I asked Will, my husband to come to the interview with me because it’s a 2 hour drive and I wanted the company. We used to commute together when we both worked for Mt Rainier and the drive brought back many pleasant memories. Russ’s house is tucked up a windy hill in Packwood Washington. You drive down a gravel road, passed his gate and park in front of his garage which is covered in antlers.

Russ doesn’t hunt. He finds the antlers in the woods, brings them home and keeps them. He does this with bones, feathers, sticks, and anything else natural he may encounter. I can relate to this. I was the type of kid that came home from the beach with pockets filled with shells, sea glass and pretty rocks I’d found. My room had abandoned bird nests on my shelves; feathers tucked everywhere and brightly colored dried leaves from the previous fall. Anything from nature I could carry made its way into my room.

When I met Russ, we bonded right away. The first time the wildlife crew picked him up at his house, I discovered a museum of animal skulls, neatly preserved on shelves made of stripped devil’s club branches. I collected animal skulls as well. Of course I had at the time maybe 4 skulls, while Russ must have had over a hundred. The first time I decided to add animal skulls to my growing collection of natural items, I’d found a dead skunk on some train tracks. Dried in the sun, the skin was mostly gone and I was able to pull the head from the body with ease. Being 16 and really stupid; I used my mom’s favorite cooking pot to boil the skull in water on the stove (I’d read somewhere that was how you got the brains out). When my mom came home the house smelled like nothing I can describe and I had to throw her pot in the trash after a good tongue lashing.

Russ thought this story was funny when I told him. He’d perfected cleaning skulls long ago, but knew the trials and errors that new bone collectors go through. He, like myself, collected animal skulls because we loved wildlife. We found the skulls to be a way to connect with animals we could not get close to when alive. We both marveled at how the bone structures differed between species and found this incredibly fascinating. Take the beaver skull for instance; its lower jaw is immense, evolved to allow for huge chewing muscles to break apart woody material, or a bird skull, light as air and bones hollow for better flight.

When I asked Russ if I could interview him for my project he was a little leery. He is a very quiet and reserved man. He doesn’t like people much, preferring to spend his time in the woods. However when I explained I just wanted to hear some of his wildlife stories from the park he was eager to help. I’d hoped to interview his friend Joe as well, another volunteer from the park and I was delighted to discover Joe waiting at the house as well when we arrived.

Russ herds us into his dining room, the walls covered in book shelves filled with books, natural things and of course skulls. At first glance, his house is very overwhelming, every nook and cranny is filled with something natural; there is no blank wall space, no empty shelves. Everywhere there is something to look at; every item placed with care and love. For someone like me, who loves the natural world it is a feast for my eyes and soul. I can see before me a lifetime of moments and memories and experiences spent in the woods. In the living room we pass by a stack of antlers next to the couch, in fact the stack is bigger than the couch. It’s grown since I last was in the house a few years ago. What I love most about being in his house is the feeling you get of being close to nature. Each thing I see is a window into a hidden world.

Russ and Joe take seats facing each other with me at the head of the table. I am surprised to see my husband sit down at the other end. I thought he was going to wait in the car.  I start by asking some basic questions about where Joe and Russ live, their ages, their backgrounds. Once this is over I ask Russ to tell me the story about the Bald Eagle he found while hiking in the park. He’d told me it once a long time ago and I hoped it would be a good starting place.

The stories are easy to get out of Russ and Joe, but they are reserved men and passed this I start to struggle a little. I am trying to get them to tell me more about the park and how they see it. They seem to be holding back and I know this will take some patience. Suddenly my husband breaks in and responds to something Joe has said. I feel annoyed as I realize I will have to take this out when I dictate the interview. Russ and Joe know Will from the park so the conversation starts to shift from formal interview to conversation. I try to ask another question to get my husband to shut up and Russ and Joe back on track, yet it just leads to my husband talking more. I try the glare tactic and give my husband the best “I am going to throttle you” look I can across the table, yet he seems immune.

Joe asks Will about the park’s management team; Will was employed with the park for 14 years and often has insights into the culture I do not. I can sense the comradery growing between Joe and Will because Will now works for the Forest Service which is what Joe did before he retired. This leads the conversation off track completely, yet I can see a general ease and relaxation occurring with Joe as he talks to Will. I wait patiently, adding up the minutes in my head that have been wasted and imagine all the painful things I am going to do to my husband when we get home.

Yet 10 minutes in I have given up trying to keep control. As the conversation flows, it moves toward resource management and I get caught up in it. Russ too, has joined in, and it feels more like a get together with friends than an interview. I manage to get in a question from my notes and all of us tackle it together; each adding our own experiences in a tangible, fluidic pace. I realize I am getting material I would never have been able to pull from a strict interview setting. These men are cautious and slightly aloof.  They thrive in the woods where things are grounded and open. They are no longer participating in an interview; they are sitting back with friends, talking about what they love. They have forgotten the recording device sitting in the middle of the table; Russ is leaning back in his chair smiling and Joe is talking, his face animated and his hands dancing in front of his face as he describes a time he confronted a visitor about walking off trail. I find it easy to gently steer the conversation in the direction I need. And by the end I know I have some amazing stuff recorded. As we get in the car to leave I turn to my husband and point to the recording device. He looks down at it and back up at me with an apologetic look in his eye. I smile and thank him for hijacking my interview.

I have to get off my chest how annoying I think the narrator is. I am really trying to find the good in him. I really am.  Albertine is gone, and he says things like “The memory of Albertine had become so fragmentary that it no longer caused me any sadness and was no more now than a transition to fresh desires, like a chord which announces a change of key. And indeed, any idea of a passing sensual whim being rules out, in so far as I was still faithful to Albertine’s memory, I was happier at having Andree in my company than I would have been at having an Albertine miraculously restored” (p.809).  How awful! He comes across fickle and frivolous and shallow.

One difficulty I have had with this book is the lack of ability to connect with the narrator. I have no problem connecting with Proust. I can hear him often in the writing trying to lay Easter eggs that represent his view points on sexuality, religion and more. His descriptions are so detailed that I can sometimes vividly see the scenes and feel the emotions described.  This I enjoy. However, the narrator, his character, his personality, his motives… I can’t relate to. I can’t get behind. I can’t even contemplate! This stops me from getting lost in the reading. I often find myself jerked aware from my reading by something the narrator says that just rubs me wrong. I wonder if this happens to anyone else while reading these novels. Like I said, Proust I am cool with, it’s the narrator I want throw over my lap and give a good spanking to!

My husband and I talk about the past to keep it alive. We went through a really bad experience with his family three years ago. It was over (until recently) and we had moved on, yet we found ourselves filling long car rides or late night conversations in bed with a “re-hashing” or the events. During the first year after we’d moved away, we were filled with frustration and unresolved anger; bringing up the memories only made the feelings fresh again. Yet it helped us work through what had happened to us; even though it meant repeating the memories over and over again.

By the second year we revisited the memories less often and with a much lower degree of emotion involved. We repeated the events in order as if to preserve them, to keep them whole in our minds. By the third year we didn’t talk about it as much. Just once in a while one of us would dip their toe into the past and stir up the muck that has settled at the back of our minds.

The memories of this time allowed us to heal. Like scrap books, we could choose to open them whenever we wanted and relive moments that caused us pain. This process was in a way cathartic; allowing us to sort through how we felt and find resolution in our own way. Memories reflected the pain and confusion of those events; which in the beginning ran fresh through our daily lives. By the third year the anger had subsided. We didn’t think about the past anymore, yet when we needed to we could pull the memories down from the shelf and open the pages of preserved emotion to remember.

With current events in our life forcing us back down the route we escaped from three years ago, I can now see the value in memory.  It has given us the healing we needed and prepared us for this new challenge we are facing with his family. By revisiting and keeping those memories alive we are confident in ourselves and what happened in the past so that we can face the present with strength.

I have not seen Russ in five years. I have many memories during my time working at Mt Rainier in which he is included. I remember the stories he would tell me while we hiked side by side in the woods while we searched for owls, and I remember going to visit him at his house filled with natural objects he’d collected. One of the last times I remember seeing him, he came with me to investigate a fox sighting at Paradise.

Russ is the kind of volunteer you want to send deep into the back country, not drag to the most populated spot in the whole park. He is a quiet man in his seventies. Gangly with large oval glasses perched on his nose. He is incredibly soft spoken, almost to the point you have to lean toward him to make out the shape of his words. He smiles easily, but rarely offers his opinion. Russ is not a people person, he prefers the quiet solitude of the forest or the peaceful sanctuary of his little house in Packwood. I took him with me, because I needed someone to help collect any scat we might find. Owl surveys, his usual gig, had been canceled due to rain and the wildlife crew had nothing to task him with. So I had snagged him, taking advantage of this rare chance to spend time with him, since I rarely did owl surveys anymore.

At the time, Mt. Rainier was doing a genetic study on the foxes in the park. They are a special sub-species, biologist think are only found at Mt Rainier and Mt hood.  High elevation red foxes, perched on an island of snow and encroached on by people. Scat is a marvelous genetic marker, and so a sample of any found was sent off to the lab for inspection. And it fell to us to collect the samples.

My memory of that day is still very sharp in my mind. I can still smell the inside of our truck, an odor created by hours of sweaty, dirty field biologists crammed into a small space after a long day in the backcountry. I can remember Russ’s plaid shirt, and the way the afternoon sun peaked out from behind the clouds as we drove higher up the mountain. The rest of the memory goes something like this:

As we pull the truck into the parking lot I can see the male fox with his singed coat of grey and silver. He is infamous for hanging around the lower parking lot near the visitor center. He sees our vehicle and stops to watch us park. It’s been my job for the past three years to teach the park employees to encourage the foxes to not beg or hang around the roads where they are in danger of getting hit (“Encourage” meaning chase, harass, scare, threaten and/or anything I have to do to get them to run away).

Russ does not have the demeanor to chase the fox, so I do not ask him to help me. He is one of the most mellow and calm people I have ever met. I doubt he would have the vocal range to even yell at it. I tell him to scout around the area for scat while I do the chasing. He seems relieved and takes the scat kit filled with ziplock bags. Meanwhile I grab my Nerf water gun filled with lemon juice and water, and my radio before sliding out of the truck and shutting the door.

The fox has gone around the other side of the vehicle, Russ, being a volunteer, is dressed in his own clothes and looks like a regular visitor. The fox is smart enough to tag him as safe. The foxes have learned to associate the parking lot, roads, and even the people with food, just as they have learned to associate the green and grey uniform with trouble, thanks to me.

I can hear Russ’s voice from somewhere on the other side of the truck talking to the fox. I smile inwardly; only Russ would try reasoning with the fox to leave. I on the other hand had been dealing with the foxes for three years. I gave up asking a long time ago. As much as I love animals, and would do absolutely anything in my power to not harm them, in this case, in this role I play at the park, I get to be the Rambo version of animal lover. And it is a lot of fun.

I pump the water gun three times as quietly as possible. The foxes know the sound. I place my back to the truck and slide down the side, gun perched in my hands. Russ has wandered away from the truck, stooped over searching for scat. I am far enough down the side to be able to see over the bed of the truck; the fox is standing erect, focused on Russ. His ears are prominent features to his round furry face, large and slightly tuffed at the tips. His black eyes are ringed by white sprinkles of fur, and his perfectly black nose is balanced at the end of a long narrow snout. He is absolutely adorable.

I get why people feed the foxes. They are cute to a ridiculous degree. They also have been lucky when it comes to their relationship with people. Labeled as a charming tricksters, secretive and aloof; the characters the fox plays in folklore are never monsters. Unlike the bear, or wolf, cultural identity has been kind to the fox. Because of this, people do not have a deep rooted, unconscious fear of them. They are small, inquisitive, and like I said, obnoxiously cute.

All this plays to the fox’s advantage, people see them as harmless. It’s a rare treat to see a fox, people are immediately captivated by the way they prance along the road, fluffy tail bouncing behind them. They cock their head just like our pet dogs do when they are curious, and they often make eye contact with you, hinting at intelligence behind their mysterious stare. And people feed them. They dangle bits of lunch meat from their sandwiches, to coax the creatures closer, in a human need to touch the object of curiosity. The foxes never get that close; they creep near enough, but always elude the visitor’s reach. However the ploy works anyway, the human ends up tossing the yummy morsel. When this happens, the fox is rewarded, just like a dog who gets a treat when he sits. After a few encounters with a friendly, food laden visitor the fox has it down to an art. And that’s when it gets dangerous.

I duck down and slink to the end of the truck to peak around the tailgate. We call this one the Silver male. He’s been a regular at this parking lot for the past two years. He likes to hit up the visitors while they are still at their cars, having learned that the giant metal boxes contain all kinds of hidden goodies. He’s been hit twice by vehicles while begging along the road. He’s been fortunate they’ve only been close calls, coming away with temporary limps both times. One of his kits the year before was not so lucky, emulating its parents, we’d found the dead youngster, smashed and bloody on the asphalt, hit because he was begging for food along the roadway.

I lower into a squat, and balance the gun against the truck for stability, careful not to make any nose. Nerf guns are incredibly accurate if you get a good one. Some even have little sites on the top like regular guns; if you have a steady hand you can usually hit your target.

I take aim.

My goal here is to hit the male square in the face. It’s just water and some lemon juice. It’s won’t hurt him but it will smell strong and foreign and hopefully scare the crap out of him. My body is tense, ready to spring. I shut one eye to get a better view. Then I squeeze the trigger.

But the fox is already moving. Somehow he knew I was there. The water crests over his ears as he duck and lurches to the side, only misting his back as he spins around to run. I leap out from behind the truck and with my best guttural roar I race after him, water blasting triumphantly from my gun and splattering the ground behind him.

I chase him past Russ, who stops to watch the show, and toward the snow embankment where forest meets road. The fox nimbly mounts the hill with two graceful leaps and disappears over the side as I some crashing into it. My feet sink into the snow, throwing me off balance. I make one last valiant aim, sending the stream of water in an arch above my head before tossing the gun to the side as I tumble onto my side in the wet snow.

After a few moments, I see Russ’s face peering down at me, a halo of blue sky behind. He doesn’t say anything at first. His face is solemn. I know he knows the purpose of this display. He knows I play the bad guy for a reason; to get the foxes to associate people with danger and not food. The water and the yelling and the chasing are meant to be scary, meant to teach the foxes to stay away from people and roads. I know I appear like a crazed lunatic chasing the poor endearing fox. Russ is an animal lover too. He’s devoted his life to roaming the park’s cathedral-like forests, searching among the towering old growth for the silent flyers of the night. He is good at it too; his energy is serine and patient, perfect for owl surveys.  I wonder for a moment if I have just ruined his judgment of me. Did I look like a big bully to him, picking on the lovable fox? It’s one thing to understand the reasoning behind why I chase the foxes, however it still looks contrary to the feelings of awe and reverence I have for these beautiful creatures. I have always felt a kinship with Russ, a connection brought on by our love for nature. Maybe, I think, I shouldn’t have brought him along.

Russ’s eyes look gravely into mine; his brows furrowed. His mouth pinches into a frown.  I wonder how I am going to explain this all to him. I wonder if he is appalled by my actions. I wonder how I will get him to understand I was trying to help the fox.

Slowly Russ stoops and pick up the water gun, holding it gingerly between his weathered hands. I hold my breath, ready to be chastised. He looks at me, his eyes twinkling as he says “You missed.”

My memory of Russ is warm and makes me smile. I can still feel the give of the forest floor as we hiked together through it, always listening. I first met him in 2005 when I was working at Mt Rainier on the wildlife crew. On the first day we went out to do an owl survey, we first swung by his house to pick him up. A tall lanky man, in his late 60’s climbed into the truck. I think the five crew members and I all had the same thought, how was this guy going to keep up?

The first time you participate in an owl survey there are so many sensory impressions bombarding you. It’s April, the snow still skirts the trees and the air is crisp and fresh. You are weighed down by a field backpack which you just got, having jammed in the pile of gear given to you for the season. Compass, map, flagging, radio, batteries, whistle, first aid kit, field notebook, tree tags, binoculars and more random things you have never seen or used before.  The trees and snow seem to swallow up any sound, and the world around you is quiet in a way that penetrates your bones.

I remember feeling awkward in the snowshoes. The world around me so airy and serene, while I lumbered through, loud and uncoordinated. The rest of the crew seemed as unnatural as I did. Trying to take in what our lead was teaching us about that particular owl territory we were entering; wielding our plastic turkey whistle that supposedly could sound like an owl call if we got the cadence right.  Russ was the only one at ease on the snow; his snowshoes crunching as he passed us all by, the only one without a whistle.

We came to respect him very quickly that day. We had underestimated him. He was lithe and adept at traversing the tree trunks, slopes and watery streams, his owl call although soft was natural from his lips, unlike our toy whistles. A skill we looked on with envy.  The large pack seemed like a feather on his back, while ours pulled us off balance and slowed our pace. His manner was kind, almost humble toward us, as if his rank as a volunteer lowered him beneath us. Years of experience in the park didn’t seem to calculate in to his demeanor, even though he was by leaps and bounds ahead of us in knowledge and skill.  He was quiet and respectful that day, listening to our lead talk about how to call in an owl and what to do once you did, even though he had most certainly heard this talk before at the beginning of each season. I know I was not the only one wondering why he had bothered to come on this training session. Later we learned, for Russ, it was all about just being out there in the park, in the forest.

When watching the movie Stories We Tell I was struck by how the director Sarah Polley constructed a story using both real and counterfeit footage. She tricks the audience by stating that her father received an 8mm video camera. From then on, we are under the impression that all the footage is real. Although there was, from the start, questions in my mind about the authenticity of some of the shots I was viewing, I told myself even if it was faked it didn’t matter. I was more interested in staying caught up with the story unfolding in front of me. At the end of the movie she reveals to her audience that some of the footage is staged.  For me, it was an “ah ha!” moment that confirmed my suspicion.

The question is why did she do this? Is it because she is an actor? In her world, movies create an illusionary reality which can parallel actual experience? Does she blend the two because she is afraid the story itself will not capture the audience fully? I do not think so. I think, because there are moments like the funeral scene where the shot pans across the crowd, then focuses in on Harry staring at the camera from a distance. The moment is so constructed, it is impossible to not question the authenticity of the footage.  I think Sarah was not trying to trick her audience, I think she was combining real and faux footage to create the representation of how our memories work.

Memory can be false. It can warp over time like wood exposed to the elements. Time, for memories is a corrosive substance. Small details of a memory flake off as time goes by, and with longer periods the memory may lose its original shape. I can withdraw inside myself and open a chest inside my mind filled to the brink with memories from my childhood. I can pull them out like forgotten toys in an attic, and examine them.  Bits are so vivid, even after years and years of lifetime I can still smell, touch, taste, and hear certain aspects.  But none are whole.  I have used my imagination like glue, to keep them together; to fill in the cracks that threaten to widen and obliterate the memory.

And this is what I think Sarah Polley has done with the melding of real and fake footage. She has filled in the gaps. The staged footage is there as an adhesive to strengthen the story she is telling. The real footage can represent memory, faded and jagged. It has lost much of its substance, and viewing the footage just like remembering a memory can be difficult unless one fills in the blanks to solidify it. So Sarah used staged footage to congeal the story; to make it whole and fluid.  Just as I construct insignificant details within a memory to help make it real to me again.

It has occurred to me after reading the first few pages of Swann’s Way for a second time that Proust writes in a style, that at first, I could not quite put my finger on. His long, smooth, often diverting sentences, like the crisscrossing of a stream over a rocky river bottom, are disconcerting and perplexing. I did not approach the novel prepared for this meandering style of writing; initially finding it bewildering and hard to track. I was almost frustrated by it. It felt unnatural and muddy; one topic overflowing into the next like reflecting light, bouncing off one subject to something new.  I reminded myself that present day readership prefers fast paced, action packed, succinct plot. And as someone who dabbles in writing I had trained myself to not get lost in my own thoughts on the page, to follow a course and stick to it.

Only on my second reading through, where I did not have to concentrate on the story as much as the way it was told, was I able to grasp the feel of the writing. The constant shift and flow to his style reminds me of the way we think and remember. How, in our minds nothing is concrete, everything is fluid. Like in the exercise of concentration where you try and picture a red ball in your mind’s eye for as long as you can. Inevitably your thoughts slink away from the red object and almost without you being aware of, slowly let surface the awareness of the hair that is tickling your nose, or the way your sock is bunched under your foot in an uncomfortable manner. As the thought gradually gains substance you become conscious of it and immediately with some annoyance toss it away, refocusing your efforts on the red ball. However, within seconds your mind is slipping again… a sudden scent in the air dredges up from some recess of your mind the idea of air fresheners, and this thought topples over like a failed Jenga game, scattering pieces of thoughts and memories. One such memory, being the time your mother gifted you that strange automatic spraying air freshener, which sent a spritz of lilac flavored droplets into the air at random times, making a weird “PITZZZZZ” sound. This memory triggers another memory of the time you had your friend over, who slept on the couch and commented on the strange “PITZZZZZZ” noise that kept him awake all night long. This recollection dissolves into the pondering of how your friend is doing, since he started dating that awful girl twice his age, from online. And this thought, like the run-off of rainwater following along an unseen curve of the earth, flows effortlessly into the memory of the time you met your husband online so many years ago, in that loft in Chicago. Which at this moment you recall, is having terrible snow storms. And you are now glad you live in the Pacific North West where the weather is so affable, with its velvety rain showers on misty mornings; where one can sit for hours gazing out at the Puget Sound sprinkled with distant ferries and faded red buoys that dance on the horizon. And the image of the red buoy riding the ocean waves jerks you back into the present. The red ball; completely evaporated by arbitrary memories and thoughts, returns brightly to center stage in your mind. To your horror, you realize the journey across space and time your mind just led you on, has occurred in just a few brief moments. Yet in this fleeting transitory expedition, you have toured a vast amount of places, moments and memories. In just a few seconds your thoughts liquefied and melted, moving haphazardly in whichever direction was simplest, taking you across your lifespan and over distances of miles and miles far away from the red ball you were supposed to be concentrating on!

This exercise brings to light how we often think; a random stream of thoughts, chained together by minor details within memory. We may not be aware of this as we go about our lives, but when we sit quietly and ask our mind to be still, we are suddenly given the chance to observe the way our brain links memories with thoughts endlessly and not always with direction. I find this to be much the same way Proust tells his tale to us. His writing resembles the way we might sit back and reminisce. How our thoughts start on one topic and quickly get diverted onto new paths, one memory triggering the next and so on.

Now as I read Proust I feel aligned with the design of his writing. I let myself relax into the flow of the winding path of his story. I am not disturbed anymore by the sudden shift in direction, or deviation onto a new topic. I feel I am riding the current of this narrator’s memories; a course that flows and detours by the unseen influence of the subconscious. Getting caught for a time in swirling eddies of powerful moments and details, then cascading over the edge into a new channel of memory and thought. Ever moving, ever flowing, like a river.