The island is a body that has been read for its contents. Coal seams beneath Nanaimo, counted. Old-growth beyond Port Renfrew, counted. Herring measured by the tonne, salmon by the run that does not return, copper and gold pencilled in beneath the alpine where no road has yet been cut, but could be.

We call it resource to make the taking sound like husbandry. We call it growth to make the subtraction sound like addition. Somewhere between the mill and the market a forest becomes a figure on a page, and the page is lighter than the forest ever was.

I am not above the ledger. I dawn myself in the remains of mammals. I shield myself in a box made of plants. I move myself on wheels made of rocks. I dance myself to the sounds of birds. I travel myself on the currents of air and water, and every current has been costed.

The fragile thing is not the forest. The forest has burned and returned before. The fragile thing is the balance we claim to keep while keeping nothing, the story we tell the bluff about how much we have left it alone.