Don't Judge the Fern by the Fiddlehead

Despite the rain this Saturday, we went in search of a trillium experience.  We were not disappointed.  The rain, it turned out, was warm and the misty air created a sense of mystery as we followed the well worn trail through the mixed hardwood bush.  We walked past the dark green heart shaped leaves of Wild Ginger and the bluish green foliage of Blue Cohosh.  Past the Wild Leeks and Wild Garlic until we found them. Thousands of White Trilliums spread out beneath the trees as far as the eye could see.  We breathed them in like a tonic after a long winter.  They had returned, a little later than usual, but in full force.  Our hearts were filled and our spirits lifted by the sea of white and green.

We kept walking, taking in their beauty and finally paying attention to the other plants as well.  Just beside the path, I saw a little fern unfurling.  It wasn’t the fiddlehead of an ostrich fern and I had trouble identifying it in it’s infant stage.  It was probably a Sensitive Fern judging by the thick middle part of the frond.  It was kind of gangly and misshapen, not the lovely graceful shape of the adult fern.

This reminded my partner of the baby robins in the backyard.  They have indeed hatched and he has been taking pictures of their fuzzy , big beaked, closed eyed heads projecting out of the nest, waiting for regurgitated worms from their parents.  They look nothing like the adult robins who hatched them.

Baby Robin emerging from underneath its mother.

Well, this got me thinking of a video I had watched recently on a new economic idea of circular economics.  You can watch it here. In this two minute video clip, Economist Kate Raworth uses a piece of hose she found in her garden shed to explain how we can work with and within the cycles of the living world to create a circular regenerative economy.  So, check out the video.  If you can’t picture what this might look like when it is all fleshed out, then remember the little fern and the baby robin.  Imagine that this idea could become something concrete and beautiful and don’t judge the fern by the fiddlehead.

Supporting Creativity is Building the Future

A Robin is sitting on her nest just under the eaves of our greenhouse in the backyard.  Since the clothes line goes right past her nesting spot, we have temporarily stopped hanging laundry on the line until the eggs have hatched and the nestlings have fledged.  Otherwise, clothes whizzing past her might scare her away and then the baby birds could be lost.  It is a small and easy thing for us to do to support the new life emerging in the yard.  Two chickadees have taken up residence in a bird box on the front lawn and two House Wrens are building a nest in the nesting box attached to the far side of the greenhouse. We really enjoy watching the bird parents work so diligently to bring new life into the world.  We do what we can to support them and not frighten them as they go about their sacred duties.

Last weekend, I attended a fundraiser for Sistema Huronia which is an organization that provides free music lessons for children who would otherwise not be able to afford them.  Sistema was started in Latin America and has now spread to many more countries.  Its focus is on having children learn to play violin, viola, cello or double bass to play together as a way of enriching the children and also to create community.  It was really wonderful to hear the children from Midland perform simple and more complex pieces together. The concert also included a senior’s yukele orchestra from the area as well as folk musicians from a local Coffee House called Good Vibes.  Here we all were on a Saturday afternoon celebrating the musical offerings of young and old alike.  The Board of Directors for Sistema is made up of four seniors who must fundraise to keep the program going.  Sistema Huronia is now five years old.  It was so  good to see the seniors from the Board and the musical groups working so diligently to support the children of the community and creating community as they did it.

Later on this past week, I attended a play called Empty Regalia. This play was written by Ziigwen  Mixemong, a young Indigenous woman from the area about Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women.  The proceeds from the single performance of the  play all went to Greehaven, the local women’s shelter.  Ziigwen opened the play dressed in her Jingle Dress Regalia, dancing to the Strong Woman Song.  The short play showed four different scenarios in which an Indigenous woman was lost.  After each scenario, the woman donned a blank mask and then hung up her regalia on the black backdrop and disappeared.  By the end of the play, there were four brilliant regalia suspended against the black speaking loudly of the brilliance and beauty that was lost along with these women.

In the final scene, Ziigwen returned in her regalia and swept the area clean with her Eagle Feather as she danced suggesting hope for a new future.  The other actors were her friends who agreed to help her stage this play in a very short period of time.  The Orillia Opera House was well attended for this performance and the audience gave the actors a standing ovation.  After the play, there was a chance to ask the cast and crew questions to keep the dialogue going.  Once again, adults had come out to support young people who are trying to make a difference in the world and listened to what they had to say.  There are no easy solutions, but as Ziigwen said, How cool is it that we can shape the future?

My own children are all grown up now and the parenting role has changed but I still have a commitment to the young ones in the world and in my community.  Be they baby birds, young musicians or creative young people, they all need our support to grow and find their places in this world.  Indeed, they are building our future as well as their own and we would be wise to care for them well.

Sacred Symphony of Spring

We were just about to back the car out of the driveway when my partner noticed an orb spider web that hung between the passenger side mirror and the door of the car.  The heavy clouds had left beautiful drops of dew at all the intersection points of the web and it glistened in the pale morning light.  The spider must have spun its web during the night or early morning since it hadn’t been there the day before.  It probably seemed like a great place to create this intricate insect trap.

As we drove down the street, the web shook in the breeze but held up rather well.  Once on the highway, the super strong silk was no match for the wind and the web was swept away.  I hoped that the spider was hiding behind the mirror, safe from the wind.

The web felt like a metaphor for the times we are living in.  We build structures, social webs, ways of being that seem like good ideas at the time.  We think we are building on rock and that things will never change.  But suddenly, the ground begins to move.  Up is down and down is up.  Our structures seem to fall apart before our very eyes.  What we knew can be swept away in a moment.  My sadness at seeing the web destroyed was really sadness for my own sense of loss in these rapidly changing times.

But then I remembered the spider.  Once the car stops, she can swing down on a silken thread and find a better place to build her web. Or maybe she left before the car moved and is already spinning a new one.    She can make all the silk that she needs in her spinnerets and build a new web.  She is the ultimate symbol of creation.  In fact, in West African creation stories, Anansi the spider creates the world.  In Hopi stories, Spider Woman creates the first people with Tawa, the Sun god.  Many cultures have stories about spiders involving weaving and creating.

Spider reminded me that we are creators as well.  We can form new structures, new relationships, new ways of doing things.  Perhaps we have to examine if we want to recreate things as they were before, or if they need some changes and some new ideas.  Although it can seem as though our webs are being destroyed by the speed of change, in fact we are still connected to everything in a web that is part of the structure of the universe whether it is visible to us or not.

Coltsfoot Flowers

After driving for a while, we came to the Wye Marsh and went for a walk, in search of a seemingly elusive spring.  Even in the cold misty air, spring was evident.  The fiddleheads of the Ostrich Ferns and the Blue Cohosh stems were rising magically from the leaf littered forest floor.  The Coltsfoot flowers that look like miniatures suns were closed tightly waiting for the Sun to open them.  The Marsh Marigolds had yellow buds on them that were in the same holding pattern.  We found several cracked Canada Goose eggs that had been licked clean by some hungry mother raccoon or otter. 

Blue Cohosh

At the side of one of the ponds we found dozens of Tree Swallows dipping and diving as they ate insects.  It was time to stop and take in this amazing sight.  A Leopard Frog began to croak and the Canada Geese were honking as they do.  The Swallows were calling out in their shrill way as they flew past.  And then a bell began to ring from the Martyr’s Shrine across the highway, a reminder of the sacred calling people to worship in a church.  The tolling bell, the frog, the geese and the swallows created a kind of Sacred Spring Symphony as we watched the birds carve twisting arcs through the sky.  For me, they were all visible evidence of the web that connects us, a reminder of what is eternal and a call to keep on creating within that web.

Restoration is About Love

Restoration is About Love, Reverence and Care.  Here is a feminine response to climate change.  Take a few minutes to listen to the voices of these women as they speak passionately about restoration and women as forces of nature.

A Wealth of Winged Wonders

Here we are, mid-April and everything is birds!  Outside of our living room window, my partner has hung five bird feeders.  Some are on the edge of the roof and some are in the big Sugar Maple.  They offer sunflower seeds, corn and suet.  Below them is the roof for the outside entrance to get under the house which is perfect for putting peanuts and more corn on. The birds are joined on the roof by chipmunks and squirrels.

All winter we had Goldfinches in their seasonal olive feathers.  But now, the males have turned bright yellow for mating season.  Purple finches, Ruby Crowned Kinglets, Common Redpolls, Evening Grosbeaks and an array of sparrows; White Throated, Song, Fox and Tree, to name a few are all migrating through the area and stop to feed.  The Dark Eyed Juncos, Chickadees and Blue Jays that we had with us all winter now have to share the feeders with a roving band of Rusty Blackbirds and Grackles who arrive like a motorcycle gang coming to town.  These large black birds swing upside down on the suet feeder and gobble down the corn as if they would never eat again.  Woodpeckers go for the suet feeders as well; Downey, Red Bellied and occasionally a Pileated which is way too large to hang onto the feeder and eat.  The White Breasted Nuthatches like the sunflower seeds as do the finches and Chickadees. Dozens of Red Winged Blackbirds trill their songs out in the trees around the house.  The ever present Crows play in the wind, waiting for the egg laying season to begin.  Occasionally a Raven’s groak can be heard from way up high, or the warbling call of Sand Hill Cranes migrating through.

The intricately interwoven branches of the maples create a multidimensional web of infinite perching possibilities.  The birds navigate this matrix, flying from branch to branch, sidestepping along horizontal ones and side slipping down those with an incline.  They are fluid masters of their habitat.  The whole living web vibrates with energy and excitement.  It becomes a fractal as my mind recalls impulses moving along the neurons of the brain, or particles moving through blood vessels, or sap rising through the trunk and limbs of the tree.  As I stay in the moment and simply pay attention to what is outside of my window, I connect with my own body and the wonder of life.

Every now and then Turkey Vultures soar by, or Trumpeter Swans pumping their huge wings.  Occasionally a Bald Eagle does a magestic fly by as well.  The Merlins are back in town, so the Robins and Mourning Doves have to be on the look out for the aerial acrobatics of these small falcons.

We can sit in our living room and watch this amazing display through the big picture window, better than any TV screen.  And that’s what we did on Good Friday as it rained most of the day.  During a lull in the bird action, I checked my emails and read a disturbing one about how the Ontario government is proposing to remove protection from endangered species.  Just one more attack from a vicious premier left me feeling dispirited.  But of course, that is what politicians like him want us to feel, hopeless and powerless so they can go about their dirty business unhindered.

So, we decided to get outside and go down to the lake to connect with the life down there. There are thousands of birds who migrate through this area.  On Georgian Bay there were Buffleheads, Common Mergansers, Goldeneyes and lots of Canada Geese.  The Double Crested Cormorants and Ring Billed Gulls are back as is our local Kingfisher and the Trumpeter Swans. I felt better down there surrounded by the water and clouds, birds, trees and new flowers pushing up through the earth.  Little purple Crocuses and Snowdrops were braving the cold wind. I imagined myself connected to all of them and pictured myself connecting to people who also value all the species, people who will speak out in support of protecting endangered species instead of the monetary interests of developers.

Feeling somewhat better we began to walk back to the house when we noticed a large number of birds swooping and diving in the sky.  We could tell they were swallows by the shape of their wings and their manner of flight.  There were hundreds of them.  We stood still and watched the flock move wildly through the air.  The whole flock would circle away and then appear again.  They must be migrating through and had found a swarm of newly hatched insects.  It was so amazing to watch them fly wildly without ever hitting each other yet staying as a flock and moving over the trees and water and back again.  We were delighted by the magic of this fabulous show and followed the flock along the edge of the lake.  Later we saw them flying just over the water still feeding.  We couldn’t figure out what insect would be hatching in the chilly weather until a little black winged one landed on my partner’s nose.  Then we knew.

Energized by the swallows we continued walking along the lake, fed by all the life that was emerging from the water and the land.  As we connected to all the life around us, we no long felt powerless or hopeless.  We will look to find others who will speak out against this new assault on those non-human life forms that we share our home with.  The first person we met as we were watching the swallows told us that he had bought some binoculars just to look at the ducks and geese out on the bay.  “This is bird central,” he said with a laugh. 

How rich we felt surrounded by these winged wonders.  Not rich like developers.  No, a much better kind of wealth.  The wealth of finding our place with all of life, not outside of it.

A Gift of Silver

I received an unusual gift this week.  I had accompanied my partner to a conference where he was selling the beautiful stringed instruments that he makes.  I had brought one of my beading projects to work on at the booth and was happily sitting with the sun at my back sewing tiny seed beads onto felt, three at a time.  A thin man, probably in his late fifties approached the booth and began to look at the instruments.  He struck up a conversation and I joined in, although I can’t remember what we talked about now.  He seemed happy just to talk to someone and he made eye contact from behind his horn rimmed glasses the whole time.  He seemed to be quite happy to be in the moment and so was I.

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After about ten minutes of conversation, he reached into his pocket and brought out a zip lock bag with coins in it.  “I’m going to give you a good luck charm,” he said as he reached into the bag.  He pulled out two coins, one for myself and one for my partner and handed them to me.  They were silver coloured and a bit bigger and heavier than a Canadian toonie.  The man beamed with pride as he handed them to me.  Looking down, I saw the words Half Dollar and US on it.  There was a picture of a building on the coin. I felt immediately repelled at this US currency due to the past two years of American politics.  But the man was still beaming.  Flipping the coin to the other side I saw the upside down head of a man.  I righted the image and there was the profile of John F. Kennedy.  Underneath his head I read 1776 – 1976.  “It’s the bicentennial half dollar,” exclaimed the man.

He began to tell me all about the coin.  After the assassination of JFK in 1963, the US had minted a commemorative coin with the image of the president on it.  It was brought back again to celebrate the bicentennial of that country in 1976.  “I’ll bring you a fact sheet,” he continued.  “But I have to get it photocopied first so I can give one to every person I give a coin to.”  And off he went to do just that.

I looked at the coin more closely.  It had the words Liberty, 200 Years of Freedom, In God We Trust and E Pluribus Unum which I later discovered was the early motto of the United States meaning “Out of Many, One”.  I was to learn much more once the man returned with the fact sheet.  “Read it,”  he said before he continued on his distribution round.  I had lots of time so I read the sheet, wondering all the while why this coin was so important to the man.  I learned about the history of the coin and the specifics of its composition and weight, but I couldn’t see the significance.  So, when the man returned for the third time, I asked him why this coin was so important for him.  “I collect coins,” he said.  “And whenever these bicentennial coins come up, I buy them and give them away.”  My brain moved in slow motion trying to grasp this man’s reality.  He loved coins, found them fascinating and special.  And he was sharing something he loved with strangers that he met.  This was just the way he was in the world.

I later found out that this man’s brother had always come to these conferences and had loved the community that he experienced at them.  The brother had recently passed away and so this man had come to the conference to experience the community that his brother loved.  And he brought coins as gifts to people in that community as good luck charms. 

I had to look past American politics to see into the heart of this gift.  This was a gift of a brother to a community that his deceased brother had loved.  That original American motto, Out of Many, One seemed to describe this very community.  I had to look past the symbol of money that can cause so much trouble and see the good wishes with which this man had imbued the silver.  

This gift of silver challenged the stereotypes and prejudices that were within me.  The gift challenged me to see the man not as an American stranger, but as a brother who was grieving and as a fellow human who was sharing love by generously sharing what he loved with people he had just met.  The coin did not feel like something that I wanted.  And yet it was a gift and so I accepted it with as much gratitude as I could muster.

I have been pondering this unusual gift for days now wondering what the actual gift is.  I will keep the coin as a reminder to look past differences and see the heart of each person.  It may very well be that this silver good luck charm will indeed make me feel lucky to get to know people whom I might otherwise ignore and to be part of communities that make space for the many.  

Familiar Faces that Light My Way

Through the tiny airplane window, I could see the waning moon midway on her journey across the sky.  Four days earlier, she had been full and round, the Sugar Moon.  Now she was thinner but I still remembered the maple syrup we had made in our little sugar shack and the sugar maple trees in the yard that shared their sweetwater with us.  And I remembered the taste of that sweetwater that we drank as a spring tonic.

Now, I was headed west to Victoria where sugar maples are not generally found except in special gardens.  I was on my way to meet my daughter and my son and hopefully some Arbutus and Douglas-fir trees that I had read about but never seen. As I looked out of the airplane window as we sat on the tarmac I noticed the moon.  That made me smile to see her shining down on my journey.

The plane took off and circled Toronto until it was finally headed west. I was watching the land as we rose to cruising speed and altitude but once we were headed west, there was the moon outside of my window once again.  I was happy to see her familiar face in a sea of unfamiliar ones sharing the plane with me.

Over the five-hour flight to Vancouver, I noticed that the moon was getting a little ahead of us. I tried to figure it all out but remained slightly baffled.  I guess the world was spinning faster in the opposite direction than we were flying even though we were hurtling through the air at over 900 km/h.  It made me think about my life these days.  No matter how fast I go and how much I try to accomplish, the tasks that need doing always outpace me just like the moon was doing now. 

The moon and I were both orbiting Earth out there in the sky and I was happy for her company until the sky got too light and she disappeared from my view.  I missed her shining face but very shortly we landed in Vancouver.  My daughter was already there and she texted me that she could see my plane and would meet me when I came out.  I followed the other passengers and we walked and walked until finally we came to a doorway and there was my daughter’s shining face.  How wonderful lit is to find a familiar face in a sea of strangers.  The heart just leaps.

We flew together in a little turbo prop plane over the many islands between Vancouver and Victoria.  We could see ships and ferries down below.  Before you knew it, we were in a rental car headed for Sydney where my son who had taken a ferry from Vancouver was waiting for us.  With lots of help from the GPS voice, we found the restaurant and after searching the faces in there, we found my son, another shining face.  How wonderful it was to sit across from my grown children at the table after travelling with hundreds of strangers across the country. 

Together we explored Victoria walking through Beacon Hill Park with its giant Western Red Cedars, to the place where Terry Fox started his run so many years ago, past Emily Carr’s home, around the Legislative Buildings where the Moose Hide Campaign celebrates every year, along the harbour and then back again.  My daughter had found us an Air B&B with a lovely fenced in yard so there was no need to pull down the blinds at night.  The next morning, I woke up and looked out the lovely big windows and there in the sky was the moon, a little thinner but midway across the sky again.  I laughed out loud to see her there.  She was travelling just as I was. She connected me to home somehow. She had already looked down on my home in the east and now here she was in British Columbia. The next morning, a little later this time, there she was again. 

After a few days, we travelled on to Salt Spring Island and I didn’t see the moon again for a few days.  Our next stay was in a lovely little cabin that faced east.  There were tall Sitka Spruces and Douglas-firs to the south blocking the sky.  I missed seeing her in the mornings.

On our last day, we took the 6:15 am ferry back to Victoria.  It was dark when we drove onto the boat and we went to sit in the heated seating area.  The ferry turned and then started sailing south down Fulford Harbour.  The sky began to glow in the east and we went out onto the deck to watch the sunrise.  And there just to the west of the rising sun was the crescent moon just rising.  What a perfect send off as we began our journeys back to our homes in Calgary and Barrie this time in the opposite direction to the moon.  

But I know I will see her again once she starts to wax and I will always remember seeing her face and the faces of my daughter and my son in British Columbia.  In a world of so much change, I find myself relying on the constancy of the moon ever changing as she is.  Rising at a different time each day as she completes her own orbit of Earth, changing shape and size every day and then beginning again. She reminds me that change is part of life, that movement is part of life and that connecting to these cycles helps me to feel at home.  The moon helps me to find my place amidst my own changes and cycles and travels and I love her company.