Chapter 12: Calls to Life

The central swath of a landslide is like a giant eraser that removes everything in its path. Houses are buried, trees and landscape obliterated, a moonscape created where every point of reference is gone. When I returned I was bewildered and disorientated. The place had become unrecognizable. Nothing remained for me except the fear that the mountain might move again.

Gail and Lynne and their home have been my bridge back to Johnson’s Landing, and my sanctuary on many occasions since July 2012. I always felt safe with them, during a period when I felt unsafe almost everywhere else in the Landing. I’d drive up the lake from Kaslo, thinking positively, intending to visit my derelict garden and see a few friends. Sometimes I got no farther than Gail and Lynne’s house. On other occasions I ventured over the creek to the south side but soon returned, distraught.

Invariably, Lynne would make a pot of tea. I’d dry my tears and sit in the flower garden, soothed by watching the birds that flocked to the feeders. Or I’d curl up on their bed for a nap with Tinker the dog, then drive back to Kaslo. It was all right, I would tell myself. I’d return another day to dip my toe in the waters. And so I did, until now, two years on, I cross the slide without too much thought, drive to my friend Kate O’Keefe’s house, and revisit the old trails down the hillside that lead to our sad, abandoned garden beside the beach. I carry an old wound, knitted together, that’s still tender if I prod it.

In contrast, Christopher chose to spend much of his time in the Landing, and still does, deciding that he would not cut his connections with the place or our friends there. Gail and Lynne are generous employers as well as friends, thoughtful and attentive to the needs of their carpenter. Paul and Osa offer him their house in the Landing—the house the three of them built—and he helps with firewood and building maintenance. His heart lies in Johnson’s Landing. I think it always will.

This new arrangement is both a loss and an opportunity. Christopher and I were constant companions during our nineteen years in the Landing. The rhythm of our days embraced walks, boat rides, visiting, team-cooking and gardening, as well as the endless house projects and our local employment commitments. Only my three annual trips to England separated us.

These days, I am alone here in Kaslo for much of the week, until Christopher drives back for a couple of days’ R & R. I appreciate our Kaslo home—it’s simple and small, with mountain views, minimal gardening chores and easy maintenance. I spend most days quietly engaged in my writing life, thinking, reading and listening to classical music. I volunteer with our hospice society, attend community events and concerts, and have developed a rewarding relationship with our Anglican church. Christopher and I talk daily by phone and email. We honour our time together with bike rides, canoe trips, excursions in the car and special meals. The relationship has certainly evolved, and feels strong as we each answer our respective calls to life.

When someone recently commiserated with me about the disaster, I heard callous-sounding yet honest words coming out of my mouth, words that weren’t about the loss of four lives, but about my experience of healing. I said, “Yes, the landslide was a terrible thing, but for me personally it wasn’t all bad. My life was spared twice in twenty-four hours, and I’ve been enriched in unexpected ways.” I looked at the other person and smiled. We were a large group of locals attending a Kaslo Birdwatchers’ potluck supper. The evening was warm, the wine flowed and I enjoyed every bite of the lavish and imaginatively prepared feast.

Ann MacNab died two weeks after the landslides, and in her last days of life gave us and others many gifts. She instructed her executor to let Christopher and me look through her possessions, and pick out replacements for things we’d lost. We drove to Howser one Sunday in late July 2012, and were offered a wealth of sorely needed household items.

On cold winter nights we reach for Ann’s gold mohair blanket, spreading it over the deep red duvet with its matching pillowcases and sheets. We sauté potatoes for breakfast in Ann’s cast iron skillet and make regular use of many other pots, pans, dishes and utensils from her kitchen. I drink my afternoon tea from her delicate Royal Doulton china mug. The quality of my wardrobe was greatly enriched thanks to the coincidence that Ann and I shared a similar taste in fashion and, amazingly, wore exactly the same size, both in clothes and footwear. From her enormous library we gladly replaced treasured volumes, including the Winnie the Pooh series and many other classics of English and Canadian literature. We placed our new book collection on Ann’s Swedish wooden bookshelves. Ann’s computer printer has done sterling work delivering hard copies of this manuscript. Countless other fine quality, beautiful things of hers fill in the gaps in our new life. I remember Ann almost every day and feel gratitude.

We’ve created a photo montage, pinned to a large bulletin board on the kitchen wall, adorned with photos of Ruth’s house and its interiors, the creek, the garden, Ozzie, our parents and family. I fall into a reverie gazing at the poignant images of happy times past, and weigh the losses, sensing their heft and pull. These nostalgic mental pilgrimages seem to be an inevitable part of the healing process through grief.

Our photo display includes several pictures of “Teddy,” who was lost in the slide. Teddy was Christopher’s bear. He was small, no more than eight inches tall, with bright yellow fur and an expressive, handsome face. When I met Christopher on Manitoulin Island for the second time, in 1992, I also met Teddy.

We fell in love that summer. When it was time for me to fly back to England, Christopher gave me a box that I was instructed not to open until I was on the plane. Inside I found Teddy, holding a note that told me he’d like to come along and see London. “Chris” had asked him to keep an eye on me. And it was imperative that I return him safely to Chris as soon as possible.

When we settled into Ruth’s house in the Landing, Teddy made himself at home on a shelf in the kitchen, beside storage jars of dried mint, flaked coconut and black peppercorns. He sported a Bahamian shell bracelet round his neck, and a knitted egg cozy as a hat for winter days. Luckily, I took a few photos of him and kept them in Kaslo.

Another photo on our bulletin board shows us in the front yard one sunny May morning. Christopher’s mother, Virginia, snapped it through the kitchen window. Christopher sits cross-legged on the dandelion-studded grass while I perch on the driftwood seat under the gnarly apple tree that is just breaking into blossom. Ozzie has left Christopher’s side and pads towards me across the shaggy lawn, his tail high and his head low, anticipating a nose rub.

I’m in a sleeveless T-shirt with my hair tied up, clear of my neck. The day lilies are knee-high; purple and yellow columbines nod, and the first green swords of iris leaf jab skyward. Looking at the photo I can almost smell the heavy, rich aroma of balm of Gilead, emanating from the opening cottonwood buds beside the cascading creek.

I think about the place where our front yard lay, smothered now under several metres of stony, infertile till. Do pockets remain underneath, even now, where life stirs? Does a sprig of Virginia creeper push blindly upwards seeking light? Did any of our trees remain rooted? Does the Japanese maple, or the old apple tree, still hear the call of spring and try to respond? After two years I know the answer is a resounding no. The giant eraser did its work too well.

And what of the beige filing cabinet and the precious treasures it held? All through that first year I scanned the deep gulley beside the house site whenever I went there, willing the filing cabinet to appear, certain that it would show itself. In December 2012, Duncan opened up the hole again and dug for four hours in the northwest corner (the bedroom area). I huddled with Christopher and Kurt in a biting wind off the lake, with a thin powder icing of snow etching the rough contours of the earthy hill. Nothing emerged.

On August 20, 2013, one year on, we tried for the last time. Glen Sorenson, an excavator operator from Glade, has family connections with Johnson’s Landing and wanted to help the community. He offered five days of his excavator services at no charge. We requested six hours.

We were optimistic. We knew where the cabinet was not. Surely, by logical deduction we could track down a large lump of metal? The first dig in August 2012 had uncovered everything in its vicinity, including the wooden plank desk that lay on top of it, my desk stool and a box of onions that had stood on the bedroom floor right beside it.

The excavation team reunited for the day. Kurt brought his hoe. Lew, in his pith helmet, brought water. Christopher directed operations and explained the lay of the land to Glen. The large yellow excavator roared into life and bit into the earth near the corner of the house. Glen soon found the concrete external wall and dug systematically along its length, around the corner and down the west side of the house.

Again the bones and flesh of the tortured building showed themselves: splintered, rotting wood and congealed pink insulation. Deep, dark recesses of the basement and root cellar beckoned eerily and exuded a putrid stench. We made odd discoveries: an intact bottle of Pernod, its label almost illegible, had somehow rolled out of the root cellar. I picked up a rusted dress belt cast adrift from a distant bedroom drawer, a red embroidered housecoat, ripped and filthy, and one mouldy sandal from a pair I’d worn every summer.

The reopened tomb revealed countless visible reminders of our past life. Everything was still under there, for the most part quite recognizable. The intensely earthy smell that I’d loathed emanated even now from the freshly turned soil. To catch a whiff was to be catapulted back to those days of terror and grief.

After six hot and dusty hours, exhausted, horrified and unsettled by the hideousness, we gave up. The filing cabinet had seemingly evaporated. I’d brought along my collection of soft deer hide and silk bags, in which I’d planned to place the jewellery. How stupid I was to allow myself such high hopes. That evening, back in Kaslo, my eyes stinging with tears, I put the empty bags away.

I must make my peace with these last losses: my mother’s rings, her gold necklace, the cultured pearls and my own small collection of jewellery that included gifts she had given me and loved to see me wear. They lie there still, somewhere under the mud. I visualize and speak to them, especially my mother’s diamond and ruby engagement ring. I keep faith that they do not wish to remain lost from me forever. But there is nowhere left to search, and we will not excavate again.

As time passed, I began to see a larger picture—synchronicities within the two parallel threads of my personal story: the losses in the landslides, and the losses that soon followed in England.

My mother was like a tiny boat bobbing far from shore on the high seas of vascular dementia when I went back to London in early October. She retained no short-term memory, yet was unerringly loving to everyone, and never forgot who her children were. Every day she asked fearfully how soon I’d be leaving again for Canada, and I’d say, “I’ve changed my ticket and I’m staying longer, much longer, this time.” June’s face would be wreathed in smiles and she’d squeeze my hand in her arthritic fingers. “Oh, that’s marvellous, darling. I’m so glad! It means the world to me to have you here.”

On sleepy days I sat in her room, sewing name tags into her clothes while she napped. On livelier days we watched her favourite afternoon TV game show, Countdown, and had tea together, just as we’d done so many times at home over the years. One day, watching Countdown, she astounded me by identifying an eight-letter word that I missed, as did the two contestants. Pretty good for advanced dementia! She said, “It just came to me,” and I imagined my father perhaps whispering the word into her ear. June often said she sensed John’s presence beside her, and he’d been an avid fan of Countdown.

My mother was so easy to kiss and caress. We held hands—she had the softest hands—and I brushed her hair. I’d never done these things on previous visits at her house, constrained by an almost physical barrier between us. At the onset of her dementia, June had been wound tight like a spring with nervous anxiety, panicky and unable to relax, endlessly repeating questions. Loneliness and depression were her constant attendants. And I expressed my guilt and worry through irritation. I was teacherly in my criticisms, coldly parental in my nagging. At the root of it I, too, was terrified of what might happen to her.

In the nursing home, with that barrier gone, I became a better daughter. I stroked my mother’s hair back from her face as she lay on her bed under her blanket of knitted squares, ready for a nap, and covered her cheek in kisses. She giggled and gazed up at me, beautiful as a young girl again.

I hid a second secret from my mother, aside from not mentioning the landslides. My brother and I saw there was no realistic possibility that June would live independently again, so we decided to sell the family house. Andrew flew in from Australia, we put the house on the market and it sold in seventy-two hours. We started emptying the attic. I was grateful for the rare treat of having time alone with my “little brother,” who lived half a world away.

We both noticed June’s agitation at having so little cash in her wallet. She worried obsessively about paying for her care, her meals and our expenses. Andrew had the brilliant idea of photocopying a number of ten-pound notes and putting them in June’s purse. She was happy again and seemed unaware that the notes were black and white instead of brown, and blank on the back. One day she gave me a grubby, well-fingered note and told me to go out and buy myself something special with it. I thanked her with a lump in my throat, and pasted the ten-pound note into my journal.

Andrew returned to Australia in mid-October and I buckled down to the huge task of dismantling thirty-six years of my parents’ accumulation. Being of the pre–World War II generation, nothing was thrown away. Sheets were re-hemmed “sides-to-middle,” and every last piece of string, elastic band and reusable envelope was kept.

There were days, I swear, when I almost wished for the purgative power of a cataclysmic event to sweep it all away! I spent painstaking hours poring over and sorting through ancient, dusty box files, folders, wads of letters, yellowing photographs, clothes and personal effects. In England, just three months on from the landslides, another era of my life drew inexorably towards its conclusion.

I reduced the London house to an empty shell. On the last morning I sat at the kitchen table, sensing a grief that swirled around me and seemed to emanate from the place itself. We were about to cut our connection. The day was bright. Sunbeams streamed across the deep burgundy carpet in the empty dining room.

I closed the front door, said goodbye to neighbours along the small terraced row of townhouses, then felt compelled to return and drink in each familiar detail, one last time. The characteristic click of the key in the lock. The distinctive smells: wool carpeting, central heating and a whiff of gas from the ancient cooker. Dust motes swam in the sunlit air. Then I caught the bus to my mother’s nursing home.

I used the excuse of sickness to explain away my puffy, red-rimmed eyes and pale face. For reasons unfathomable, that day my mother kept insisting that it was high time we went home—we had to call a taxi right now. Was she somehow, subliminally, aware of the shift just made in the tectonic plates of her life?

On December 6, 2012, my last day in England, I thought my heart would break. My mother looked so pretty with her grey hair neatly brushed, wearing the new pink cardigan I’d bought her. I returned to her room after lunch to find three favourite nurses around her. Su, Lorna and Puja were helping June to write a birthday/Christmas card for me. June could no longer sign her name and was upset at the scrawl she made. But she managed big X’s for kisses and O’s for hugs. I fought back tears, hugged her and quietly slipped away before she realized that the dreaded moment had come to say goodbye.

I never saw my mother alive again. In February 2013, during a leg of my next journey to England, this time with Christopher, we learned that my mother had died unexpectedly. Fifteen hours after her death, Christopher and I stood in her small room at the nursing home. Her things lay scattered around as normal, but she herself was gone. Christopher’s presence lent me strength as we made funeral arrangements.

Grief is love that’s become homeless, so they say. If we include my mother, and my family home in London, I guess I was left homeless three times in seven months. Things do tend to happen in threes.

Human beings are resilient. You think you’ll never recover, and in some ways you don’t—you are no longer the same person you were. But in time you move forward and forge a new path. We the bereaved are like war veterans whose legs and arms have been severed. Nothing can bring back the lost limbs, but we learn strategies to function around the losses.

I draw comfort from memory. I can always revisit the past and play my favourite scene over again, like a clip from a movie…

Drifting up to consciousness I squint at the clock: 6:45 a.m. I am cozy under the covers. A weight presses against my left leg. Ozzie is snuggled up close on his green and red knitted blanket.

My ears pick up the first sounds of the day: a scrunching of newspaper, a snapping of kindling sticks. A hatchet pounds rapidly through a block of cedar to make thin strips. Tcheep, tcheep, tcheep. Pause. I hear crackling in our basement wood stove. I won’t get out of bed until the chimney starts ticking, then I’ll know it’s warm enough.

My eyes gradually gain long-distance focus. Through the window beside the bed a billow of woodsmoke gusts away between the trees and over the lake. A breezy day. I examine the tall firs just beyond the deck. If it’s raining I’ll see the pattern of drops against their dark boughs. No, the sky is brightening and it’s going to be a beautiful day.

I gently ease my legs out of bed and slip a small pillow under the covers for Ozzie to lean against. His black forepaw is draped across his eyes to block the light and he’s curled in a tight ball. He is not a morning cat. I lean forward to kiss between his ears and he raises his head groggily, his message clear: “Please go away!”

Across the room at my stand-up desk I switch on the MacBook and smile at the reassuring energy of its awakening C-major chord. The internet satellite receiver across the deck glows with three orange lights, signalling a good speed at which to download The Guardian, BBC podcasts and my email.

I wander downstairs to the basement and find Christopher gazing through the gold-framed glass door of the small Pacific Energy wood stove. We embrace and enquire how each of us slept. I sit next to him on the bottom step, mesmerized by the yellow and blue flames that lick at the wood and caress the ceiling of the stove box. Getting up, I toast myself, front and back, in the welcome radiant heat.

Upstairs I put the kettle on and make tea. Christopher joins me in the kitchen and we stand beside the tall picture window, lost in wonder at the expansive view southward down Kootenay Lake. He puts his arm around me with a quirky half-smile.

“Well babe, it’s another tough day in paradise!”

John and Jillian Madill travelled an immense journey in one year. As a retired couple, they never expected to experience changes so abrupt and traumatic.

On July 12, 2013, one year to the day after the landslide, they slept in their own bed again for the first time. That was the day they retrieved their furniture from storage and brought it to their newly purchased permanent home—Ann MacNab’s house in Howser, north of Kootenay Lake. The Howser community has been extremely welcoming and supportive of the couple.

Jillian told me, “I’ve said goodbye to Johnson’s Landing. I don’t feel any longing to go back there. Parts of it are still beautiful, but it’s a difficult place to be. What you might long for is no longer there: no Petra, no Val and the girls. It was such a strong community, we all knew each other so well.” Jillian was a long-time friend of Petra, who lived right next door. Val was also a nearby neighbour and friend. He and John always took care of waterline problems for south-side residents.

Jillian is stoic about the future. “I’m ready to move on, put it all behind us, work on this place, have some fun. And not think about the landslide all the time. I think we’ll be happy here. A lot of it is your attitude: we can mourn forever for Johnson’s Landing or we can get on with it. And we just have to get on with it.”

Kate O’Keefe identified three big losses: “First, the immediate loss of the people who died. Second, the loss of the people who no longer live here, and that’s different—Jillian and you are still alive but we have a changed relationship now. And thirdly, there’s the loss of geography: the scar that will deface this land forever. And the loss of greatest magnitude for me is the last one. The new landscape dictates every turn and decision I make. If I walk north I am walking ‘towards the slide.’ If I walk south I am walking ‘away from the slide.’ I cannot easily walk to the beach. It’s all about the slide. I can never forget it.”

Jillian and John’s decision was made for them: they had no option but to leave. It was the same for Rachel, Christopher and me. But Kate and Harvey had a choice because their main home, Algot Johnson’s old cabin, lies safely to the south of the evacuation zone. “It was really hard, but we’ve made the decision to stay. I have a beautiful life here and we are doing good things: installing solar energy and our own water system; Harvey moved his workshop and will get his pottery studio up and running again. But the place will never be what it was.”

For Harvey Armstrong, the enormity of the event took months to sink in and, like so many residents, he floundered for the first year. His property and buildings had forty years of memories attached to them, and he’d intended to leave the land to his sons.

In Harvey’s opinion, the community felt split and conflicted, physically divided by Gar Creek and fractured by disagreements over water issues and access to property. But he believes Johnson’s Landing will heal eventually. “It is too wonderful and beautiful a place not to heal. People will come who don’t have our background. Wherever you live in the mountains you have to deal with these events. All over the Kootenays people are facing weather-related threats. Johnson’s Landing just happened to be one of the first and one of the biggest.”

For Renata Klassen, the elapse of time has helped her grief run its course. “You need the passage of the seasons, the familiarity of each one, until the first year is done. Then another year starts and you have a measure. I sought help, did intensive trauma work, then I saw Millie at Community Services weekly for eight weeks, her last eight weeks in Kaslo, and I felt so thankful. She gave me some psychological tools to work with after she left. My dog Lennie died in mid- August 2013, and his death brought me extreme clarity around a number of things. I continue to seek the help I need.”

Susan VanRooy and Bob Yetter are determined not to abandon their home and their hopes for a renewal of community life. Susan told me, “We will move on. Something has changed irretrievably, but change is inevitable. It’s part of the circle of life. Hopefully something positive will come out of it for all of us.”

Before the landslides, Susan used to pause during her morning run, just above Creek Corner in the Gar Creek draw. She’d meditate and draw strength from the powerful force of the water surging past her. A cedar tree stood on a tiny, mossy island in the stream, its roots spanning the channel. Susan would jump onto the island and rest on the curved bough of the cedar tree, sometimes hearing a winter wren’s song, in this beautiful green place of solace. She was often there, in the middle of Gar Creek, at ten thirty in the morning. If she’d been in Johnson’s Landing that fateful day, with the high water roaring, would she have heard the landslide coming?

“Now there’s a sign on the road that says: NO STOPPING. I feel a sense of dread, but I’m trying to make friends with the new creek. It will be beautiful again one day.”

Lila Taylor told me she’s doing well, although the first year was gruelling. She learned a lot about who she was and how to take care of herself. “I’m still upset sometimes, and still miss Diana. It comes back, but less often. I try to focus on the good memories. Life goes forward in honour of the ones who died. With young death it makes you want to live more fully. Everything looks more intense and beautiful and interesting. If you’re doing something you don’t like, then stop! It’s a waste of time. You need to enjoy every moment.”

On the first anniversary of the disaster Margie and Lila joined other friends in the Landing, including Rachel and Diana’s mother, Lynn Migdal, from Florida. Eighteen people met at the site of the Webbers’ house, around a heart-shaped firepit. At exactly 10:37 a.m. they held hands around the circle, then spoke prayers, told stories, sang songs and played percussion instruments. Lynn passed tequila and a tray of chocolate and halva around the group to signify the bitter and the sweet.

The afternoon saw a simple commemoration on the beach: a gathering, a moment of silence, then a scattering of flower petals over the water and a floating altar adorned with flowers. Margie went into our abandoned garden at my request, and put flowers on Ozzie’s grave beside the mulberry tree.

Margie, Lila, Tenise Trueman (one of Rachel Webber’s best friends) and Louis Bockner stayed overnight on the beach, singing songs to Louis’s guitar, reminiscing about childhood days and keeping a vigil.

I asked Margie how she felt.

“It’s so tough to lose four people. But it is also hard to lose this land. It’s always been home to me and is such a special place for so many of us—it’s almost like losing another person. Shared experience, even when it’s tragic, creates a special connection between people. How long it takes or how it happens, I don’t know, but I believe Johnson’s Landing will heal.”

Lynn Migdal told me from her home in Florida, “I think the key to living through multiple sudden death, destruction of one’s home and dream is best said by Joel Osteen: ‘You do not move forward with your dreams unless your dreams are more powerful than your painful past.’ I have a dream to lift the consciousness of the world into a peaceful place, and to spread the truth about natural healing and global warming. I have always wanted to save the children of the world, and it is this mission that gets me up every day, helping others with chiropractic and ChiroChi, and giving workshops on natural healing.

“I am starting to include in my workshops the message that suffering is a choice. And we get to choose how long during the day we do it. The techniques that keep me emotionally fit during this horrible time are chiropractic, acupuncture, massage and breath work. I found out early in the grieving process that I had to choose some quality time to ‘feel’ my feelings, and lie down if I was sobbing. Lying down and breathing while crying is actually healing.”

Patrick Steiner and Colleen O’Brien, who stayed on their farm, suffered serious economic hardship following the landslides. “Our farm was affected pretty drastically. We lost approximately $20,000 worth of crops in 2012. We lost many seed crops, so had less to offer our customers, and much less bulk for retail orders. An online campaign started on our behalf raised approximately $9,000.

“Our 2013 has been as tough as last year, and we’re finding it extremely difficult. We’ve had to deal with water maintenance issues, and there’s still no permanent water system in place. Other things we’re struggling with include turning this property into a viable farm—it’s rocky, sloped and infertile—to be able to produce the quantity and quality we’re used to, and the lack of infrastructure on our farm.

“We feel less sure about Johnson’s Landing as a long-term place for us. The landslide highlighted challenges and difficulties with living out here. Raising a child, we have to go long distances for support—doctor, clothes, play group—and it takes a great deal of time out of the day. We are trying to improve the house and property but it is a lot of work. We feel fortunate because Kaslo and the north Kootenay Lake communities were really supportive and helpful after the slide. In a less close-knit place this disaster would have been much harder to get through.”

Roger and Carol differed in their feelings about Johnson’s Landing, one year on. Roger said, “I don’t feel happy here. The nature of the place has changed. I have no fear of more landslides—the risk is probably minimal. But it used to be a magical place, almost another world, a place I was content never to leave. Now it’s a paradise lost. If I were not embroiled in things here and had the choice to move elsewhere, I would do so. The ‘real’ Johnson’s Landing is nothing but a memory.”

Carol said, “It is not the same magical place it was before, but it is still pretty special. I enjoy being here. Before, nobody knew where Johnson’s Landing was. Now everyone knows. The first year was very stressful for everyone and recovery takes time. Who knows? The community could become even better.”

Kurt Boyer decided in 2013 to move back to his house beside Gar Creek. “I love my life and work here. If some freaky thing happens, and I’m making too much noise to hear it, and the mud takes me, so be it. I’ll die doing what I love.”

Kurt’s decision to move back home was cemented when the provincial government refused to buy people out. The DFA program offered him $37,000 compensation if he would first destroy his home-cum-workshop—a vastly insufficient sum with which to purchase anything else. So he decided to stay and take his chances. DFA funded his replacement waterline. “The gods were smiling on me,” he concluded with a smile.

Gail Spitler is worried about Johnson’s Landing. Some areas are too hazardous for human habitation but others are safe, although property values have all been affected by the stigma of the landslide. How will the community keep functioning? Will new people move to the Landing, attracted by the cheap land?

Gail believes the climate is changing. Heavy rainfalls started in the 1990s and the extreme weather events are ever more alarming. “I think this is just the beginning,” she told me. The local government has not done much to educate the public about landslide risks except to issue a fact sheet about “hazard indicators.” In Gail’s opinion it will have to do much more in the future.

Johnson’s Landing used to feel like an extended family, big enough to allow for all its quirky characters to express themselves without impinging on neighbours. Gail worries that the current population is so reduced in size that healthy community life may be more difficult going forward.

Lynne Cannon struggled in the aftermath of the slides. “I’m still in recovery, not there yet. I feel dislocated and alone. I am called, by some, one of the ‘unaffected,’ but the losses were immeasurable and one grapples all the time with changes in the community; the landslide is always in your face. At times I wish I could be a hermit. I lack the resilience to go out into the world and be myself. But you can only move forward. And we’re not about to leave Johnson’s Landing.”

During the first year, Rachel Rozzoni returned to her ravaged house every few weeks. “The house was a shell, with rat and mouse shit everywhere. No power—the fridge and freezer leaked all over the floor. It felt so ugly.”

Rachel would lose herself in a task, then look up. “Holy shit! Look where I am!” The landslide had swirled around three sides of the house, and was visible from every corner of the property. Rachel’s chores always seemed to take longer than planned and she’d become so upset she’d leave without completing her list.

Adding insult to injury, in March 2013 thieves broke into several buildings on properties devastated by the landslide, including Rachel’s garage. “They made a real mess. They took tools, the ladder we needed to get into the house, hoses, an old computer…” Some of the stolen goods were later dumped on the road on the Argenta Flats, but Rachel never saw a list of what was returned and retrieved nothing.

Now she’s in school, studying online for a qualification in midwifery. She wanted to focus on a path, she said, even though it’s costing “a ton of money.” It felt important, and was something she had to do for herself.

In August 2013, Loran Godbe told me he feels differently about his long-time home. “Johnson’s Landing is changed forever. It was a wonderful place, but I don’t feel comfortable, wondering what’s up the mountain. It’s a daily trauma. Every time I look at the creek a blast of adrenalin goes through me. It’s not good to live with that kind of stress.” Loran reacts traumatically to the sounds of rumbling trucks and thunder.

Loran and Linda moved to Trail, three hours’ drive away, on account of Linda’s need for regular kidney dialysis, but have since moved back to the Landing; Linda returns every week for treatment. It’s been hard for them both. As Loran put it, “Trail’s a city and we’re not city people. I’ve lived surrounded by wilderness all my life. I’m used to walking outside in the morning with grass under my bare feet, and preparing for the day’s many projects and activities on our little farm.”

Gerry stayed behind at their house in the Landing, with only a generator for power for more than a year. With Linda and Loran gone with the car, Gerry relied on others to bring fuel, food and the horse’s feed. In the days before the road was rebuilt he reached the horse via a strenuous journey that took four hours, twice a day. He hiked to the shore below Carol and Roger’s, paddled his canoe out through the logjam to the south beach, then climbed the hill to Kootenay Joe Road, packing water in buckets from Kate and Harvey’s pond for the horse.

Due to our chaotic lives in the first weeks after the slides, Christopher and I kept in touch with Virginia Klassen, his mom, only sporadically. Virginia told me, “Rationally, I understood why you didn’t call. But emotionally, I felt abandoned. I wanted so badly to be up there with you. I wanted to be in the car going back with Christopher that Thursday evening. It was like my home.”

Virginia saw huge change in her granddaughter, Margie Smith. “Margie had stayed with me for several months two years earlier, when Diana Webber was also in Eugene. In fact we celebrated Diana’s twenty-first birthday here. When Margie came back here after the landslide, she was in deep grief for the Webber family, especially Diana, and I was reminded of what I learned when my son Michael died.

“Each person’s experience of, and reaction to, trauma is unique. The grief is so overpowering that often there’s no strength left to extend empathy and care to others in the family or group, and people feel abandoned. Relatives or friends who live far away may be just as impacted as those living near the disaster.

“There’s a sense of losing not just material things and the present way of life, but also the future—growing old together in a familiar, beloved setting; plans and dreams; and the contributions that the people who died could have made.”

Bobbi Huber, in Birchdale, feels hopeful for the future. She and Peter often hike in Switzerland and have seen many slide zones in the Swiss Alps. Little signs announce that a village was buried or badly damaged by a landslide, perhaps several hundred years ago. “This does happen, all over the world. People go on, but it’s going to take time.”

She believes the community will heal. “There will be ‘before the slide’ and ‘after the slide.’ This is a huge event that, ultimately, will bind people together. It creates a common history and makes the community stronger.”

The geotechnical report put both of Osa Thatcher’s properties partially within the high hazard zone. “This leaves me perplexed,” she told me. “I can’t rent out a house that’s in a high hazard zone. Yet the upkeep has to be done and the taxes paid.”

In monetary terms, Osa lost everything. But she says the real value of her properties lies in what they hold and mean to her. The spirit of the place lives on in her woodlot—a mixed forest of pine, birch and larch—as well as in her wonderful neighbours, and in her garden, which grows good corn and tomatoes. The hillside is south facing, there are no mosquitoes and the beach is beautiful. She and Paul visit from their house in Kaslo as often as they can.

Osa still sees much to be thankful for and enjoy. “The landslides were just another glitch in the saga. The Landing will live on. It is such a beautiful place.”

It’s a comfort to know where Ozzie lies buried, a place we can return to.

Photo: Margaret Smith