Summer Place

She had dreamed of a house by the beach and when she was led to this glacial trailing in the middle of the Salish Sea, she saw her dream in reality.

Every summer we would come to this place. While my parents were focussed on building our cabin, my sister and I would roam free.

The sunbaked rocks were characters in our imaginary dramas. The trees were kingdoms, sanctuaries. The seaweed was clothing for our fashion shows. We braided tall grass into bracelets while hot sand stuck in our hair and salty water crusted on our skin. We would eat from the bounty the ocean provided—clams, oysters, fish—and we ourselves were in the water so much our parents called us little fish. Some of my best moments were underwater—the light fracturing through the clear salt brine to create blurry auras dancing all around me.

Nature intertwined with our beings.

There weren’t many people in our bay back then. But luckily, there were a few families with kids our age. We were a small herd of grubby feet galloping down the trail in threadbare pajamas, foraging little miracles from the sand. A moon snail, a geoduck, or a butter clam feast. Shoeless explorers discovering the bounty of the land.

My mom, from cancer over 25 years ago, and then my sister, in an accident a year later, leaving me and my dad to find our way together through the decades that followed.

After losing his wife and daughter, my dad built himself an art studio in the backyard, leaning into his dream of being a full-time artist. He lived here as much as he could, creating every day. The ruleless-ness of the island afforded him permission to create in the way he felt most alive. He made pottery using clay from the land, producing vibrant Raku and stoneware pieces. He painted the island as though she were his muse. He too was enmeshed with the land. People would wander into his gallery not just for a treasure to take away with them, but to sit with my dad. To hear his stories. To share their own. Sometimes creating art together or with his guidance, finding connection in this quiet place.

My dad called his gallery Ayhus, inspired by the oral history of the Tla’amin First Peoples. According to the Tla’amin oral history*, Ihos was a double headed serpent who was taking too much from the neighbouring Mitlenatch Island, so the transformer turned Ihos into Kayeqwan, (now known in English as Savary Island), as punishment for his greed. Perhaps history is repeating, and we are now the greedy ones who come here to feed our souls with the island’s riches, to ‘own’ a piece of this double headed serpent who provides for us in abundance.

When I brought my son here, I began to see it all again through his wild and curious eyes.

The rocks, tall grass, and hot sand all know me as well as I know them. We are connected.

While the young generation plays, the elders still watch from their ethereal perches. Watch me resurface. Watch to see if I can run the generator and chop the wood on these inexperienced, wobbly fawn legs, still growing into my new role as caretaker of this place. When I start to lose my footing, they are there to remind me that I am not alone.

I am held by this place and the people who are so deeply connected to it.

There is a security that still holds me to this land—a grounded attachment when the wind blows hard.

It is through this experience of land-as-family that I humbly bow to the Tla’amin people with gratitude for the land that has raised us.

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This story first appeared in The Waste Volume.

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