Dreamer at the End of the Universe: One Life in Two Worlds

By Gordon James Harrison

Together with My Cousin & Me: And Other Animals plus Wolves: Ryders in the Whirlwind, this book comprises a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Prometheus Publications
• Release date: Mar 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781999225933

Gordon James Harrison

Gordon Harrison is an accomplished and revered nature writer and photographer whose work has captivated readers and viewers for several decades. With a profound passion for the natural world, Harrison has authored seven books that explore the intricate connections between nature and science. Through a unique blend of prose and breathtaking photography, Harrison has provided invaluable insights into the beauty and wonder of our planet, encouraging a deep appreciation for the environment. Early Life and Inspiration: Born in a lumber camp, Harrison spent his formative years immersed in the lush landscapes of Haliburton, where his love for nature was cultivated. The tranquil surroundings of the forest served as a rich source of inspiration, igniting the spark that would later lead to a remarkable career in nature writing and photography. Awards and Recognition: Harrison's contributions to nature writing and photography have not gone unnoticed. His work has received numerous accolades, including the BIBA award for best independent book award. This recognition is a testament to his dedication and talent in bringing the wonders of nature to a global audience.

Book preview

Chapter - 1

P ANDEMIC

I sleep for myself, but I dream for others.

Anonymous

C ome a little closer, hear what I have to say, came a small voice from the ground-floor bedroom of a large home. A white-haired man pumped up by pillows lay on a single bed warmed by a multicolored blanket. Come closer, he whispered, I wish to tell you something.

As the intruder in white glanced around the room, the pictures of wolves, bears, deer, and eagles on the far wall caught her attention. But the drawing on the near wall was unlike anything she had ever seen before. It was extraordinarily beautiful and surprisingly mathematical. The visitor closed the bedroom door, and as she did, the illustration (see next page) was reflected in the full-length mirror hanging on the back of the door. In that instant, the painting’s signature became decipherable; it said, Leonardo.

As the visitor sat in the room’s only chair close by the bed, she pulled out a thermometer and inserted it under the old man’s tongue. That should shut you up for a while, she thought. . .. Just as I suspected, you have a fever, and I hear a dry cough. After further examination—probing and palpating—she said, Now, what is it you wish to say?

I’m going to tell you the story of my life, for I have lived the greatest adventure of all time!

The doctor smiled to herself and wondered if she should add dementia to his diagnosis of COVID-19. But the signature on the drawing intrigued her, and she said, Was that painting done by Leonardo da Vinci?

Yes, said the white-haired patient, and in a deep sense, it tells the whole story of my life.

OK, now you have my attention, replied the doctor sitting back in the chair by the bed. Tell me your story.

s12a

As the minstrel* sang, [T]he green dark forest was too silent to be real. But above that forest in heaven’s high vault, against an intense cerulean sky, a hawk surveyed the land below. The valleys were dark green and entirely of evergreens, while the hills were a mixture of maple, beech, and ash. And marshes, ponds, and lakes dotted this vast landscape, but the hawk wanted none of these. He was searching for those rare open spaces, areas cleared by settlers. Like Sisyphus, these settlers rolled the rocks into piles and fences, cut the trees into houses and barns, and scratched the fields with shovels and plows to grow a few vegetables in the hope of feeding a wife and a handful of children. At the edges of these open fields, this raptor would find his lunch of rabbit, squirrel, or snake. He and his mate were still feeding two chunky chicks that could not yet fly, although they had left the nest.

Seeing a slight movement in the field below, the hawk dived lower, letting out a piercing shriek as the sun shone blood-red through his tail feathers (see photograph). The raptor continued his swift descent with legs and talons fully extended, impaling a giant milksnake.

Since snakes have no ears, the shrieking of the hawk gave it no alarm. The fight was brief, and the raptor quickly flew away with the writhing snake still dangling from his talons. Although not poisonous, this snake was a constrictor, but its movements were all without purpose since the hawk had decapitated it.

This constrictor, as long as the hawk’s outstretched wings would make an excellent meal for his family.

Another movement caught the hawk’s eye; this one was on the road that bordered the farms. The raptor, glancing in that direction, saw one of the settlers. From experience, the bird knew these creatures were to be feared. Often, they pointed boomsticks in his direction. He circled higher by pumping his great wings, the snake still wriggling wildly in his talons.

The settler mumbled to himself, Damn chickenhawk, I should have brought my rifle. Every hawk was a chickenhawk to the settlers, be they buteos, accipiters, or falcons. Knowledge of the outside world had no place here; nature was the enemy. All such birds were chickenhawks, although the settler had never seen one kill a chicken.

On this late summer day near noon, our settler was on a mission of mercy as he approached the gate of another property. This farm would be the second he had visited that morning, three if you count his own. A minor dust devil enveloped him at that moment, for it had not rained in many weeks. When the whirlwind of dust moved up the road, he took off his cap, vigorously slapping his trousers, producing more dust while muttering a variety of blasphemies.

The missing cap revealed a man with a ruddy complexion, fair hair, and blue eyes, with a drooping mustache, the visage of a Celt in his early fifties. He was above average in height, with arms and back as strong as a bear. After the Great Potato Famine, his father had emigrated from Fivemiletown, a village in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, enticed by a new life and rumors of free land.

The Spanish Flu Pandemic was in full force in this hinterland community; the year was 1918. Surprisingly, this settler was immune to its deadly grip. He lived in that horrific era before vaccines. In his youth, he had mumps, measles, chickenpox, whooping cough, German measles (rubella), and diphtheria. Beyond these were the yearly flu and pneumonia outbreaks. Just two years earlier, he had a severe case of shingles all around his midriff. Through good fortune and healthy genes, he had survived all these ravages. He carried himself with confidence, a certain air of pride, that none could deny him.

These diseases were grim reapers of the young, particularly those under ten. Four-sided tombstones in the form of a pillar with a child’s name on every face dotted country graveyards throughout this region. If you lived past your first decade, you would live into old age.

Well before he reached the farmhouse door, he heard it, deep throbbing cries of despair. Without knocking, the settler swung the door open and shouted, Is everyone alright? He waited, and after what seemed too long, the farmer’s wife appeared pale in her ragged nightgown. She said nothing; the settler thought she could not because her sorrow was so profound that words could not describe it. She stood ramrod straight and motioned him to enter the bedroom, but at that moment, her husband stumbled out of the same doorway. It was clear the uncontrollable sobbing was coming from him, but he, too, was unable to talk.

Sometime in the darkness after midnight, something unspeakable happened. The wife developed a fever and shortness of breath, which triggered a miscarriage. Her husband was sick with this Flu and slept in another bedroom, not wanting to infect her. Alone in the darkness, like a wolf in a den, she did what she must to survive. When the morning’s light revealed the extent of the horror, the wife went mute.

The settler and the husband entered the bedroom, and he pointed to a bloody mess on the bed wrapped in a crimson towel, aborted twins, a boy and a girl. The settler could hardly believe his eyes—he had not known she was pregnant. A tiny perfect hand smeared with blood and afterbirth crept out of the pink towel. What were they to do?

As she pushed aside the two men, the wife motioned them to leave the room, and they did. She carried a porcelain basin of warm water, setting it on the nightstand by the bed. Without a word, this mother began the ritual act of preparing the bodies. Each tiny figure was carefully cleaned and wrapped in a white pillowcase. Little knitted booties decorated their immaculate feet, and she adorned each head with a small woven hat.

When this mother had completed these rituals, she gestured to the men to reenter the bedroom, and they did. Gently she handed the boy to her husband but kept the girl to herself. By now, the men knew what she intended. Just as they were about to leave the farmhouse, the husband, who had finally stopped weeping, bent down and picked up a toy doll he had been making. It was just rounded pieces of pinewood held together with string and decorated with scraps of cloth from his wife’s sewing basket.

They stepped into the garden next to the house; she led the way. The garden was hers; the rest of the farm was his. The settler picked up a spade as they walked to the far corner of the garden. He dug a small grave in the rich garden soil at her direction. Softly they laid the tiny bodies side by side with the homemade doll between them to play with after death as they never did in life.

The wife wandered off momentarily as the settler backfilled the tiny grave, padded it down, and replaced the sod. The husband was on his knees, sobbing again. She returned with two maple sticks, which she fashioned into a crude cross, tying them together with the belt from her dressing gown and bound as if for eternity. The settler now wandered off to a nearby rock pile, where he found two granite rocks, each the size of a giant fist, laced with crystalline quartz. These he placed as headstones for this tiny grave.

The husband was still on his knees, sobbing inconsolably while his wife remained mute and ramrod straight; neither could mutter a coherent phrase. The settler, a man of few words, found something somewhere deep in his memory; he gathered up these words in a sentence and declared, May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

s1

Doctor, doctor, I can’t see!

A calm voice beside the white-haired man said, That’s because I shut the lights off. I was hoping you might fall asleep.

Can’t sleep yet. I’m not finished.

You mean your story, answered the doctor.

It’s not a story. It’s a his-tory.

The doctor tried to get comfortable as the old man continued his history.

s1

The settler had yet to do the chores on this farm. Going to the barn, he fed and watered the horses and released them to the large barnyard. He also released the chickens and turkeys into the same enclosure, where abundant grasshoppers would soon fill their crops. All but a single cow was grazing somewhere in the farmer’s wilderness fields. This cow he milked into an 11-quart bucket while sitting firmly on a three-legged stool. Just as the bucket reached the half-full mark, an old barn cat appeared as if to ask for his share. The settler found a small flat bowl by the wall and served the cat his portion. He gathered four eggs from the henhouse and gently put them in his pockets on the way back to the farmhouse.

The wife and her husband sat around the kitchen table; he held her hand. Each dipped a warm cup of milk from the bucket and drank it eagerly, and she brought out the iron skillet to fry the eggs. The men shook hands, and the farmer managed to mumble, Thank you. As he left the house, the settler said he would return tomorrow. He took the narrow path down to the road. The Spanish Flu kills quickly or not, so the settler thought they would live.

The hawk returned before he had walked halfway to the road. The dazzling sunlight and azure sky should have improved his spirits, but they did not. Deep in his stomach, he felt a horrific pain, as if the hawk were ripping out his organs. Looking up at the raptor, he shook his fist, and it flew away to find its supper elsewhere. Immediately after this, he threw up into the tall fox grass, and the pain subsided. He had reached the road by now, but the sun had passed its zenith, yet the settler still had three more farms to visit.

The little wooden cross decayed and fell apart in the years that followed. Even the nightgown’s belt could not bind it, but the quartz rocks remained permanent markers. These tiny bodies were not alone in the ground that is always cold. If you wander the forests and fields of any land, you will soon find death. It comes in the form of the rigid bodies of those who have left us. Dylan Thomas says it touchingly when he describes, in A Child’s Christmas in Wales, his search for news of the little world: he would find always a dead bird . . . perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Closer inspection will reveal other fatalities: mice, partridge, turtles, snakes, frogs, and small birds that scavengers will carry away and recycle into new life. Farther afield are the carcasses of moose and deer, wings of hawks, headless snakes, dead kangaroo mice, voles, weasels, raccoons, porcupines, bears, and, on rare occasions, a human corpse. The dead litter this land. You cannot fall anywhere in the forest or the field without resting on the graves of the fallen. These little ones with their wooden doll were in good company.

Nature has a way of reprocessing death into life; it is a form of everlasting life. Without a casket, these tiny perfect forms soon decayed. First, they became wildflowers, then rabbits, and finally wolves. And so, furious with life, they run all over this vast land.

Mercifully, the next three farm visits were uneventful, with only regular chores to do. After finishing at the final farm, the settler took the shortest path home, a well-trodden trail through the forest. It was an hour’s walk. The sun had just passed below the horizon when he heard the first call. A loquacious barred owl with his inquisitive, Whooo cooks for you? Whooo cooks for you aaall? declared its territory—a night voice familiar to these forests. It was too late in the summer to hear the haunting, flute-like song of the rarely seen hermit thrush. Except for the shrieking of the hawk, the daytime had been quiet, but the nighttime was about to become a much noisier place.

Sometime after this, when the first stars appeared, the settler heard a different call—a primitive song from ages long past. Listening intently, he heard it a second time. There was no mistaking; it was wolves. Their electrifying call of the wild filled the night air only to let him know who owns this place, and he best not forget it. Wolves do not perform on demand, nor do they negotiate. Yet, when they do sing, your spine tingles to the sound of their transfixing arias, and for an instant, you can touch that ancient time when we roamed the forest with them. The settler picked up his pace.

As he ascended the last hill, he saw the glimmer of a lantern that his wife had put in the front window to guide him home. The fields were open now, and he could make out the large dark image of his barn. His family would be waiting to welcome him home. Although his three youngest daughters were severely stricken, they survived the flu epidemic.

As these thoughts flashed through his mind, he heard a deep panting sound as if from something wolfen. His automatic reflex was to run, then he thought better of it. No one outruns a wild animal, no one—especially not a middle-aged man shackled in heavy leather boots worn summer and winter. The panting grew louder, and the settler was sure he could hear the animal’s footfalls. Nevertheless, he controlled his fear and braced himself. By now, his eyes had adjusted to the night, and he could discern a four-legged form almost upon him. At that instant, it lunged, wrapping its legs around his neck, vigorously licking his face. It was his dog, Pal, his faithful companion. With his keen sense of smell and acute hearing, this animal had detected his master long before he ascended the last hill. Tensions evaporated as he ruffled the fur on Pal’s neck and praised him for being a good boy.

Arriving at the house, his entire family greeted him. He had seven children, six girls, and one boy (see Chapter Notes). Edith, the oldest daughter, was missing, gone to Alberta to homestead on virgin soil with her husband just home from the Great War. The settler’s wife, Annie, always kept a large pot of chicken parts and vegetables bubbling on the back burner of the woodstove. Since the rest of the family had already eaten, he dined alone with his three youngest girls chattering in his ears while the two older daughters, Agnes and Alma, helped in the kitchen. Supper was a bowl of chicken stew, two large dumplings, and two hard-boiled eggs. The three youngest girls, Hazel, Reita, and Eva, wanted all the details of his day. Their father, however, was discreet in his recall; he made no mention of the aborted twins.

Around the table, all was laughter and happiness with his three daughters, ages 4, 9, and 11. Full of pure mischief, so that after their father had cracked and eaten an egg, they would replace the inverted half-shell in an egg cup. And their father would play along and act surprised, discovering the shell was empty. Happiness is a blanket stitched together with such simple moments. However, these three young girls, Hazel, Reita, and Eva, would have astonishingly different lives.

Everyone went to bed early. And since the parents had more daughters than bedrooms, Hazel, Reita, and Eva slept together. Before sleep, all three were on their knees at the bedside, saying their evening prayers. It was always the same prayer:

Jesus, tender Shepherds, hear me,

Bless the little lambs tonight;

Through the darkness be Thou near me,

Keep me safe till morning light.

Despite this prayer their mother had taught them, the family was not religious. It was more form and less content.

Their father constructed this little house in the forest out of logs and love. It was a single-story structure with only three small bedrooms. He fashioned the trees into a barn through titanic labors and pried the rocks apart to find enough soil to grow a few vegetables to keep a wife and feed a family. By any standard, they were desperately poor, although they never realized this. No electricity, no central heating, running water, or indoor toilet—just an outhouse with a tattered Eaton’s catalog for toilet paper. Yet, in my memory, I never heard anyone complain. Not once! Not ever!

The settler’s home rested in a vast region called The Land Between. In this case, an area where two iconic environments collided, the Canadian Shield and the St. Lawrence Lowlands, to create a zone rich in plants and animals—the best of both ecosystems. The immigrants to this area must have been traveling light because they carried no keepsakes of any kind, no relics of their earlier life, nor did they ever speak of it. Like soldiers returning from the horrors of war, some things are best forgotten. They went forth naked to live life on their terms in a new land. As the minstrel sang:

Long live the pioneers.

Go forth and have no fear.

The land was free if you maintained the roads on either side; otherwise, 50 cents an acre. The settler’s people took the first option. The government threw these colonists onto the land with an imaginary plan to farm these rocks buttered with soil. Some survived, some perished, most left.

A nighthawk, hunting insects in the sky above this home, may have noticed when the settler’s wife extinguished the last lantern. All was darkness now but for a handful of stars scattered across a black vault. Nightfall gave the darkness over to bears, foxes, and wolves. Ar Hyd y Nos,* the family slept secure in their beds and mutual love.

Before the first gray of morning filled the east, a bird of mystery landed on the room’s windowsill where the three youngest sisters slept and announced its presence by saying its name: whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will. It repeated its introduction until all three girls were up and staring at this noisy nighttime apparition. And then they were privileged to hear a soft cluck before its regular hypnotic song, a gift given to few. After this never-to-be-forgotten moment, they returned to bed where Reita and Eva dreamt of their future and what it might hold while Hazel thought of the rabbit she saw in the garden yesterday.

In the predawn, the settler awoke, dressed, and went to the barn as he did every morning. His son, Cecil, who slept on a small bed in the kitchen, had recovered sufficiently from the Flu to help his father. Outside, the air was fresh and moist, and you could see the mist had crept over the fields from the nearby marsh. Two deer bolted away as soon as father and son appeared. Methodically feeding and watering all the animals, one of them milked a cow while the other, with the dog’s help, collected a basket of fresh eggs, including three from their turkeys. While Annie, who had risen before the men, baked fresh tea biscuits with raisins to go with their bacon and eggs. The younger girls, still weak from the Flu, were sleeping; the two older daughters were helping their mother in the kitchen.

Turkey eggs are large, spotted, and strong tasting, while chicken eggs are brown, unmarked, with a mild flavor, and often come with two yolks. The bacon, thick and with the rind still on, made for a chewy breakfast. Uncle Cecil, an expert in slaughtering pigs, had butchered the one they were now enjoying earlier in the year. But he refused to talk about that occasion. Somehow, the pig became aware of his murderous intentions and repeatedly avoided capture. During the chase, Uncle Cecil slipped and fell into the incredibly foul pig manure rolling like a corncob in butter. The pig, however, was finally caught, cooked, and consumed.

After breakfast, the settler scrubbed the kitchen floor on his hands and knees using Gillette’s lye. Reita and Eva, now up and just returned from the two-seater outhouse, were astonished to see their father doing their mother`s work. Still too weak for hard labor, Annie packed her husband tea biscuits and cheese for lunch. Kissing his three youngest daughters goodbye and pushing the door open, he strode across the field to again do the chores on five other farms. He had no rival to his humanity.

s1

What was this settler’s name; how do you know so much about this man? asked the doctor.

"He was Robert Walker, my grandfather, and his daughter Reita was my mother."

Taken aback, the doctor had not realized the old man was telling his memoir.

Reaching into his nightstand, the old man retrieved an album. Here is a picture of him and his wife, my grandmother, and the child in this photograph is me. It is 1938, twenty years after the Spanish Flu. You can see my grandfather has worn himself out by his great labors. He was so poor; he had nothing left but friends. On March 9, the following winter, he died during a snowstorm.

The doctor protested, "But you haven’t explained anything about Leonardo da Vinci’s magnificent drawing of the dodecahedron* hanging on your wall."

Didn’t I tell you, Doc, that was just Chapter-1? I will reveal more on your next visit. Tomorrow I hope?

Yes, yes, tomorrow, replied the doctor leaving the room.

s1

---

* Thanks to Gordon Lightfoot and his Canadian Railroad Trilogy.

* Ar Hyd y Nos is Welsh for All Through the Night.

* A 3-dimensional figure having 12 pentagonal faces.

Chapter - 2

T HE L OST C HILD

I thank God, he used to say, that I was born Greek and not barbarian, freeman and not slave, man and not woman; but above all, that I was born in the age of Socrates.

Plato—flourished 400 BCE

Knock, knock. It’s Dr. Jamieson.

"I’m