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)

Driving Dogs

I remember 2 large dogs that were sitting in the front seat of an old car in the parking lot at the Hummingbird Pub on Galiano Island BC. The 2 dogs that were sitting in the front bucket seats of that old car looked just like humans. They were sitting up straight like detectives on a stakeout and in perfect disguise. Their heads had long pointy noses and ears and their necks looked very long ... but their eyes took in everything - without judgement and without surprise. The experience pierced and exploded my vision of being gifted to be human. Those dogs seemed to have it all under control and I would have chosen them both as twin friends. They were probably just checking out the place or maybe waiting to pick up a fare at the Hummingbird.


The dogs were white in color and may have been King Corsos but they looked very much like white versions of 'Prospero' - the Black Dog in the photographs that you forwarded. I never had the feeling that they were concerned to be in the car because they were so calm and so interested in what was going on around them. The windows were done up on the car and as Roger and I approached for our evening meal both the dogs tracked us by simply turning their heads toward us in perfect unison. I felt naked in that moment and was fully aware that there was no room for anything but truth in the world as we passed by the silent dogs.


Except for the black color of Prospero and the right hand drive vehicle he was sitting in the two white dogs in the left hand drive car that Roger and I saw could have come from the same spy school training program. I am almost sure those two white dogs had drivers licenses and they certainly had us pegged for who we were. I never felt that those animals were anything but happy and engaged in the life that they had imagined and found. The dogs and their car were gone by the time Roger and I finished our dinner and exited the pub. Neither Roger nor I have ever forgotten those two mysterious dogs over the past 10 years.

Giant Pacific Octopus

The first octopus that I handled lived in the ocean about 7 miles north of Horseshoe Bay BC.  My old green 67 firebird was only about 4 years old at that time and I left it up near the top of the hill.  With its overpowered engine and light rear end - it could never hope to reach the bottom of the hill and return.  So we had to carry our heavy diving equipment over the railway tracks and all the way down to the ocean’s edge.  I was working for the Aquarium then and I enjoyed my work of exploring and understanding the underwater world before us.  I put all my SCUBA gear on making sure that my air was open and turned on.  There was just my mask to spit in, smear and fit on my hooded head so that condensation on the inside of the lens would not impair my vision.  It was warm outside and the gear was heavy so I stepped into the Ocean and merged with it as it began to find the open seams of my ‘farmer john’ wet suit.  I stood chest deep in the ocean at the base of a steep talus slope that ran from the rail tracks 200 m down to the ocean where I stood.

I looked down through my mask and Watched part of the seabed move.  I was surprised to see an octopus at my feet and, being the first in the water, I needed to prove an octopus was there in such shallow water.  I plastered the eight legged cephalopod onto my black neoprene chest and stood above the water to say 'hey look at this!'- Who needs to dive to see things here!  That was the first giant pacific octopus I had ever played with.

Later I learned that slurp guns and large syringes filled with chlorine were useful to tools to disgruntle, dislodge and urge octopus to change color and begin to move away.  I also found out that octopus can really only be handled if they are caught on the move because their suctioned hold is just too powerful to dislodge.  Their homes are usually quite far below low tide and are often marked by a pile of Dungeness crab parts – one of their favorite menu items.  If you can stir an octopus to move it can be easily bagged for live transport to the aquarium for holding or display.  Back then we used plastic garbage buckets with air stones bubbling to move them.  Now that I look back on that time I am glad that we were not looking for octopus to collect that day.  I so enjoy sharing with living things where ever they are – and then just to let them be.

The Wolf

                                                                                                                Google image - Wolf
In July, 1981, I slept on the banks of the Kitlope River. The river sand I slept on was 40 km upstream from the Gardiner Canal at the mouth of this ancient, natural watershed on the Central Coast of BC. I still remember that day clearly. I was far upstream on the Kitlope River in an 18' aluminum jet boat powered by twin 90 hp engines and carrying a full 45gal drum of fuel. The boat was heavy sitting in the water and it took a long time to get it on the step. We travelled upstream in the jet boat for several hours that day and penetrated well into an unseen and unfamiliar area of the river for us. I found myself in a large shallow (8" deep) side channel pond area that just offered no way out.


When a jet boat is on the plane it only draws a few inches of water but when it falls off the ‘step’ it draws about 20 inches. I lost the turn in a skid that grounded out as I was bringing the boat around to get back out into deeper water. The boat came off the step and stuck tight in the sand - like a hot match dropped onto cake icing. Not a flicker of hope to float. "Oh well, it is near mid-day, the warmth will melt the glacier in the headwaters and the stream will swell as it does every day. Then we can push it out the last 20 m or so of shallow water to the mainstem." The next time this hopefull thought finds my head another voice will knowingly add: "Sometimes it happens and sometimes not."


Our boat was sitting tight on the sand while we waited for the river to rise through the afternoon heat and softly float us back out into the mainstem. We waited but the river dropped more and more every hour. A headwater rain storm we never saw must have swollen the river in the early morning and granted us entry into the sandy side channel far beyond its normal hospitality. After we waited a while, it became clear that the daily rise and fall of this summer river wasn't going to float us out. We slept the night on the sandbar, in our waders. Two of us, a hundred miles from humans, under so many stars, in moist air.


In the early morning, the boat was still stranded. I don't know when it happened but sometime during the night a lone wolf silently visited us. We could tell that without any doubt. The unmistakable straight line track of a single wolf’s large paws paralleled river's margin until the point it reached us. Then, paw prints diverted to the impression of our bodies on the moist and wrinkled crush of sand where we had slept. We were sniffed with interest and then left alone in our sleep. I love the wolf and the way they forge straight lines across nature.

A Glacial River

                                                                                                                          Google image - Kitlope River back channel
A glacial river gives to my mind the picture of a strong muscled belly. One that moves in and out with the draw and push of steady breathing that rises and falls in a strong summer rhythm. A stream’s baseline rhythm is only broken by heavy rainfall events. Localized rainfall, upstream in the headwaters will swell the main stem while an overhead rain swells every little tributary nearby. In its soft summer rest, a river drops at night in the cool air and swells through a warm afternoon with cool green melt water. One needs to be aware of this pattern of rising and falling water - especially, when travelling by boat. It is one of those things that someone can warn you about but if the river ever catches you by surprise and takes your boat away or strands it high and dry in the wilderness, even just one time, then you will never, ever, loose this lesson.


Once you've figured out how to keep your boat safe and floating on the river while you are away from it exploring - then you might notice river's breath. A river breathes is downstream in the morning and upstream in the afternoon. Cool heavy air that slides off a glacier's back floods down the river's valley during the early morning. This is the pleasant morning "Out" breath. It creates a cool downstream breeze that carries the smell of bare rock and glacier dust just barely over the flow of cold, clear, green water. It breathes mist and dew onto the glass of a quiet morning dream. There are no bugs in the early morning air but fish hold in the clear morning water pointing with purpose into the current and unknowingly, into the valley’s wind.


The "In" breath changes everything. It draws the warm moist air from the estuary up the valley, changing the direction of the wind and carrying the rich summer smell of sun on marsh mixed with wet river silt. The kind of summer silt that sticks and stays slippery on the bottom of work boots and marks your clothes forever. Waves of insects fly and bite or nuisance in sequence as the valley warms. They come in waves, tied to loose schedules, first the deer flies, then black flies, then horse flies, mosquitoes and finally no-see-um's. Each species has enough time to be noticed and cursed. As the river breathes "in" this warm and scented air penetrates upstream and the river rises with melt water. Returning salmon begin to move up the swelling stream. Their nose into the current and the valley wind's steady watch at their back, never really makes their journey easier. I watch it all happen, just the way it is, trusting and certain in every moment, just like the belly of a sleeping dog. This harmony of nature touches something deep inside of me.

The Bear

The bear has always found me needing to notice it and offering my interest toward it. I have always lived under nature’s light and because of that have often met the bear. He is not, for the most part, what others have storied him to be. For most people, the bear is to be feared and can only smile with dangerous teeth and claws. The odd thing is that; for a meek and careful person I do not fear the bear any more than I fear myself. I respect him (or her) as a large, powerful and magnificent creature. However, in these present days there are many different circumstances of meeting a bear. 


The wild and natural bear expects to be admired and respected. They eat grass to distraction in the lowlands when they first wake and then move to higher elevations during the summer in search of berries and finally they settle in the lowlands where they store winter protein and fats that are brought to them by returning salmon. These bears have their own life and their own busy path to walk. They only ask for respect and space.


Garbage bears, however, know our smell and resent their dependence on us for food and sometimes for shelter near our neighborhoods. They have no choice but to trust us for their safety. They fear us and they need us. Like matches and gasoline those two things just don't ever find comfort with each other. Bears that live near people have seldom learned love from us... Draw care quickly from your mind when you meet these bears - because you never know what they see in your smile. You never know how they will answer your presence.

Killer Whale

Killer Whale
My earliest experiences with whales go back to the time when I was 4 or 5 years old and was sitting in an old reliable lapstrake (or clinker built) boat out on the ocean fishing for salmon with my mother and sometimes my brother. I remember the contented sound of the ocean waves against that hand built wooden hull. I remember all of the simple dreams that fueled the evening summer sun as it watched over us.

Occasionally, a pod of killer whales came through the area where our boat was. We pulled in our lines as the fishing was always over when such a thing happened. Even though fishing went flat, as salmon switched their minds instantly from predator to prey, the whales brought their own excitement and energy to the world we sat in. They seemed bigger than the life I knew but somehow seemed perfectly scaled and so naturally suited to the sea they lived in. When we returned to the land from fishing, people onshore always asked if we were frightened to have been among unconcerned whales on the open sea. It never occurred in my mind to be frightened of them. Being in the middle of the whales was always an exciting gift – a miracle in my life. It never never soared above the landscape of my mind that 10 years later I would become friends with just such a whale.

I remember the fishing clothes that my mother used to wear and the gentle summer that surrounded us in that place. That cranky, strong-willed single cylinder engine was always enough to get us where we needed to go – into the wind or into the sea or away from the storm or out from the middle of the whales. That engine was a good and dependable friend that always seemed unafraid. It is amazing for me to remember how happy I was and how unconcerned I was to just be there. Somewhere along the way I learned to worry about the engine and the boat and the waves and whales and the children in the boat.

Anyway, a good many things came to me from the universe that I first met in that summer boat. I have built boats, I am a fisheries biologist, I learned to dive in the ocean, I came to love the ocean. I was one of the first humans to approach with caring, a killer whale and one of the first humans to touch a living whale. Later I would learn that ‘Killer Whale’ was the English name for them but really; it was a mistranslation from the Scandinavian name for them that more accurately meant ‘blubber chopper’ or 'whale killer'. That made sense to me.

Transient Killer whales can hunt like wolves in a pack and are well organized and social in that activity. I have watched them pursue and take down Grey Whales in the wild. Two whales on each pectoral fin, two whales on the tail and the last whale casting his body over the larger whale’s blow hole. I have learned through these struggles that life's grip is just as strong in a krill as it is in a whale until the time comes to lay down its well used body. Life is powerful beyond our words.

For the most part; killer whales I have known are salmon eaters. Their mouth is so very sensitive – I have watched them in captivity come up under a duck in the whale pool and take the duck or seagull into their mouth and swim around the pool underwater two or three times before coming up to the surface to open their mouth and let the bird fly away – in what was probably a very scared and bewildered state. When I think about it now, they should not have 18 year olds training whales any more than 60 year olds should parent children. Sometimes the differences between generations can be larger than the differences between species. I see the whale differently now than I did as a child but its miracle remains unchanged.

Along with killer whales I also worked with pacific white-sided dolphins, narwhals, belugas, stellar sea lions, harbor seals, sea otters and other marine mammals at the Vancouver Aquarium in the 1970’s. I have lots of memories of the specific personalities of the many animals I worked with and shared myself with. Some of these animals I connected with even more closely than our family dog.

I never realized until this moment just how much has come to me from the time I spent sitting in that boat during long summer evenings. I am grateful that my mother did not teach me to fear those things that I have so come to love. All the things I wondered about All the questions that brushed close to my heart have come to be answered over time in my life. I still find new questions every day but one thing that I know to be true is that Dolphins are social animals – in such a more natural way than humans sometimes are.

Spider Web

Spider Web

Fall has sealed the ground with heavy morning dew. Leaves are changing their colors so the frost can find them in play. And, after a full summer of practice, spiders spin their webs with grandeur. Have you seen one? Big and perfect at this time of year - as if they were made just for display. These spiders and their webs make me think of confident, solitary fisherman with their well used nets - their boats hidden near shore. During the early fall, morning dew sometimes strings itself like pearls along the sticky strands of web - outlining and fouling these invisible traps. Just watch one for a while and you may find a complete world within it. There is enough truth near a web to keep a whole cycle of life turning through triumph and tragedy without effort.

Spiders construct with 2 types of threads. The first threads are structural and radiate out from a center. These are the thickest of a spider's strands and are stronger than steel for their size. These structural strands are not very elastic and not sticky at all. Then the fabric of the web itself is traced around and around the structural strands in an increasing circle with a sticky thin thread that is very elastic and functions to absorb energy with out breaking in a violent but small scale struggle. With a blade of grass you can call the spider out. Tickle a strand, as if you were a struggling insect - caught in the web... Watch for the spider to sense life's argument against death through a single tending foot on the web. If the struggle is scaled just right then the spider will rush toward its web's promise. If the web becomes aged or broken or fouled by morning dew, a spider may eat its own web and thus carry it away to spin and set out somewhere else - for although spiders have eight legs, they have no pockets in their pants.

Redwood Trees

I listened to David Whyte speak at Mt. Madonna in California. I love what I learned about redwood trees by watching them in the fog and soft air during the breaks we had. I like the way they stand so still in the quiet morning mist. I like the way that mist condenses on the leaves into large droplets that fall to the ground around the drip-line of the tree. I like the way that young redwoods spring up as shoots from the roots of the parent tree and form a perfect circle around it – right at the drip-line where the water, distilled from the mist, falls to the ground to nurture the new young shoots. One day the taller parent tree may be lost to lightening, disease or age and when it is taken back by the earth just a circle of trees will remain.  That is the origin of a grove.

It made me think of the questions that the workshop acknowledged. The questions that are rooted at our own edges of knowing and of comfort remind me of the circle of trees that establish around the parent tree – right where the edges of the tree that stands meets everything that the tree is not. One day the parent tree may be gone forever but genetically identical trees will remain firmly rooted at exactly the place where the parent tree's own raindrops imagined them. Just like one day we may stand in that place where our own important questions have already taken root.

September Morning

I don’t really remember my walk to the lake. I just remember the irritation of encountering unseen cobwebs on that early autumn morning – strong silken strands wrapping around my head and across my face all needing to be pulled away. Early September mornings are often like that at the beginning of a warm and dry day. Invisible cobwebs fastened between objects with care and designed to snare the last of summer’s insects. Part of life’s gravity is its need to survive winter’s night and to save the land from having to remember things like spiders from past years. Maybe the irritation was more the spiders’ at having lost their carefully crafted webs than it was mine at having to brush them away from my face. But some of summer’s last insects had unknowingly been given freedom for one more day of living by my passage along the path. I know that this season is busy for nature as she works thoughtlessly and automatically to create and rebalance and maintain the space for all life that can be accommodated and to open new opportunities for life that has the imagination and the will to experiment with its own survival.

It really doesn’t matter but the experience of walking through cobweb after cobweb dominated my walk to the lake that morning. Head down, shoulders scrunched-up and a walking stick raised ahead and in front of my face with all my attention focused on detecting strands of web across my face. Even that discomfort never kept me from arriving at the open margin of the lake. It just kept me from sensing the world beyond my own body. All this just made my arrival at the lake that much more special. This world has changed in 2 weeks. I am a lone human here today and that is different. The spiders have marked the trail with their webs so I can know that others have not come before me and I feel welcome here. Warmed by the sun and greeted by this natural place.


On arriving and standing still at the lake margin my head is freed to rise, my shoulders relax my bent arm drops from in front of my face and my attention is freed to take in this quiet morning scene. I notice the broad arrowhead of light floating weightlessly on the rippled surface of the lake. It extends from the water’s curved horizon in front of the mountains and tapers to an invisible point that seeks to speak with my heart. The light is like a floating shawl of sparkling diamonds shimmering with quiet excitement on the water surface. Just like the point on a compass - the light seems to follow me no matter where I move along the lake shore. The arrow-head of dancing light rests wide under the brilliant eastern sun and narrows to a simple and certain knowing right in front of my heart. It seems to know exactly where my heart is and I am certain that it would find me even if I turned away from the sun. I want to reach out to join it. It is such a simple thing to notice but there is much love in the world and so much beauty that rests calmly in this scene.


Looking across the lake I realize that I have been on the other side of those mountains before and so I know that the world’s beauty continues on and on beyond them – far past anything I have ever been able to imagine. The part of me that holds on to a sense of owning some aspect of my self is always frightened and a bit uncertain in the face of this infinite place. I am really no different than that branch on that arbutus tree up there above me. It reaches into the sky to find in every moment just the place at its very edge that it needs to be and in that instant knows where it must go next. Failing to heed that knowing could bring the end of its living. I am not really different from that branch growing with the tree – I am just where I need to be at this moment and I am listening to understand where I must go next. We need to feel excited with the taking of a step rather than hesitant to leave where we once stood. There is so much birthing and so much dying in a life and yet we still think of lines instead of circles. Perhaps that is what happens when we never get a glimpse of what may lay beyond our horizon.


I wonder what would happen to my experience of this place if I opened completely to the full depth of love that surrounds me without fearing for its loss. Standing on the ground in this place helps me remember that I do miss those I loved who left - but sadness is full compared to emptyness and it owns its own beauty like the shadows between dappled light that finds its way through lightly dancing leaves under a warm autumn sun. Everything seems to change when I hold a lens of gratitude in front of my heart. Everything passes from us and I was lucky to know them while they were here. So I offer this moment in my heart and instantly, I am less alone than I was a moment ago. Love is a bit like the sun's light and must be always there even when it hides behind a cloud or is away from a neighborhood on its regular mission half way round the world.


Light is as invisible as a vacuum to our eyes. It is able to pass right by with out noticing and without being noticed. Only if an object interrupts its path can it be ‘seen’. It seems the same for so many feelings - they are infinite and unsatisfied until they meet a surface to interact with.

There is beauty in this place and knowing that there is also beauty beyond its horizon of mountains puts me into ease. My walk back from the lake’s shore will be easy as all the strands are broken and all the voices quieted. My body is warmed by the sun and my spirit loostened by belonging.  The spiraling color of a big maple leaf marks the coming of fall and invites me forward to smell wisps of wood smoke tangled between trees by my house.

October Lake

I went back to Ruby Lake over the thanksgiving weekend with my boys, Ben and Will. The spiders and their webs that had held the forest in their strands two weeks ago were all gone. The webs had been eaten by their spiders and carried off into hiding for the winter. The weather has turned toward cool and the lake did not even try to make us think of swimming. Chester alone was anxious to send waves across the smooth skin of the lake as he pushed on for his ball. Just like last month, there were no people at the lake. The water level seemed the same but the world around the lake had changed.

As I watched Chester swim for his ball, I noticed that the waves he made with his body were so different from a boat. His wake was not smooth – the up and down straining of his head; the beating of his heart and the pulling of his front legs interrupted the smoothness of the ‘V’ shaped lines along his wake while the push of his hind legs under the water left concentric arcs that slowly expanded, retreated and diminished behind him as he swam toward his ball that drew him far into the lake.

There were no spiders to be found; the wasps that had so bravely buzzed me two weeks ago were no longer flying and richer colors had been pressed into the dry autumn leaves that smoldered abandoned on their branches. I noticed that in isolation from the world around them the water and the sky seemed unchanged. The first few pages of this autumn’s arrival have already been written, read, closed forever behind a bookmark of time and then set down on the forest floor like a memory resting on the shore of a watchful caretaker. Summer and early fall has ended and a new sleepier season has begun.

Mushrooms and toadstools were silently massed into groups or stood solitary on the forest floor. I wondered if they considered themselves lucky to have a large maple leaf land on top of them and cover them where they stood. When I noticed the mushrooms it reminded me that even after a tree dies it is still important to the forest as it circles back into life. Mushrooms appear for a short time in October and then shyly retreat back into the ground where they remain invisible to us until their time comes round again. I don’t pick mushrooms I just like looking at them. Besides, mushroom mistakes can be big ones. It has always been in my nature to expand successful experiments right to their limits – till something almost breaks…. like canoeing a river and continually seeking the faster waters until an error declares my limit and leaves me wet. It is one way that I learn but somehow I know that is no way to approach mushrooms.

I am reminded that my life is in constant change and transition just like the forest I walk in. The mushrooms made me feel a bit uncomfortable at first as if I was being given a warning that I must open to the new world around me soon and awaken to it or fall lifeless on the forest floor to rot. I am anxious to live more and learn more with the time I have here. I honor the process of death and rebirth in the forest and become clear about where I am now in my own circle of life. It seems wonderful that I just come to the lake to enjoy being here yet it always seems to be waiting with the gift of a new lesson to surprise me.

After being at the lake today I stopped by the plant nursery on my way home with Ben and Will and bought a variety of bulbs to plant in my garden. I invited their flowers to greet us in the spring as I placed them into the soil. I will remember how it felt to hold their dried and hardened kernel in my hand when I planted them in rich soil. I want to be there in the spring to welcome them and to enjoy them and to know that my hand touched them just as I will be touched by their emergence. I am ready to arrive into this new season.

Living

..."We sat on a crate of oranges and thought what good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world--temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Once in a while one comes on the other kind--what used in the university to be called a "dry-ball"--but such men are not really biologists. They are the embalmers of the field, the picklers who see only the preserved form of life without any of its principle. Out of their own crusted minds they create a world wrinkled with formaldehyde. The true biologist deals with life, with teeming boisterous life, and learns something from it, learns that the first rule of life is living. The dry-balls cannot possibly learn a thing every starfish knows in the core of his soul and in the vesicles between his rays. He must, so know the starfish and the student biologist, who sits at the feet of living things, proliferate in all directions. Having certain tendencies, he must move along their lines to the limit of their potentialities..."

Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez, 1951

I have practiced biology for years and still deeply enjoy this passage. It leaves us longing for our passion to run with the ideals of our youth - wholeheartedly into our own grown up reality. I remember when I first held these dreams like a new lover and when my personality, my being and this profession first met and began courting. I look at life and biology now from a point well along the path I chose and am happy to realize that I am still alive and moving ahead; guided by the same love and respect for life that I had back then when I started. I am amazed to know that after all these years and all that I have seen and learned; I still hold the wonder of a child in my heart for life in all its forms.

I can’t help but reflect on this passage by Steinbeck: First of all I notice that they sat casually when they spoke. It reminds me of when we as students used to sit on Friday afternoons in the pub at university and scatter truths like chickens with the philosophical wands of our youth. Then I noticed where they sat. They didn't sit on a soapbox, and it wasn't just an orange crate - it was a 'crate of oranges'. The crate full of oranges led me to think of a collecting bag full of specimens – plucked fresh from the tree of life or drawn wet and salty from the ocean floor. All people that have come to know in their hearts that life streams a river of light through every living, breathing, growing form and that all living things are connected by the same energy that knits the universe together also knows death in their hearts. Donald Peters' woodland painting (above) clearly shows this thread of life that knits all of the animals with the seasons to the sun and to each other in a circle of life.

All of us who are now biologists, as young children (and sometimes as older people) have caused suffering and destruction to life. Perhaps it was in ignorance, perhaps it was inadvertent, and perhaps it was, in our judgment, intended to help. Whatever the reason, some of us even in the very act of committing these crimes against life, could hear a cry of outrage deep inside of us - hollow from our belly. In hearing this cry and in knowing this truth, we are freed to feel our love for the singular wonder of life's energy in all its diversity of forms. In this knowing, we are no more important to the universe than the butterfly that passes by us on its’ mission. It seems strange but through our diminished sense of self and our expanded awe at life we can for the first time truly become great - just by being alive.

This passage also reminds me that all of us, as biologists or bakers or butlers, need to feel things and to find our 'self' at the core of our being to truly live and to learn and to know. We can never find life by observing the pickled bodies or vessels that life courses through. Life is long gone by then. It tangles in the branches of my reasoning that there is just too much energy in life to simply be traded for the cooling of a body when life leaves its vessel behind.

So, I am glad the author sat these people on a properly packed harvest of fruit. I believe that each and every one of us sits upon our own harvest of life – inadvertent or otherwise. Everyone; biologists, healers, and Holy men have all trespassed against life. I remember discomfort as a child watching ants suffer under the sun’s concentrated heat focused through a lens. I remember the pain of learning that flight may be lost to butterflies just by touching their beautiful wings. So often the crime is one of ignorance. It is the other tortures like shooting, clubbing, crushing, or pickling that man can practice with impunity against so many vessels of life that claim the "dry balls" and separates them from those of us that bow to life. Who can do such things to the creatures that we live with, and not hear the voice of outrage that comes right from the core of our soul? Once we stop hurting life and pause to watch with wonder and awe we may find ourselves able to listen more carefully and even to hear the gentle song playing deep within as it rises to join a chorus from the universe.

Frost

I saw something on Saturday morning that has crystallized bright and clear in my memory forever.  It is neither cold or warm but simply bright.  A very heavy frost grew everywhere that night.  It looked like snow at first at first light - at first glance.  But the approaching morning proved it was everywhere – not just on top of things – but all around them.


All the leaves are off the weeping birches and the Japanese maples in the front garden, now.  Their branches were all white and thickened with the frost.  Everything was frozen breathless and everything was still until the sun found the garden.  Then steam poured up from the roof like smoke as the garden played host to a nature symphony.  Frost disappeared in ruler straight lines from the roof and from the lawn leaving water behind in haste depending on the sun and its shadows.  The sun breathed heat on the fuzzy white covered roof revealing black shingles and where the rough white was softened off the lawn green moss was uncovered.  In this way, color quickly found itself in the morning world.


Frost, water vapor and glistening water droplets ran along the belly of wires, roofs, lawns, clotheslines and eve troughs.  Everything was busy.  Water droplets with the brightest colors locked into so many of them – twinkled with brightness.  The weeping Birch held thousands of brilliant tiny sparksthat vibrated within its branches.  There were hundreds of little glistening packages - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.  Mostly indigo and violet - I have never seen anything like it before and I will never wait to see it again.  I called Benjamin outside from his studying - we watched the sun and the steam and the light - distilled into each dewdrop - for nearly an hour before we went back to our chores.  Water lives so far outside the rules of all other compounds.  I have never seen water as alive, as precious, as excited, or as full of nature's music as it was at Pender Harbor in the garden last weekend.

Autumn Leaves (2004)

Fall is still hanging on and I am enjoying it to the fullest this year - still walking and gardening and just outside a lot with my work and the children and the dog. I can't help thinking about how much I am enjoying it and my mind is at play like a dry leaf in the wind as I daydream.

Living in the indoor environment of our homes and cities softens our need to be aware of the richness, beauty and urgency of fall. Living in the outdoors, the fish and bears and the insects and birds that I watch are so focused with purpose toward preparing for their winter that they just ignore me. Like rousing a child in the morning from sleep to get ready for school, the voice of nature is spoken close to the ear while its strong hand rests gently on our shoulder. Autumn’s message is spoken quietly and patiently at first but with increasing urgency until it firmly rings shut the last of a carefree summer, leaving in our mind, only the need to prepare for winter.

Partly, it is the wonderful fall that we are having, partly is my weekly drives into the interior and Okanagan over the past month and partly it is just where I am this time in my life that connects me so powerfully with the autumn this year. It is my favorite season. The weather has just been so alive and varied through each day; offering wind, sun, cool breezes, morning mists, damp and cold at night, heavy dews and now, hard morning frosts. Waiting are the rains that will strip the last leaves from the trees and wash out the bright colors of fall and haul down the excitement of this season.

This year, the leaves still remain dry and brittle and brightly colored, preserved by extended good weather. Half of the leaves are still fastened to their trees. Those that have managed to shake themselves loose from their branches love to play in the wind, skittering and spinning recklessly until they are snagged by a hedgerow or crunched underfoot or captured by a rake to be stored in a pile by the curb. Even then, the dry leaves seem to exercise a "will" to be freed from their pile and to return to their game. They irresistibly draw small children near, inviting them to play, daring them to jump in the piles and break them into pieces and then scatter them into air with a kick, or better yet, to throw them in armfuls back at the bare branches of trees that they fell away from.

In the morning, those piles of leaves that were not pulled apart by children or sealed and welded into soggy sheaves under the press of car tires look just like heaped-full holds of frosted, frozen fish on returning boats.

Soon the winter cloud will come to push its shoulder up against the unyielding bulk of our mountains where it will strain for the winter in a silly stubborn contest. The winter rains will search out the last dry leaves to plaster them where they are found onto sidewalks, windshields and roads. What a treat it is to be able to enjoy this fall so deeply this year.

Easter Camping

I went camping with James, Ben and Will on Vancouver Island during a long weekend in March several years ago. Chester, our dog, came as well. I made it simple. We brought a 6 man tent, air mattresses, 4 sleeping bags, a cooler with essentials in it, a bag of extra clothing and James' skateboard and helmet. Of one-hundred campsites only two tents were pitched. The rest were all big motor homes and trailer campers.

It was cool at night and very damp. With 4 of us and the dog in the tent we breathed out a surprising amount of moisture that condensed on the inside walls of the tent and ran down in droplets to absorb into the outside of our sleeping bags. It was cool and a bit uncomfortable at first but we had all that we needed.

I have seldom heard so much activity as what surrounded us during those Easter nights. Not scary, but active and full of unthinking life. First were the frogs. A single frog began from the center of the marsh behind us. He set the rhythm and then the rest entered as an untimed and untamed chorus. Not with the purpose of harmony and without regard to melody but rather with the purpose, of being noticed as an individual - one among a crowd and worthy of mating. That night, the forest yielded several wonderful unrestrained frog choruses of great significance. I am sure they were of great significance - because the hundreds and hundreds of frogs that lost their breath to song were completely unmindful (or unsympathetic) toward the many of us that had paid our own money for a quiet, private, natural campsite at this peaceful place. The frog that initiated the 7 minute chant ended it alone. After 5 minutes another single voice drew the others into the agreement of song for about 7 minutes again before ending it alone. I thought that it was much like our life, this song.

At 2 in the morning sea lions barked their way through the darkness from some distance down the beach below a full moon that seemed to tangle in the trees at the same place each night. That was my cue to rouse all the boys wobbly from their sleep - to go outside and pee respectfully into the wilderness – just to make sure that they made it through the rest of the long springtime night in a dry sleeping bag. Chester seemed to understand us better for this night time ritual and joined us in it. We slept well after the sea lions were quiet.

The last night we camped there, a great horned owl perched overhead and called. I could see the owl clearly in my imagination silhouetted against the full moon - comfortable in his element and unneedy on this bright and easy hunting night. A coyote howled and then later, at 4:30 a solitary but definitive rooster rang into the night. One call, then another, perfect without practice. The night was given back to us again in silence.

We were aware of all that went on around us those nights; yet felt rested each morning. I asked the boys and they said they had fun over those 4 days. Even the Easter bunny that seemed to live in the grassy meadow at the margin of the park stuck his head up as we roasted marshmallows over a morning fire with laughter above the excitement of children’s voices.

Dragon flies

There is a dragon fly pond near to where I once lived. I learned about that pond with thanks to young children at a pirate treasure hunt I captained for Ben's birthday several years ago. I had drawn a map and made a series of clues and had placed treasure stashes of candies and other goodies at the park before they arrived. I watched, for a moment, a bright, deep red Dragon Fly and knew that I loved its name. It landed on my knee and it was definitely bigger than one of the little electric blue darning needles that kept darting by me where I sat. It seems to me that I have noticed dragon flies more often recently than I did when I was a child. Somehow, I just don't think that they were around as often when I was young and small. But that stocky bright red helicopter just touched down lightly on my body during his busy work as if to say "Hey: look what I did while you were gone...since you were a child" and "How do you like my new outfit?... I have got to go now.." When I was a child I hardly noticed the way they were dressed - instead I noticed how they resembled miniature military helicopters - especially the big four winged black and dark blue ones. I imagined that something like a miniature Darth Vader was flying them.


I remember the end of being young one day when I chose a place to lie in the sun out at the end of the dock on Spider Lake. That dock was a place that I had seen dragon flies land before while I waited my turn to water ski. So, now that I had the time, I waited in the full stillness of bieng alone for one to land near me - if it chose to. I let my attention follow the flying dragons through space until they would touch down near the end of the wharf where they rested and glittered in the sun - where I could inspect them closely. I still remember the muscled feel of my bare chest on thick, sun softened boards of the dock while I waited for them to land near by. I remember the wonderful smell of clean summer skin and the feel of sun-bleached wood on the dock. My chin rested heavily on the backs of summer hardened hands. I remember how wet patches on the dock whispered secrets about the clean lake's summer life and of knowing just how the wood had been softened and frayed by hot summer sun and the lake's precious water. I remember my head heavy and my eyes sleepy in that place.


A blue Dragonfly landed triumphantly right on my shoulder and seemed to claim victory over my still form. I stayed calm and did not move and instead of brushing it away, I studied it closely through my right eye from just 6 inches away. I had never seen one so close-up before. There were too many lenses in its eye to count and Darth Vader was definitely not inside. I watched how the thin strong armor on this primitive beast moved. I listened for the clink of loose screws or the scrape of metal plates against each other. I didn't hear any of those sounds. Instead I heard the dry rustle of crinoline as I felt myself being carried beyond an outgrown childhood. Returning to summer sleep on the dock I felt somehow older and richer but even today - I still hold up hollow dragon fly molts for inspection when ever I am lucky enough to find one.