Daniel Thompson

shadowmounds@gmail.com
250 580 9403
955 Humboldt St. apt. 103
Victoria B.C.
V8V 2Z9

This is my submission of Once Upon a Town, for . It is a short work of fiction,

consisting of 1,316 words and part of an ongoing simultaneous submission. I will contact
you when and if it is accepted elsewhere.

Thanks for reading,

seriously,

Daniel Thompson

Daniel is a graduate of the Creative Writing program (MFA) from Vancouver Island
University, his poems and fiction have been featured in Portal, The Malahat Review,
Grey Sparrow and The Gyroscope Review. He is a reader and contributor to the Tongues
of Fire reading series and has written several books, all currently seeking publishers. He
lives in Victoria, B.C., Canada.
 Thompson/ Once Upon a Town/ 1

1,179 words
Daniel Thompson
shadowmounds@gmail.com
250 580 9403
955 Humboldt St. apt. 103
Victoria B.C.
V8V 2Z9

Once Upon a Town

by Daniel Thompson

The mountains are uncivilized by contemporary standards. Far-flung populations

propagated in small towns, outlier fishing villages, insanity camps lost under the radar. Where

even now witches are blamed for the unexpected and auspicious deaths of villagers, animals or

loved ones. Choosing a man or woman whom they see as suspicious and after finding them

guilty, by superstition, drive them from the village. If you want to travel into the past, take the

train, VIA rail, 6 hours to go 150 km. A distance in space proportional to an equivalent length of

time like a hundred miles = a hundred years, not an exact value. Some years are shorter than

others. Some places arent as easy to access. Roads back then not really being roads at all and

one cannot go where there are no roads

Moving at half the speed with twice the pleasure, news from outside comes like a late flu

season. Its the feedback loop of a small town that keeps everyone in polite check of keeping up
 Thompson/ Once Upon a Town/ 2

appearances. Time measured not in hours or minutes, but something called valley time.

Calculated by the rings on trees, the seasonal flowering of plants, perennial flow of streams, the

hours between breakfast and lunch, lunch and dinner. The time it takes to stack a cord of wood,

for a fire to burn down; fuel for the evenings entertainment. This local, or shall I say non-local,

quantum concept of time is the pride of the valley. Patience, they say, is what makes the local

cheese taste so sharp, the vegetables hearty, the tender the meat. What we knew of culture came

from pop music and fashion carried on the hips and gossip lips of girls and movie posters in

corner store windows. Expressed within my own generation, as an almost imperceptible bi-polar

shift in popular culture as it reached a critical mass.

The first wave of wealthy industrialists, companies and contractors infecting local

populations like the Europeans did when they came to the new world. A sudden spike in property

values followed by an influx of urban refugees, turning the natives into animals, stealing, stoned,

broke, possessed out of some longing for a better life. Wanting more than the simple forest could

provide. We were being invaded. Theyd heard about this place and its untapped resources.

Developers buying thousands of hectares from steward forest companies in secret land deals.

Crown land that had been granted to the corp. by the prov. gov.1 as tree-farm licenses for

harvesting trees, not for sale. Telltale orange ribbons tied to branches marking boundaries of

forest that wouldnt be there in a few years. All one had to do was look across the lake at the

surrounding hillsides to see what would be there instead, the future existing along side the past in

a patchwork of bald spots exposing ground that hadnt seen direct sunlight since the end of the

last ice age; microchorizae, spores, bacteria, viruses enclosed in particles of dirt, finding their

way into the moist combs of lungs and digestive tracts.

1
see section 7 (b) of the British Columbia Land Act.
 Thompson/ Once Upon a Town/ 3

Hidden groves and isolated clefts of land and beach converted to recluses for rich

urbanites, tourists and yuppie boomers, who after leaving the city under the auspices of leading a

more sustainable life, brought the city with them instead. More and better roads established for

transportation between the urban and rural. Little pieces of paradise a gas tank away, at a

weekends convenience. For us though it was our home and we cherished it as such. A place free

from pollution, incessant lights, crime and noise; where the dark was dark and sleep unbidden by

sirens. Making slow, imperceptible adjustments, human filters for the water and air. Evolving

towards a total symbiosis so it seemed we could not survive anywhere else.

Oddly this population growth didnt bring prosperity with it, but coincided with a general

collapse of the local economy. Starting with the closure of the mill, the towns main source of

employment then the restaurant, one of the towns two stores, grocery or otherwise, the pub and

even the beer and wine, leaving only the one store, a marina and some cabins that get rented out

during the summer.

As the impermanence of landscape and shrinking economy began to express itself

through unemployment and clearcuts, there precipitated out a right and a left polarized by the

shrinking middle class. Those who continued to benefit from the logging industry didnt want to

hear arguments from those who werent, namely that the valley was being stripped of its only

resource for short-term gains in foreign markets, while the real benefits were being enjoyed by

the recipients in China in the form of raw log exports, outsourcing the jobs these company men

were so bent on protecting. Protesters warning of the potential effects on both industry and the

environment were criticized, ad hominem, as unpatriotic. Dismissing us with our long hair and

no-name clothes unless we were working for the very industry we opposed.

Local conservation groups amalgamated with native bands to resist further devastation,
 Thompson/ Once Upon a Town/ 4

blocking roads at Carmanah, Walbran and Nootka Island. Chaining themselves to trees, thus

forcing the enemy to work around them. The main conflict centered on what percentage of public

land would be reserved for provincial parks, 21 or 12. The hippies wanted 21. The loggers

wanted 12. Coexisting as predator and prey, each taking a turn as prey. The loggers would be

prey to the hippies when they spiked a tree and the hippies would be prey to the loggers when

they would all band together and beat on a hippie. The loggers, unwilling or unable to give up

their way of life, continued to enjoy the support of government and company, while the hippies

rallied the support of Greenpeace, David Suzuki and a few other small time political players.

Hatred for Suzuki being endemic amoung the loggers, to whom forestry was sacrosanct.

Under the spell of what, at first must have seemed like a limitless resource, the forest

companies saw only what lay on the horizon so that after a few years it began to look like a

completely different place, more spread out, giving the illusion of more when it was actually

less. Grossly underestimating the ability of the ecosystem to regenerate itselfhabitat for

humanity has to be inside a building that is structurally sound, but better for a bug if it is falling

downa reminder that it takes just a short time to build a house, but much longer for those trees

to grow and decompose; up to a thousand years to create just two inches of top soil, but forest

companies dont have a thousand years. They have a five-year contract wherein their objective is

to make as much money as possible via the easiest possible route, extracting resources and

employing tens of thousands of people. Talk about not being able to see the forest for the trees.

But after the trees were gone. The forest, or at least the land the forest once occupied, was plain

to see.