Hidden Rainbows

   Low western sunlight shone through the windshield, and as the car turned a corner it beamed through a Canada Goose feather hanging from the sun visor.  Multiple tiny rainbows appeared and rippled across the feather as the car made the turn.  Amazing!  I took the feather down and angled it towards the sunshine trying to understand what I was seeing.  Repeating bands of the visible light spectrum glowed mysteriously.  Who knew that rainbows were hidden in feathers?

  

                                                       Sunshine through a swan feather

   The next day I tried a trumpeter swan feather against the sun and there again were the rainbows but brighter against the white barbs.  I researched this phenomenon and found that some feathers have convoluted air cavities that act as tiny light-scattering prisms. .Later that week my partner discovered an orb spider’s web illuminated by the setting sun.  Rainbow colours appeared on the various silk strands.  We tried to photograph it which was tricky because it all depended on the angle the camera was at.  I tried to photograph the rainbows in the feathers as well but the camera saw the event differently than I did.    

                               

                                         

                                                        Rainbow in spider`s web

  

   We began looking for hidden rainbows in unlikely spots.  Seeing the spectrum of visible light depends on light bending through water or air or transparent solid objects.  It depends on angles of light.  You have to be at just the right spot to see one.  You have to look at it in the right way.  A few inches off and it disappears.

   Yesterday, a friend gave me a girasol (around the sun) crystal.  If you look at a light through it, the fibers in the crystal create a halo affect around the point of light.  You have to move the crystal towards and away from the light to get this effect which is very beautiful.  I took it home and looked at all kinds of lights through it, happy and curious as a child.

   The way we look at things can determine what we see and how we see things.  The paradigm that we think and work in will affect how we see events and people.  After the recent Canadian federal election I heard a radio interviewer ask a guest if Prime Minister designate Justin Trudeau was a strong enough figure to lead the country.  After nearly ten years of a prime minister who controlled and micromanaged the country with a paternalistic “father knows best” attitude, we had become well used to the paradigm of hierarchy, competition and control being linked to this role.  It seemed to me that the question was being asked from this paradigm.  

    However, Trudeau seems to be working in the new paradigm of collaboration and cooperation.  The old prime minister rarely met with the premiers yet Trudeau is inviting all of them, Elizabeth May of the Green party and the other party leaders to come with him to the United Nations summit on climate change in Paris later this year.  He promises to have a cabinet with gender equality while the old prime minister reluctantly let only a few women into his.  In a CBC radio interview, Premier Kathleen Wynne of Ontario said that Trudeau will “dialogue” and “cooperate” vs a “lack of connection” with the previous PM.

   Perhaps this style or paradigm will look new to many Canadians. In the light of the old paradigm collaboration spells trouble and men who share power with women appear weak. It all depends how we look at it.  Collaboration allows many ideas that can inform each other to co-create new solutions. Gender equality offers new potentials that have not been explored yet.   If we look with new eyes, the light of the new paradigm shining through the old political institutions may reveal rainbows.

Marsh Monster Magic

“Ready, set, go!”  Off ran two children dressed as a dragon and a cowboy.  They were “riding” broomsticks, wearing witch’s hats and carrying inflatable pumpkins as they raced down the indoor course at the Wye Marsh Wildlife Centre’s Marsh Monster event.  Other children were busy playing Hallowe’en games such as bouncing ping pong “eyeballs” into pumpkin buckets, Spooky Twister, ring toss onto witch’s hats and reassembling a paper skeleton.  Some were decorating scary cupcakes and then bravely devouring them.  Parents, children and grandparents played together in this low tech, some may say “old fashioned” Hallowe’en event.  I was one of the volunteers working in the game room.  It was delightful to watch children and parents playing together for the fun of it.  Older kids and teens volunteered to create an experience for the younger ones and adults became child-like again.

Outside, volunteer guides took the families on a nighttime mystery tour in search of the Marsh Monster through darkened forests and along moonlit boardwalks through the waving cattails.  Teenaged volunteer zombies lurked along the path groaning and doing the sort of things that zombies do.  Staff and volunteers got into character at the various stations telling the story of the mythical Marsh Monster and advising the kids to use their magic flashlights to re-humanize the zombies.  Together they co-created this unique outdoor family experience.  I almost expected to see David Suzuki leap out from behind a tree.

The Wye Marsh Wildlife Centre in Midland, Ontario is a 3000 acre wildlife preserve that is run by the Friends of Wye Marsh as a non-profit organization.  It depends on admissions, donations, educational events and fundraising for funds and an active group of volunteers to help the dedicated staff fulfill the stewardship commitments of the marsh.  There is also a partnership between levels of government and other agencies for ownership of the once private parcel of land and marsh.  Many people work together to maintain and protect this special place.

And in the marsh itself and the surrounding forest and fen, many species of mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, fish, insects, plants and trees live together in many different habitats that exist in an intricate, diverse balance.  As the visiting people experience and connect to this natural co-creation and cooperate with it and each other, it is good for all.  The habitats are protected, endangered species have a safe place to build their numbers and some of the harm done by humans can be healed.  Visiting there, we can remember our place in nature.  I try to imagine the web of nature interconnected with the web of all the people that work to protect and maintain this area interconnected with all the visitors that interact with and learn from this beautiful marsh.  It is too complex for me to picture but I do know how it feels to be a part of it all and I am grateful for that.

Magic of Matchedash

At the northern edge of Matchedash Bay, the mostly easternly part of Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, we found a channel inviting us into the heart of the marsh.  Muskrats dove as we our red canoe approached, long rat tails disappearing beneath the water’s surface.  A male osprey circled on arched wings overhead, chased by protective red winged blackbirds who fiercely attacked this fish hawk who meant no harm.  Eventually he landed on a perch above his nesting partner and the proactive protagonists retreated.

The channel twisted and ran past a stand of newly leafed, vibrant spring-green trees and greybrown snags long dead but still standing.  From their branches dead and alive emerged a beautiful collection of bird calls, an avian symphony.  Each sang its song brightly with no apologies.  Singing the songs of their species, they sang their heartsongs.  The bird songs became words in my brain.  “I am golden light”, “I am liquid gold,” “I am the brave protector,” “Stay away from my chicks,” “I am here but you can’t see me.”  I wondered about the song each human sings.  What are our heartsongs – the songs specific to each one of us?  What if we all sang our songs without apologies?  Would that be as beautiful as this bird chorus?

Farther along the channel, I saw the reflection of new cattails (kittentails really) mirrored in the water in a near perfect likeness.  But our paddles made the water turbulent and the image was blurred beyond recognition.  I wonder if we can be still, can we reflect the true image of a person back to the?  Mostly, I think we are turbulent and distort their image.  But perhaps if we can be patient and breath and let the water settle then maybe they will be able to see their true selves reflected in our eyes.  The beauty of their being just being.

Generous as ever, the marsh offered its wisdom to humans trying to remember what it is to be human, what it is to remember that we are a part of all of this.  Remembering from the past and imagining for the future our connection to all of life, remembering our heartsongs, remembering the beauty of our being.

We Story Ourselves into Being

We tell stories, we share them, we listen to them.  We connect with each other, we find commonalities, we find community.  We are moving from a paradigm of competition, scarcity and fear to one of collaboration, cooperation, co-creation and compassion.  We are finding our way and then telling the story to light the way for each other.  It has been said that we story ourselves into being.  We've had enough of the fearful stories we hear on the "news".  We have our own news.  There are new stories being told of a new paradigm.  Let's share them!