‘Revolutions’ by Cate Sandilands

It’s a hot August day — hot, at least, for Vancouver Island — and I’m in the middle of the bench front seat of an old Ford pickup, speeding along Highway 4 somewhere between Port Alberni and the T-junction at the coast that takes you to Ucluelet if you turn left or Tofino if you turn right. We’ve already passed through Cathedral Grove, where I wanted to stop because I loved going there with my parents when I was a kid. I remember the feeling of the huge trees with their thick, deeply-grooved bark and how small and protected I felt among them.

The truck broke down in Nanaimo, though, so we’re late, and we haven’t even stopped to pee since we left the garage. The conversation has dwindled to silence, and the scenery has devolved into a monotony of scraggly, badly replanted clear-cuts. MacMillan Bloedel has announced these new stands with bright yellow-and-green signs. They’re dated: 1968, 1972, 1979. The area around last year’s sign, 1984, still looks like a dead zone.

I’m terrified, but I’m trying hard not to show it. It wouldn’t be part of my newly cool political persona to say I’m afraid because I have no seatbelt, or because there’s a steep drop down a cliff from the two-lane highway, or because Dan, who’s driving because it’s his truck and it can fit all our camping gear, is losing his vision and angry about it most of the time, or because he’s holding on to the steering wheel with his left hand while he rolls a smoke in his right.

Dan’s handmade Drum cigarettes are always perfect cylinders. Mine look like pathetic joints. Dan is older than the rest of us.