I think it was Gisela Mendel who first took us down Engineer’s Trail – the trail that angles down from the McCabe Trail  to a spot where the engineers camped beside Driftwood Creek the summer in 1919 when they were building the trail. You can find the entrance by hiking the McCabe Trail as far as the big rock slide, then backing up just a few metres. Or you can scramble a few metres down the rock slide to find the trail below.

It’s not much of a trail really. On the first couple of descents we trimmed back a few small sub-alpine firs and clipped the alders that close in on the lower parts. Ann and Alan Pickard helped us, Renee Granlin too.

Once you emerge at creek level, the trail disappears into soft moss and small waterways that often don’t freeze all winter – they seem to be the result of some extensive beaver activity a few years back and natural springs like the ones that cross the Silverking Trail above Danny Moore bridge.

You have to make your way across the creek to find the camp itself and there’s not much left of it – a round of wood where a wall tent might have been anchored, a few rusting vessels of indeterminate function. Almost one hundred years ago now – it’s likely others used it over the years for there to be anything left of it at all.

One November, we walked down there with our boys – teenagers at the time. Very little snow and a heavy frost created the most wonderful illusion. It was a special day and resulted in a poem, one of the ones included in the weather from the west.

winter

one step down
from the named trail
into
silence

we trace a lost descent
its perfect grade
tangled in alder
huge tracks
unmistakable
no dog wanders here    alone
where wolfish breath
clouds the glittering air
hot paws melt through
to thrifty November earth
hoarding its heat
beneath a dusting of snow
coolness
after a season of rocks

we follow the tracks
and the earth
down
to water
burrowing in its own cleft
struggling
always
towards the center
tricked by beavers
and winter into extravagance

ice floods the trees
a window to the earth
spread naked and surprised below
bubbles stilled
unburst

my boys slide on their bellies
and spin
their whoops shattering
the silence of indrawn breath

wolf tracks measure the beaver lodge

they too mark the surface
they too sing their wildness
into the ringing winter air