Chapter 53
Eight months after
Evan Hale loves late September in Hale’s Landing.
An omnipresent fog hangs in the sky. The leaves burst into tangerine and gold while moss drips with rain. A cool wind blows.
The front porch of Ruth’s cabin still creaks. The peeled cedar logs smell the same as they did when he was a kid. The cabin
is as spare and utilitarian as it was; the same chipped ceramic plates, cast-iron and copper pans. A dented kettle lives on
the wood stove. Shells line each windowsill.
He eats the same cereal every morning with his favourite spoon, the one with moon cycles engraved onto the handle. He still
wears the same black work coveralls, with the Hale Timber insignia between his shoulder blades.
But some things have changed.
The day Annie went north on the barge in February, he went straight to the public library. Why would he have gone there? To
this day, he remembers it like a fugue state. An elderly librarian—-with a rainbow of bracelets, glasses on her nose and another
pair tucked into her nest of grey-white hair—-led him up a spiral staircase to a narrow section on sustainable forestry.
“I guess I could have looked this all up online,” he said.
“It’s better to feel a book in your hands,” she replied. Her bracelets jangled when she patted his shoulder.
He sat in a wing chair in a corner, alone, tearing up, thinking of Annie while devouring word after word; wondering if he
could be redeemed.
The following week, Evan resigned from the coast guard and went north. He knew he had no choice. When he arrived, Henry grabbed
him by the shoulders and pulled him into a hug.
“She called in from Polaris,” he said.
“Polaris?”
“She’s sailing south on her own. She sounded strong.”
Evan stayed put. In the following months, he hiked every inch of the Hale Timber land. As the weather warmed, he trekked over
more and more terrain, through the underbelly of mulch, salal, and sword fern, underneath trees of towering majesty. He measured
the oldest growth, graphed the area’s remaining inhabitants by hand on large topographical maps he stuck to the office wall.
Evan hung a photo of Celeste next to his maps. She would have loved this.
Ed Hollingsworth hung his head and told him he was ready to retire.
Evan walks the forest every day like a pilgrim. The oldest trees—-the ones that touch the sky—-seem to reach down to touch
him, too. He presses his cheek against the trunks of many of them, the same way he did as a child. What do these trees want
to tell him now?
The answers are coming, slowly, flowing through cambium five hundred years thick. His sense of gravity is returning. He invites
in foresters, naturalists, Indigenous elders; experts of all kinds arrive in Hale’s to talk with him about the trees.
“Call and response,” a craggy old forester from Clayoquot Sound tells him one evening beside a smouldering campfire. He’s one of the ones that put his own body in the way of the loggers and ended up in court. “Bring your questions to the trees themselves. You’ll get your answers.”
Evan collects more and more forestry books—-some glossy-paged, others yellowing with small, faded fonts. They sprawl across
the living room floor and pile in a wobbly stack on the bedside table. He loves the weight of the books in his hands. The
oldest volumes, the ones with the feathery pages and split bindings, contain what feels like lost knowledge. As if Evan might
be the last person to read them.
He never realized how much he didn’t know: grandmother trees and nursing logs; connected root networks and shared nutrients;
the way trees talk to one another. He runs his fingertips over images of lacy white mycelium. He has lifetimes left of learning
and this is only the beginning.
The message is unmistakable: The trees need to come first.
There are no more clear-cuts at Hale Timber. Instead, they only bring down trees near the end of their lives. Selective cutting
retains diversity of species and a healthier canopy.
Many early mornings, Evan stares at the old patches on the mountainsides near Ruth’s bluff. He googles conservation land designations
and scrolls through long applications. The muscles in his shoulders loosen.
It still rains most days. It rains more than he’s ever remembered. In the places that Isaac clear-cut—-the places he sprayed
or slash burned afterward—-the earth feels unsteady with all the mud.
He wonders what is possible—-even here, even now?
Slowly, Evan’s making something he can live with.
Annie sails in the midafternoon.
This is her: alone-but-not-alone, sailing back north, single-handing Polaris.
The waves lower and then lift her back up.
She dials into a low-frequency pulse underneath her—the one that stills and quiets everything else.
The wind and drizzle run through her unbraided hair.
She does not use the GPS. The radio is turned off, the way she likes it.
She loves the drift of this; merged, right here and right now.
She’s nearly back in Hale’s Channel, closer to the towering trees hugging the shoreline. But she gets an unexpected pull to
change course. The instinct is electric, like a charged battery. She needs to head into Jenny Inlet instead of her original
path to Hale’s Landing.
It’ll start to get dark, soon.
Annie changes course. At the mouth of the inlet, the wind dies down and the water is quieter. She rounds up, drops the main,
ghosts in on the jib.
At 4:00 p.m. the same day, Evan is still working. Greg sits on a nylon chair on the deck of the barge, scrolling on his phone,
a can of Coors Light in his other hand. Despite the rain, the two of them are outside, surrounded by cartons of supplies destined
for camp, plastic crates of pancake mix, coffee creamer, and instant noodles.
“Ben Innis from BC Ferries just texted,” Greg says.
Evan doesn’t look up. He slices open the tape on another crate, then holsters his knife on his tool belt. Picking up a clipboard,
he checks the inventory list.
“He just crossed Jenny Inlet an hour ago. It’s a crap picture but check it out,” Greg says.
Evan looks at the pixelated image. He reaches across to zoom in with his fingertips. It’s a humpback. But also: a moored sailboat,
and he can just make out the cursive written across the stern. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He closes the crate,
walks toward the wharf, over to his pickup truck. He pulls his keys from the pocket of his jeans.
“Where are you headed?” Greg yells after him.
The dock rocks in the familiar way it does as Evan jogs to his boat. He jumps in to start the engine, unties the lines, and
pushes off. He picks up speed, waves spitting out behind him.
He arrives at Jenny Inlet around 5:00 p.m. It’s getting darker, the wind has died down, the rain is clearing. Polaris bobs innocently as he comes alongside and kills the engine. Bull kelp tangles and drifts around her mooring line.
He ties up and climbs aboard.
No Annie, but nothing seems amiss. Evan opens one of the cockpit lazarettes: a set of folded towels, two life jackets, perfectly
arranged, tucked into one another.
He climbs down the companionway.
Everything is in its place. An empty sink. A sack of organic brown rice in the cupboard. A tea towel tucked around a handle
of one of the cherry cabinets in the galley. Books crowd the upper shelving, all of Annie’s favourites: fairy tales and poems
and folklore. The main berth is covered in a dark grey wool blanket. He runs his hand along the edge of the soft mattress.
Annie’s whalebone necklace sits on the table.
He feels the low rhythm of waves against the hull—-and something else. He can sense a new movement underneath him. He could
swear he hears a melody.
Returning to the deck, he looks out at the receding tide, then the expanse of smooth water in the other direction. A slight
disturbance ripples the glassy surface. A puff of breath.
The back of a whale.
Then, a light touch on his arm.
He knows this feeling. A sudden fever, a spark.
Seeing Annie makes it hard to draw a full breath. Her appearance is otherworldly. There’s a flush in her cheeks he hasn’t
seen in years. Wrapped in a towel, seawater dripping from her hair, she is smiling, clear-eyed. Her calmness washes over him.
“You’re here,” he says.
“So are you.”
Before he can reach for her, a humpback breaches beside the boat, fins splaying, showering them both. It’s terrifying and
exhilarating. He cannot breathe.
A deep song tumbles toward him through waves and air. Evan tears up but doesn’t quite know why. Somewhere, he can faintly hear music.
Annie reaches for his hand.
Holding on to the echo of song, they listen.