Storms and Stillness is about a search for hope irrevocable changes that humans are forcing upon the Earth including the loss of ancient forests, the demise of pollinators and large predators, shifts in the chemistry and circulation patterns of the atmosphere and sadly, so much more.
Written as a series of letters to the young Twyla Bella, this work of non-fiction leads readers through intelligible scientific fact to adventures around the globe: studying marine predators thirty metres below the surface of high-current pinnacles in Haida Gwaii, observing Dall’s sheep in the rugged mountains of the Yukon, and researching relationships between sea turtles and tiger sharks in Western Australia. The letters also speak of a connection with food from the forest and sea, and therefore a connection with the Earth that transcends anything scientific. The dipping of cold hands into the steaming, open cavity of a freshly hunted deer. The experience of standing with a six year-old Twyla Bella beside ceremonial fires, as members of the Stó:lō, Squamish and Musqueam First Nations sing to the wild salmon that have sustained them for millennia.
Join Alejandro Frid and friends at the Gallery at Artisan Square on Sunday, November 30 for a journey through readings, images, and life music - with a little wine too.
Excerpt:
It was the austral autumn of 1989. I was gliding in my kayak, surrounded by tidal glaciers, alone in the channels of Tierra del Fuego. I came here because I wanted a glimpse of my non-human kin and origins.
I watched the vertical granite face of Cerro Yagán appear through a gap in the clouds. The mountain is namesake to a culture that for eons coexisted with the forest and the sea. That culture is dead. Yagán Indians, the original inhabitants of the Beagle Channel andCape Horn Islands of southernmost Tierra del Fuego, no longer paddle their canoes hunting sea lions. They no longer gather chaura berries in the forest. Those not killed by European settlers quietly wasted away in Christian missions. Lakutaia Le Kipa, the last member of the Yagán race, died in 1983. In her own words, “[Yagáns] stopped wandering naked and obtaining their own food and got sick. Civilization attacked their lungs and stomach and they began to die.
