The town I was born in wasn’t the town my parents lived in when I was born. That’s not meant to be a riddle. They were having lunch in the bigger town an hour south as it was the closest town and the town I my parents lived in was only a couple of hundred people in the middle of the vast expanse of rainforest on Vancouver Island. That town was Sayward and I haven’t been back through there since I was about eleven years old. Time contorts those memories into something a little bit more fantastic — for me the town has this sort of supernatural gothic “Twin Peaks” kind of vibe. Random winding roads through the forest / A small shopping mall that was build and never opened until about fifteen to twenty years later / old cars and trucks from the first half of the twentieth century overgrown in the woods / the sounds of complete silence except for wind at night / covered one lane bridges built of timber with traffic lights swinging in the breeze on either side – nobody around – waiting for something to happen.
The claim to fame in this town was a place called the Cable Cook House that was build out of 26 tonnes of 2″ thick bridge suspension cable coiled to form the shape of a building. This is the kind of place weary travellers and lumberjacks of the “strong but silent” type would tuck into a grilled breakfast of omelettes, toast, home fries, and classic drip filter coffee.
These thoughts have been swirling around my brain lately — appearing more frequently in dreams. Perhaps I feel detached from the places I grew up when I was a kid as I haven’t been back. I only lived here for my first two years and then moved two hours north to an equally small but more remote town until I was 11 years old. Something is pulling me back, inviting me for a visit. I don’t think it’s anything supernatural; likely just reconnecting a few rotten cobwebs on those memories solarizing in my mind. I dug up a few pictures to give you the idea:
