Ghost Cat
black dark coastal night
drips with the scent of cougar
huntress. And my fear
When my flashlight died that night, I had to move gecko-style, arms and legs splayed, fingers outstretched for maximum surface coverage. At first I felt for moisture, signs of slickness and treacherous footing. But as I made my way up the rocks from the boat to the forest, my focus changed. I patted the darkness for the softness of soil and for the rough warm bark of the old Sitka spruce—my trail marker. This tree lives on a bank overhanging the shoreline. Muscular roots hold it in place, reaching through the meagre layer of topsoil to seek anchorage among boulders and crevices. The roots create a rainforest-style ladder for hands and feet. Find the tree roots and I would find the trail. From there, my journey across the island could begin.
It wasn’t completely dark when I’d left Tofino by boat that night, heading for Echachis. The day had been hot and still, lacking the onshore winds that cool the coast in August. There was no fog, also unusual for August. I usually journeyed home with my partner, to our tiny shack on the far side of the island. But Carl was away fishing, so I started his small motorboat and cast off from the government dock. It was late, but the ocean had not yet released the day’s light. Reflections glimmered and the silhouettes of islands were visible. I rounded Grice Point and steered into Duffin Passage. To the south, I could make out the sweeping beam of the Lennard Island lighthouse. To the southwest, I could see the dark shape of Wickaninnish Island, with Echachis close by—the dot on the semicolon. Behind the islands, black clouds rose up in the western sky, threatening a squall.
That day I’d guided four whale watching trips. I’d been on the water for over twelve hours, my ears battered by the combined noise of diesel engines and wind. On long days like that, my sanity lay in the quiet moments between trips, or those occasions when the motor was off and the deep breathing of grey whales was all I could hear. And at the end of a day, the tree-muffled silence of the forest poured an instant wash of relief and rejuvenation through me during my ten-minute walk across the island, to the west-facing beach where the cabin was situated. I craved that silence as I squinted through the darkness at the silhouetted treeline. The squall was building, but I would be home before rain fell.
As I pulled in to the bay and threw the anchor, a sudden swath of darkness rose up around me. At first I thought I had driven into the shadows cast by the tall trees. But the darkness intensified and a quick skirl of wind threw the boat sideways as I nudged the bow toward the rocks. Glancing up, I saw the cloud mass now blacking out about two-thirds of the sky. It was growing as I watched, billowing above my head. I adjusted the anchor line, grabbed my gear and climbed off the boat, slithering up the algae-clad rocks of the low-tide zone. One foot slipped and I dropped the flashlight. It stopped working, and no amount of tapping or shaking would bring the light back. I swore, jammed the light back into my pocket, then bent over to feel my way.
The first flash of lightning came as I reached the old spruce, illuminating the way. Or so I thought. I lurched into the forest, the image of the lightning-lit trail fresh in my mind’s eye. Within seconds, I was on my hands and knees. The squall created such blackness I could barely trust myself to move. I began feeling for the clamshells I’d once laid down in a moment of inspiration—fist-sized ovals of whiteness that marked the path to the cabin like Hansel and Gretel’s fairytale breadcrumbs. Usually, the clamshells were visible in the gloom of twilight. Tonight they were invisible. They were recognizable by touch, however, and my fingers sought out their cool smooth shapes, so different from the other forest matter. The lightning came sooner this time, allowing me another hungry glimpse of the path. As I crawled along it, thunder cracked again, jolting me upright, hands to my ears. Crawling and scrambling, I made my way as the thunder and lightning intensified. I kept expecting rain, but it didn’t come, despite the obvious humidity. The air fizzed with static, the thunder jolted and deafened, and the lightning forced me to squeeze my eyes shut, burning whitely into my retinas. I didn’t worry about being struck by lightning. I assumed it would be sheet lightning, the less dangerous variety. The temperate west coast seldom becomes hot enough to produce fork lightning.
In a way, I was happy for the drama of the storm. It was a distraction. Walking through a silent forest in complete darkness can be eerie. Twice that summer, I’d been startled by animals on the trail at night. Both times the culprits had been deer, but both times their sudden bounding had sucked the air from my lungs and left me breathing hard, heart fluttering. At times like that, my mind would run with thoughts of a dear friend, Frank, whose nine-year-old son Jesse had been killed by a cougar. The cougar had simply plucked Jesse from a hollow near a trail, despite the presence of other walkers. Even though I wasn’t there at the time, descriptions of that event never leave me: a boy on a trail, vanishing; a father, felled by grief, crumpling to the ground; an orange ball, lying where it fell, gleaming against wet moss.
Before I knew Frank, I had seen cougars as ghost cats, masters at the art of camouflage and secrecy. There was a sense of allure in the notion of a ghost cat; they inspired a kind of excitement. Jesse’s story changed that. It showed me the reality of loss—the miles-wide chasm of shock that follows the death of a child. Frank didn’t blame the cougar for its actions and he was adamant that others shouldn’t, either. I didn’t “blame” Jesse’s cougar—a four-year-old male, shot and killed days later—but the predatory nature of cougars became harder to ignore. The ghost cat began to inhabit my mind in ways that were unhealthy. As if my mind itself were the victim, I worried about the cougar’s hunting pattern: a slow, stealthy stalk culminating in a sudden attack. Tales of a cougar’s silence unnerved me, too, each step soundproofed by thickly cushioned paws. And then there was the idea of the cougar’s unwavering stare, the way its eyes apparently lock upon the victim in what the writer Barry Lopez once referred to among predators as “the conversation of death.”
That night, I could have felt vulnerable on my hands and knees—such easy prey for a cougar. But with the storm in full flow, all creatures—cougars included—would feel vulnerable, more concerned for their own safety than in being a threat to me.
By now the cabin seemed a distant goal. I thought only of clamshells while I waited for the lightning’s visual hints. My fingers became expert at reading the textural language of the path: sifting the lightness of summer forest duff; passing over the ubiquitous shoots of salal—this year’s growth still soft and pliant; shrinking from the sudden cold of rocks and moss; reaching and searching for the chalky smoothness of the shells, their age marked by growth rings, ridge after subtle ridge.
The next day I was able to see where I’d gone wrong. But on this night I only knew that suddenly there were no more clamshells. At that point, I should have returned to the last shell, but I didn’t. I spread my arms wide, feeling for the vegetation that bordered the trail, hoping to establish an opening. My findings were inconclusive: salal here, a tree there, nowhere an obvious path. I blundered ahead, reaching and tottering.
Perhaps it was the Norse god Thor who stopped me, his legendary battle with the serpent reaching its climax, hammers flying, the sky fractured by the sheer volume of noise. Whatever the reason, I stood immobile with my hands clamped to my ears in a futile gesture as the blasts freighted through me. There was no pause now. The lightning came together with the thunder.
But it came in time to save me. Lost and blind, no instinct warned that I was standing at the edge of a bluff—a viewpoint overlooking the forest. Without the hissing whiteness of the flash, I would have stepped into air and fallen fifteen feet or more.
I’d often paused at this halfway point on my way home, to readjust a heavy load, or simply to appreciate the view of the forest below. Now I fought a sudden spurt of tears and threw myself back to the path I’d so quickly lost. Where once I had been calm, approaching obstacles one at a time, now I faltered. For a second I lost myself in the vastness of fear. I could have been a mother fleeing from soldiers, or a girl hiding in the dark to escape an abusive parent. I could have been anyone; it didn’t seem to matter who. There in the forest, I was swept by this primal feeling, my vulnerability a sensation that linked me to human beings everywhere. I breathed deeply, not wanting to move, not wanting to remain. The force of a thunderclap flung me back to life and I started again, released.
The rest of the path home unfolded clamshell by clamshell. It seemed to take the entire night but I couldn’t be sure. I only remember the end, thrashing through dense salal and falling onto the beach just as the sky lit up—with fork lightning! There it was, snaking from sky to earth, blasting what looked like an old snag on the point of the cove and lifting the hair away from my head, afro-style. Without pause, other lines of light zigzagged across the sky. I reached for the handle to the cabin and heaved the door open. Once inside, I crouched by the window, fingers grasping the sill, eyes fixed on the horizon, backpack still on.
The cabin was built near the base of a tall tree. If fork lightning were to blast the tree, the cabin would offer little protection. It was the size of a garden shed, with a clear plastic roof and a sand floor. The walls were made of cedar planks so rough that curious Pacific wrens charmed me by hopping through the large knotholes to seek out crumbs. It was the embodiment of summer at its most simple and rewarding. My living room was the island; my bedroom was the cabin.
As I squatted by the window, I remembered my earlier, naïve presumption that the lightning would be benign. Why did I not think to check? Would I have been able to see that it was fork lightning through the dense forest? Might its hissing fingers have reached out to me as I crossed the island? Suddenly my storm journey seemed blessed, not a nightmare after all.
Javelin after javelin struck the western sea as I watched. Hours later I was still crouched, limbs stiff, body tired, but eyes and mind transfixed. Long after Thor ceased his thundering, the lightning continued. The sky was still dry. No rain had fallen. I began to think about moving, about finding the matches and lighting a candle. The irony made me wish I had someone to laugh with.
At some point I unclipped my backpack and slung it onto the floor. The hours blended into timelessness. I knew I should try to sleep so that I could be fresh for work the next day, but the idea of sleep was laughable, with the clear plastic roof inviting every blaze of light to share my space. I yawned and made myself comfortable, settling in for the long haul. I didn’t expect to fall asleep, but I did—the lightning flickering over my eyes and creating a lucid dream world.
The dawn forest was soundless, foliage glistening with moisture despite the lack of rain. My surroundings were still tinged with the grey shadows of night, yet colour glowed in haphazard pockets: green here, amber there. The silence was infectious and I was pleased with my deer-like steps. For the first time in my life I walked without noise, searching the path for signs of the previous night’s passage. Soon, however, the silence began to feel wrong. I longed for the usual morning chatter of birds—the breathtaking solo of the Pacific wren, or the endless tirades of the kingfisher—anything to shatter the unnatural quiet. Even the raucous commentary of crows would have felt reassuring.
Where are you? I wanted to ask the birds. But I seemed unable to speak, my vocal cords tight with a building sense of unease. I looked around for information, as if I would find a warning scribed in tree bark. I needed to rephrase my question to the birds, not where are you? but what are you hiding from?
I’d once read that a cougar can see in the dark about six times better than a human. As I stood in that soundless forest, the presence of a cougar seemed certain. The idea that I was being stalked descended on me like winter frost, a rime of fear growing outward as I walked. I tried to picture where the cougar could be. I searched the path for prints and the bushes for the flick of a tawny tail. I remembered the quickness of a cougar I’d once seen, its long tail curling at the tip, like a wisp of smoke. I thought of the two cougars reported in the local newspaper earlier in the year who were swimming out from the rocks near Tofino, heading for Felice Island, or Wickaninnish. Large predators are not expected on small islands, but where there are deer and raccoons, cougars and wolves will find them. I thought of the deer roaming freely on Echachis, traversing the sandbar at low tide from Wickaninnish. They often came at sunset, cautious but undeterred by our beach fire, their dainty silhouettes decorating the evening tableau.
Other than the silence, it seemed impossible to notice clues as I floated along the trail, ears straining to pick up sounds, hands protecting my naked neck. Cougars are said to pounce from behind, sinking their powerful teeth into the victim’s spine. My small hands made a poor shield, so when I found a large cedar branch, I snapped off the end and brandished it. And when I came to the viewpoint, I didn’t relive the narrowly avoided fall of the past night. I only thought of the boat. And the cougar. The boat. And the cougar.
Every step took me closer to the boat. Away from the cougar.
Step. Step. Turn and look. Brandish stick above head. Be large. Seem formidable. Make noise.
Until now, I hadn’t dared to make noise. The quietness held me taut, even though I knew that cougars abhor noise. I considered screaming obscenities, but if I did that, I would hear only my own voice, not the crack of a nearby twig, or the light swish of fern fronds moving. In the end, what kept me going was the light. I could see by the increasing light that I was nearing my anchorage. Any minute now I would break out of the trees, cross over the rocks, haul the boat in and climb on. And then I would be safe.
As the colours of day crept into the forest, my pace quickened and my fear lessened. I stopped holding my breath. When I saw the old spruce, I almost smiled. The horizontal branches stretched out on either side of the main trunk in a welcoming salute, defying gravity with their wide girth and obvious weight, inviting tree climbers of all ages. Seeing the Sitka spruce—my spruce—changed everything. I stopped rushing for the boat. I stopped listening for cougars. Instead, I took in the rich texture of the bark, the cushions of emerald moss and sprigs of licorice fern. I ducked under one of the branches and drew my body close to the trunk, letting its bulk shield my spine from predators. My eyes strayed to the rocks and the water, to the boat patiently waiting for me, apparently unscathed. I sighed, ushering my exhaustion and fear out into the world—shedding the heaviness of my long night, as I would have done had someone given me a hug. Somewhat restored, I turned to thank the tree and rest my hand against it. The feel of the bark under my palm is written into my memory of that moment—the moment when I turned and looked directly into the face of a cougar.
It was crouched on a branch, ready to spring, massive paws flexed.
My body coursed with cold shock. I might as well have been struck by lightning. My face was a foot from the cougar’s face. I could smell the confident musk of it. As if I had whiskers of my own, I could almost pinpoint the distance between us. The short, smooth facial hairs were the colour of dried grass, while the muzzle was snowy white—a perfect foil for the electrifying kohl-rimmed eyes—eyes whose bloodlust pierced me, heart to womb.
As if waiting for me to respond—for me to participate in this conversation of death—the cougar remained motionless, its energy a tangible force. My mouth opened and the breath left my body. I screamed with all my being.
And I woke up.
The cougar’s face was still a presence, still there, inches from my own. The darkness made things worse, so I staggered to my feet to find the matches. But I couldn’t calm my jumping fingers, and the box fell to the floor. My attention switched to the door and I grabbed for the handle, pulling it tighter, so the dream cougar couldn’t get in. Then my eyes darted to the corrugated plastic roof. It wouldn’t keep a cougar out. I wrapped my arms around me and shrank into a corner of the cabin, breathing hard. Still anchored in the feel of the dream, I was sure the cougar’s eyes were locked on me, its paws ready to spring. At that moment I was certain I would never again be able to walk to the boat. So how could I get help?
At no time have I been so violently overcome. Just like a cougar, my fear had stalked me, slowly and stealthily. Fear had attacked me at my most vulnerable: when I was asleep. Fear had penetrated my defenses when my guard was down. I was a victim in every sense of the word. I had no means of resistance.
But the human mind is capable of great change. And as if my mind were a machine that had simply shifted gears, when true morning finally dawned, I found myself purged of fear. As I walked the path to the boat, shafts of sunlight imbued my spirits with their warmth. The forest was alive with sound and I smiled at the trill of a busybody wren. I paused at the Sitka spruce and checked the cougar branch, finding only the patina of green that comes with time. Wondering at my apparent recovery, I recalled advice from my mother—a chronic insomniac—who once counselled me to remember that what seems to happen between two and three in the morning must never be fully believed; that the time of night itself prompts the blackest of thoughts.
I did believe my dream. I still believe it now. For me, that cougar has never left the tree branch. My memory has been branded with the details of its face. I will always know how it feels to have been there, one hand on the tree, no means of escape. Just by closing my eyes, I can feel the shock.
But I did escape. And in the split-second flight to the waking world, I left my preoccupation with cougars—my fear—behind. If I really want to, I’m sure I can find it there still, somewhere near the old spruce, a heavy mass growing green with age.