The bright October sun and relatively warm weather called
us out onto the water for the last time of the year. We had been waiting for a good day to take
our twenty-foot freighter canoe from the dock on Duck Bay where she floated all
spring and summer to a boat launch on the North River. After some repairs, the canoe will rest under
tarps on the boat trailer in the back of the yard for the rest of the fall and
winter.
Our trip from the dock, under the Highway 400 bridge and
through Matchedash Bay let us experience the wind that was coming from the
Northeast. I wrapped my sweater and
scarf around myself and put on a pair of thin gloves. The sun warmed one side of my body while the
wind cooled the other. Once we entered
the mouth of the North River, we were more protected from the wind by the thick
wall of cattails that lined both banks.
The air was very clear and fresh as we made our way upstream.
Eventually, we came to the Lawson Line bridge which runs
alongside the boat launch. There was
already a small motorboat beside the launch.
It’s bow line was held by an eleven-year-old boy. We slowly beached the canoe beside the
motorboat and I hopped out onto the shore with our bowline in my hand. My partner took off the fuel line and let the
motor run dry for the winter.
As the last splutters of the motor died out, I noticed a
pick-up truck with a boat trailer backing up beside me. An elderly man got out of the truck and
greeted us. We were beached between his
truck and his boat. He took the bowline
from his grandson and pushed his boat out, trying to get it around our canoe
which we dragged onto shore a little bit more.
But the wind that we had noticed on our trip was still fairly strong and
it blew the man’s boat away from the truck.
He became frustrated and told us that we could get our boat out before
him.
My partner pushed our boat back into the river while I held
the bowline and the boat immediately floated downstream and came to rest
parallel to the riverbank. My partner
backed our car and boat trailer into the water but the boat was now
perpendicular to the trailer. I handed
the bowline to my partner and went to the riverbank to push our boat out.
With the first step I took onto what I thought was a solid
riverbank, I sank into silty mud up to my mid calf. The second step resulted in the same
scenario. When I tried to pick up my
right leg, I discovered that my plastic Croc sandal was stuck in the mud. I stepped out of the shoe into more mud and
then reached down into the sucking mud to pull my sandal out. The mud smelled swampy and it got onto the
sleeve of my sweater. I repeated this
manoeuvre with my left foot and then plodded, barefoot to the hard shore. Walking gingerly over to the gravelled boat
launch, I washed the thick mud from my sandals, hands, arms and feet.
While this was happening, the two men had worked together
to pull our canoe onto the boat trailer.
Newly washed and shod, I walked into the water on the gravelled (I can
see why that had been put there) launch and pushed the boat into its final
resting place. My partner drove the car
and trailer into the parking lot and then returned to help the man put his boat
on the trailer as well. It turned out
that both men had just turned 70 and they bonded over their common age and the help
they both needed with the boats. Once I got home, I used soap and water to wash
the lingering swampy smell from my hands, feet, sandals and sweater. No harm done.
During this past week, I’ve have been watching a Healing
Collective Trauma Summit on-line that has been moderated by Thomas Hubl. I have been listening to the various speakers
talk about personal, collective and ancestral trauma and have been trying to
apply this learning to the work that I am doing. Hubl speaks about how trauma is frozen in the
permafrost of our cultures and that as such it cannot be informed or
healed. It just gets played out over and
over again. It is not until we can
liquefy this permafrost that the trauma can be informed, that it can rise into
our consciousness, be learned from, digested and integrated. Hubl refers to pearls of learning that can be
found in that permafrost.
As I listened to Hubl speak, it occurred to me that my
experience of sinking into the silted mud and getting stuck may hold such
pearls. This is not the first time that
I have sunk in the mud at this boat launch.
Twice before, I stepped off of the launch into a water filled ditch and
sank into deep mud. I had been wearing
flip flops those time and I actually snapped off the strap as I tried to
extricate my feet, breaking the shoe.
This time, I had “sensibly” worn Crocs and had stepped in a different
area. I slipped my foot out of my shoe
this time and retrieved it with my hand.
I had learned something from my past experience. What learning was available to me this time?
The North River winds through farmland on its way to the
Great Lakes. Run off from the fields
takes soil into the water and this builds up on the sides and bottom of the
river, hence the soft sucking mud. As my
feet sunk down into this mud, I was travelling backwards in time, visiting soil
from past floods, spring run-offs and heavy rains. I was travelling through the last two hundred
years or so of farming in this area and the erosion of ploughed fields. This land was cared for by the Anishinaabeg
for thousands of years until the European settlers forcibly removed them. Settler culture of owning, tilling, farming
land is not “set in stone” on this land. It is a sucking kind of mud that pulls you in
and it is not easy to extricate oneself from this culture or even imagine
something different. I had to step out
of my shoes and let my feet touch the earth.
I could pull my bare feet out of the mud fairly easily but not my
shoe. For that, I had to reach down with
my hand, wiggle it and pry it from it’s mucky trap. The domesticated part of me, my shoe, had to
be intentionally pried out. Once I put
the mud filled shoe into the river water, it all washed clean and I could use
it to walk easily on the gravel of the boat launch.
Thomas Hubl talks about liquefying the permafrost so that
change can happen. Pulling my shoe out
with my hand and then washing off the swampy mud, allowed a new use of the
shoe. Trying to pull the shoe out with
my foot in it, would not have worked. I
had to try something different.
My belief, that the two men needed my help to put the boats
on the trailers was false. My belief
that the river bank was solid was also false.
I had to feel the sucking sensation as I tried to pull my foot out with
the shoe to learn that the shoe was well and truly stuck. I had learned earlier that stubbornly pulling
on the shoe wouldn’t work. I tried
something different and got out of the mud, out of the false beliefs.
In fact, it was probably very good for the grandson to see
his grandfather and another man problem solve together and help each other
despite the strong wind. That was
probably a good lesson for the boy. I
had my own lesson.
When I sink into the mud, the permafrost of our culture
that says nothing ever changes, when I feel stuck, I will remember the feeling
of being stuck in the riverbank mud on that sunny October day. I will pause and imagine how I can liquefy
the situation, how I can pull it apart, take my feet out of my shoes so to
speak, disconnect from a cultural pattern.
I may have to put my hands into the mud, to feel it, smell it, as I search
for the pearl. I may have to get my
hands dirty. And I will pull up the
pearls of learning from that melting mud and integrate them into my
knowing. As I work at my own personal
healing which is linked to that of my ancestors and the collective healing that
I am a part of, I will remember the beautiful smell of the soap as I washed the
stinky swampmud from my feet. I will
remember this as the smell of healing.
No comments:
Post a Comment