Cedarvale diary.

Borson, Roo

29 December

Early winter, post-solstice, and the mind is already turning toward things that are not yet before the eyes, looking forward to another repetition and variation on the sights of past springs:

   A robin
   almost too heavy
   for the cherry twig--

It's possible to acquire a catalogue of such things--settings out, things seen--without knowing whether or not they constitute a continuing reality, or merely carry within them the stamp of some expired, transfiguring, imperative. Always the flavour of a given life, both evanescent and repeatable. On the verge of entering another new year, my sixtieth, something new has been added, a sense of the penultimate.

   Is it still blowing?
   That old wind
   old wind from long ago--

Not yet the ultimate, a little short of that.

1 January

A warm south wind has been blowing for two days now, and this is the result: 12 degrees Celsius. This is the weather of the west coast, not Ontario January, yet here it is. The ravine today is filled with a perfectly even mist, all the way to the tops of the trees. On my way home I ran into a woman I recognized, having met her once before, her and her small caramel-coloured dog. The path was mostly puddle, with a narrow raised strip, so I gestured for her to go first. Happy New Year, she said, and I asked if her dog thought it would be a good year too. She said yes. She said every year has the likelihood of being good when it first arrives. I said I felt this year would be a good one, though I hoped it was not just the weather today. (The forecast was for the cold north wind to return.) We live in hope, she said. And one after the other, woman and dog, both of them unfailingly polite, made their way along the narrow raised strip and continued on into the mist.

17 January

It is nearly twenty-five years since we moved into this house, which is near Cedarvale Ravine. First though, before moving in, we had to make our way by bus and then on foot through the biggest blizzard of the year to a far northern suburb where one of the children of the original owners now lived, to sign the contract that would make the house our own. It's a place that freezes in winter and boils in summer. Where the branches of the neighbour's backyard cherry trees extend over the fence and well into our own. In springtime the blossoms float like sea-foam; on rainy summer days the entire world is lit with green leaves and darkening cherries; in autumn I watch a few more of the yellowing leaves drop to the grass, leaving behind yet another painting in the air. More than two decades have passed, and those trees still anchor us here, but now they have companions as well: a half-wild cherry in our yard, and two more young cherry trees in the yard of our neighbour on the other side, so that at the peak of blossoming the three houses are joined in a single vision. Or, as now, joined in a world of snow.

18 January

A flock of those little boat-shaped birds that always seem to go about in groups, blue-brown above, white below the curved "waterline." In a snow-laden crotch of the cherry tree, one of them will suddenly bow, eating the snow, sipping the snow. At the same time I've just discovered how those "snaky tunnels" are made--by squirrels, apparently at play. One just "jump-tobogganed" through the foot-high snow, leaving a sunken zig-zag channel three inches deep the whole length of the yard.

23 January

The same three squirrels I've often seen chasing one another, their early morning silhouettes, following one another along the curving roads of branches until they disappear beyond a neighbour's roof, are here again. Calm winds, summer-like, in deepest winter: minus 25, and sunshine. Like memory itself, that brings things forth in the wrong season. Another kind of small bird, brown with white chevron-like flashes on its tail, sports playfully, landing every few seconds, bathing in the powdery snow as if it were a spring puddle. Every few seconds, another of these takes a turn splashing in the frozen landscape.

3 February

So many tracks in the snow, going this way and that: squirrel, bird, cat. Soon the apricot-grey haze of the city will glow between bare branches; above the downtown towers a yellowing moon will float up, fragile and ancient. Soon I'll be following two ski tips, skimming along the ravine at dusk, keeping to the pale track, almost phosphorescent, of the skier who went before.

8 February

Today we saw a big hawk devouring what looked like a bluebird in our back yard, under the bare branches of the lilac. This went on for about an hour, until Kim could hold off no longer, and started shovelling snow, at which point the hawk listened carefully for about ten minutes, then took off with what was left of its prey. Later I went out and with the toe of my boot scuffed clean snow over the pinkish snow, burying along with it the few blue-grey feathers that were left behind.

14 February

This winter has brought a preponderance of cardinals. It's common to see three or four at once through the back windows, flitting here and there. Kim makes a distinction between the males and females, referring to them as either Richelieus or Claudias. Just now two Richelieus and two Claudias, four altogether, are in the bare grey lilac. Beside the sumac, with its forty or fifty reddish seed clusters like standing flames. Big flakes of snow are making their wandery way down along the twisting currents, volatile air, and it occurs to me that this is precisely the life I would have chosen had I been offered it at age 15 or 16 or 17, when I had no idea how to meet the future, and spent much of my time (unsuccessfully) trying to imagine it into being.

4 March

In the snow-fringed yard, a young squirrel, hopping straight into the air. Once, twice, a third time.

   The sadness of things that leave the world,
   the happiness of things still coming into being--

This young squirrel, so obviously excited by life, makes me ashamed of the sombre thoughts that have preoccupied me, on and off, for much of the winter. Once, when I was well into my thirties, a favourite aunt, who is dead now, accused me of being too young to appreciate a kitten. At the time I felt only the slight sting of what seemed an obscure (and in truth rather peculiar) insult. Now perhaps I begin to know what she meant. Six or seven robins are congregated along the path that leads, a scant block from the house, into the ravine. Last night it rained, and the puddles are filled to brimming with large pinky-brown worms, more bare than bare, exciting the robins' expectations. Each year a similar troop of robins appears at this spot: heralds, messengers from afar, bringing with them another spring.

5 April

The snow is gone from the streets, but in the ravine freshets of snow-melt still run along either side of the path where the ground is lowest. One toy boat-hull or miniature barge of snow, foamy-looking, weightless, like styrofoam. A piece of bark makes its way down one of these freshets, spinning, pirouetting over the "rapids," then gets stuck, like another toy boat, all on its own. On the shady side, scalloped ice-terraces that will melt by late afternoon.

6 April

The robins return first, then the shrill of the first returning red-winged blackbird is heard, and not long afterwards the red-headed woodpecker is drilling into the neighbour's cherry trees. A pair of cardinals has spent much of two days apparently trying to get into the house, flying at the windows on the west side, where an eastern white cedar grows. The cedar's branches touch the windows, and in storms make squeaking noises scraping back and forth across the glass. The cardinals flutter at the window on the ground floor, then hover against the upstairs windows, looking in, as though to spy a nest site indoors. After several tries they give up, fly off to the back yard for a brief rest. A cardinal in the backyard sumac--as Kim says--like a temporary sumac bud. Again and again they return to the windows, as though to a problem that can be solved only by endless repetition.

13 April

The cardinals have been at it every day for a week now. One after the other they try flying against the windows, standing vertically as it were in the air, beaks hitting the panes. From another room it sounds as though a large bee were striking the glass again and again. Clapping doesn't dissuade them, or at least not for long. The male is a deep red, the female dun and blush-coloured, and she is the more fanatical of the two. The cedar tree, so close to the house, provides a close-up view of the squirrels and birds all year round, and is maybe a partial contributor to what seems a category confusion on the part of this pair of cardinals. Could it be that the branches appear multiplied in the windows--as though a whole forest were standing in the place of a single tree? The male makes a beautiful song, even in his frustration.

21 April

The first pale blossoms on the apples in the ravine, apparently frail, yet not: these trees have stood along the path for far longer than I've lived here. Some of the trees are highly perfumed--the pinker the blossom, the more delectable the scent. It's the same with the fruit: an apple with a blush tastes sweeter. Thoreau wrote: "I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house." In fact he left his last works to fall only after his passing, like windfall apples, sure and sweet. Others happened along and sorted them, editing them posthumously, until at last someone published the whole as Wild Fruits, my favourite among his books because it is the least worked. The house is of course the place I like best to contemplate his thoughts; out walking, there are blossoms and fruits to consider, of the sorts that can't be found in books. Someone I fell into casual conversation with today, near those apple trees, told me that cardinals quite often fly against windowpanes, attacking the image of what seems to them an enemy, reflected in the glass. A simple explanation, but is it true? And now the rustle of rain. Rain coming down, the sky sliding east with the clouds.

30 April

   In a second-storey room
   to sleep
   among the blossoms--

Yesterday afternoon the first few blossoms opened on the small cherry in our yard. Not in the morning, but by afternoon they could hold out no longer. This is the tree our neighbours planted for us as a surprise one year when we were away. Later they apologized, saying it was the "wrong kind" of cherry. But in fact, though its fruit is small, the flavour is unequalled. We've always supposed that the grafted part failed, leaving the wild cherry to grow as it might, straight from the roots. And today, fight on time, the first bumblebee.

   Assailed in the night by wind and rain
   don't the blossoms love it this morning
   their wild roots wet

3 May

Looking out the dining room window early in the morning I find that someone is in the back yard--bent over, stooping and moving on, stooping and moving on. It is a middle-aged woman I've never laid eyes on before. She doesn't even glance in my direction--though I'm framed in the window behind her--but holds a garden fork of some kind, and a plastic bag, which, I now see, she is filling with not-yet-flowering dandelion greens. She keeps this up for a good ten minutes, then departs with her haul, never once having turned to look at me.

5 May

We go for a ravine walk with our friend from Wuhan, who shows us a game from his childhood.

   Pulling a new spray of willow through his teeth
   he shows how it's done:
   making a "rat's tail"--

How quickly they're gone, these days, blown away on the breeze. Yet in the house, time and heat are already beginning to pile up. Spring pressing in from all sides.

10 May

Cedarvale Ravine. The female horsetails are thick in the marshy, boggy places, and along the thin wash of creek. More red-winged blackbirds now, in the stand of last year's cattails, new shoots of cattail sprouting alongside.

   Everything rain-washed
   wind-washed
   standing that much taller today

The blackbirds punctuating the air with regular clock-like trills.

20 May

Deep in the ravine this morning, a police car and paramedic's van, with five or six emergency crew in their reflective yellow vests. I passed right by on the narrow path, averting my eyes. A thin man lay on a stretcher. Later that day, there was no sign that hell had visited, just as there's no reminder now of the apples' blossoming. All of nature is a kind of subtraction, with nothing left over: whatever we see, whatever we think is there, is then wholly gone, wholly changed into something other.

6 June

A white-haired woman was gathering a huge bouquet of wildflowers, which I stopped to admire. It turned out the bouquet was a gift for her friend--one of those who'd helped "save" Cedarvale Ravine. Decades ago, she explained, the city had plans for an expressway, and so a few women from the neighbourhood had come together to present their views at city hall. There were now only two left, out of the original group. The idea was this: each of them had a large house and garden, but for those who lived in apartments, with no hope of a garden, there was only this ravine, and thus the plan was to preserve a piece of wild garden for everyone. Not a year ago, on the other hand, I came upon a man who had just finished digging up a particularly striking shrub, taking for himself what had grown wild here, for transplanting to his own garden.

9 June

A young snake has been dipped in white paint, so that it writhes along the ravine path, trying to escape its own skin, suffocating. The two boys who have done this (telltale paint can in hand) startle when they see me coming. How would you like somebody to do that to you? I yell, and they scramble into the woods.

29 June

The cherries are ripe. Robins come to eat them, two birds on a single branch. The larger bird pecks first at the ripest cherry within reach; as soon as the other bird tries, it is pecked! The larger one alternates between pecking at the cherries and pecking at the other bird, keeping that one from managing even a single bite.

5 July

At night the gangs of raccoons comb through the neighbourhood, making their strange whoops and trills. My neighbour, leaning out from her porch, makes kissing noises, calling in the cat.

   Washing my hair
   wringing it out with one hand
   moonrise

The next morning she says something has been at her lettuces. What sort of thing? "A white animal," she replies, and makes the sign for "fangs" with her two index fingers. Could it be a possum?

17 July--20 July

Midsummer in the ravine. Where a makeshift bridge of two boards crosses the creek, yellow flags bloom shoulder high, tresses of dark jade cress blowing in the water, anchored in silt. Two women, dressed (impossibly) in kimono--mother and daughter? aunt and niece--bend midstream, ankle-deep, gathering handfuls into plastic supermarket bags. They would make a graceful subject for a nineteenth-century Japanese wood-block print. I can hardly believe my eyes, yet a few days later I glimpse them again, dressed in ordinary shirts and pants this time, crouched well off the path, on the soft muddy ground among the lily stalks, each wielding a small stubby knife. What could they be collecting? Lily buds? Lily bulbs?

11 August

The house never gives up its heat willingly, but stores it up from day to day, until it rains.

   Years of summers:
   a trunk so full of rocks and shells
   it won't be budged--

After the rain, the entire neighbourhood stands steaming in the sunshine.

22 August--25 August

The longed-for hard rains have come, and all at once the roof is leaking. "Animal damage" is the verdict, meaning the squirrels have pried up the shingles, preparing to make a winter nest in the attic. First we had to have that portion of the roof re-shingled, then trim back the cedar tree that allowed such easy access. A trio of men arrived. One hauled himself up into the tree with a loop of rope, another handed him the chainsaw, and he began to cut a "hole" in the foliage so that he could throw the branches and small trash out through it onto the front lawn. Next he trimmed one of the two secondary trunks and then the other. Finally he hopped down and sawed the smaller branches from the cut trunks. One of the other men started feeding the smaller branches into the chipper at the back of their truck. The two trunks were cut into shorter sections, and I asked the men to take them round the back, and watched as they dropped them into the grass. Later Kim came home and wrapped the long pile in black plastic, so that it could weather over the winter, and perhaps eventually be made into garden stakes. Together the limbs make a body nearly the size and shape of a man. The birds avoided the tree all day; then late in the day one came, stood on one of the bare cut trunks, and screeched repeatedly. No one came or answered. And that was the end of our idyll of the birds and squirrels.

4 September

Late-summer jaunts through the ravine are pleasantly uneventful, which is to say they are improvised of events too numerous and subtle to detail. Always I take stock, in a sweeping way, of the minutely altering complexion of the weeds, trees, and grasses: which patches are in bud, or in bloom, or fading. And then today, out of nowhere, another sort of weather entirely: a pastoral of heavy mist. Two half-bald men, in sagging shirts and trousers, knee-deep in the damp grasses, chatting to one another. But what is it they stoop to gather from the matted weeds, among moth-eaten cattails, sodden purple asters? Something round, each no bigger than a quarter, dozens of them bulging the white plastic sacks they are carrying. I stop to ask. "Verrry espenseeve!" cries one of the men, and holds out his palm: snail. I nod, and wave, turning from the lovely tiger-striped shell pulled from its home in the weeds, and head back through the mist of a foreign land.

3 October

At times, when I think I'm done with looking, I crawl into bed and close my eyes, and there before me once again is the very world I closed my eyes to.

   End of autumn cricket
   my hearing too
   grows faint

10 October

This house came into being in the same year Kim did, which endears it to me doubly. From its windows can be seen the autumn leaves, which are at their peak now, crimson and scarlet and burnt sienna. In my sixth decade of life it dawns on me that I've been granted an extension--as a different sort of creature. What is this creature with the old eyes? Increasingly girlish, liking anew the old girlish things. Chocolate; lace; lying down to watch the clouds scudding past, the blue October sky ...

11 November

The feral cats of the neighbourhood have been many over the years; they come and go; die and are born. One such cat--big, with matted long fur and wild green intelligent dreamy eyes-used to spend a great deal of time in our yard, resting in the morning and again at evening beneath the lilac tree by the back fence. We used to see him there, crouched in the snow after his exploits or stretched out in the sunshine, warming himself, afraid of no one. After not seeing him at all for several months, we wondered if even he had finally met his end. But no--a woman from the apartment building two doors down had taken him in, and from that time on he has no longer cared to venture out, having entered the ease of his retirement. This is the same woman who once, when telling me about another matter--a local cat who'd been cruelly deformed by a wire trap--began by patiently explaining, "I was busy setting out some peanut butter sandwiches for the squirrels, when ..."

15 December

When it snows it snows equally on what is left of the living cedar in the front yard and on the long limbs of the cedar wrapped in black plastic in the back yard. When the snow melts from the plastic, one of the cardinals likes to sit there in the sun, where the winter warmth is gathered and stored. Cardinals and bluebirds are the birds I drew when I was a child, thinking them exotic, copying their colours and forms from pictures in books, and now, quite by chance, I live among them. In the ravine, bent stalks serve as half-woven basketry for the snow; in the half-distance, the beautiful brown architecture of the woods. An album of days. It may be that in the future no one will think of gathering snails from the weeds, or cress from the creek, or set out peanut butter sandwiches for the squirrels.

   In the quiet before snow
   the book is not its words
   the cats are lovely and stubborn--

This place, such as it has been, will truly be gone from the world. Something else will have taken its place. Where else would lost things be found then, but in the words that once stood for them?