On Quadra

  I am sitting in my nephew's house on Quadra Island, looking our across the Strait to the grey-green scenery of the west coast, an Australian far from his own home. Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' is playing in the background. The music shifts into the slower movement of 'Spring'. A soft rain drifts across the bay, the surface of the dark water rippled and etched by the wind and the incoming tide. A single motor-boat cuts a white wake across the bay.  A small island's shaped curve in the middle of the bay softens the hard lines of the dark firs and the lighter aspens and birch which draw strong vertical lines on the landscape. The plane of the black high-water mark provides a horizontal balance. Above it, the soft yellow of the lichen and moss gives way to the light green of the under-story.

  A stillness settles on the bay. The birds—eagles, robins, jays, gulls, humming birds—regular visitors on a sunny day, have merged into the trees away from the rain, and no human form moves. Only the relentless surge and suck of the great Pacific tides and the soft drifting rain blur the landscape. To my left, the strong, slanting planes of rock of the near shore remind me of the forces that have shaped this coast and still lie, patiently dormant, under the land, forces too terrible to contemplate. I know of places on this coast where the islands plunge sheer hundreds of metres to the sea floor. I have just put down a book in which I read of an earthquake on this coast centuries ago that unleashed a tsunami of such magnitude that it crossed the width of the Pacific and was felt in Japan. I think of the old rocks my own homeland, where the forces of destruction are more direct, of fire and heat and drought. I shiver as some feeling shakes me.

  The music drifts into the slow, languid movement of 'Summer', with its promise of warmth, renewal, and sensuality. Tomorrow the sun will dance on the water, the carefree and curious seals will glide in the bay, and the blue of the sky will lift our hearts to join the returning birds.

Neil Quintrell

June 2000