Bees

I sat on the wooden porch watching the oregano come to flower. Really, it was the bees that helped me notice the small delicate flowers that coloured the plant with their sweet mauve colour. There were more than a hundred native bees buzzing in the still and fragrant air that held the oregano plant and its moist ground in a warm summer embrace.

There must have been at least 15 species of bees working on the plant at any warm moment during the hot summer days that it flowered. When I looked at the plant it seemed very busy and noisy with the thoughtless hum of bees. Some bees looked as if they were from the same hive and were nearly identical. Other bees looked very different from each other and were much smaller or coloured differently.

For the week of warm days that the plant flowered and the bees were busy visiting its flowers they did not fight or struggle in any way among or between themselves. There was usually only one bee per flowerering frond and that was the first bee to get there. That bee would visit each floweret of a frond one-by-one without any disturbance from other bees until it moved on to another frond. Once a bee moved on to a different flowered frond another bee would take its place immediately. I never saw any fighting between the different species of bees even though the bush seemed very busy and quite noisy from the buzzing of a wide variety of very different bees.

Even though the bees all seemed to be competing for the same resource (nectar) of the flowers there seemed to be a polite order to their harvest efforts. I considered what I had learned in school about the importance of survival of the fittest and the competition for limited resources among animals and felt entirely confused after watching the bees work their way through the garden's sweet summer flowers. Then I remembered how our fine human brains always found clever ways to explain the success of an animal's strategy to survive as a species. Sometimes it is uncomfortable to believe what we see rather than to embrace the models that have been handed down to us through generations of teachers. Each of us encouraged to use our minds to defend or elaborate on a pre-existing theory that was never ours to start with.

Chester and Pigs

Chester

Chester is a good dog. He was brought into the family when I was divorced. The thought that opened me to a puppy joining my family was so the 3 boys could experience the unconditional love of a dog. I thought this was important because our family was dissolving (as so many have). As a lab, Chester was big enough to play equally with the boys and would easily learn to swim and could suffer wearing a baseball hat and a t-shirt or survive a wrestling match with the boys. As a fisheries biologist, I needed a dog that would be able to swim and follow me through the bush. Chester proved to be very sensitive and learned subtle things very quickly and easily it seemed. Many things he did were just what I wanted but I still have no idea how he came to incorporate them into his life. He always pooped in the bushes where I couldn’t pick it up. He never crossed a stream before I told him he could. He never chased birds or disturbed wildlife. That meant he could join me at the office and in my field work.

He has many friends here at the office and at the nearby river park. On the weekends he enjoys watching me in the garden and has always enjoys wilderness hikes with the boys. He never needed a bath as he swam in a crystal clean lake, never needed his nails clipped as he fetched the ball in the parking lot and wore them down there as well as digging on the beach. He has only been to the Vet twice. A good dog.

Now he is getting old (14) but he remains happy in his life. He loves the boys and has become a part of me. A life well lived! In common with older people he likes predictability, safety and regular schedules – not to mention warmth and comfort.

We can learn a lot of things from dogs.

Pigs

Someone told me once (and it stuck with me even though I can’t remember who it was that told me) that: ”Raising Kids is like herding Pigs with your hands behind your back”  Now, I remember this instruction because once I had to herd young pigs into the back of a pickup truck when I was a healthy, strong 19.  Boy was it hard to get those pigs to do what I wanted them to do.  The reason I was asked to get a couple of the pigs into the back of the pick-up was to provide them to the local Ashcroft Rodeo for the kids greased pig contest.  Remember that this is long ago when man thought he was more important than other animals in the world.  Well, by the time I was getting close to even touching a pig my jeans were ripped in the crotch and I was sweating in the middle of what later seemed like playing a racketball game to me.  All puffed out, after 40 minutes, I stood in the empty feed (slop) trough to catch my breath and rest while all the 9 piglets surprisingly came over and tried to munch my boots.  Then the Dutch housekeeper came out of the house (probably after she and all the rest of the household regained a straight face from watching through hidden windows my efforts to herd a couple of pigs into the pick-up) – she said to me ‘those pigs are afraid of the dogs so why don’t you use one of them?’.  I carefully lifted ‘Jake’ – the old toothless bulldog into the pig’s 20 foot corral – and put an old grey board up to the back of the pick-up.  Well, Jake was happy to be given permission to chase pigs.  Within 1 minute, all 9 of the pigs were in the pick-up and my problem became how to put 7 of them back in the corral.  So I got one of the other farm hands to help me.  I removed Jake from the corral and stood in the slop trough.  The pigs filed out from the back of the protection of the pick-up one-by-one to see what was offered in the slop trough and the other farm hand closed the tailgate when 2 were left.

Well, the piglets were donated to the rodeo and all greased up for the Kids to try and catch.  I heard that the pigs just stood there in the center of the rodeo ring in a sort of exhausted manner while all the kids rushed to catch them and piled on top of them. 

So I remember the hard work and the impossibility of the task to herd pigs by running and flailing my arms.  So I will always remember that saying as true for me.  If I can’t herd pigs with my arms flailing – how can I possibly herd them with my hands behind my back? – using the dog was just luck

I will always honour pigs for showing me the importance of struggling for life.

Oceans

                                                                                Google Image

 http://www.ted.com/talks/sylvia_earle_s_ted_prize_wish_to_protect_our_oceans.html

I do communicate with Silvia Earle on occasion. I agree with her view as you will notice by listening to her speak. She says so many things that I have said before but she speaks with greater clarity and grand authority. Many of the same observations have floated by both of us over the years and, much like barnacles, they have attached themselves to our awareness. I am fascinated and excited but at the same time quite intimidated to process the reality that we know more at this moment about the Dark Side of the Moon than we do about the depths of our planet's oceans.

The "High Seas" average some 400 meters in depth and comprises nearly 40% of the global surface and remain the blue and beating heart of this planet (as explained by Sylvia Earle). The High Seas include the Sargasso Sea, Antarctic waters, North Polar seas and many other watery features. Less than 0.6 - 0.8 % of the high seas are presently protected and no international legislation or jurisdiction really controls them or their use. We strive to protect our own heart much more than we seek to protect the High Seas that serve as the beating heart of our planet.

Only 2 people have visited the 7 mile depths of the Mariana Trench since 1950 - fewer than the number of humans who have visited the moon and yet we continue to harvest thousands of tons of biomass from our oceans each year for the food we consume and we throw hundreds of thousands of tons(more than humans eat) of dead unusable catch back into the same seas. This is clearly one of the largest unsustainable practices that has ever been served by the ignorance or greed or need of humans. We hardly speak about it because we can't really properly define the ocean's problem and certainly can't find any handles to grip the problem with.

Plant matter from the Sargasso Sea is presently harvested to feed Cattle. This practice is harmful but it does remove a small portion of the floating plastic from the Ocean's water. It is only one of the ignored truths of our unkind treatment of this place we live in. The eels that spawn there are disappearing. Tuna are still killed with dolphins as a bi-catch. Whales and sharks are in trouble and we continue to ignore the noise of this problem. Sea turtles and flying fish also depend on the Sargasso Sea and they are being dramatically affected by today's changes that are occurring there.

The effects of global warming will undoubtedly define themselves clearly through their impacts on the plants and animals of the oceans in ways we can hardly imagine at this moment. But these negative changes will come unless we seize the opportunity we have over the next 10 years to alter the unfortunate course of the ship we all travel on. The loss of species and community structure within the world's oceans will be a tragic way to learn about the values of these resources to man and every other species and community that inhabits the planet.

Of course not all human news is bad but this does call out for our attention. We will all eventually learn the value of our place among a diversity of life and I hope so much that it will not be through the loss of fish from our Oceans.

Loyalty and Attachment

 Loyalty can serve many masters but one in particular interests me.   For some reason that isn’t fully clear to me, I am interested in understanding how Loyalty serves Attachment.  Dogs and Humans come to mind as both can be loyal and both can experience strong attachments in their own way.  I know a bit about dogs and humans from having lived in this life so my thoughts wander in the following fashion.

One of the bottomless pains of being human is the inevitable severing of an attachment.  One of the unimaginable pains of being a dog must also be the loss of an attachment.  I have watched dogs drag along or deteriorate rapidly after loosing their master friend.  I believe that the life force inhabiting a human is virtually the same as the life force that learns to live in a dog’s body but both Loyalties and Attachments are different in the two species.  Dogs and humans have such very different bodies, minds and senses to create, interact and communicate with.  Again, dogs and humans are so very different in their physical forms, senses, habits and natural life-spans that they are bound to experience loyalty and attachment very differently from each other even though the force of life may be essentially the same within them.  The ultimate attachment that is developed through our life experiences (as a human, at least) is probably to our own body and our own mind as they blindly play out their role in molding our sense of self.

A Dog or a Human, (or any other species for that matter) likely identifies with a ’self’ to some degree and may even experience a powerful attachment to that notion or image of ‘self’.  I am concerned that if we are not attached to an image of body and mind we may cease to exist within this physical plane and our ability to gain wisdom through personal knowing and experience would be cut short or lost entirely.  However, this notion may not be valid at all and in truth it may simply be a stage of learning that I am passing through on a path toward gaining wisdom.  Without wisdom or experience we often need to rely on others and behave like a following sheep in an ocean of souls.  This state of relying on, or blindly following others, can further remove us from our real and natural attachment to universal knowledge which is truly available to all of us.

Less intense attachments for us may lie beside or beneath our notion of self and may occur among both men and dogs (and many other living things).  By 'less intense' or ‘more loose’ I mean a lesser or shallower attachment that may be useful or even critical for us to practice letting go of - while holding fast to our love or respect for the object that we are releasing.  For humans, these secondary but important attachments are often linear and familial.  Specifically, we (as humans) are at some point most strongly attached to the notion of our 'self' and are perhaps less attached to our parents and our children and our grandchildren or our life partner and our close friends.  An important thing to learn is that these attachments occur even when we try to avoid them.  More accurately, it is often the pain of severing an attachment that we are trying to avoid.  It is important to know that attachments cannot be avoided or mitigated by shallowing an emotional involvement.  It is a part of the experience of being human that is supported by our biology and our ecology and a closeness to others over time can cause strong bonds to be forged.  It seems true that most of us spend some time with a deeper emotional commitment to our selves than to any other living force.  It is no surprise to me that our attachment to the notion or sensation of ‘self’ may be our ultimate attachment and eventually the hardest one for some of us to let go of.

Dogs do not usually exhibit the same familial attachments as humans but instead may develop attachments to the primary one who feeds and houses them.  Parents and offspring (puppies) can be relatively painlessly removed from a dog’s world and dogs really don’t have persistent partners to be drawn away from.  But it still seems clear to me that strong attachments exists in the world of dogs as they do in the world of humans.  Attachments are, however, very likely colored differently for dogs and for humans.  While, attachment is generally linear and familial for humans it may be more practical and survival oriented for dogs as they come to rely increasingly on the food and dwellings and company that are provided for them by one human or a family of humans..  The severing of attachments for both dogs and humans can be very traumatic and may precipitate the emotional equivalent of a fracturing earthquake for any individual of a species that experiences attachment.

All humans can experience a sense of belonging – but what do we belong to?  Maybe life only belongs to life itself and our notion of ‘self’ along with our identification or attachment to it is ultimately the most deeply painful attachment and may be the most important attachment of all to break free from.  I can not think of any place for the ego to survive intact when that attachment is broken.

Loyalty may serve to protect humans (and perhaps dogs or other species) too from the perceived unbearable pain that we might believe lies beyond a severed attachment.  It is likely that humans will experience the loss of children or partners or parents over their lifetimes.  However, it is well within the reach of human experience for individuals to loose children and partners and parents and close friends all within one lifetime.  Dogs experience severed attachments through the loss of close friends and feeders and handlers too.  Broken attachments can introduce us to feelings of grief or loneliness or isolation.  Our loyalties whether as a dogs or a human can either hold relationships together beyond their good health or can be transferred to others or can be held even beyond the survival of the object of attachment.  Eventually, we may all come to know or to accept that all things which come to us from the outside will pass by and leave us as empty (or as full) as when they first arrived.  It is common to try and avoid pain or grief that may accompany and follow the breaking of an attachment, even though, the passing by of external things is a truth that may eventually free us as dogs or as humans - as it did Buddha.

My mind has often presented a threat of an unpleasant, solitary, black, emptiness as the reality I will experience if I should dare to cast my attachments to the side.  At such moments it seems to me that my own ego is threatening me with the death it fears for itself if I ever put my loyalties elsewhere.  I believe that these experiences are fundamental and important aspects of life’s fabric.  Once we can stand apart from our attachments – we  can gain from higher and richer view points of life’s miracle.

So Celebrate Attachment and Loyalty for the rich experiences they bring us - especially when we need them - and celebrate every moment of overcoming any fear or finally seeing through an untruth.  These moments are as important as birthdays and are among the most difficult steps along every pathway toward growth and freedom.

A Gossip of Leaves

 

A gossip of leaves circles tight and crisp under the apple tree in my back yard.  They rise and fall with the wind.  Fall has already arrived from summer’s dream and is settling in to the land.  I wonder what stories the leaves are drawn to tell each other where the flowers bloomed so richly.  I wonder which leaves will be flowers and which ones will be dogs or humans.  Some will probably be leaves again to teach the others what they need to know above the weeds we will pull forever and the flowers we water when dry or the lawns we mow for others to see.  A lot of time was stolen from life to feed our false egos.  I think of the grass where my children ran chasing their own bright loves through the world that they dreamed.  I remember the soft earth that our dog warmed as he slept under summer’s blanket after chasing a yellow ball, digging in grey sand and jumping with children’s excitement.

A leaf that must have watched me while working in last summer’s sun settled with its color on an empty green chair under a backyard pear tree.  I found my own rich moments lying on that lounge last summer in the sun and remember feeling the gentle intimacy of breeze caress the hair on my arms and awaken my full awareness.  I knew the richness of those brief moments when they were here - and I treasure them now as I did then.  I want to wade into those moments again.  I want to be deeply and unknowingly aware again.

But time and life change and move.  Now, I no longer live in the old sandy yellow home I built for our family.  Our dog has put white hair around his face and my children are growing up while my outward body has let go of youth.  I still look for the same thing I always looked for – to be happy.  To be heard and felt.  To be loved.  I hope that I touched my children in this life.  I hope I touched my dog and I hope I touch my friends.  I have been blessed by the miracle of life – even in those moments that seemed so unbearably hard.  I still don’t know what it is all about…

Wind Storm

The wind was in such a hurry today. Everything was in its way. There was a sense of urgency in the air. Green leaves were stripped from their branches before their time and brown leaves, wet and well settled on the ground, were picked up and sent higher than some of the trees they came from.

I looked where the wind was coming from and I looked to where it was going. It was either fleeing from a predator I could not sense or it was rushing toward a closing door I could not see.  The world was in the wind’s way and cottonwood trees were straining to hold their ground where they stood - to withstand the windstorm’s haste. I asked the wind ‘what was it running from and where was it going?’ but there was too much noise tangled in its coat tails for it to hear me and it was too focused on its own needs to notice me. Everything was on its own in the middle of that wind-storm.

Looking at the sky, from inside, through a Southeast window in this creaking house I can now see the dark colored swabs of cotton in shapes of insects and monsters chasing the wind from their magical sky. I am pretty sure that the storm wouldn’t have been so bad if the wind hadn’t become so frightened that it panicked in-front of the clouds. Oh well, there is no real damage done and the wind will come back one day. Although, I never know what direction it will return from. Everything seems so still and so quiet now that the wind has gone.

Healing

I have been a soother for many years and I have always left healing to others. The others are those who have taken specialized courses or training to inform their natural inclination to place healing hands onto the suffering bodies of others. Some people are just naturally comfortable as healers and are healers even if they never were trained that way. As a soother, I have always acknowledged that true healing comes as a gift from the pure heart of love within the divine or from somewhere sacred within the universe. Soothing offers gentle comfort to those who seek healing from the divine. Healing never really did originate in the people I knew but it often did flow through them – as if they were a lens. So I want to say in this moment that healing is a beautiful and important act. I acknowledge that I am willing to allow healing to flow both ways through me and that soothing will always be known to me and others in all cases where we are the only plank present in what could be the blessing of healing. I have written to describe my rough-edged and unpracticed beliefs about healing below and it is my intention to approach participating in the process of healing from now on. Healing is a sacred process that has kept me at arms length and frightened in some way for so many years. I don’t know why I believed it lay so far beyond me when I was truly born into the very center of it.

Healing may be one of the most important experiences we can have in a lifetime. The healing process is fully attached to ascending life and is inseparable from it. Healing has always been a defining force of nature and continues to play its role in sustaining the universe which, I believe, will always remain bathed in unpredictable change. Healing may even be a central process that continually facilitates and balances evolution and change within ourselves, on our planet, throughout our solar system and possibly across the universe. Healing may always remain a powerful and invisible force that is known intimately to the divine but is so often overlooked and misunderstood by those of us who strive blindly for betterment under the lonely human clouds of time and isolation.

Healing draws two parts into its make-up and relies on both a healer and on one who suffers from illness to come together fully in trust. The seeming contrast of healer and ill-person may emerge to meet and combine from two separate entities or may join hands from within a single soul. The process of healing can arise and occur in any direction between two animals or two humans or a human and an animal or even between a landscape and a soul. Sometimes, many souls can be drawn into a healing at the same time. The two simple and fundamental ingredients of every true healing are love and forgiveness. No substitutes for these two authentic ingredients ever seems to work.

True and selfless Love is simple and proud forever and is always ready to carry the weightless magic of healing. Forgiveness invites openness and can expose the imbalance and suffering that illness inevitably flowers into. Forgiveness draws its supple but unbending power from compassion and is unable to be silenced and never bleeds shame. Both love and forgiveness need to be fully present for the process of healing to ignite. Unselfish love swims with us into an ocean of wholeness filled with freedom and joy while forgiveness enables an infinite vision of knowing in the one who suffers. This vision allows free entry into the past, the present and the future as it has been, as it is and as it will be skewed by illness. When an impediment is seen and released with compassion then freedom is experienced and healing has occurred. True or authentic healing can never be forced by giving or taking but only occurs when truth and a deep agreement exist together. The agreement is a perfect fit like two pieces of a puzzle that joins the perfect and powerful friendship between love and forgiveness seamlessly together. Wholeness is offered through love and compassion while forgiveness allows old beliefs to be replaced with new life.

It is odd but common for one who suffers from illness to fail to see in their own self something that often stands so obvious to others. Sometimes, it is as if one person for some uncertain reason has two noses on their face. The two noses are plain for others to see but remain ‘invisible’ to the one that carries them. In this way, illness can sit like an elephant in the middle of a living room conversation taking up a lot of space and crushing the furniture but still, no one ever asks why it is there. In any moment when love and forgiveness are present together the magic of healing can ignite to give birth to a new and healthy world. The miracle of a single healing can touch several generations behind a soul at the same time as it will smile on generations yet to come. All this can happen in a single instant.

Although, the magic of healing seems to reside in that timeless place we left behind, we do bump into it every now and then as we make our way through life. Healing is a simple and stable force of nature that can be experienced as a joyful moment of being able to see behind the drape of this world into something larger. It is also a sharing of ‘oneness’ between immortal souls and welcoming the grace that can flood into our earthly lives. In this way, healing can be a process that shines light on freedom and immortality at the same time. To participate in the lightening strike of healing is to gain true knowledge through the deepest blessing of a lesson. There is no evil and nobody looses in such a moment. Even the illness that we sometimes mistake for ‘bad’ eventually leads us to experience the blessings of love and forgiveness and to know infinite wholeness for at least one moment as we continue on our journey home and toward the divine that we carry within us. Both the healer and the healed can in that shared moment of oneness feel the energy of all creation flow through them as they float weightless toward their own new birth into freedom and peace without judgment.

For the most part western medicine is based in chemistry while Eastern medicine is based in energy but they are both just tools to be placed in the hands of loving healers. Some people know both. The point is that our presence and our authentic feelings are the real tools that we bring to the healing process and our ego really has no meaningful place within the true healing process. The mind is, however, well placed to learn about the pills and energies or the practices and procedures that can facilitate healing. In the end, and by that I mean at the end of this life, our soul will carry our experiences of healing with us forever while our mind may lay down all that it has observed and all it has picked up and all of the beliefs it has carried during a challenging time here.

Let us all know the blessing of healing as we come to need it and as we come to offer it.

Love John

Deer

I parked my car and returned to the garden that was calling me and only to me for help. On my early morning drive home with supplies I passed two deer on the side of the road. I slowed right down and we looked into each others eyes as I passed by, confirming our shared life together in this place and the safety of their bodies in my neighbourhood. They returned to their munching and ground work when I passed by.  I didn’t think of them beyond the pleasant surprise of our encounter but did carry the beauty of their life-filled eyes and the clean smooth warmth of their bodies with me into the day as a silent thanks to life.

After working for a while in my garden I looked up quickly for some urgent but unknown reason to see the same two deer bounding at full speed up the street toward me. They must have cleared fences and hedges on their low straight flight toward me.  The force and beauty of their movement held my deepest attention and wonder. Despite the deers’ speed and the fantastic height of their bounce there seemed to be moments of stillness in their stride. In particular, the stillness in their bound seemed to be a place of intuition; a place where decisions of direction and survival were made and changed without thought.

 

I never knew what fearful thing pursued them across yards and up the street behind them and whether or not it was real or imagined and if it were real - when it was left behind. I did identify with them and remembered fleeing as a young child, when I strove to outrun my own imagination, leaving our family’s basement in darkness behind the lightening fast click of a light switch and the breathless clack of a basement door-lock. I will never know what ghosts lived in that old basement as my back was always turned to its vastness when I ran up the stairs to the safety of a higher level and my own kind.

The two deer passed me in my lower garden on a bound with their heads 3 feet higher than mine – one on each side of me at full speed. For a moment I feared they were tethered or that the slightest confusion between them would leave me flat, run over and bleeding.  These two deer had looked so vulnerable to me before when I was driving by in my car. Now it was my turn to feel vulnerable.  I never did see anything behind them as they approached but I saw their eyes looking into me as they raced against their own fearful need to escape.  But underneath that surface of fear was the same connection between lives that I had shared with them earlier in the morning. They left me alone in that instant with my own wide eyes and a fast pounding heart but in that moment I clearly knew the difference between our living body and our being.

The experience of my own vulnerability sticks somewhere deeply submerged inside of me but in that moment it moved toward the surface. I have never seen the front end of a fleeing deer before and I will never forget it. It is so very different from their back end that I am more familiar with.

Moments Beyond Self

When we think back to moments of absolute joy.  When we remember instants of profound knowing.  When we stood outside of time and were able to see and understand clearly, ourselves and others.  During those moments compassion was always as just as deep as it needed to be in order to float any shortcoming (ours or others) on a deeper ever-present sea of truth and gratitude.  That simple place - where the love we give is exactly the love we feel.  I don't even remember being caught up in the notion that I was a human at those moments.  In fact, it is like there was always something missing or absent at those times.  Our own identity (the image of self) or one we identify with was not there in that moment at the center of the stage.

Our sense of self – (the one who we think we are) was not in the way – sometimes it wasn’t even on the stage at all.  A restroom break or a brief holiday or maybe even an accidental and short term death kept our sense of a self from standing at the centre of our stage.  Sometimes, a moment is just so very important to us that we choose to set aside our self-image.  In that flowing moment of freedom we hold an open pass to all of the love and all of the wisdom and all of the knowledge that has ever existed.  There is nothing to block our access to it.  There is also nothing that we need to protect from pain or rejection or abandonment or even the embarrassment we might fear.  It never takes a long time for that moment to pass but it also never takes any time at all to know that the heart of life itself, beats for us with joy and without hesitation during any moments we need it – during any moment we invite it.  During those instants in our life when we find the courage to set aside who we imagine we are, or who we want others to think we are, or (basically) who we identify with – we find that we can just simply ‘be’.  The incredible thing to notice is that fear doesn’t even exist when the miracle of courage and knowing is so easily uncovered in us and so easily becomes a part of our presence.  Life loves life – wholeheartedly - in a new and different way in every moment and the true nature that we feel and share with the universe is filled to the brim with love and compassion. 

Harbour Seals

Harbour Seal pup  (flickr.com photograph)

I know a little bit about seals so:

Let me tell you a story.  Every animal, every plant, every cloud, every sunny day and every person is unique.  You also know that Life tattoos a story we can feel - deep into our perceptions of this place and that our past colors how we see and experience everything that is around us.  So all I can tell you is my story and all you can hear is yours.   But somehow it is still worthwhile for both of us to speak, to listen and to share as it distracts our minds from everything that they can see and allows us to sense something beneath the words that touches our hearts and connects our souls.  That is the seed in the middle of the fruit, or I could say, and that is the intention in the middle of the miracle.

 Harbour Seal (Phoca vitulina)

I worked at the aquarium when I was in university.  One of the things that used to happen every summer back then and still happens now is the annual appearance of solitary seal pups that need care and attention to survive their earliest glimpse of the world.  The gestation period for a common harbour seal is about 9 months and new-born seal pups stay with their mothers for a few months after that.  Shortly after giving birth to a single pup during late June to July harbour seals, including pups, remain on land through much of the process of molting.  This means that during the near post-partum period, females commonly leave their young pups on sandy beaches, while they hunt and forage.  They swim deep and long and hard through the sea seeking, pursuing and eating much of the food that their body needs in order to recover from birthing and to provide nutrition for themselves and their pup over the coming six weeks or so.  This intense feeding lays the foundation for blubber storage, fur replacement and milk production that will challenge their physical resources over many summer weeks.

A seals sensible act of leaving young pups on a sandy beach has proven to be unfortunate for many pups and their mothers over the years.  That is where the aquarium so often comes in.  Seal pups have oversized, wet-black, liquid eyes and skin-clean nostrils that close tight with black membranes together or alone.  Their “arms” and “legs” seem too short for our notion of a baby and the way they move and lie beached on their belly just in front of a rising tide makes an irresistible call toward our wish to help.  It is a physical trap for seals and an emotional trap for humans.  Seals need to be with their mothers and helping humans have no intention ever to harm or steal a pup.  So many ‘abandoned’ pups need help every year.  If they are left alone and unmarked by human scent a seal pup will likely be joined by its mother in a few hours.

Female seals and their pups will rejoin their colony together when the time is right.  It is no one’s fault really but many of the cute seal pups at the aquarium have been abducted rather than abandoned.  Most of us have experienced the panic of loosing a pet or something precious to us and even our own child for a moment, or a while, or forever?   I wonder how it feels for a mother seal to return to the silent memory of a pup she left on the beach hours ago.  It is so sad for me to know that for so many creatures the heartbeat of a mother and the scents of her new born are torn apart before the living tissue of independence begins to form between them.  I know that there can be a thousand reasons for early separation but none of them bring comfort to a vulnerable soul.

At the aquarium, we learned to tube feed older pups and those pups that just wouldn’t suckle.  The mixture depended on the age of the pup and I am sure that 40 years have brought many changes to the practice of feeding an orphaned seal.  Mostly we would add oil, protein, water, vitamins and sometimes antibiotics to finely blended herring.  A tube was carefully fed down a nostril a measured distance.  Then we would listen at the end of the tube to hear breathing sounds or stomach sounds.  That would tell us if the tube was down the trachea or the esophagus.  We were seldom really sure but very seldom made a fatal mistake.  Then we squeezed a rubber ball of our best-guess mixture down the tube and into the stomach of the baby seal.  Seals are hardy and most survived.  Some were released back to the wild and some stayed as display guests at the aquarium.

Seals seem hard wired to know how to take a herring head first and to snort and cough loose scales away when they grow up.  But no matter how young they came to us they seldom found any comfort with trainers or feeders as the years went by.  Many of the seals I came to know over the years I worked with them reminded me somehow of dogs that bite or nip in fear.  They did not like to be touched or patted and they could withdraw and extend their heads to inspect or bite with sharp teeth instantly and effectively.  I always respected them more than they let me like them.  I remember their lips, their cheeks, their whiskers beneath their large black liquid eyes and behind their strong fishy breath and their bodies are made to swim in cold water.

I truly know what it is to be taken from a mother before the miracle of healing their separation can occur.  As with many wounds, it may never really heal perfectly smooth, although, we do grow up and forgiveness can breathe life back into nearly anything.   One thing that I have learned to be in this life is a soother rather than a healer and that is probably one reason that this story is told the way it is

So I would be happy if someone told me:

If you ever see a young seal on the beach in June or July – don’t touch it or take it away without waiting a good while for its mother to return.  Watch from a distance and give it the room it needs to feel safe in the world.  If its mother has died or been killed then the little one can be rescued.  The word rescue is the key.  Sometimes it is very hard for a healer to watch.  You can learn to help and to take good care of these animals at the aquarium – even if you do not share the sentiments of other workers there.  I strongly believe that the relationship between a human and an animal is sacred and untouchable by others.

May everything that comes to life be blessed with knowing the feeling of joy…  I remember meeting an adult harbour Seal once in the wild at Galiano on an underwater reef in front of my parent’s home while SCUBA diving many years ago...  But that is another story. 

Harbour Seal Pup and Mother  (Garry McCarthy photograph, 2007)