I realized I had been holding my breath when Emily turned away from Millie, and I released it with a sigh.
She sat down on a rock and held out her sketchbook. Millie sat beside her and took the book into her hands. She examined each page, each image, at length before continuing on to the next. Charlie, Alfred, and I were outsiders, watching the two of them. Emily, of course, said nothing. Neither did Millie. She just studied the pictures, page after page. When she reached the last one, she closed the cover and looked at Emily.
“Extraordinary.” She turned to her husband, her eyes shining. “Quite simply extraordinary. The detail is remarkable. Alfred, she has a Listera borealis and a Polygonum viviparum. There are plant species in here that are native flora of arctic terrain, never recorded in these parts. But this”—she opened the book again, flipping through the pages until she stopped at a drawing of a plant I am quite familiar with—“this is the most extraordinary.”
We called it devil’s club. It was large, growing as tall or taller than me. Its leaves resembled those of the maple, and it produced bright red berries that Mother told us we must never, ever eat. But the most distinctive feature of the plant was that it was covered, from stem to leaves, with long, sharp spines.
Millie turned toward Charlie and me. “Has she traveled elsewhere? West, perhaps? Or to the far north?”
“No, ma’am,” Charlie replied. “She’s barely left the island.”
Millie stood up. “You must take us there, show us the plants, where she found them.”
She moved as though she were ready to leave right then, to set off in little Sweet Pea or trudge straight through the woods. I had never really examined Emily’s drawings before. Never paid them much attention other than to note that they were lovely and detailed and full of color. But something had ignited Millie.
It was Charlie who spoke up. “What’s listeri boreali?”
“Listera borealis,” Millie replied, her excitement palpable. “It’s an orchid. A lovely delicate green flower shaped like a little tongue, very rare. Oh, it’s not nearly as showy as the Cypripedium family, with flowers that look like delicate little moccasins. I’ve been searching for this particular species for some time now. But the Oplopanax horridus, the devil’s club, is it nearby?”
Over cups of tea at their sparse campsite, we learned that Alfred had studied botany in England, specializing in peat and wetlands. Millie was a student at the University of British Columbia, working on her thesis about orchids. She had studied under the eminent naturalist John Davidson, and had spent time as a field assistant in the ancient forests of the west coast, where devil’s club was common.
“We met a little over a year ago,” said Alfred. “At the university.”
“He was giving a presentation about sphagnum moss,” added Millie as she handed us a tin of biscuits. “Orchids are one of a few species that flourish in the low acidity of mires, so we quickly found something in common.”
They married only a month before their research set them on the shores of Lake Superior, with a speculative list of orchid species rumored to be on the islands of the north shore and their cobbled-together collection of camping gear.
After we shared tea on the beach, they relocated their campsite to Edward Island near the old mines, where it was closer for them to paddle their green canvas canoe to the boat harbor or around the point to the light to join Emily and me on excursions. Charlie, committed as he was to the light and chores, observed our budding relationship somewhat grudgingly as we led the couple from bog to fen, Emily in the lead, and I acting as intermediary and interpreter.
We showed them the patches of devil’s club. It was a plant Mother had turned to many times, carefully avoiding the dangerous stems to dig up the shallow roots, which she used to make tinctures and poultices. I failed to appreciate their fascination with it, but it pleased Millie, so it pleased me.
That summer was dry, but still the mosquitoes tormented us as we mucked about in the wetlands. Millie wore netting that hung from the brim of her hat, keeping her delicate face free from bites, but Emily was particularly bothered by the insects and often refused to venture into the bogs in spite of Millie’s pleading. On those days we sat on the beach where the breezes off the Lake chased away the pests. Millie always found something to look at, hauling out her field notes and guidebooks and writing observations in her journal. She was incredibly patient with Emily, but I still always felt that I needed to be there, a protective shadow, one part of a whole.
Millie fascinated me, with her burnished golden hair and tenacious passion for science. She was young and beautiful, but she was also smart. And she wore men’s pants. She was not like any woman I had ever met. We filled the silence around Emily with conversations about books, and she promised to send me copies of her favorite novels when she returned to Toronto in the fall. She laughed often, and when she did, it was as refreshing as a summer rain.
They spent some time visiting at the light. While Millie and Emily sat together with sketches and notebooks, Alfred and my father lit their pipes, settled into wooden chairs in the shadow of the beacon, and debated politics, the rising tension in Europe, the drought on the prairies, and the economic depression that had left young, capable, and eager men unable to feed their families.
Alfred was a conservationist, long before it was common to be one. He was critical of the popular approach to wildlife management, which, to his dismay, tended toward the routine elimination of animals considered to be vermin. Animals like wolves, he argued, played a vital role at all levels in what he called natural society, and indiscriminate culling would disrupt a balance necessary for the preservation of even the most humanized and valued of wildlife.