Christmas trees
being ground.”
I sniffed the air and plucked
three white daisies from
a weed patch. I sniffed them,
too, and began braiding their
stems.
“Hurry with those
suitcases, or I’ll
be grinding you up,” Grandma
said, waddling past us. We
knew she wouldn’t,
but we thought our tiny mother
might, by the curl of her
lip and the scowl she aimed
at our father’s back.
My
father strode ahead of
her, waving his arms, talking
faster than usual. I wasn’t
sure what Mom was feeling
until she muttered between
her teeth, “Don’t
you ever take me over that
road again.”
That was in 1952, the summer
I turned eight. For most
of my eight years Mom, Dad,
and Grandma had struggled
against the odds on our northern
Saskatchewan homestead. Barley
and wheat crops had been
repeatedly rained out, the
pigs and chickens became
diseased, and this spring
our last horse, Barney, died
of old age. My father resolutely
pursued work in Alberta and
moved our family to Lost
Creek Lumber Camp nestled
in the Rockies behind Bellevue.
On a hot July afternoon,
we cheered as we turned off
Highway 3 and onto the final
piece of road.
But
coming from flat Saskatchewan,
none of us were prepared
for the horrific ride over
that last sixteen miles into
the camp, with our father
flooring the Merc to keep
up with an empty, in-a-hurry
lumber truck so we wouldn’t
get lost. I wish I had known
the word “tortuous” then;
that would have perfectly
described that narrow, gravel
road. It snaked through switchbacks
with steep drop-offs on one
side and high banks on the
other. Oncoming, loaded lumber
trucks had the right-of-way
and changed lanes accordingly
to always occupy the safe
lane against the bank. My
mother screeched all the
way, “I’ll never
come out alive.” To
this day, I think those words
sealed her fate.
My
father worked as a sawyer
for the mill at Lost Creek;
my mother taught the mill
workers’ children.
The company offered only
primitive housing, primitive
even for the 1950’s.
All the buildings, including
our school, were paintless
shacks on skids, barely winter-clad,
as apprehensive as the mill
workers’ families who
lived in them. Our house
was a typical three-shacks-combined
dwelling with two of the
sections added like tired
wings. Over the first winter
Mom set about making that
shack into our home. It did
have some attractive features,
electricity for one, which
we hadn’t had on the
farm. And we all loved the
red Formica counter tops
and the tiny, sunny verandah
off the kitchen. There in
the spring, I helped Mom
baby geraniums and transplant
wild, white daisies, which
flourished. Even Mom was
surprised.
Despite
scary roads and bleak housing,
our mother taught us to
love our life at Lost Creek
Camp. Boosted by Dad’s
patience, she practised
driving one mile at a time
back over the road until
she made her peace with
it. Eventually, she challenged
herself to drive Lois and
Grandma and me to picnics
or into Bellevue when Dad
was working.
After
having done nothing but
farm chores for ten years,
Mom loved her challenging
teaching job, and she loved
planning Nature Study lessons
for us by roaming the densely
wooded hills right behind
our house. She sang then;
we could hear her singing
long after she was out of
sight. “Pack up your
troubles in your old kit
bag, and smile, smile, smile” -
old wartime songs like that.
In summer, far up the hill
she would find a sunny meadow,
remove her dress and shoes
and lie down in the moss
in her full-length slip, “To
feel the earth and sun mating
in my bones,” she told
my father. I only know this
because I heard her telling
my father one night when
they thought I was asleep
in my cot at the end of their
bed.
My
father teased her. “Hey,
if it’s mating you
want, let me know the next
time you’re up there.” It
took me a few years to realize
why they laughed at that,
and I still shudder at my
mother’s giddy response, “You’ll
never find me.”
My
mother often had a teasing
answer like that, but wise,
almost prophetic, when I
look back on her life. Like
the time my sister asked
her why she always wore white
slips. “A sign of purity,” she
laughingly said. “Like
an angel.” But my sister
and I later realized she
wore white slips because
she couldn’t afford
the colored ones we picked
out for her from Eaton’s
catalog.
We
had few books besides the
catalogue, but Mom always
found something to read to
us at school and at home.
My favourite was A Girl of
the Limberlost, about Elnora
whose father mysteriously
disappears in a swamp. I
became haunted by that story
into adulthood and have re-read
it several times. There’s
something morbid, yet ethereal,
about the father’s
mysterious disappearance
and the sporadic and eerie
sightings of him years later
in the swamp.
Our
lumber-camp life went blithely
on with millwork for Dad,
schoolwork for Mom, summer
nights of Kick the Can
and winter days of sledding
on the sawdust pile for us
kids. A few dramatic incidents
did add excitement, such
as the time a bear killed
the neighbour’s goat
that was tethered behind
our house on Mother’s
Hill, and my mother had to
refrain from her roaming
until the bear was hunted
and destroyed.
We
didn’t think much
more about bears until the
end of the third summer when
our mother disappeared. She
told our grandmother that
she was going on her usual
jaunt up the hill and would
be back by four o’clock
to start supper. She went
away singing and never came
back. Our father with RCMP,
wardens, and camp workers
searched desperately for
days, weeks even, combing
the hills and tramping the
undergrowth. They found her
dress and her shoes - nothing
more.
For
the first week, sister
Lois, then fourteen, screamed
angry obscenities into the
hills and hurled rocks at
the trees. Then she spent
the winter crying. I was
silent. I felt a numbness
slither into my bones and
hibernate there like so many
snakes in a pit. I didn’t
cry. I simply spent the winter
talking out loud to my mother
- either through the window
facing her hill, or from
the bottom of it behind our
house. “I’ll
never leave you,” I
promised her every day. Then
I’d see her smile.
I promised I’d look
after the potted daisies,
too, but they all died that
first winter.
I
remained frozen for months
until one April morning at
breakfast when our father
stated (as flatly as if he
were asking for the salt), “When
school is out in June, we’ll
be moving out of the camp.”
That’s when I erupted.
I jumped up, flinging my
heavy chair over backwards. “You
can’t take us out of
here,” I screamed with
all the pre-teen disrespect
I could muster. “Don’t
you care about Mom? Didn’t
you even love her?”
My
father slowly stood up,
awkwardly reached for me,
and cradled my head in his
muscular arms as he had tried
to do many times before. “Oh
Baby, Baby,” he murmured,
and then, for the first time,
I cried. And for the first
time, as we stood together
crying, I felt the agony
like a searing dagger, splitting
his heart, and mine. Lois
picked up my chair and sat
down, sobbing into her arms
at the table. Grandma tried
to soothe us all.
“Now we’ll never
find her. We can’t
leave her here alone,” I
cried against Dad’s
sleeve.
“We’ll take
her with us - in here.” He
put his big hand over his
big heart. I couldn’t,
or didn’t want to,
understand that. Mom needed
us here. But our father had
carried on at the camp for
most of a year since our
mother disappeared and had
just become foreman when
tragedy struck again. When
a falling tree killed a young,
Japanese logger named Harry,
my father felt a curse in
the place. “Those mountains
are out to get me,” he’d
say. “There’re
demons here.”
In
July he moved us out onto
the prairies, but right
into adulthood, the mountains
kept calling me back. My
father could never bear to
take me, Lois wouldn’t
go either, and my grandmother
died when I was fifteen so
she was no help. But the
child-mind in me insisted
that our mother needed us.
I thought I should go and
exorcise some demons, but
I didn’t, and the camp
was removed in 1969.
Years
later, I learned that an
open road to the campsite
still existed, so I begged
my husband to take me there
- and he did - there, to
that place that by this time
had become a tranquil valley
of angel-white daisies. I
picked an armful and fashioned
a cairn of twelve smooth
rocks to display them on,
an apt memorial to my mother;
then I designed a miniature
one for Harry and knelt before
them. “This truly is
the ‘Valley of the
Shadow of Death’,” I
whispered to the daisies.
I went away from there somewhat
more peaceful, but still
dissatisfied that I’d
never know for sure where
my mother was; I needed a
sign, a closure.
In
the summer of 2003, when
we heard that the Lost Creek
Forest Fire was ravaging
those hills, horror held
me hostage again. Nightmares
began stalking me. Night
after night, I’d see
my mother running toward
me in her slip, her wavy,
chestnut hair glinting sunlight.
When she got close enough
for me to see her seared,
scared face, I would scream.
She’d turn then, and
run away, singing something
like, “Smile boys,
that’s the style.”
By now, I was living in
the Yukon, 2000 miles away,
so I called my cousin in
Calgary. I knew she was cutting
clippings from the Calgary
Herald. She tried to console
me and suggested I call the
Crows Nest Museum to get
maps or photographs of the
area, which I did. Maybe
a visit to the place one
more time would calm me.
When the area cooled and
the smoke cleared from the
burn, I flew to Lethbridge,
and with an obliging guide
from the museum, got permission
for us to drive into that
charcoal Hell. As we wound
up to the Beaver Mines Summit,
I retched, thinking about
my mother trapped among those
black, greasy spruce skeletons,
the acrid, smoldering earth.
“Stop,” I gritted,
and got the door open just
in time to stumble, heaving,
onto the roadside. Twice
I did this, and was embarrassed
only later. Right then I
didn’t care. We drove
on, finally coming to the
last piece of corduroy road.
It hadn’t been redone
in forty years, but seemed
passable, so we bumped slowly
on, around the last blind
curve before Lost Creek Valley.
I held my breath.
“Oh my God! Oh my
God!” I jumped out
of the car before it stopped
rolling.
The fire had halted at the
edge of my valley, had skirted
around Mother’s Hill,
leaving it beautifully wooded
and green. The valley of
daisies remained and even
my old memorial cairn hadn’t
changed, except for the prolific
flourish of flowers now shrouding
it.