The Fisher Queen Read Free Page B

personal hygiene issues. It required I be oblivious to the reactions of other adults and have a readiness to grab any opportunity that came along. It often required that I be very still and quiet and move in slow motion to sneak up on things and absorb every drop, every molecule, of the experience. The book I was reading on Eastern religions said what I had intuited long ago: Be Here Now.

    After two days and 300 miles, we tied up to the pristine wharf at Sointula on Malcolm Island. The bountiful land was settled in the 1880s by Finns who were part of the wave of Scandinavian immigrants escaping poverty and desperate for land. Some homesteaded in the American Midwest, and some of the most tenacious founded utopian communities on the remote and primeval northwest coast of Canada. Finns went to Georgia Strait, Danes to Cape Scott at the northern tip of Vancouver Island, and Norwegians to Bella Coola on the mainland.
    Paul and I were here to replace more damaged engine parts and fish out the sea-born plastic bags that had been sucked into the heat exchanger valve just below the water line. The innocuous shreds had damn near melted down the engine. But not even another floor removal and swear-fest could disturb a day so beautiful that things had come loose and now fluttered around inside me.
    I felt spring-loaded, like my heels couldn’t stand touching the ground. I knew there was something amazing very close by and I was going to find it. Paul was in the hardware store getting engine things, and the leash was off, though it didn’t get much safer than Saturday afternoon in a fishing village descended from utopian Finnish settlers. The sturdy, ruddy-cheeked descendants were a picture of communal industry. Everyone was busy, brisk and friendly, and I felt like I was inside a giant wooden cuckoo clock: all moving parts and window boxes.
    The wharves were like sturdy welcoming arms reaching out to sea, a stalwart mamma gathering her children home and safe, protecting them from the turbulent world. Even the private docks showed the Nordic propensity to build to last an eternity.
    Drifting to the wharf edge, I marvelled at the clarity of the water (I’m sure the inhabitants would not tolerate anything less) and leaned forward to follow the lines of mighty pylons. The moment wood met water, life exploded into shape and colour. This was the treasure I was looking for. Already on my hands and knees, I leaned over as far as gravity would let me. Nature had created a marine Monet, an impressionist painting of a garden beyond imagination. If Monet could create such shimmering watery scenes from ponds and water lilies, what could he have done with this extravaganza?
    Somehow, the water seemed clearer than air and acted like a magnifying glass, intensifying colour, shape and shadow. It was dazzling and hypnotic, everything in gentle motion like graceful Balinese dancers, and just as exotic. Pearly foot-long sea cucumbers, starfish like ochre suns, anemones like shaving brushes in a southwest desert. I had to remind myself that these were not gardens of alien flowers but herds of earthly animals.
    They drew me down and in, as I eased myself flat on my belly, oblivious to what might be smearing my clothes or whose path I was blocking. It was not that I didn’t care; I just didn’t notice. The closer I got, the more I could see. And I had to see everything.
    I imagined these creatures chose the high-rise housing of the pylons because it put them in the stream of whatever it was they ate. Like a buffet on a conveyor belt. And no danger of being baked before the tide rose. They clung and clustered with no thought to personal boundaries, though what territorial instincts were at play, who could tell? For all I knew it could have been all-out invertebrate warfare down there. People said that even a nuclear cloud had its own terrible beauty.
    Coming from Vancouver, the marine mecca for scuba diving, I’d seen a million photos