Caitlin Hicks

PLAYWRIGHT. AUTHOR. PERFORMER. PRESENTER.

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Mountains of Things

You have to take a ferry to get here, a ferry with big windows and stunning scenery and worn, coffee-smelling carpets. And here, there are trees everywhere!

At the grocery store the clerk’s assistant asks you: paper or plastic? One day, one visit later to the Sunnycrest Mall and it connects: the paper choice means preservation of that damp, fart smell everywhere and the underpinning of the local economy.

Be careful to pack the garbage tight and snap on the lid, the dogs and bears will pick apart the bags and drag them and toss them and spill their contents everywhere before the truck comes roaring down the road. It’s evening, it’s spring.

At this time of the day the sun literally spills everywhere and our house seems made of glass in the light. I saw a woodpecker “this big” in the woods behind us, pecking and pecking. I guess he was looking for bugs in a tree. I guesss I can remember that from my childhood. I saw a drawing of a woodpecker in a book and that looks like a woodpecker to me!

At the beach we stared down a blad eagle yesterday just as it began to rain. When the tide is out the rocks are covered with a hairy, deep green and slippery moss, and how many varieties of shellfish are bleached and broken, vacated with the tide out to sea?

Conor found another star fish. Purple! Twice the wasps tried to make home on the underside of our porch, but we brushed them away with a broom. Sow bugs everywhere, but don’t worry unless you see big ants. Is this the same strip of highway?

There are two malls in the town of Gibsons, screaming at the top of their lungs, “Attention K-Mart  Shoppers! We’re having an Easter party on Saturday!” Welcome to the land of milk and honey, it’s our anniversary and there isn’t a single restaurant we can go to until the weekend, fancy enough or gourmet enough or worthy enough of a ten year celebration.

A year ago, it seemed to rain all the time, things were grey out here. But so what, it was grey in Vancouver and our apartment seemed to be shrinking around us with the bad weather. The land we bought here was overgrown with blackberry bushes and dandelions. We were shooting for a Christmas around the fire on the Sunshine Coast, and not one relevant building person could be lined up until late November.

But you know what? It was March before we could spit, and the first night we slept on the floor between unpacked boxes and bruised furniture. I could see the stars through the skylight, real stars! Glittery stars and black, black night reaching all the way up. Loose and free, that’s how it felt and full of the wonder of things.

Welcome to the Sunshine Coast, Spring, 1992.

Published in The Coast News, Spring, 1992

Acclaimed Debut Novel

Republished by Sunbury Press this summer

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Mother Marcelle's Spaghetti, as discussed in my podcast, "Some kinda woman - Stories of Us"

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