Mythology

Despite my best efforts to actually do something productive with my evenings, the past few days have been insanely busy and draining at work, causing me to desire nothing more after 5 p.m. than to curl up with my cat, Lola, watch some sort of true crime documentary or series on Netflix, and write - poetry, clumsy attempts at music, or this silly blog. 

I have been struggling lately, because there is someone who still haunts me. I had grown terribly accustomed to communicating with this person, particularly in the evenings. We do not talk now. I miss our long, involved conversations about all manner of topics, both sublime and ridiculous. I miss the way he made me feel. I suppose it is of my own volition, and the fact that I cared too much, and cared even more when he didn't, that we currently do not or cannot talk to one another. Still, I almost always feel this tiny void in my heart that must needs be filled with words, even if they are only words to myself.

Lately, I've been feeling very drawn to a place close to my house, a marshland nature sanctuary called Swan Lake. I've spent my whole life around or near it. My childhood home, in which I lived for 26 years, was only about a five minute drive from the lake, and my current abode is just about the same distance away. Now, as an adult, I find it a wonderful solace to hike the trails and wander through the changing topography of the area, hearing the strange cries of the birds and the soft scuttling of things unseen in the tall, dry grass.

This peculiar little place, a combination of marshlands and forested cliffs, was once the property of the Girling family, who emigrated to Canada from England in 1912. I recently found some whimsical and haunting old photos taken by one of the Girling daughters, of life at the lake. (Forgive my inability to figure out how to link directly to things, just yet):

http://www.saanich.ca/discover/artsheritagearc/saanicharchives/exhibits/girling/girling_swanlake.htm

From the 1950's onward, Swan Lake became a dumping ground for sewage runoff. The ecosystem was nearly destroyed by pollution, until the city stepped in in 1975 and, through ardent recovery efforts, restored the lake and its surroundings as a protected nature sanctuary.

When I was a child, walking around Swan Lake with my Dad was an afternoon of free entertainment, a chance to play, to feed the imperious white swans and squabbling mallard ducks while standing on the rickety floating bridge that crosses the lake, and to be carried away by my father's fantastical stories.

For all his unassuming demeanor and quiet simplicity, and although he would never admit it, much less even realize it himself, my father is truly possessed of one of the most creative minds for storytelling I have ever encountered. As a child, I delighted in his bedtime stories, which he always came up with on the spot. He would perch on the edge of the bed, and I'd laugh as the whole side of the mattress would sink down with his weight, a fact that I'd always gleefully point out to him. He invented a host of characters in these evening tales, many of whom recurred in the story lines: "Pooh-Pooh Barry", the petulant child who refused to eat his vegetables or do anything his parents asked him to do; or The Rangers, a gang of kids living in Arizona in the Old West, who spent their time building a clubhouse and committing anonymous, random acts of kindness toward strangers and passers by. 

Dad's stories at Swan Lake took on an even more magical element. As we passed boulders, grottos, small caves where muskrat lived and twisted old tree stumps, he wove a complete history and mythology of the place to rival Tolkien in its detail. The Witches' Den... Listening Rock... The Hallway of Trees. Our walks came alive with the tales my father stitched together with the delicate spider's thread of imagination, stretched over the framework of the natural scenery.

Once, upon arriving at the lake, we encountered three police cars and an ambulance in the parking lot. We were told that we could not go down onto the floating bridge, since a man had drowned in the lake, and a "recovery effort" was in place. My Dad told me, when I continued to pester him, that the bottom of the lake was a tangled jungle of murky weeds, and that it was deeper than anyone realized, and that sometimes, people didn't come back up.

 I never found out if they found that man, but even to this day, when I walk along the floating bridge and toss handfuls of seeds to the bossy little mallards, I stare down into the deep bottle green water, and imagine blanched bones entangled silently in the eternal, jealous embrace of the weeds.