Final Fire

by Michael Mitchell

  The fabled Dome mine is now an open pit but its original drift tunnels still penetrate the walls. They’re like hanging valleys, suspended hundreds of feet above the bottom, seeming so inadequate to the quest for precious metals when compared with the great greedy maw of the pit. I shoot great carpet explosions here too but do my best work sneaking off to photograph the theme and variations of spray-painted stakes and fuses for myself. I also photograph in a mine run by a woman who’d inherited it from her father. She’s desperate as the returns have been low and she’s nearly bankrupt. She’s tough but her panic is palpable.

  The miners have a checklist before going underground — spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch. It’s meant to be a small funny and it is the first time you hear it but on a day when I’m down a few thousand feet I run through the list and realize my wallet is gone. Rerunning the morning through my mind I realize that the only place I could have lost it was when I slipped during the early morning snowfall at a Timmins Tim Hortons parking lot. A message goes up to the surface and men are dispatched to the donut shop. They arrive to discover that the lot has since been plowed with snow piled in a single pyramid rivaling Giza. They are joined by other coffee drinkers who dismantle the tower of tons of snow by hand until they find the wallet of a total stranger — me. This can make you love the people of small northern towns.

  Deep underground at Timmins

  I soon get even more reason. This is the kind of assignment on which I would normally take a guy assistant. However, this time I had taken Anna, a sweet-faced woman in her 20s, along to schlep cases and load cameras. One morning, moments before we were to go underground she picked up her cell messages and discovered she was pregnant. I reluctantly let her work that day but when the miners in the drifts down thousands of feet found out they wouldn’t let her do anything. They taught her how to operate one of the ore trains so she could majestically follow me around in her personal locomotive towing my equipment cases behind her. Whenever she stopped some miners would leap out of the shadows and carry cases for her. Those grimy, sweat-stained miners were far more gentlemanly than many Toronto toffs.

  There is more. I slowly work my way across the top of the province toward Quebec, following that secret, unseen subterranean belt of metals that slither eastward through the rocks. At Val-d’Or and Cadillac I go deep underground, more than a mile down, where the mantle’s heat makes you sweat and the rock walls are hot to the touch. Set charges, retreat, photograph the smoky aftermath, the machines rushing in, the darting outlines of men. It’s a bit like combat — the heat, the stabs of light, the shadows and the brutal noise.

  The landscape above is broken, scarred, raped. Rock piles, tailings, raw roads, slashed trees and here and there the great black maws of old mines waiting for you to walk in and fall through dark space. This is the brute, impolite side of Canada. The rude part with a long history, the part hidden away behind remote stands of spruce where we bang away at rocks with big crude tools and sell the results to the rest of the world where refined things are made. We’re just the choppers, the crushers, the lifters. These are the skills we export around the world, dragging abuse and exploitation in their wake. It’s a hard industry. It makes a mess.

  My last stop is far to the west near the B.C.-Alberta border. The scale dwarfs everything I’ve ever seen. The trucks here are the size of buildings. And so are the buckets of the giant shovels. You could live in them. And because they need real power, lots of torque, they’re electric — like streetcars and locomotives. These huge machines are actually plugged in and crawl about dragging huge power cords behind them like your vacuum crossing a rug. The last rolls finally exposed I fly home. My next assignment was photographing hats.

  ***

  It’s been a week of island silence. No people, no wind, no boats. No singing insects, no birds. I’m alone on my point under the pines when from the south a strange rumbling sweeps up from the forests across the inlet and roars toward me. Its pitch rises and an enormous low-flying aircraft emerges just over the treetops and makes straight for the island. A massive swept back shadow daggers over the water as a B52 bomber, its eight engines thundering, threatens past. What war game are the Americans playing now?

  1989

  I’m back in San Francisco again to photograph a couple of buildings. This assignment includes getting a dramatic late afternoon view of a modern office building downtown. When I scout the location I realize that the best view of the structure will be from a late 1920s art deco skyscraper at the head of Market Street. This is always tough — cold calling the property management and convincing them that they should give a stranger, a photo lowlife and, what’s more, a foreigner, access to their roof or a high window so that the required image can be made.

  I once had to persuade an intimidating owner — I was later told he was an international arms dealer — to allow me access to the roof of his Manhattan tower so that I could photograph the Chrysler Building. He was skeptical and abusive but relented in the end. I was escorted to the building’s roof by a pair of guards carrying automatic weapons. The building was a sleek silver erection with tinted windows but its roof was a shantytown of weird plywood shacks. Every move I made was minutely scrutinized. Security called me “the photo fucker.” I got the picture.

  My cold call at the vintage office tower in San Francisco eventually yields permission. I am escorted up a dozen floors and taken into a small empty office lit with a single sash window. The building is a classic of its period — clad with ceramic tiles and designed with a series of step-backs that create numerous little rooftops as it rises. It had been a Manhattan idea: one that allowed light to reach the streets far below. I raise the sash and squeeze myself, a case of gear and a tripod out onto a two-metre-square roof more than a hundred feet above the sidewalk. Once I have my tripod set my escort leaves. That tripod is jammed against the low parapet on the Market Street side and I am jammed against the parapet behind. As I make my exposures the building begins to shake. I am told later that the 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake had lasted only fifteen seconds but as I clung to my tiny heaving roof raft being showered by tile shards it registered as many lifetimes.

  ***

  A sudden wind howls around the cabin. Panes rattle in their sashes, a big branch rubs the roof, the porch screens hiss and cry. As the gale intensifies the big wooden cabin shutters and groans. These northern buildings have no real foundations: they merely squat on little piles of stone and cedar shims, ready to levitate. I stand alone in the middle of the 40-foot main room in the sepulchral light. Dark trees dance in every window. I become very small.

  A design studio I often work with has called and booked a studio session for the Senior “A” Hockey League and the Allan Cup. The league plans to publish a glossy commemorative book for the season. The publication needs a cover. Over the next few days various objects to be included in this still life begin to arrive at my studio. The selection eventually includes the Allan Cup itself.

  We spend a long day setting up and lighting this tableau. Once the photograph has been approved we return all the props except the cup — it’s to go somewhere else. So the cup sits for a week or so on a table beside the seamless backdrop awaiting pickup. The week passes and I haven’t yet heard anything so I move it to a shelf and get on with other projects. After a few weeks I need the shelf space so the cup is moved offside in the studio. Still no word. Eventually my assistants get tired of tripping over the thing so it gets stuffed into a far back corner of the building. Out of sight is out of mind. The weeks come and go. I come and go.

  Many months later I get a call toward day’s end from some guy connected with the league. He sounds frantic. He’s almost incoherent. I have to ask him to repeat his message. It seems that the Allan Cup is to be presented that night in Sault Ste. Marie and nobody could remember where it was. I don’t tell him that even I don’t remember where it is. There’re many miles and only a few hours separating
the cup from its big moment.

  As I dig through storage in back of the studio I try not to get frantic. Finally I find the cup behind the studio fridge just as someone pounds on the studio door. It’s the incoherent guy. We jam the cup in the trunk of his Honda and I watch the taillights vanish into the night. So let me see. It’s a bit over 700 kilometres to Sault Ste. Marie. That’s gotta be at least seven hours of driving time. How’s this ever gonna work? Did some guy in a cold arena have to tell lost trophy jokes to restless players and the crowd while a small Japanese car hurtles along the Trans-Canada Highway through a dark, empty northern Ontario night?

  2014

  It’s like hockey cards. I’ve always wanted to have the full set — of pine trees. My tiny island has 26 white pines and a lone Jack but no reds. The secondary road to the reserve where I leave my van in a clearing and load my skiff takes you through several zones on the way to the river. There are spruce swamps, tamaracks and lots of majestic white pines. However, around certain corners are magnificent stands of red pine with their distinctive pompom-like clusters of needles — always in pairs rather than the white’s clusters of five that the Iroquois thought represented the original five nations of their confederacy. They seem to prefer the sandy shelter of the interior rather than the wind-ravaged granitic shores where white pines thrive. Several times I’ve waded into the bug-infested interior to search beneath the giant reds for a baby that I can dig up and transplant. None. Nothing. Never.

  Finally one realizes that the reds must, like the jack pine, be a species that requires a forest fire to encourage reproduction. Mercifully forest fires are in short supply around here so there are no young trees. After a fleeting fantasy of becoming a secret firebug I get real and start making inquiries at nurseries. Nobody stocks red pines anywhere in Ontario that I find. However, a garden centre in the Sound agrees to try and source some. I request four to accommodate an inevitable mortality rate. Some weeks later the trees arrive but my ex-wife beats me to it. She spirits all four trees off to her new place on a Lake Ontario island. Skunked. Winter comes.

  The following spring I skulk into the same garden centre and ask if they can source a further pair of reds. They will call me when they arrive but never do. I have this kind of trouble with pretty much everybody north of Barrie. On a pass-by in mid-June I drop by and enquire. They haven’t gotten around to phoning but a pair of red pines in the backlot has my name on them. With full knowledge that I’m cheating I slap down a credit card and squeeze the pair of meter-tall trees between the seats of my van. At least I’m not introducing an invasive species.

  Those trees now stand some 50 feet apart on the sheltered back side of my island.

  So far so good. However I feel only semi-fulfilled. After some 200 years these trees can reach a commanding height of 30 meters. Mine have 29 meters to go. I’m only 71.

  ***

  Trees teach us to slow down. Of course, when you’re going to live for a hundred years or, even several thousands, you have the luxury of taking it slow and easy, an inch or two of height and girth a year, a few more twigs and then a long sleep with the bears during winter. And trees long ago decided to communicate quietly underground through their interlocked root systems. No hot-blooded arguments, no idle cell phone chatter, just stately patience.

  Seven

  A Bestiary

  “That it’s rough out there and chancy is no surprise. Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.”

  Annie Dillard

  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

  ***

  Another spring. We’ve made it! The sky is velvet gray, it’s cool, a light west wind drifts a fog like puffs of smoke down the inlet. High above a merlin harries a turkey vulture that languidly cruises off to the west. Canada geese hector in my harbour while cranes gronk in the next inlet. My birches and alders have just leafed out and my little orphan red pine is radiant with survival. Once again there is hope.

  She’s flown in from Tokyo with her lanky teenaged son and pretty daughter who’s just on the sweet side of 12. I picked them up at Pearson and we began the long drive north. Harumi and I had sampled many Tokyo bars together and now the turn was mine. What was really Canadian — in Barrie, Waubaushene or Parry Sound? I decided on lunch in a Barrie Swiss Chalet. The service was glacial, the chicken dry and salty, the fries soggy — disastrous. In Parry Sound we bought the week’s supplies at a No Frills grocery outlet. No one was impressed there either. Then we hit the river.

  It was a stunning day. A soft wind dashed sparkles on the waters while small clouds scudded across a sky of blue perfection. The river run was a song of swallows, swifts and herons. Its backwaters were dressed in white water lilies and blooming pickerel weed. Where the river surrendered to the Bay a warm and gentle wind tossed tiny whitecaps into the acres of wild rice and rushes. And the land everywhere was green, green, green.

  After mooring and emptying the skiff I filled the cupboards and the fridge while Harumi organized her children. My chores finished I went to find them. They were huddling together under the pines on my little point watching a pair of loons treading water in the inlet. Harumi who’d been here twice before was clearly laying out guidelines for her kids — life jackets, fish hooks, rattler avoidance and care around the many oil lamps. As I drew up behind the trio I heard her stage-whisper one last instruction, “And most important of all is that whenever Michael is around never, ever say the word beaver.”

  1981

  Small animals. I flew on assignment to London with an executive of a big Canadian life insurer. I’d been working with this manager on the company’s annual report for some time. He was always impeccable — perfect haircuts, neatly trimmed mustache, elegant ties and bespoke three-piece suits. He was the master of the two-martini lunch.

  I usually travelled on his assignments alone but for this one he had decided to accompany me to ensure that all went well with the senior management of the British subsidiary. A waiting limo at Heathrow swished us through rainy streets to the Four Seasons Park Lane where we’d booked rooms for the week. Except they hadn’t quite. As their records showed us arriving two days later we would be forced to share a suite for the first nights. Our luggage — my road-battered camera cases and his suite of five impeccably crafted, matching leather travel trunks that diminished in size like Russian dolls — was loaded onto a brass cart and slinked into the elevator. We hissed up to our floor and were ushered unctuously into our rooms. In addition to a sitting room and office there was a large bedroom with twin queens. We began to unpack. My clothes were simple — photographers have to look neat but dress durably for case lifting and lighting setups. He had more suits and tailored shirts than I’d seen in a shop window. He carefully bedded his shirts in the dresser drawers while his suits were marched into the closets and his shoes paraded down below. This sartorial sorting took in excess of an hour. Another fifteen minutes were devoted to arranging soaps and crèmes on the shelves of the bathroom. Finally he was down to a single unopened valise.

  What could possibly remain? I busied myself loading cameras while he opened the locks of this final suitcase. He carefully folded back its lid and began unrolling the tiny blankets protecting the contents. One by one he withdrew a half-dozen Steiff teddy bears dressed in suits that mimicked his own. Once each tiny toff was comfortably cushioned on his bed pillows he began the introductions. Each had a name and each a history.

  ***

  Every year has its resident bear. This season is owned by a gangly male with a strange blond blaze between his shoulders. Come mornings he’s shambling along the crescent shore that cups my little harbour. Occasionally he retires behind a shoreline thicket and spies on me through the underbrush. As spring sags into a torpid summer he’s emboldened to wade over to my little island and vandalize my buried gray-water tank. A generous seeding of cheap Chinese mothballs over it soon discourages any further treasure digging by this biker bear. B
y solstice we’ve gotten so used to each other that I let the gap between us begin to close. Soon he’s sniffing around bushes not a dozen feet from where I work on a laptop under some pines on the point. The following day when I’m working in the same spot I look up and see him cruising the shore of a neighbouring island several hundred feet to the west. I watch him approach the sturdy trunk of a giant pine that’s fallen across his path along the shore. Will he slide under it or elect to clamber over it? Neither can be done with dignity. I hold my breath as he closes on the trunk that’s thick as an oil drum. Upon contact he casually flips it out of his way. Our days of hanging out at the point as a gang of two are over. This bear works out with logs.

  1975

  The small grassy pen at the Toronto Zoo has three occupants — me and two black bear cubs. They are having a giggle. In order to photograph them I must crouch on the grass, camera before me on the ground while I try to capture them playing with my childhood teddy bear. One cub will playfully perform for the camera, scooting and tumbling about before me. As soon as I get my eye down to viewfinder level and frame a cute cub photograph, the other bear scoots around behind me and bites my backside. I shout at the little bugger who then rewards me by scrambling around in front of my lens while my previous model scoots around to the bite-the-bum position for a nip. These bright little animals clearly enjoy the teamwork of this game. I get sorer and sorer until I’m driven to retreat to their keeper and the gate. Ha, ha.

  ***

  A new bear stalks the perimeter of the island. A late adolescent, he is so black that his profile looks like a paper cutout. When he turns away he becomes a hole in the landscape — an egg-shaped portal to another world.