One by one in the cerulean blue sky, tiny stars began to flicker until it looked as though there were a thousand fairies up there, each holding a tiny sparkler. I felt a deep pleasure in my belly.
My whole body pulsed with the wonder of it. I felt the blood flooding through my veins and became aware of my skin and how it contained me, as a leather bag might hold a scoop of fish and water from a stream. For a moment, my skin softened, became permeable and the boundary of myself dissolved. Then a realization came to me – that although the physicalness of my body made me feel separate from the nature around me, my body and the earth’s body were really the same thing. In actuality, I was nothing more or less than the earth in a smaller package. That meant that the earth’s survival and my survival were one and the same.
Standing up for these trees was not only a statement about them and their right to survive, it was an affirmation of all life, my own included. The destruction had to stop and I had to be a part of insisting that it stop, even if the only listeners were myself and the earth itself.
As I sat pondering these thoughts in the dimming light, I saw someone approaching. Tamlin? No, this person was small, with skinny legs, and was carrying a bundle. The bundle was dropped at my feet, revealing the person behind it.
“Elfreda.”
“Thought you might need these,” the old woman said, her voice slightly slurred. There, in a heap, was a flashlight, sleeping bag, thermos, a sandwich wrapped in cellophane and a few books. “Just mystery stuff. Didn’t think you’d want anything literary.”
“No, this is definitely an occasion for light reading,” I replied, slipping into my therapist mode. “Pull up a tree.”
Elfreda glanced at me warily, but crouched down. Close now, I realized how small the woman was, almost gnome-like in form. She was wearing a Toronto Blue Jays cap turned sideways on her head and a rumpled jacket. The laces of both running shoes were undone.
“From what I hear, you’ve been having a rough time…” I ventured.
Elfreda shut her eyes. For a moment, I wondered if the old lady had fallen asleep. But when she opened her eyes, they were almost pleading. “Don’t!”
Startled, I softened my voice. “Don’t what?”
Elfreda scowled as if I were purposely misunderstanding her. “Don’t do your therapist number. Don’t pretend to understand when you don’t.” She shook her head resolutely. “Have you lost a child? Have you had a child killed? Have you?” There was spittle at the side of her mouth.
I sighed, wishing I hadn’t opened the conversation like this. Obviously, Elfreda needed therapy and this was no time to start it. I answered as I would have answered anybody. “No. But I’ve had my own suffering. And when I’ve suffered, it’s helped me to talk it through. Sometimes talking helps people feel better.”
“I don’t give a dog’s diddle about feeling better.”
Great, I thought. What a lovely way to spend an evening, chained to a tree alongside a hostile old woman.
“Everyone’s treating me like a bloody basket case,” Elfreda complained.
Words leapt into my throat, but I held them back. Then I decided to let them go. If Elfreda wanted straight talk, she could have straight talk. “If you want people to stop treating you like a basket case, stop acting like one.”
A smile slowly bloomed on her face at my directness. “I just might, one day. If I can find something worth doing it for.” She cast her glance up into the trees like a child throws a beach ball. “Being here, among these trees, is the only time I don’t feel crazy.”
“They’ve bailed me out a few times too,” I said quietly.
Elfreda looked at me with interest. She nodded as if acknowledging the pain she heard in my voice. For a few moments we sat quietly, like any two women might, sitting with our suffering.
“Did you know there’s a sitting place half way up that tree there?” I gestured towards Candelabra. “Not easy to get to, but wonderful.”
“You don’t say!” When her eyes found the spot, she grinned. For a second her face lost its jigsaw puzzle of lines and became a picture of aged wisdom. “Sometimes when I can’t sleep I come and lie out here. I know it sounds stupid, but these trees are my friends.”
I nodded. I understood.
A thought pulled at Elfreda’s smile and soon the lines appeared again, tangling her skin into a knot of unhappiness. “But I always get hassled.”
“After my husband died, I couldn’t sleep for weeks,” I said. “It’s awful at the beginning. I know. Everything reminded me of him.”
My words seemed to settle her. Again, we sat silently and looked at the trees.
“What’ll you do when the cops come?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Tamlin won’t come till morning. But he’ll come early. At first light. At least, that’s what he did when I used to sleep out here. Get me out of sight before people started moving around.”
“I think he’s hoping that if he gives me enough time to think about it, I’ll change my mind and go home.”
“Will you?”
“No.”
A small smile skimmed over the old woman’s lips, but her eyes spoke a warning. “They’ve got the power on their side, you know. Once they have you out of the way, those men will be back with their saws and that will be the end of it.”
I dropped my face into my open palms. I was tired, very tired. “Yes and I’ll be in jail. Unless you can think of something else I can do – I’m out of ideas myself.”
Elfreda’s body slumped forward. She closed her eyes and the shadows made her face look deeply furrowed. Her chest rose and fell in an erratic, agitated way. Finally, in a voice so quiet I could barely hear it, she spoke.
“Its the pain that I can’t stand.” Her eyes were open now and full of jagged hurt. “The pain of things … being destroyed.” Her eyes clawed at mine. “How do you stand it?”
I took a big breath. It was an important question, one I’d spent a lot of time thinking about. As a psychotherapist, I’d seen people endure staggering sorrows. The amount of pain some people faced was truly daunting. It was my job to try and help them handle the pain. During my years of work, I’d learned that everyone had their own way of coping: some marched courageously into the feelings, sweating it out; some tried to distract themselves; others numbed themselves out with drink or drugs or sex, until it was over. Everyone had their own way of surviving. So, as much as I wanted to offer Elfreda a profundity about pain, I couldn’t.
“I guess I’ve learned to wait it out,” I said finally. “Pain doesn’t go on forever. I was just thinking about that a minute ago – how even though there’s the awfulness of these trees being threatened, the sunset still happens. And it’s still staggeringly beautiful. Life, thank goodness, has a way of insisting on itself. I find if I can get myself to focus on what’s beautiful, I have a chance of handling what’s painful. Because I want to learn to handle pain. Not just run from it. That’s what my mother did – run. She would do anything she could to avoid pain. Including drinking a bottle of gin a day.”
Elfreda nodded. “Best anaesthetic I know.”
“The problem is, you need to keep pouring it into your body. And it makes most bodies sick.”
Elfreda’s eyes deadened. Without looking at me, the old woman shook her head and struggled to her feet. I’d lost her.
I looked at her and smiled. I knew there was