The Enchantment of Marsh Drifting

Sharon Blackie writes, in The Enchanted Life, about cultural myths that underlie societies.  In our society, the myth of progress, drives the culture. “Progress means never sitting still, never counting our blessings – always wanting more, more, more.” (p. 155)  On the next page, she wonders, “What if we found different myths to live by, and what if those myths taught us to truly value what we have, rather than always striving for more?  What if they taught us to value enchantment rather than exploitation?” (p. 156)

Due to some physical challenges, my partner and I can’t paddle long distances in our canoe this summer.  Luckily, we bought an 18 foot freighter canoe last summer and put a small 2.5 hp motor on it.  This long green vessel allows us to motor across the big water of Georgian Bay until we find marshland.  Then we cut the motor and sit quietly.  With no goal in mind and no where to “get to”, we let the wind determine our course.  Occasionally we have to push ourselves away from submerged rocks with a paddle but for the most part, we sit quietly and wait.

The silent marsh gradually comes to life once its inhabitants have forgotten that we are there.  Or maybe they are aware of our presence but have decided that we pose no threat.  Gradually,  we begin to hear a chorus of red-winged blackbirds, marsh wrens, goldfinches, swamp sparrows, bitterns, grebes and the occasional great blue heron croaking.  This past week, we heard one bullfrog calling and then a second in what seemed to be a call and response pattern.  Then another and another until we were surrounded by deep bull frog calls on all sides.  We grinned silently at each other at this symphonic delight.  All the while, the sun was setting on Georgian Bay in pinks, blues and purples and the marsh music provided the sound track to the images that surrounded us.

Blackie quotes theologian and cultural historian, Thomas Berry who proposed that a new story would have “’an integral vision’ in which ‘human persons bear the universe in their being as the universe bears them in its being.’  In other words: one in which we see ourselves as an intrinsic part of the world around us, not as separate.” (p. 160)

As we drifted through the marshland, we were inside the wind, it bore us across the surface of the water.  Below us were bass, sunfish, trout, pike, map turtles, gobies, countless underwater forests of aquatic plants and aquatic insects by the millions.  Above, flew flocks of blackbirds, cormorants, Caspian terns, Ring-billed gulls and Mallard ducks.  Just over the water were millions of newly hatched insects that were picked off by dragonflies and birds.  High above us, soared Turkey Vultures, those graceful windriders.  And in the middle of what we perceived, we floated in our green canoe, being born by the universe, while we felt the universe within us.  The boundaries blurred and we were no longer other.  We belonged, we were part of this grand parade of life and we soaked in the magic, the enchantment like parched soil does the rain.

Before it got dark, we were filled up and we returned to the town, with its walled houses, fenced yards and no trespassing signs.  The old story was played out in a thousand ways as we walked through the streets. But we were immersed and saturated with the new story, it fed us and would sustains us in these challenging times.  It is becoming our new story and the old story confuses us more and more with its insanity.  Then we have to return to the places that allow us to be a part of the new story in which we value what we have and we value enchantment.

Oh and Happy National Canoe Day!

Sharon Blackie (2018) The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday. Toronto: House of Anansi Press.

Daring to Let Our Music Out

He had seen a newly hatched snapping turtle with a shell about the size of a toonie at the edge of a swampy pond the week earlier.  So when we came across the pond on our spring walk, he looked for it again.  We saw a leopard frog but no baby turtle.

Walking along the dirt road about forty feet past the pond I noticed something at my feet.  Stooping down to investigate more closely, I discovered that it was another baby turtle.  My partner squatted down and picked it up to see if it was alive.  Sadly, it was not.

Just a few inches away was a shallow hole in the road.  Perhaps this was the nest that the turtles had hatched from.  Turtles that hatch in the spring are from eggs that were laid the previous year.  They overwinter deep in the earth and then fight their way through the soil to the air before finding their home in the water.  This nest was on the road that becomes the cross- country ski trail in the winter and the soil had had a heavy snow pack and lots of ski traffic on it all winter.

Wondering if there were live turtles trapped under the earth, he started digging with his hands, gently removing soil, hoping for a miracle.  At first, he found turtles that had fully hatched but had not been able to make it through the hard-packed soil alive.  As his excavation continued, he found turtles that were partly hatched, their little heads emerging from the shells.  The deeper he dug, the turtles were totally inside the eggs.  But he kept hoping for life even in the face of certain death.

There was no miracle that day.  When he had finished digging, there were about two dozen tiny snapping turtles lying on the dirt of the road.  No happy ending, just the reality of how our seemingly harmless activities of cross-country skiing had made it impossible for the hatchlings to break out of their earthen nest.

The image stayed with me and I pondered what I had seen.  It seemed like such a waste, all that unrealized potential at a time when turtles are endangered.  My partner came up with several solutions to prevent this from happening again while I waited for my own message to emerge.

Later that week, it came to me.  Nature is nature and most snapping turtles are predated while still unformed matter in the eggs.  Many more are hit by cars while crossing roads to lay eggs.  The intersection of turtles and people is one story.  But the story that came to me, came in a phrase, “dying with your music still in you.”  I thought about the potentials inside of all of us that want to be born, the music in each of us. The hard-packed dirt reminded me of the weight of responsibilities that can at time feel crushing.  At times, there is nothing left at the end of the day for myself, for birthing my own creations.  Sometimes, the news creates such fear that we “turtle”, crawl into our shells in a seemingly safe place.  There are times for such a retreat, but if hiding becomes the norm, then part of us dies.

And so, in this strange time that gets stranger every day, where the dirt keeps falling on our heads, threatening to bury us, I resolved to use my voice to speak my truth, to use my creativity, to use my resources, to let my music out.  This is not a time to hide under our bushels or to give up.  Just because we don’t seem to know where we are going doesn’t mean that we can’t use our creativity to find new ways of being together.

Today, I got an email from the David Suzuki Foundation celebrating the good news about a new library in Varennes, Quebec which is just south of Montreal.  The library is net zero for energy use through solar and geothermal energy.  It feels like something from the future.  Sounds too good to be true?  Check it out here and dare to dream!

Memory Serves

I am reading Lee Maracle’s Memory Serves.  The book is a collection of her speeches and lectures.  As an acclaimed Indigenous author, knowledge keeper of the Stó:lō nation, actor, and teacher, Maracle’s voice is one that is important to me.

Lee Maracle

On page 32, she writes, “My memory begins with an imagined world – my vision.  A world in which I dream and see peace…. I make a map.  On this map legions of bodies engage an imagined peace. They desire to concatenate, to link together, and to make this common dream roll forward.  I envision a tidal wave of different beings.  These people clean rivers, save trees that purify our air, clutch desperately to recycling, to writing letters, to calling their governments to stop the slaughter.  They write poems that may be heard by children who will never stop dreaming of peace.”  These words jumped out at me because they speak of my own vision, my own map.

Maracle describes memory from an Indigenous perspective.  “We remember events as obstacles to connection, community and relationship, rather than from a position of blame, excellence, exceptionality or success.” (p. 38)  I struggle to imagine this worldview, so different from the one that I grew up with, so different from the one I hear over and over again in the media.  I start to imagine seeing events through the lens of relationship. It feels like turning the Titanic.  It is hard work to change my well trained mind to see events from a different perspective.  But I can see the value in this worldview and it is one that I want to explore.

Maracle speaks about many things including the importance of story. “Story, poetry, word art, engage the imagination of the community, the heart of the nation and the spirit of the present, past and future.  Word art must move people from where they are to where they need to go to ensure community concatenation [linking together]. They must activate the community-based thought process of the listener without prescribing a response.” (p. 48)

As I worked my way slowly through Memory Serves I realized that Maracle’s words flesh out the concept of decolonization, changing the ideas that have led to the situations that we live in here in what we call Canada.  She describes Indigenous worldviews in a compelling way that become a map for finding our way out of this place, a map of vision and collaboration.  She calls for people to think in a more community-based way and therefore in a less individualistic way.  This makes sense to me.  Maracle’s writing indeed activates that kind of thinking in me.  She talks about the power of story, poetry and word art to elicit that kind of process in people without being prescriptive.  That of course leaves room for new thinking, new ideas, new discoveries instead of the old, standard ways of doing things which seem to be leading us to increased discord, damage and destruction.

So, I began to wonder what such a story would sound like in this very time that I am living, in this very place where I live.  In fact, for two and a half years, I have been writing this blog, once a week, in search of those very stories, hoping to elicit a community-based thinking process for myself and those who read this blog, hoping to fill in the map.  I am bombarded daily with stories of war, divisiveness and disagreements.  I now live in a place with a populist premier who rose to power on the flames of hate and fear. 

This is not the world that I imagine when I think of peace, when I vision my own map.  And so, I search for the stories from the ancestors, the stories of the people who value the land, who value community, who protect the vulnerable and empower the youth.  This is where I put my energy. This is what I link myself to with my feet, with my voice, with my on-line connections, with my wallet, with my ears and eyes and with my heart.

Tent Caterpillar

This past weekend, I encountered a young mom with two little boys on the edge of the forest.  They were looking at something in the older boy’s hand.  I went over and asked what they had found.  A tent caterpillar moved around the boy’s hand.  The mom quickly explained that the boy had learned to be afraid of bugs during a school hike in the woods and she didn’t want that to be the case.  She had read them the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar and had come to the forest so the boys could encounter nature, well, naturally, with curiosity and amazement.  So, I let another caterpillar crawl onto my hand so the boy could see an adult doing this.  I asked him how the caterpillar felt by gently stroking the hairs on its back.  We talked about what the caterpillar would eat and how it would eventually turn into a moth.  I congratulated the mom on doing a great job and she talked about how she is trying to combat the allure of screens by getting the kids outside.

The next day, my partner and I met a family at the Wye Marsh with a four year old and an infant.  My partner pointed out frogs, turtles, turtle nests, Tree Swallow nesting boxes and a nesting osprey.  Once the dad knew what to look for, he got down to the boy’s level and patiently showed him how to look for these things.  The dad’s enthusiasm was infectious and the boy started to ask questions and look for himself.  The mom talked about how she grew up in nature and how she wanted that for her kids.  I congratulated her on doing a great job too.

Ebony Jewelwing resting on an Ostrich Fern at the Wye Marsh

As a "grandmother-at-large", I want to encourage parents who are limiting the tech culture and teaching their kids to appreciate and love nature.  I want to congratulate them, empower them with information and share my own enthusiasm with the kids.  Could this very simple linking up for a few minutes with families be one of the stories that elicits community thinking?

Lee Maracle (2015) Memory Serves. Edmonton: NeWest Press.

Bayer Shareholders Vote for the Bees

Last week, I wrote about a new story in which hundreds of thousands of people joined together to convince the European Union and Bayer that using pesticides that are lethal to bees is a disastrous idea.

SumOfUs, one of the organizations that was fighting on behalf of the bees attended the shareholders’ Annual General Meeting in Bonn, Germany.  They made sure that they got their message out, trending on Twitter, in the press and then at the shareholders’ meeting.  Their message is that “Bayer’s profits come with a hefty price tag – the massive global die-off of our bees.”

SumOfUs sponsored beekeepers to attend the meeting to speak directly to Bayer’s shareholders.  You can see some of the action here, including the mock funeral for the “last bee.”

SumOfUs presented a counter motion against Bayer’s board of directors and it was supported by 5000 investors.  They listened as key investors raised concerns about the effects of the neonic pesticides.

The SumOfUs members and beekeepers who attended the AGM felt empowered because they knew that hundreds of thousands of people all around the world stood behind them in support.

So, to summarize what SumOfUs has accomplished with the support of people all around the world;

• ·        in 2013 the EU made a partial ban on neonics,
• ·        France passed a full ban in 2016,
• ·        this year, the EU made a full ban on three neonic pesticides and
• ·        just three weeks ago, the European Court of Justice dismissed Bayer and Syngenta’s lawsuit against the EU’s measures to protect the bees.

Now that’s a good story!