[ book excerpt: eco-poetics ]

Kim Trainor: “Grandmother Tree, Grandfather Tree”

“I guess we use the tools that are to hand,” Kim Trainor said in reply to a question—“What calls you to use poetry to talk about climate collapse?”—from interviewer Anna Cavouras back in 2024. Trainor then spelled out her particular implements: “For me, those tools are poetry, poetry films, and, when I’m in a teaching semester, my classes. When it comes to poetry, my poetry documents my life and it is inevitable then to include everything this encompasses, including climate collapse, the sixth mass extinction, the breaching of planetary boundaries, and so on.”

The question related to A blueprint for survival, a volume Trainor published in 2024 that included “Paper Birch” (winner of the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize in 2019). In conversation with Rebecca Salazar about that poem, Trainor offered another glimpse into the politics of her writing: “I guess at one level I’m trying to transcribe this particular historical moment and its dark ironies and the only thing I’m any good at writing is poetry. I guess at another level, one of the ancient functions of lyric poetry has been elegiac. Mourning is important. Maybe it brings some solace. Maybe it gives you time to gather yourself, to adapt to a new situation. The lyric poem especially seems so small a thing in the face of ecocide—a small gesture. This does not however preclude action, struggle, coalition building, resistance. I don’t think the future is written.”

The latest book by Vancouver resident Trainor, a self-described “eternal optimist,” is Blue thinks itself within me: Lyric Poetry, Ecology, and Lichenous Form, a work “about making poems in an age of ecological desperation.” The excerpt below, “Grandmother Tree, Grandfather Tree,” comes from the volume’s fourth chapter, “Grandmother Tree, Grandfather Tree,” which describes the writer’s experiences as part of a blockade at Fairy Creek on Vancouver Island.

The British Columbia Review would like to thank Kim Trainor and publisher U Regina Press for permission to reprint the following excerpt. —BJG

[Editor’s note: Blue thinks itself within me will launch in Vancouver on Thursday, February 5 at 7pm (The China Cloud, 524 Main St); the event will feature a performance of the “Little Looper Caterpillar” song by Foghorn Lil and a screening of Trainor’s short poetry film, “Oldgrowth specklebelly lichen,” with soundtrack by Hazel Fairbairn.]

   * * *



“Grandmother Tree, Grandfather Tree”

Last weekend, my friend Foxtrot and I returned to Fairy Creek—mid-January 2022. We were lucky—a free weekend happened to coincide with three beautiful days of sunlight, a drop of temperature to only 0°C overnight, crystalline stars. I woke the last morning to find my tent’s fly stiff with a thin coat of ice.

Roadside has been closed for the winter; the snow has finally arrived higher up the mountain and logging has temporarily ceased. The RCMP have abandoned their critical response post at the base of Granite Main, where we first helped to set up the white tarp in October, one day after the injunction had been lifted; the RCMP have left behind only a tangled metal frame detached from its canvas pop-up shelter.

One camp remains—R+R, and it lies outside of the injunction zone. There are possibly others, hidden deep in the mountain—we wouldn’t know. Elder Bill Jones has encouraged all land defenders to rest, to reflect, to come and spend time with the trees. We camped alone, not at R+R, but at the edge of Renfrew Creek, arriving in pitch black our first night. We had come to hike back up to the old River camp, which we never saw when it was up and running but knew later as Landback Bridge. It lies about 7 km up Granite Main and we helped to retake it on our fourth visit to Fairy Creek, in what I believe was the last action of the 2021 season.*

That day in mid-November we had waited around until 5:30pm—for the dark to fall, for a shift change by the RCMP—before the hike up Granite Main, ostensibly to “see the old growth forest,” but in fact to reoccupy the bridge at the former River camp. It was a slow hike of stops and starts, accumulating more people as we climbed through the dark and the steady rain. At a certain point we reached a juncture where two patrol cars were idling, lights on. We clumped together and slipped between them silently–they made no attempt to stop us. Tremendous rushing of water as we climbed up and up Granite Main, until at last, several hours later, we arrived at a bridge. 

Immediately out came ‘utensils’—crowbar, pickaxe, shovel. Immediately, people digging at either side of the bridge. Arctic Fox making a fire, splitting wood. (Arctic Fox: If it would just stop raining for one hot minute.) Pitch black. Pouring. No hope of staying dry or of keeping our gear dry. Others looking for wood and stringing rope to set up tarps. We helped find firewood, damp mostly. But at last, being too cold and wet and tired, Foxtrot and I setup our tents side by side, our doors facing each other. I draped my blue and green tarps over the opening between the tents and covered thehead of my tent with my rain poncho for extra protection. We scrunched in and boiled water for a bag of vegetarian pad Thai; it quickly became like a sauna beneath the small tarp. We hardly knew where to begin, between taking off our boots, undoing sleeping bags, trying to avoid the wettest parts of our packs. Ate bowls of pad Thai. Bliss. I kept on all my clothes: long-sleeved merino wool shirt, t-shirt, long johns, rain pants, two buffs, tuque, requisition Helly Hanson waterproof jacket, moss green like the forest, and crawled into the slightly damp bag. I folded my sleeping pad down to form a pillow as mine was soaked; I had to sleep on my left side, curling myself around a bulge in the earth beneath my tent. It was 1:37am.

And woke to a clanging on metal tin and the cry, Time to wake up Fairy Creek defenders! We got up, pulled on our boots, emerged to pouring rain. Boiled water for tea. 730am. Overnight two hard blocks** in the form of sleeping dragons had been built, one at either end of the bridge. A sleeping dragon consists of a hole in the ground with a piece of PVC tubing cemented in place, so that those in the hard block extend one arm into the tube in the earth and use a carabiner to clip into a metal ring secured at its base; they lie flat on the ground, supported by pillow, sleeping pad, sleeping bag. We offer constant assistance to those in the hard blocks: heat, tea, food. A tarp overhead keeps the rain off. 

A meeting was called—how to form as a blob to defend the bridge.*** We practiced linking arms—the tallest and strongest of us in front, the smaller in the second row, towards the centre. A cop car came and went, came and went. Each time we ran to the bridge and stood and sang.

The RCMP came on foot, observing, taking photos across the bridge and up the hill. Back down. Took off. Then back again—one green, two blues.**** The green was brusque–insisted we would have to move back to the middle of the bridge as they began the first extraction. A paddy wagon arrived, two or three cars, an excavator, three blues who stood and watched us from beyond the yellow caution tape they’d set up. Five or six blues and a green carried out the excavation with pickaxe, drills, chainsaw—chewing out pieces of wood from the support structure of the bridge. It was difficult to watch—imagining the young woman in the hard block, fragile flesh contra sharp metal and electric tools. It took them two hours and forty-five minutes to excavate her. Intermittently, we stood on the bridge at the caution tape, singing, and called encouragement to the girl. 

The same green came through again, brusque and irritated—insisting we had 25 minutes to clear everything from the road—all of our tarps, tents, packs—or he would take them. If I see a tarp I’ll take it. If I see a rope I’ll cut it. Raven warned, Everything important to you, carry on your back. We took our emptied tents and placed them in the ditch. Stacked the wet tarps along the road’s edge. Raced back to the bridge. The angry green was back. He ripped the tarp off the second hard block, said he was taking it as we hadn’t moved it quickly enough; pulled the cover and sleeping bag off the girl inside. Raven and Métis challenged him. As soon as the first extraction had finished and the girl in the hardblock had been taken down off the mountain, two blues walked up to a location just beyond all our stashed gear and tents and strung another caution tape line—a new warning, to move even further back, past the tape. We had five minutes. A pause—some talk of a forming a blob—but not coordinated in time. At the last minute we rushed up the hill, grabbing tarps and pots. I helped drag a tarp filled with firewood. Arctic Fox carried the embers of the fire on a metal tray. Immediately he began to build a new fire.

They began the second extraction at dusk, bringing out an excavator and drill. Three officers—blues—watched us as they patrolled just beyond the caution tape. It grew dark. Raven began to play some music off her phone and shouted, Dance Party! Whoever wins the dance party wins the mountain! A group of seven or eight women danced with her—along with Butterfly, who came up the mountain with an umbrella, tall, skinny, punning and eccentric, like a character out of Dr. Seuss. People warmed up by the fire. We cooked another pad Thai and ate. This second extraction took less time, and was conducted under blinding police lights as mist rose off the trees. The dance party continued—gyrating, twisting defenders. Sparks from the fire. Crashing of the river below. When officers extracted the second arrestee and had taken her away in a paddy wagon to the sound of our calls of encouragement, the excavator filled in the trench; the RCMP left. We hadn’t been sure what might happen—if they might try to make us leave—in which case, the plan was to move slowly off the mountain, for individuals to then slip off into the forest, and rendezvous later at Grandfather Tree. But the cops simply left. Probably exhausted and pissed off after spending eight hours on the mountain in a cold rain, digging two defenders out of the trenches. They’ve been doing variations of this for a year now. 

Everyone grab a tent and take it to the other side of the bridge. We grabbed tents and set them up on the far side of the bridge, so that we could defend the entire span once again in the morning, pushing our front back down the mountain. Began to build another soft block—logs, rocks, anything to slow them down, to make them get out of their cars to remove the obstacle. This time we filled two barrels with rocks, brought in large logs, pieces of wood—Lightning Bolt insists on making it beautiful—before, there had been a smiley face made of cedar branches, with yellow caution tape eyes. This new soft block is meant to be a dragon, decorated with cedar. In the dark, off the side of the FSR, I found a carefully built path with stepped roots and handrails formed out of branches, which meandered past the most magnificent yellow cedars up to a space called the Medicine Wheel. Rocks, in a spiral pattern, a lantern. A sign, asking for respect of this place. Truly ancient in feeling, as if finding a door into a secret room. As we slept, a new hardblock was dug, and two women locked themselves in, side by side.


_________
* My account here of Landback Bridge is adapted from my article, “We Will Feed the Seeds of Tomorrow” and my camp journal. Filmmaker Jessey Dearing was also at Landback Bridge and presents the blockade from Indigenous land defender Strawberry’s perspective (Shy-Anne Gunville) in a 14-minute video: “At War for the Forest: On the Front Lines at Fairy Creek,” Brut America, December 18, 2021.
**A ‘hard block’ is a blockade that includes an embedded human being—for example, locked into a sleeping dragon. A ‘soft block’ is a blockade consisting of solely material objects, such as rocks and boulders strewn across a road to slow down access by the RCMP, who must stop their vehicles and remove the debris.
*** As there were so few of us, this version of a blob consisted only of two rows of protestors with interlocking arms; the larger the numbers and rows, as suggested by its name, the more effective a strategy of resisting the RCMP, hence the RCMP’s resort during the summer of 2021 to pepper spray.
**** “Blues” are regular RCMP officers; “grays” are liaison officers; “greens” are the officers with paramilitary training and associated with C-IRG, the Community-Industry Response Group.

The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster