Nuu-Chah-Nulth fish trap rattle

The Fish Trap Rattle took on a life of its own
Even as it was being made
It didn't belong to anyone - it was itself.
Well, yeah, it belongs to someone
It was made by someone
Or it was a gift to someone
I don't think it goes beyond that -
It is itself, mostly.

Fort Langley

When I look at the fish Trap Rattle
I know that I come from there.
I know what that place feels like -
It feels like the Fish Trap Rattle
Fish like Drizzle - Forest Hall

There is so little difference
between the ocean
and the air
there.

Animist in a mist.

"Bring your Fish Trap Rattle, George.
Let's drink a beer and eat some salmon.
Let's have a smoke and stare out the window at the rain.
At the river. At the mountains.
Remember that cougar? - what a crazy cougar -
swimming across the river and roaming around the countryside -
Terrifying everyone.
She found her way to the balsam behind the house.
The dog barked up at her until we noticed.
She was gone in the morning.
Swam back across the river to the wilder place.
Over the Maple Ridge into the Golden Ears."

Don't you love the smell of lanolin in the rain?
The way the rain beads up on the tiny hairs.
Thousands of small jewels, collecting and growing
until they fall.
and when you have the wrong socks on
beneath rubber boots
and it feels so wrong when your naked foot slips out
into the forest
And then it feels just right.

River people. Wet - always wet.
I grew up there. By the river.
Alone.
Most of the time.
I didn't know I was an artist until much later.
I just knew what Susan Stenberg
Said to Carol Thompson on the party line -
I was so boring.
I just wanted to collect eggs -
to be with the chickens in the barn.
Or I wanted to sit on my haunches
and stare at the insects in the mud
On the edge of the pond.
Or I wanted to play the piano.

I was an anomaly -
I felt like a cloud in the sky,
Like fog laying low on the fields in the fall.
I was no different than a drop of water,
in the ocean, in the air, on the tiny
hairs of my Cowichan sweater.
I was a part of the landscape.
Me and the rocks and the ravens and the river and the rain.
No different, but completely different.

Victoria

Yeah, if I was an Indian - do you call yourself an Indian, George? -
That spiritual suitcase, the Fish Trap Rattle,
Is all I'd need for a trip to town
Step off the bus and head down to the hotel for a beer.
But the fish trap rattle might decide to go somewhere else.
It might prefer the dock, down by the fishing boats.
Or tea at the Empress with all the Old English Ladies
Eating tea cakes and triangular sandwiches.
And then what would I do?
I'd just drink another beer
Later I'd try to find the Fish Trap Rattle for the trip home.
By then it might have been set up in a museum.

But it would still be itself.

Vancouver Island

A wave bubbles in, clear and soft.
shuffling the pea gravel along with it.
How can I paint that sound?
A wave drags it back.
Rain on the water.
Little circular patterns on the surface.
The pebbles rolling up and down the beach,
up and down the beach,
up and down the beach.
Walking up through the long grass,
Water soaks my shoes
And steams up the inside of the car
As we drive toward Jordan River.

The Fish Trap Rattle knows how to paint that sound -
Just by being.