08/18/2026
It’s been a while. I’ve been focusing on what’s in front of me lately. I’ve found so many bodies in the ditches and on the property around my folks place here in the Bulkley Valley, that it’s actually taken a toll on my nerves a little bit,
But I thought I would share how I talk in my head to them sometimes. Ive learned from a lot of folks I’ve met how useful talking out loud when no one can hear you can actually be.
This big baby, I found not far from my family’s home, having likely died a long long time ago, and since been cleaned by the ecosystem he was a part of.
He had a pretty narrow pelvis and remnants of soft-parts that lead me to think it was a male, not that it matters,
But you never know for whom pronouns bring a feeling of acceptance and respect to…
But working on this guy’s bones has led me to love him. Not every animal that I care for in my work takes my heart with them, especially if they are loved already, but this guy feels special. In the chunks of black fur and paw pads dried out in the sun I found so many new lives starting. Insects, snails, the shed skin of a small lizard, some old black feathers of visitors come and gone.
In his death, he fed families and planted seeds in the dirt.
There were Saskatoon seedlings sprouting where his stomach had once been.
With this, I feel like he’s received a good ending, despite the pain and trauma of his death.
But what do I know, im just another animal that found and scavenged from his remains. But I left some of me where he had fallen. A wish that he didn’t feel it. A hope that his death was recovered from by a mother, a sibling…
Sometimes I wish I could know the whole story, but I think it’s a gift that I only have a piece of it.
Life goes on. Death goes on. And life springs from it all over again.
But he will be loved.
