The Future, Day by Day: A Grandmother's Story

Here is a lovely summer story that a friend shared with me and has agreed to share with you.  She wrote it for her granddaughters.

This summer day, time moved slowly.  We were in the middle of a heat wave, steamy. hot and humid with no relief day or night.  After another restless hot night Gramma decided to go to the lake just as the sun’s light was bringing in the next day….

With blanket, towel and tea flask I walked down the stairs at the beach onto the already warm sand.   I settled near the water’s edge.  The sunlight had not yet cleared the tops of the big trees and so the beach was still in shade…

The water was still, like glass.  The surface was so flat and quiet…not a ripple to be seen.  Looking out over the bay, a haze left over from the previous day, hung in the air, a promise of more heat to come.  Only a few people were there so early, all of us looking for some early relief from the heat.

At one end of the beach, a husky and its owner stood in the still water while a mother wood duck quacked insistently – quack, quack, quack.  She had a family of four young ducks to protect and she was loud and persistent.  She quacked, her alarm breaking the morning hush-- Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack!  Then the husky, cooled and wet, walked away with his owner.  The morning’s hush returned and the duck family swam on….

In the quiet another woman and I slipped into the lake, moving out beyond the buoys into deep water.  Swimming slowly, without making a sound or splash, matching the lake’s morning message, I felt the cool water’s caress.  While I swam I noticed several feathers left from the previous day's adventures… floating now on the surface of the water.   Apparently weightless, small, white, downy gull feathers were balanced on the water’s surface.  Each feather touching the lake’s surface at a tiny point, while the rest of the plumage curved up dry, in a graceful white smile. 

The water reflected each feather’s beauty in a perfect mirror image.   I swam wide slow circles around several feathers to see them from all directions without disturbing them… I wanted to remember this beauty and lightness of being forever.  I breathed in deeply, “Ahhh.”

Feeling cooler from my swim, I walked out of the lake to my blanket. The sun was just spilling its rays over the tree tops as Gramma sat and started to sip her tea.  Sunlight touched the water as a new day was beginning.

Then two young girls, not yet 10, slim, all arms and legs—one taller, the other shorter, passed me on their way to the water.  They were in their “own world” quietly talking to each other, excited and holding ‘something’ in their cupped hands.  They spoke Cantonese.

They had long straight black hair and were wearing dresses. The taller girl with a pony tail wore a short dress and the shorter girl who had  loose black hair to her shoulders wore a green velvet dress.

They walked directly into the water, touching it with their toes, giggling and happy.  When they were knee deep in the cool lake they bent to place their treasures carefully on the water.  They each launched two tiny boats on the water and since there was not a breath of air they proceeded to make little ripples with their hands to move the little ships along.  They, like the feather earlier, were perfectly mirrored in the still surface of the lake.

Of course, they started to get wet and the boats moved into deeper water.  Distressed about this the younger girl ran back to her Mother and asked in English for her help to get the boats.  Her Mom came to the water’s edge and after stepping into the water quickly said “Oh! Too cold!” and went back to her blanket.

I paused, and then spoke to the girls, “I’m a Gramma,” I said, “and I’m already wet --I could get your boats if you’d like?”  They talked and the younger girl said “Yes please.”  

In I slipped, to retrieve the four boats.  When I got to them I discovered lovely origami boats – each one coloured differently, each one with a tiny folded piece of paper inside! 

I brought them back to the girls and immediately told them how beautiful the little boats were.  The younger girl proudly replied, “We were up at 5 o’clock to make them today!”  I told her I noticed the little pieces of paper inside, she took a moment and then thoughtfully replied,  “Those are our wishes…”

Standing in the lake, a Gramma and two young girls with wishes for the day I asked “Do you want to keep the boats? Or would you like to have your boats take your wishes out on the water today?” 

  

They talked amongst themselves and the younger replied to me,  “To the lake… “  I handed the boats to them and once more they launched their boats  this time their hands made waves which took the boats and their wishes out to the larger lake.  We  three stood together, a Gramma and two young girls, witnessing.

I returned to my tea and blanket while the girls continued to play in the water.  The younger girl’s mother was now sitting near me with her mother.  She explained, “We just flew in from China two days ago and the girls were up very early making the paper boats. The younger girl is my daughter and we came back to this place for a holiday.  Once years ago we lived here, and were very happy.  This year we brought an older cousin and my mother for the holiday.”

Curious I asked the mother what her daughter’s name was …. she replied her name is the same in Mandarin and English.  It is Future.  Our pet name for her is Day by Day.  "I tell my daughter," her mother said, “Day by day, you walk into the future.

I had asked Future when we were in the water if she might share with me their “wishes” or were they a secret?  She had taken a long moment to answer and then whispered, “It’s a secret”.  “All fine”, I said, “I understand.”

It was time for me to go.  The sun was higher and my own daughter was waiting for me, having returned from an early morning run.  I said goodbye… 

…remembering :  The water knows the wishes from Future --- day by day we will move into them….

… pondering : what would your wishes be if you were a child dreaming…

Wild Buffalo Range in Banff Once Again

Wild buffalo roam once again in Banff National Park after one hundred and forty years.  Small numbers ranged in what is now Banff National Park for roughly 10,000 years before they were nearly hunted to extinction and before the Park was created in 1885.

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, it is estimated that there were 30 million Plains Bison (commonly called buffalo) in North America before the Europeans came.  They were extirpated from Canada by 1888.  Nearly all of the Plains Bison alive today are descendants of the last 116 Plains Bison.

Now due to conservation efforts there are between 350,000 and 400,000 Plains Bison in North America. While they live mostly on farms and ranches, it is estimated that 1500 to 2000 live in conservation herds in Canada.

There was a small display herd in a paddock in Banff National Park for one hundred years. It was removed in 1997.  A year and a half ago, a small herd was transported from Elk Island National Park east of Edmonton, to a fenced pasture 40 km. north of Banff townsite.  You can watch the journey from Elk Island to Banff here: 

This included ten cows, some of which were pregnant and six bulls.  After two calving seasons, there are now 31 bison in the herd.  Last week, the gate was opened and the thirty-one buffaloes walked free under the cover of darkness into the 1200 sq km reintroduction zone in the remote eastern slopes of Banff National Park.  GPS collars and will be monitored.  You can see the release here:

Since Bison are a keystone species, they will change the food web and the landscape that they live in so that biodiversity will increase.  They improve grazing for elk because they leave fertilized grasses in their wake.  They also open the forest for birds and small mammals.  Birds used the hair from the heavy shedded coats to build nests. The bison also provide food for predators such as grizzly bears and wolverines and scavengers.

 In this video which was made when the buffalo were brought from Elk Island, Chief Kurt Buffalo from Samson Cree Nation speaks about the significance of bringing the buffalo back to its natural surroundings. “It’s about restoring the balance,” he says.  

He also speaks about the modern day “Buffalo Treaty” (read it here) between many First Nations.  This is a treaty of “Cooperation, Renewal and Restoration to “honour, recognize, and revitalize” the relationship with buffalo and to allow it to be free-ranging and wild once again.  It opens with a description of the relationship between the First Nations and the Buffalo stating, “For all those generations BUFFALO has been our relative.  BUFFALO is part of us and WE are part of BUFFALO culturally, materially, and spiritually.  Our on-going relationship is so close and so embodied in us that BUFFALO is the essence of our holistic eco-cultural life-ways.”

Parks Canada has been working in partnership with many First Nations on this and other projects.  As people work together to restore the buffalo to its natural habitat and renew their relationships with the buffalo, they are also building relationships with each other.  The buffalo will change the land through its relationship with the rest of life that shares the terrain.  This new story is one that returns to the old stories of respecting relationships in all of life and this renewal of relationships is bringing healing to our land.

Growth or Life

This two and a half minute video says that we have a choice to make: Growth or Life.  The creators contrast the single story of capitalism which is only about growing capital and the many stories of post-growth economies.  Check it out!

So what could choosing Life over Growth look like?  Hard to imagine?

Here is a quote from futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard.

Here's a way to explore the many stories that are already being created.  Living the New Story Series 2 is an on-line learning experience which is being offered by Findhorn Foundation.  You can check it out here.  Findhorn Foundation works on a pay what ever you want basis so that it is open to everyone.  

Stories on the West Wind

Last week, I read Why Indigenous Literatures Matter by UBC professor and author, Daniel Heath Justice.  On page 77, he writes,

Imagination and curiosity are essential to the empathy required for healthy, respectful, and sustainable relationships with a whole host of beings and peoples, from cedar trees and magpies to thunderstorms and moss-blanketed boulders.  Simply put, there can be no true kinship without imagination.  The more expansive our imaginations, the deeper our capacity for empathy, and the healthier our relationships and communities will likely be.  And the opposite is equally the case: as our imaginations become impoverished and the scope and range of possibility becomes narrower and limited, the health and well-being of the whole world around us will suffer too.

 I was thinking about this while walking along a trail by Georgian Bay.  I came to a gap in the trees where the wild west wind and the waves instantly captured my full attention.  A poem seemed to be the only way to communicate that experience.

The west wind demanded that

I stop and listen NOW!

And so I sat on a nearby bench.

But instead of listening,

My busy brain questioned the wind.

What stories do you carry?

I asked.

Do you bring news of my

Daughter on the prairies?

Or my son deep in the mountains?

Do you carry the yip of the coyotes

Or the growl of grizzlies?

Do you bring me the call of a magpie

Or the scent of red cedar?

Do you bring the smoke of wild fires

Or rain from the western sea?

Yes all of those things

Answered the wind.

Then my mind stilled and I listened

to the crashing waves

Of the lake on the shore.

One after another after another,

Their rhythm a kind of music,

A story of movement and power.

Of timelessness and this moment.

Of faraway and right here all at once.

Wind from the west 
Where two of my children are.

Perhaps you caressed their faces

As you now caress mine.

Perhaps they breathed this same air.

Perhaps it has been in their bodies

As they were in mine.

Perhaps they breathed out water

That lives in the clouds above me.

Perhaps the vibration of their voices

Still quivers in the flowing air.

Then I returned to walking the trail.

The daylilies danced and swayed,

Orange heads dipping and rising.

Red hollyhocks rocked forward and back

And the tall trees rustled and waved

As I walked by.

Cool, dry wind animating us all.

We are part of its story of dancing motion,

Of mighty power, of interwoven connection.

Our breath joins the wind.

It remembers our voices

And carries our story onward.

Daniel Heath Justice (2018) Why Indigenous Literatures Matter.  Waterloo: Wildred Laurier University Press

Wild Space Creates Common Ground

My partner and I have a small piece of land on the shore of Georgian Bay.  It is just 59’ x 75’ in size.  It is not zoned for building.  It used to be tended by a woman who could be found gardening on her hands and knees out there, well into her eighties.  She eventually suffered from dementia and began “weeding” so much that even the grass was pulled out on the land that we eventually came to care for.  So, when she ended up in long term care we were faced with a denuded patch of earth.

As I stared at the ground throughout the winter, I kept seeing in my mind, a giant turtle lying in the space.  And so once the ice melted away, we placed stones from the land and from the shore in a large turtle shaped ring.  We used really big stones for the head, tail and feet.  Inside the oval, I created 13 mounds of earth to represent the plates on the back of a turtle.  I carefully selected indigenous and medicinal plants from my seed catalogue and planted a variety of plants in the mounds.  That was a dry summer and we had to constantly water the tiny plants.  Some thrived while others withered back into the earth.

The next spring and summer were cool and wet.  Some of the plants never returned and others grew like wild fire.  I added some new varieties that I purchased from a local wild flower group.  No need to water that year, but the job became selecting which plants to keep and which new arrivals from nature herself to keep. 

This spring was the third year for our turtle garden.  Some of the original plants like Marshmallow, Arnica, Black and Blue Cohosh, Sweetgrass, Sage and Yarrow are well established.  But the Calendula, All Heal and Feverfew didn’t come back.  Yet there are new arrivals like Butterfly Weed, Curly Dock, Jewelweed, Vervain and some as of yet unidentified plants that appeared.  I leave plants I can’t name to flower so that I can look them up in one of my many guidebooks.

The garden is teaching me about what wants to grow there and about new medicines that arrive on the wind or via bird droppings.  Even my favourite Stinging Nettle showed up this year.  To the untrained eye, the wild plants may be seen as "weeds" but they are in fact a fabulous pharmacy.

This may all sound magical and indeed we are enchanted by it.  However, our next door neighbor is not.  He has pulled up almost all the plants on his small patch of earth and put down limestone screenings.  He attacks the right-of–way that crosses our property with his lawn mower, leaf blower and whipper snipper.  We have occasional encounters when he crosses the line and we have had to erect a fence-line to help him understand boundaries.

Water Lilies and Cattails provide cover for spawning fish

On the shoreline of half of our property, we have let the water plants re-wild themselves as we don’t put any boats in that space.  White water lilies, Cattails, Bullrushes, Joe Pye weed, Blue Flags and Purple Loosestrife have appeared.  My partner has observed Yellow Perch (who are just returning to this area), Sunfish, Bass and Garpike spawning in this small wild space. Some of the cattails have already been eaten by a muskrat or beaver.  It is truly amazing how quickly nature restores the balance once we leave it alone.

Sadly, our neighbor’s son likes to fish right in front of this area with no regard for the fishing seasons.  Recently, my partner observed him setting a minnow trap right in front of the new spawning ground.  A little while later, his father with whom we have had so many negative encounters arrived.  My partner greeted him and the man asked if his son had been down there.  My partner affirmed this and told him about the minnow trap.  The man was upset.  Apparently, he had told his son not to set the trap there because he would only catch Bass hatchlings.  The man had been observing one spawning Bass in this new wild space.  He could see the eggs and had watched the fish protect them.  He too wanted to protect the nest.  So he took the trap away.

We had thought that we had absolutely nothing in common with this man.  We had written him off as someone who saw nature as the enemy.  Perhaps because he likes to fish he has a relationship with the cycle of life for fish.  Who knows?  But the wild space that we had “allowed” to generate became space where we could find common ground with our “enemy”.  I am sure that the plants in the garden still drive him crazy, but we have formed an unlikely alliance around the fish.

Monarch Butterfly feeding from Milkweed flowers in our yard

Back at the house, my partner only cuts the grass once in the spring for a certain area.  Over the past few years, he has left milkweed plants to flourish there as a Monarch butterfly garden.  Every year there are more milkweeds but there haven’t been very many butterflies.  This summer however, he has seen up to 12 butterflies at a time drinking nectar from the milkweed flowers.  We have observed several eaten leaves so we hope that there are eggs and caterpillars out there as well.  It is indeed magical on a hot summer’s day to breath in the sweet smell of Milkweed flowers, while butterflies flit and feed. 

I got to thinking about how these re-wilded spaces are so quickly filled with so many species of life.  The diversity that emerges is in stark contrast to the monocultural lawns of our neighbours.  And yet within that diversity we have found a common space with one neighbour.  Perhaps that is the one of the gifts of diversity; a wealth of connections are possible.

  

How wonderful to be a part of the great Monarch migration story

Underneath We're All the Same

Blues legend Buddy Guy partnered with Playing for Change to create this global collaborative offering of Skin Deep.  “Underneath, we’re all the same…”  Check it out!  It speaks for itself.

You May Be an Imaginal Cell

Elisabet Sahtouris, Evolution Biologist and Futurist, reflects how the competitive and cooperative aspects of evolution relate to what is happening in the world today.  This 9 minute video clip is from Science and Nonduality (SAND Anthology Vol. 2).  The message is a positive one.

And then check out this 1 minute video on the metamorphosis metaphor comparing a butterfly’s metamorphosis to yourself.  The idea was originally put forward by author/speaker Norie Huddle and further substantiated by Sahtouris.  You may be an imaginal cell!