Hummingbird
Hummingbirds, they seem to be everywhere I go. When I was a kid, I remember my mom keeping Hummingbird feeders outside of our kitchen window in Winnipeg. Maybe a few would come by each summer, there wasn’t a lot of them. But at my mom’s cabin on Vancouver Island, that little red feeder was full of action! On some days there’d be several Hummingbirds feeding at once.
In the ancient forest, Hummingbirds are curious. They fly so fast and so close, sometimes they make me jump scared. You can hear them coming from far away, their wings buzzing as they brush past your hair.
There’s so many Hummingbirds on Vancouver Island, one of the most famous research camps in the Walbran is called “Hummingbird.” Rufous and I have tried to find it a couple of times now, but it hasn’t been active since the 90’s and is well grown-over with new forest. The logging roads that at one time would have gotten you to Hummingbird are also well grown-over and aren’t even listed on any modern maps.
The last time I felt I was close to Hummingbird, Rufous and I were hiking with a good dog named Tula. She was pretty scattered, acting like a bear or something might be close for the duration of our whole walk, there was so much tension in the air. Through some trees and across a bog, we saw a pile of old lumber but Tula was really telling us not to go any closer. So we didn’t. Maybe we almost found Hummingbird Camp?
A few weeks after, Rufous sent me a photo of the boardwalk at Hummingbird Camp that he found in an old book.
That night, I had a dream that we actually did find Hummingbird. The place in my dream looked somewhere between Rufous’ photo and my memory of Tula’s warning. I drew it in the morning:
The Boardwalk at Hummingbird, 10x7 inches, watercolour, pencil crayon and oil on paper
But that didn’t look enough like what I imagined it to be, so I painted it big too.
This morning, I took a photo of this new painting and texted it to Rufous to tell him, “I found Hummingbird.”
