Listening to the Stories of the Land

We went for a walk on Hallowe’en evening through the streets of our little town.  Kids don’t come to our house at the end of a long dark driveway and I wanted to experience some of the excitement of the event.  Some of our neighbours go to great lengths with multiple blow up Hallowe’en ghosts, witches, pumpkins and other scary creatures.  One house played scary music and sounds through a loud speaker.  The kids had to walk past a fake cemetery to get to the front door.  We saw cute little unicorns, princesses, ninja’s and some costumes that we couldn’t identify.  It was cold and a little rainy but that didn’t dampen the spirits of children who rushed from house to house with pillowcases and bags growing heavier with each visit.  The parents seemed to move together in a group and so we joined them and laughed at the antics. Our feet crunched the acorns that covered the sidewalk by the park with the Red Oaks and the fallen Maple leaves swirled in the occasional gusts of wind.

Sharon Blackie

It got me thinking about where Hallowe’en comes from.  The date, is the ancient Celtic New Year of Samhain (pronounced Saw-when) which was around October 31^st.  According to Celtic scholar, Sharon Blackie , it was a time for honouring the ancestors.  It was at this time that the Celts believed that the veil between this world and the Other world became thin.  For Blackie, Samhain is above all a Trickster time, a time when surprises happen to invite a shift, transformation and growth.  I had been listening to a podcast in which she discussed this with Welsh teacher Angharad Wynne.  In their conversation, they discussed how the Christianization of the British Isles had tried to make the old ways and knowledge disappear.  

Angharad Wynne

Over the years, the gods of the land became smaller and were turned into leprechauns and elves.  The goddesses of the land became fairies, while the old wise women were demonized and turned into witches.  But even after a few thousand years I could still see the remnants of the ancient festival all around me.

And so, it seemed timely or maybe just coincidental that later in the night of Hallowe’en, a mighty wind swept through our town, as well as in many other places.  We awoke dark and early the next morning to the sound of a roaring wind in the tall trees.  The power was out and I got ready for work in the dark, had a cold breakfast and headed out to the city.  Driving through the blackened town, my headlights illuminated leaves billowing and scuttling madly down the road in front of me.  As soon as I got on the highway, I discovered driven snow, the kind that looks like a Star Wars movie in your high beams.  However, I was the only car on the road and I took my time.  After a while, other cars joined me and we made our way to Barrie, where I got on a GO train to the city where it was merely raining lightly.

When I returned home that night, the power was still out and my partner was making supper on the camp stove in the workshop.  He informed me that one of our docks has come loose in the storm and was now floating beside the rock and wood crib that it used to sit upon.  It is cold and now November, so wading in the water is no longer an option.  Disaster!

After a quiet night with the gas fire, candles and playing our instruments we went to bed.  The hydro crews were outside with flashing lights, still trying to get the power back.  Our next door neighbour’s generator was loud and it’s unfamiliar groaning made it was hard to sleep.

The power returned sometime in the middle of the night.  It was pretty exciting to have power again after 24 hours.  Good news!  The wind had died down.  The sun was up.  We had to decide how to story this event.  Was it a disaster?  What if instead, we said that the North Wind and the West Wind got together and decided to blow out the old, making space for the new.  The cedars had shed their rusty brown needles and the maples were bare of leaves now.  What if the wind had something to teach us? 

After a hot breakfast and coffee, we went down to our dock to survey the changes.  I almost wrote damage, but decided against using that word.  A big Manitoba Maple had fallen down across the right of way so we had to go through our neighbour’s yard to get to our property.  The rebel part of the dock was chained to a tree in it’s new position thanks to my partner’s efforts the day before.  The water had risen so high that it had flooded my garden.  This garden is designed to look like a giant turtle.  It seemed that the turtle had had a chance to swim!  The water had receded but the garden was now covered in organic matter.  It seems like the lake has mulched my garden for the winter.  There were logs and bits of wood all over the garden.  I stacked the wood against the shed and cleaned up the big stuff.  I will clear whatever doesn't decay, in the spring.

I suggested that we bring our creativity to this situation.  After talking through a variety of solutions, we have decided to pull the dock apart and stack the wood against the shed.  In the spring as nature bursts into life, we will decide what to create with this lumber. Being creative always makes us feel good.  In fact, my partner already has some new ideas.

The interesting thing about our dock is that it was built on the stone and wood cribs that used to support a boat house.  We repaired and built docks on top of them about five years ago.  Last year we had two storms that moved the other side of the dock.  After the second storm, we pulled it all apart and rebuilt it to be stronger.  That side held firm in this storm.  The side of the dock that moved was not damaged last year.  Pre-emptively, this year, we added another layer to the dock and a heavy wooden shade structure.  We thought that the added weight would prevent it from floating away.  But not so.

It reminded me of the structures that are in place in this country.  Many of them are very colonial.  Rather than changing them, we just build more structures on top of the old ones thinking that that will work.  Perhaps, they too need to be dismantled and rebuilt using creativity.

Later that day, we walked along the shoreline.  The properties that face west had been subjected to much more force during the storm.  Some old boathouses had been pummeled into lumber.  Quite a number of boats had washed in from across the bay.  Lumber, styrofoam and plastic things were everywhere.  We realized that we had gotten off easy.  My partner noticed that things built in straight lines had been damaged while only a few trees had come down.  The areas of the shoreline that were covered in trees did very well.  However, in one spot, the Township had cleared the trees, put in paving stones and a bench to provide a nice look out and a set of stairs to get down to the water’s edge.  The wind and the waves had eroded a major portion of the shoreline here.  The stairs lay in pieces and the paving stones were no longer totally supported by the ground.  What a difference the trees make to shoreline stabilization. 

So, if we were to see the winds as evil, malicious and out to get us, we would tell the story of man made structures being attacked and destroyed by Nature.  What if we listen with different ears?  What if we tell the story that the North Wind, or maybe it was the West wind, or maybe a marriage of the two, brought in a new energy, brought in the next season.  They shook all the dead leaves and needles from the trees back to Earth where they will return to the soil.  They gave energy to the water which rose and crashed, showing all the weak spots in the human’s designs and hubris.  Just as the leaves will return to their basic elements, so our dock will be dismantled into boards and screws.  We will store them under a tarp and in the spring, just as the season changes again, we will rebuild our dock and make it stronger and more beautiful than before. 

It could have been so much worse.  Our dock could have floated out into the lake and become someone else’s dock, but somehow it simply moved to the right and nestled into a new place where we can still access it.

In listening to the land, a story emerges of returning to the elements, a story of us as creative and able to respond to change.  To return the old dock to its crib would mean big machines or many men freezing in the water.  There is no need to disturb the lake bottom or risk making people sick.  It is only a dock.  We made it and we can unmake it and remake it.  The land is our teacher.  She reminds us who we are.

People like Sharon Blackie and Angharad Wynne are researching the old ways from Celtic and Welsh history.  They say that for most of time, the people there knew how to live on the land and it is for a relatively short period of time that this has been lost.  Wynne feels that we have stretched our relationship with the land so far that it will now snap or it will pull us back. People are looking for their connection to the land and to their own centres and to all beings. 

Beth Brant, A Generous Spirit

Both Blackie and Wynne believe that the land holds the stories and tells them to those who know how to listen.  They are once again listening to the land of the British Isles.  Here in Ontario where I live, the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee people have been listening for thousands of years and they have a rich tradition of sacred stories.  When I hear some of these stories that they share, they inform me about how to live on this land.  Tragically, though, the European colonization of the land we now call Canada took almost everything from these First Peoples; land, children, culture, health, language.  The stories and traditions they have protected are theirs to tell and share.  Mohawk writer, Beth Brant writes in A Generous Spirit: Selected Work by Beth Brant that non-Indigenous people should access something that comes from their own DNA rather than appropriating the stories of the First Peoples.

And so when I learn about my own pre-Christian ancestors from the British Isles and their connection to the land and the water, I wonder what does live in my DNA.  Do I have the ability to listen to the land for the stories that need to be heard at this time in history?  Or will I continue to impose old Christian concepts to this place. 

Tomson Highway

Cree playwright and musician, Tomson Highway, in his talk, Comparisons of Mythologies, points out that the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam all come from desert countries.  These religions have travelled all over the world taking the stories that came out of a desert.  The Romans adopted these stories and made Christianity a state religion.  So, when they colonized my ancestors, they brought those stories and tried to have them overtake the old ones.  And yet they persist.  On Hallowe’en or Samhain, I saw them on the streets of my town, here in Ontario.  Despite thousands of years of effort, we still celebrate this festival, albeit in an unconscious way.

As we walked back home from our survey of the “changes”, the light rain falling on our raincoats and hoods, we heard an old familiar sound.  Sandhill cranes!  If you don't know what they sound like, just take a moment to listen here:

 Throwing our hoods off and craning our necks, we searched the sky and were rewarded by the sight of about eighty of them flying high in a series of V’s.  Their long legs trailing behind and their long wings gracefully flapping, they called to each other as they headed south.  Yes, it is time to do that.  We only see the cranes if we are lucky as they migrate through in the spring and the fall, so sightings are special treats.
   

In looking for a video to show you, I  learned that these wet land birds are adaptable, communicative, and that they dance!  They teach us how to adapt, communicate and celebrate life.  If we had stayed with the old story of Nature being against us, we could well have missed the call of these beautiful birds and all that they had to teach us.   In fact, a man very close by, did miss them he burned debris.  So. here is the video I found made by two people who are passionate about Sandhill Cranes.  Our sighting felt like a big gift to us and I want to share that gift with you.