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There's a torn and splintered ridge across the stumps I call the "screamers." These are the unsawn last bits, the cry of the tree's heart, wrenching and tearing apart just before she gives that sway and the dreadful groan of falling, that dreadful pause while her executioners step back with their saws and axes resting and watch. It's a horrible sight to see a tree felled, even now, though the stumps are grey and rotting. As you pass among them you see their screamers sticking up out of their own tombstones, as it were. They are their own tombstones and their own mourners.
Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr, Toronto/Vancouver, Clarke, Irwin and Company, 1966, p. 132 - 133.
PLACE: Near Esquimalt Lagoon, Vancouver Island.
TIME: June 16, 1934.
CIRCUMSTANCE: Impressions while camping.
Quite a downpour but what care we, snugged up all cosy under the old tin hen. The rain comes in insignificant little titters on the canvas top with an occasional heavy ha-ha as the big accumulated drops roll off the pine boughs.
Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr, Toronto/Vancouver, Clarke, Irwin and Company, 1966, p. 134.
PLACE: Near Esquimalt Lagoon, Vancouver Island.
TIME: June 16, 1934.
CIRCUMSTANCE: Impressions while camping.
The rain is pelting on the unceilinged roof twelve inches above my head, quick, jagged patters reeling off millions of little noises that make one interminable, monotonous noise. If I slept in an ordinary plastered room I should miss all those sweet sounds, the wind sighing through the cracks and sometimes a rat scrabbling and gnawing in the edges of the attic beyond my ship-lap walls.
Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr, Toronto/Vancouver, Clarke, Irwin and Company, 1966, p. 163.
PLACE: Victoria, B.C.
TIME: December 30, 1934.
CIRCUMSTANCE: Impressions of a rainstorm while writing at home.
Today everything is sullen and black. The wind slams things, and the trees are provoked at having their petticoats turned over their heads.
Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr, Toronto/Vancouver, Clarke, Irwin and Company, 1966, p. 185.
PLACE: Albert Head, Vancouver Island.
TIME: June 12, 1935.
CIRCUMSTANCE: Impressions while camping.
Why worry? The three dogs lie on the bed, their heads touching, a little spiral of snores ascending from the middle, just living, their little lives grown placid, contented, undisturbed about the future, with a great blind faith somewhere inside them that everything will be O.K., trusting me to attend to their wants, living for the moment. Oh, God, how their faith shames ours.
Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr, Toronto/Vancouver, Clarke, Irwin and Company, 1966, p. 165.
PLACE: Albert Head, Vancouver Island.
TIME: June 12, 1935.
CIRCUMSTANCE: Reflections while camping.
The trees in shelter stand looking at the wobbly ones in the wind's path, like a strange pup watches two chum pups playing, a little enviously. I think trees love to toss and sway; they make such happy noises.
Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr, Toronto/Vancouver, Clarke, Irwin and Company, 1966, p. 186.
PLACE: Albert Head, Vancouver Island.
TIME: June 12, 1935.
CIRCUMSTANCE: Impressions while camping.
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